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THE GALLERY IN PRIORY GARDENS.

In 1758, Wilton, the sulptor, and his friend Cipriani, had been chosen directors of a Statue Gallery in Priory Gardens, opened by the Duke of Richmond for the use of art-students. It consisted of about thirty casts from antique statues, and the liberality of the Duke was celebrated by Hayley the poet, Romney, his friend, being a constant student there at the time Smollett was the Duke's chaplain. In 1770, after being shut for some time, the gallery was reopened, and placed under the direction of the Society of Artists of Great Britain, whose Academy was in Maiden-lane, William Woollett being secretary of the society.

Years after Turner will write with admiration of Woollett.

There is no doubt that the propinquity of this Academy influenced Turner's mind. Can we doubt that Romney and Woollett must have often come in to chat with the barber who lived opposite, and perhaps have lent drawings to the clever boy?

CHAPTER III.

THE SKY PAINTER.

It is to this period of Turner's life that we may safely refer some of the many visits paid to Bristol, to a Mr. Harraway, an old friend of his father's, and a fishmonger and glue-boiler in Broadway.*

I like to associate that dirty and venerable old legendary city with Turner. I can see him looking at the Exchange, where the great West Indian merchants are pacing, discussing the prices of sugar and rum; in Queen-square, where the great magnates lived; at Redcliffe church, looking up at the dark sad room over the north porch where poor Chatterton wove those lies so fatal to his peace; in the Pithay, looking at the knightly escutcheons over the doors of frowsy oldclothes-shops; on the river in a boat, hearing the nightingales in Leigh woods; on the cliffs, among the Mayflowers, looking down upon the chasm.

Many of his large drawings executed at this time, and given to Mr. Harraway, are extant. They were executed at different periods, and show the various

* Whose niece, Miss Dart, of St. James's-square, Bristol, still has the first picture Turner ever exhibited at Somerset House. Mr. Ruskin possesses his first sketch-book.

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DRAWING ONESELF.

stages of maturity that his mind successively attained. The same family once possessed another rude and early drawing of Turner's, "Cote House, Durdham Down," the seat of Sir Henry Lippincotte, with Sir Henry, Turner himself, and old Mr. Harraway all in the foreground. Perhaps the boy had been seen drawing down at the Hotwells, and was asked up, all red and smiling, to Cote House.

There is a view of "Oxford," also of the same date.

To the same date, or a year earlier or later (1790 or 1791, not when he was eighteen, it is wrongly inscribed), must be attributed a crude boyish portrait executed for Mr. Harraway during one of these holiday and sketching visits. The face, weakly drawn, is simple and boyish, the long luxuriant curling hair falls down on his shoulders and frilled jacket; the nostrils and mouth are delicately drawn, with a carefulness indeed that amounts to timidity. The face shows no promise of genius, and cannot be intended for a boy of more than fifteen, or at the most sixteen years old.

The likeness was considered good at the time; the circumstances that led to its being drawn were these: Turner (who is known to have taken his friend Girtin's portrait) had drawn likenesses of two of his friend Harraway's children, the family pressed him to make a drawing of himself.

"How am I to do it?" said the boy.

"In your bedroom, with a looking-glass," said somebody: so he did, and the little coloured portrait in the black oval wood frame now in Mr. Ruskin's possession was the result.

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Turner afterwards attempted his own portrait several times; there is one portrait (at the age of seventeen) in the Vernon Gallery, bold and vigorous, but not of a very good colour.

It has been erroneously stated in many confused versions of Turner's early life that he was entirely self-educated; that his father taught him to read, and that he could use a pencil before a pen: one blunderer goes so far as to say that he never could write with ease up to the very day of his death, while he certainly never spelt correctly. Nothing can be more untrue than most of these statements, which arose, like most scandal, partly from ignorance and partly from malice. Turner was reasonably well educated; we have shown he went to school at Brentford and Margate, and to an academy in Soho. He also is known to have attended a drawing-school in St. Martin's-lane, where the fashionable Paul Sandby, then an Academician, taught drawing. His final effort at Tom Malton's lodgings in Long Acre we have yet to describe.

That his father taught him reading is not unlikelywhat master will take the pains that a father does? -but the poisonous breath of detraction will blow upon the grave of all great men.

The clever boy, fired by Sandby's drawings, and having gathered something from the days gone to wreck at Brentford, is now busy at home down in the cellar and up in the bedroom, colouring prints for Mr. John Raphael Smith, printseller, in the same street, for whom a clever boy of the same age, and named Girtin, also works; gets probably a shilling or two for

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flat washes of pink, and brown, and green, such as you see on coloured Gillrays still extant. The process is not one peculiarly grateful to the imaginative mind, but it requires care and neatness, with some evenness and purity of colour, and it helps to educate. His employer, Raphael Smith, a miniature-painter, just then known as an excellent mezzotinto engraver, was acquainted with Cozens, one of the most poetical of our early water-colour painters, one of Turner's early models, and with Dr. Munro, another of Turner's early patrons.

Between whiles copies of Paul Sandby, and neat pale greenish imitations of Dayes, the topographic artist, Girtin's master, serve to hang in the barber's window, ticketed at three shillings, which Mr. Crowle, and Mr. Duroveray's friend Mr. Tomkinson, the little pompous pianoforte maker, buy greedily and chuckle over. The propinquity of Hand-court to Mr. Raphael Smith's shop is advantageous too, for it leads to the entrapment of passing amateurs.

But Turner at this period (supposing him to be about thirteen, just after he has left the school at Margate, the period so eventful and fatal to him) had other occupations besides copying Sandby, and Nicholson (whom he used to mention as his model), Dayes, Girtin's master, and Hearne, the successful watercolour men of that day. When not visiting his butcher uncle at Brentford, or his glue-boiling relation, the fishmonger in Broadway, Bristol, he is employed in touching up amateurs' drawings, and adding skies and backgrounds to architects' designs; rolls of white clouds and blue wastes of summer sky which

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