,,the ,,water-,,colours ,,of ,j4 ,m4 ,w4 ,,turner ,,text ,,by ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson ,,and ,a4 ,j4 ,,finberg ,,foreword ,,by ,,sir ,,charles ,,holroyd1 ,r4,e4 ,,mcmix ,,offices ,,of #8,,the ,,studio' ,,london1 ,,paris ,,and ,,new ,,york ,,prefatory ,,note4 ,the ,editor desires to acknowledge his indebtedness to the following collectors of ,turner's water-colours who have kindly lent their drawings for reproduction in this volume3--,mr4 ,c4 ,morland ,agnew1 ,sir ,hickman ,bacon1 ,bart41 ,mr4 ,ralph ,brocklebank1 ,rev4 ,william ,mac,gregor1 ,mr4 ,w4 ,g4 ,rawlinson1 ,mr4 ,j4 ,f4 ,schwann1 and ,mr4 ,w4 ,yates4 ,the ,editor wishes especially to express his thanks to ,mr4 ,w4 ,g4 ,rawlinson1 who1 in addition to allowing several examples from his collection to be reproduced1 has rendered valuable assistance in various other ways in the preparation of this volume4 ,,articles4 ,a ,foreword by ,sir ,charles ,holroyd1 ,r4,e4 page #a ,the ,water-,colour ,drawings of ,j4 ,m4 ,w4 ,turner1 ,r4,a4 ,by ,w4 ,g4 ,rawlinson 0 #d ,the ,turner ,drawings in the ,national ,gallery1 ,london4 ,by ,a4 ,j4 ,finberg 0 #bh ,,list ,,of ,,illustrations4 ,plate ,i4 ,the ,archbishop's ,palace1 ,lambeth4 ,from the ,collection of ,w4 ,g4 ,rawlinson1 ,esq4 0 ,,ii4 ,the ,mouth of the ,avon4 ,from the ,collection of ,w4 ,g4 ,rawlinson1 ,esq4 0 ,,iii4 ,peterborough ,cathedral from the ,north4 ,from the ,collection of ,w4 ,g4 ,rawlinson1 ,esq4 0 ,,iv4 ,the ,pent1 ,dover4 ,from the ,collection of ,w4 ,g4 ,rawlinson1 ,esq4 0 ,v4 ,distant ,view of ,lichfield ,cathedral4 ,from the ,collection of ,w4 ,g4 ,rawlinson1 ,esq4 0 ,,vi4 ,edinburgh3 from ,st4 ,margaret's ,loch4 ,in the ,national ,gallery1 ,london4 0 ,,vii4 ,stonehenge--,sunset4 ,from the ,collection of ,w4 ,g4 ,rawlinson1 ,esq4 0 ,,viii4 ,scarborough4 ,from the ,collection of ,c4 ,morland ,agnew1 ,esq4 0 ,,ix4 ,lulworth ,cove4 ,from the ,collection of ,w4 ,g4 ,rawlinson1 ,esq4 0 ,x4 ,goarhausen and ,katz ,castle4 ,from the ,collection of ,w4 ,g4 ,rawlinson1 ,esq4 0 ,,xi4 ,the ,lake of ,nemi4 ,from the ,collection of ,c4 ,morland ,agnew1 ,esq4 0 ,,xii4 ,turin3 from the ,church of the ,superga4 ,from the ,collection of ,c4 ,morland ,agnew1 ,esq4 0 ,,xiii4 ,the ,crook of the ,lune4 ,from the ,collection of ,rev4 ,william ,mac,gregor4 0 ,,xiv4 ,norham ,castle4 ,in the ,national ,gallery1 ,london4 0 ,,xv4 ,launceston4 ,from the ,collection of ,j4,f4 ,schwann1 ,esq4 0 ,,xvi4 ,barnard ,castle4 ,from the ,collection of ,w4,g4 ,rawlinson1 ,esq4 0 ,,xvii4 ,on the ,lake at ,petworth--,evening4 ,in the ,national ,gallery1 ,london4 0 ,,xviii4 ,cowes4 ,from the ,collection of ,w4 ,yates1 ,esq4 0 ,,xix4 ,venice3 ,the ,salute from ,s4 ,giorgio ,maggiore4 ,national ,gallery1 ,london4 0 ,,xx4 ,venice3 ,casa ,grimani and the ,rialto4 ,in the ,national ,gallery1 ,london4 0 ,,xxi4 ,lucerne4 ,in the ,national ,gallery1 ,london4 0 ,,xxii4 ,a ,swiss ,lake4 ,from the ,collection of ,sir ,hickman ,bacon1 ,bart4 0 ,,xxiii4 ,bellinzona3 from the ,south4 ,in the ,national ,gallery1 ,london4 0 ,,xxiv4 ,bellinzona3 from the road to ,locarno4 ,in the ,national ,gallery1 ,london4 0 ,,xxv4 ,lausanne3 from ,le ,signal4 ,from the ,collection of ,w4,g4 ,rawlinson1 ,esq4 0 ,,xxvi4 ,lausanne4 ,in the ,national ,gallery1 ,london4 0 ,,xxvii4 ,zurich4 ,in the ,national ,gallery1 ,london4 0 ,,xxviii4 ,the ,seelisberg3 ,moonlight4 ,from the ,collection of ,w4,g4 ,rawlinson1 ,esq4 0 ,,xxix4 ,schaffhausen3 ,the ,town4 ,from the ,collection of ,ralph ,brocklebank1 ,esq4 0 ,,xxx4 ,tell's ,chapel1 ,fluelen4 ,from the ,collection of ,w4,g4 ,rawlinson1 ,esq4 ,a ,,foreword ,,by ,,sir ,,charles ,,holroyd1 ,r4,e4 ,i am particularly glad to write a foreword to this collection of reproductions of water-colours by ,j4 ,m4 ,w4 ,turner1 as they are perhaps the best renderings of the beautiful originals that ,i have yet seen4 ,the more reproductions we can have of the master's drawings the more will it be possible to study properly his great message1 and the more will his genius be recognised4 ,i would like to see everyone of his nineteen thousand water-colour sketches and lead-pencil drawings reproduced1 so that we could all hold them in our hands and carry them about with us2 for in them there is an unfailing beauty of composition1 and a glorious truth of effect and of detail1 by which ,turner managed to make complete pictures out of even the fewest touches4 ,no one realises ,turner's full genius till he studies these drawings1 often made in the very presence of nature4 ,they teach us to look at her with a new and seeing eye4 ,their absolute truth has hardly yet been fully recognised4 ,i have had the fortune to carry reproductions of these drawings with me in ,wharfedale and in ,venice1 and ,i have compared them touch for touch with nature4 ,often and often have ,i been able to see the meaning of what appears a careless scratch or even an accidental wriggle1 only when the actual scene was before me4 ,they are mostly drawn from one exact spot1 as may be seen by the crossing of the branches of the trees1 although these are now so many years older1 and the folding of the hills4 ,it was in the seventies that ,i first made these comparisons in ,wharfedale and ,i still remember my delight at recognising the gnarled markings on three ash trees a little below ,bolton ,abbey2 the angle of their growth forming a rough letter ,n was identical although they were mere saplings in ,turner's drawing1 and even the broken bank of the river was still the same1 all the winter floods of variable ,wharfe not having washed away nature's truth to ,turner's drawing4 ,my experiences in ,venice are similar4 ,with the reproduction in my hand ,i could say that ,turner drew a particular scene from a particular flagstone on the quay1 or piazza4 ,the lines of the houses on both sides of the canal cut one another in the exact way they did in ,turner's sketches only from one particular spot1 but from there the whole scene was complete exactly4 ,many subjects were sketched from the middle of the canal and owing to the movement of the water it was not easy to compare exactly the reproductions with the scenes in nature4 ,curiously nearly all these scenes from the canal were taken from the traghettos1 or ferries1 of which there are several up and down the ,grand ,canal1 where gondolas wait for hire1 tied to their posts1 somewhat as cabs stand in their ranks in our streets4 ,it is possible that ,turner in his economy made use of these waiting gondolas by giving the gondolier a palanca for permission to sit in a gondola whilst it was thus at rest4 ,it was an ideal place for working from in his day1 for no 8penny steamboats0 then splashed up and down the canal making things rock in their wake1 but peace reigned in the reflections of the palaces4 ,only very few of the drawings of which ,i had reproductions went unrecognised2 one was a view from high up1 probably from some room in the monastery of ,san ,giorgio1 and others all contained a view of a tall tower1 which1 from the neighbouring buildings1 ought to have been the ,campanile of ,san ,marco4 ,but the tower in the drawings had an extra cornice on the slope of the pyramidal top1 with supports below1 which ,i could in no wise reconcile with nature and which puzzled me for some time1 in fact until ,i saw the restoration begun on the tower of ,san ,giorgio4 ,then ,i found that the extra cornice and supports were a peculiar and ingenious form of scaffolding1 used for the placing of new tiles on the steep slope of the pyramidal top--and sure enough when ,i got back to ,london and looked at the original drawing with a glass1 the touches of water-colour indicated the scaffolding quite plainly1 and a wonderful small splash of colour enabled one to realise the angel on the top1 wings and all4 ,i found1 too1 that all drawings1 in which the ,campanile appeared1 done by ,turner during that visit1 gave the restoration works quite plainly1 even when the tower was seen from a long way off4 ,the beauty of the touches in ,turner's drawings from nature can only be fully appreciated when the drawing1 or a reproduction of it1 is compared with the actual subject1 for every bend and movement of the supple brush means something4 ,it is not possible to convey the drawings all over ,turner's far-stretching wanderings1 but1 if only we had good reproductions of them all1 what a pleasure we should all have1 and how much we should learn to appreciate his greatness4 ,i should like to see1 as ,i have said1 every fragment before the public4 ,it is practically the only way of using our great legacy fully4 ,the original drawings are perishable things1 and must not always be in the light2 many have faded already1 let us reproduce them while we may4 ,the slighter sketches reproduce best1 as may be seen in this book4 ,such drawings as the ,edinburgh from ,st4 ,margaret's ,loch1 about #ahja 7,plate ,,vi471 for example4 ,note1 too1 the splendid sketch of ,barnard ,castle1 about #ahbg 7,plate ,,xvi472 how well it comes1 we can almost see the brush-marks draw the forms of the foliage1 and the way ,turner has used the water2 they are perfect in their way4 ,when ,turner worked up a drawing it became like a lovely flower with a delicate bloom upon its infinite distances1 as in the ,lake of ,nemi1 about #ahah 7,plate ,,xi471 and the ,crook of the ,lune 7,plate ,,xiii472 they are like a gloxinia or an auricula4 ,this curious beauty of theirs was often obtained1 as it appears to me1 by alterations in the surface of the paper and by colour left in the grain of the paper after washing out or rubbing down a tone--it alters when the lighting of the drawing is altered1 and its changeableness is part of its beauty4 ,i should like to see reproductions of the sketch books1 made page by page and bound in similar bindings to the originals1 where these exist4 ,mr4 ,finberg has lately put some of these books together again--some drawings having been removed from the books for exhibition--for purposes of the very useful inventory of our ,turner drawings that he is so carefully making for the ,trustees of the ,national ,gallery4 ,the books are much more interesting when seen together4 ,i remember one which ,turner had with him in the ,lake ,district and you could trace his itinerary by turning over the pages4 ,he evidently left ,keswick in the morning and drew two or three views of ,lodore and the end of the ,lake of ,derwentwater1 the hills getting bigger as he comes nearer to them2 familiar views of ,castle ,cragg and the river come next1 and to me some most interesting views of that wide-spreading mountain ,glaramara1 some of them from unfamiliar points of view2 but ,i was able to recognise them because ,i have stayed for a month at a time in farmhouses on the lower slopes1 and ,i have explored that beautiful mountain's inmost caves4 ,after this ,honister ,crag and ,buttermere appear in due course4 ,how interesting it would be to have reproductions of such books and follow the track of the master page by page4 ,how we should learn to know him and to see familiar scenes with his eye4 ,we should find that exaggeration was not the character of his landscape drawing1 when he was working from nature1 but insight into the forms4 ,his effects of extra height can generally be got by sitting low on the ground or even right in a ditch4 ,from his drawings1 from those in this book of reproductions1 we learn again a forgotten truth4 ,fine drawing1 form1 is the essential in our art2 great and noble colourist as ,turner was1 we have had other fine colourists in the ,british school of water-colour painting1 but it is just in his drawing and his sense of the beauty and significance of line that he is supreme4 ,as ,titian in ,venice excelled the great colourists of his time1 such as ,bonifazio and ,paris ,bordone1 so by his drawing and sense of form ,turner excelled as a draughtsman even more than as a colourist4 ,,charles ,,holroyd4 ,,the ,,water-,,colour ,,drawings ,,of ,j4 ,m4 ,w4 ,,turner1 ,r4,a4 ,,by ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson4 ,what makes ,turner's water-colour drawings so profoundly interesting--apart from their extraordinary and enduring attractiveness--is the fact that in them lies before you1 plainly visible1 the whole course and development of his art4 ,and the continuousness and regularity of that development are remarkable4 ,there are no pauses1 no gaps1 hardly a table-land2 only one steady1 continued progress4 ,no matter how high a point he reached1 he was never content to rest there1 but was always pressing onward to fresh achievement1 trying new effects1 challenging new difficulties even down to the last years of his life4 ,to anyone familiar with his work in water-colour1 it is generally easy to date his drawings within a year or two4 ,no doubt the growth of his art can also be traced in his oil pictures1 but with some important differences4 ,in them1 even up to middle life1 he was constantly and strongly influenced by the work of other painters whom he was often consciously or unconsciously rivalling4 ,first ,richard ,wilson1 then ,van de ,velde and ,bakhuysen1 afterwards ,gaspar ,poussin1 ,claude1 ,cuyp1 ,rembrandt1 ,titian and others1 all in turn had their effect on him4 ,as a result of this rivalry1 his oil pictures were less spontaneous1 less sincere than his water-colours4 ,his lack of education also unfitted him to be the painter of the classical and sacred subjects in which he attempted to compete with the old masters4 ,no doubt there were brilliant exceptions--such1 for example1 as ,mercury and ,herse1 ,ulysses deriding ,polyphemus1 and others1 but ,i think ,ruskin was justified in calling many of them 8nonsense pictures40 ,moreover1 in his oil paintings ,turner was constantly experimenting--not always successfully--both with his materials and his methods and1 as a consequence1 many1 especially those of his later years1 have greatly suffered with time4 ,but in his water-colours1 after his first years or training and experiment1 he was simply and always himself--he was ,turner4 ,paul ,sandby1 ,john ,cozens1 ,malton1 ,hearne1 ,de ,loutherbourg1 and others of the older water-colour painters1 all had their influence on him1 but in no case did it last long4 ,the two men who affected him most were ,cozens and ,girtin1 his friend and fellow student1 of whom more will be said hereafter4 ,but by #ahjj1 or at the latest #ahjb1 ,turner had passed all his contemporaries1 and stood alone1 the acknowledged head of the ,english school of water-colour painting1 which in the-first half of the nineteenth century was to reach its zenith4 ,before attempting to trace the course of his art from its simple beginnings to its glorious close1 a few brief words may be desirable as to his early life and surroundings4 ,born1 it is usually supposed 7but by no means known with certainty71 in #agge1 of humble parents--his father was a barber in ,maiden ,lane1 ,strand--at a quite early age he developed unusual powers of drawing4 ,the barber proudly exposed his boy's works in his shop window1 and occasionally sold them for a shilling or two apiece2 he also showed them to his customers1 amongst whom was ,thomas ,stothard1 ,r4,a41 who praised them and advised him to make an artist of his son4 ,it is impossible accurately to trace his life before #aghi1 when he was presumably fourteen1 but it is clear that he had only some brief intervals of schooling1 first at a suburban and then at a sea-side academy--both probably of the cheapest and poorest middle-class type--in fact he never had any education worthy the name4 ,he received lessons in drawing1 however1 from various teachers1 including ,malton and probably ,paul ,sandby1 ,r4,a4 ,at about twelve or thirteen years of age1 he was placed in the workshop of the great mezzotint engraver1 ,john ,raphael ,smith1 who1 like many of his craft1 was also a print dealer4 ,here ,turner1 along with his future companion ,girtin1 was chiefly occupied in colouring prints for sale1 but he also learnt a great deal about engraving which was to stand him in good stead in after life4 ,after possibly another interval of schooling1 he passed1 somewhere about his fourteenth year1 into the office of ,mr4 ,hardwick1 a distinguished architect1 who employed him in drawing and tinting 8elevations10 adding landscape backgrounds to plans1 etc4 ,it was here1 no doubt1 that he laid the foundation of the fine architectural draughtsmanship which is noticeable in his earliest exhibited works and throughout his life4 ,long before he had mastered trees and foliage he could render accurately the lines and structure of a great building1 as well as its intricacies of detail1 as1 for example1 in the ,west ,front of ,peterborough ,cathedral1 which he exhibited at the ,royal ,academy a year or two later4 ,water1 also1 seems to have presented comparatively little difficulty to him from the first2 owing possibly to early studies at ,brentford and ,margate1 at both or which places he was at school4 ,very few1 however1 of his quite boyish drawings--,i refer to those before #agij--;have survived1 and those few are mostly copies of prints or of works of other artists4 ,one1 ,folly ,bridge and ,bacon's ,tower1 ,oxford 7taken from the heading of an ,oxford ,almanack71 may be seen in the ,national ,gallery 7,no4 #fac ,n4,g472 another in my possession1 ,a ,roadside ,inn--the earliest dated work by him 7#aghf7 known to me--is possibly original1 but more probably copied from a drawing by ,m4 ,a4 ,rooker1 ,a4,r4,a4 ,from the architect's office1 at the instigation it is believed of ,mr4 ,hardwick himself1 ,turner in #aghi became a student at the ,royal ,academy1 and may be said to have definitely taken up an artist's career4 ,in the following year1 #agij1 he sent his first drawing to the ,royal ,academy ,exhibition1 then held in ,somerset ,house4 ,this was the ,view of the ,archbishop's ,palace1 ,lambeth1 reproduced here 7,plate ,i474 ,for the work of a boy of fifteen1 the good architectural drawing1 the admirable rendering of reflected light on the houses1 the careful treatment of the figures 7the costumes are quite correct for #agij71 and still more1 the effectiveness of the composition are remarkable4 ,there is1 however1 nothing original in the style1 which is simply that of ,malton and ,sandby4 ,to the next year's exhibition 7#agia7 he sent two drawings1 one of which1 ,the ,interior of ,king ,john's ,palace1 ,eltham1 is a striking work1 of great originality4 ,not only has it the sound architectural draughtsmanship before alluded to1 but in its strong chiaroscuro1 its rendering of sunlight breaking through the ruined windows and lighting the gloom1 its sense of poetry and mystery1 it would be creditable to any artist of mature age4 ,a curious phase in ,turner's work of the next year--#agib--merits notice4 ,influenced probably by the pictures of ,de ,loutherbourg1 a ,french painter1 who had settled in ,england and had been made an ,r4,a41 ,turner1 for a few months entirely changed his scheme of colour1 adopting a curious range of greyish and purplish browns as his prevailing tone1 in place of the pale greys1 blues1 and neutral tints1 which1 in common with the other water-colour painters of the period1 he had hitherto employed4 ,in this style are several drawings of ,richmond ,park1 one or two of a fire at the ,pantheon1 and many of the beautiful scenery on the downs beyond ,bristol1 where1 during his early life1 he often stayed with relatives4 ,one1 ,the ,mouth of the ,avon1 is reproduced here 7,plate ,,ii474 ,in nearly all the ,bristol drawings one special feature is noticeable4 ,turner had evidently been struck by the unusual spectacle of the masts and sails of the tall ,east-,indiamen1 which were daily to be seen in full sail under the thick woods of the ,clifton downs1 beating their way up the narrow gorge of the ,avon to the port of ,bristol4 ,turner continued to exhibit at the ,royal ,academy in #agic and #agid4 ,he sold his drawings readily1 and1 although ,i cannot discover any public references to his work before #agif1 he must have attracted notice1 as in #agic he received a commission--his first--for drawings for engraving4 ,the 8,copper-plate ,magazine0 7afterwards known as 8,the ,itinerant07 was one of many serials then in vogue which were illustrated by the water-colour painters--8draftsmen0 they were usually called--and in one of its five volumes he is alluded to as 8the ingenious ,mr4 ,turner40 ,he is said to have been paid two guineas apiece for these drawings1 with a very small allowance for travelling expenses1 it being stipulated that every subject should be drawn on the spot4 ,with his slender wardrobe and his painting materials on his back1 carrying usually also his fishing-rod1 he tramped the country2 he found his way into ,kent1 across ,wales1 through ,shropshire and ,cheshire1 on to ,cumberland1 and returned by the ,midlands4 ,a reproduction of one of the 8,copperplate ,magazine0 drawings--,peterborough ,cathedral from the ,north--will be found here 7,plate ,,iii474 ,although on a small scale1 it is typical of his work of this period1 and it shows the strong influence on him of his contemporaries1 ,rooker1 ,hearne1 and ,dayes2 yet there is always a decided individuality of his own4 ,as the late ,mr4 ,cosmo ,monkhouse,a has well remarked of these early drawings3-- 8,the great fact in comparing ,turner and the other water-colour painters of his own time is this1 that while each of the best of the others is remarkable for one or two special beauties of style or effect1 he is remarkable for all4 ,he could reach near1 if not quite1 to the golden simplicity of ,girtin1 to the silver sweetness of ,cozens2 he could draw trees with the delicate dexterity of ,edridge1 and equal the beautiful distances of ,glover4444 ,he was not only technically the equal1 if not the master of them all1 but he comprehended them1 almost without exception40 ,about this time 7#agic71 ,turner had the good fortune to attract the notice of ,dr4 ,monro1 the leading ,physician of ,bethlehem ,hospital1 who had a house in the ,adelphi1 and another at ,bushey4 ,he was a well-known lover and patron of water-colour art1 and was in the habit of inviting promising young students1 including ,turner1 ,girtin1 ,varley1 and other afterwards well-known artists1 to his house1 where they were given drawings by ,rembrandt1 ,canaletto1 ,gainsborough1 and other deceased masters1 to study and copy2 especially also some recent sketches by ,john ,cozens1 one of the most poetical of ,english painters1 who had just returned from ,italy and ,switzerland1 where he had accompanied the millionaire ,beckford4 ,the influence of ,cozens on ,turner was marked and immediate1 and the latter must have made a very large number of transcripts of the elder painter's works2 in fact1 all the very numerous early drawings of ,italian and ,swiss subjects by ,turner in ,indian ink and blue1 which are so frequently to be met with1 are copies from ,cozens1 as ,turner did not visit the ,continent until #ahjb2 yet1 as ,i have before remarked1 all show a certain transformation in passing through his hands4 ,dr4 ,monro gave the lads half-a-crown a night and their supper1 and kept their drawings4 ,the training was an admirable one for them1 and when the doctor's collection was dispersed at his death1 it did not prove a bad investment so far as he was concerned4 ,mr4 ,henderson1 another collector and amateur artist1 afforded ,turner and his companions similar opportunities of studying and copying the works of older painters4 ,from #agic to #agif ,turner's advance in power was steady4 ,his subjects were varied--,english and ,welsh cathedrals1 old castles1 ruined abbeys1 village churches1 country towns1 waterfalls and trout streams--the latter generally with a bridge and always with an angler4 ,he was himself a keen fisherman1 and his anglers' attitudes are always carefully drawn and at once recognisable4 ,occasionally some striking atmospheric effect1 seen probably on the spot1 is introduced4 ,sometimes the picture is strikingly enhanced by the play of sunlight1 occasionally by boldly treated chiaroscuro4 ,the architecture is invariably drawn with accuracy and taste1 both as regards perspective and detail4 ,his colouring was a dainty harmony of broken tints in pale blues1 greens1 browns1 and neutral greys4 ,many good drawings of this time are in private collections1 and the ,print ,room of the ,british ,museum contains some fine examples which have been preserved from light1 and are consequently in perfect1 unfaded condition--notably ,lincoln and ,worcester ,cathedrals1 and ,tintern ,abbey4 ,most of the ,english cathedrals were drawn by him between #agic and #agif1 including1 in addition to the two just named1 ,canterbury1 ,ely1 ,peterborough1 ,rochester1 ,salisbury1 and ,york2 as well as ,bath1 ,kirkstall1 ,malmesbury1 ,malvern1 ,tintern1 ,ewenny1 ,llanthony1 ,waltham and many other abbeys1 together with castles innumerable--all in the delicate1 8tinted manner40 ,he also made a large number of studies of boats and shipping at ,dover1 one of which is reproduced here 7,plate ,,iv474 ,it was probably there and at ,margate that he laid the foundation of the extraordinarily accurate knowledge of everything connected with the sea and shipping which distinguished him all his life4 ,his works of this early period are usually signed4 ,the earliest signature known to me is the one alluded to on page #e1 8,w4 ,turner1 #aghf40 ,for the next few years he signed either simply 8,turner10 or oftener 8,w4 ,turner10 occasionally adding the date4 ,in #agii1 when he was elected an ,associate of the ,royal ,academy1 he changed to 8,w4 ,turner1 ,a4,r4,a410 and in #ahjb1 on receiving the honour of full membership1 he became 8,j4 ,m4 ,w4 ,turner1 ,r4,a40 ,a few years later he was appointed ,professor of ,perspective to the ,royal ,academy1 and much to the amusement of his fellow academicians he now sometimes added 8,p4,p40 ,in the works of his later life1 it is the exception to find any signature4 ,in ,turner's drawings of this period1 as in those of the early ,english water-colour school generally1 one is struck by a freshness1 a simplicity1 a new outlook on nature1 which contrast with the works of the classical painters who since the death of ,rubens and the great ,dutch landscapists--,van ,goyen1 ,cuyp1 ,hobbema1 ,van der ,capelle1 ,de ,koninck1 and others--had for a century or more dominated ,european art4 ,landscape had come to be regarded more as a fitting background to classical story1 and although often stately1 was always more or less conventional4 ,now1 ,nature was beginning to be studied and painted for her own sake4 ,yet ,turner1 like ,byron1 throughout his life recognised that natural scenery alone never makes a completely satisfying picture--always there must be some touch of the human element1 some suggestion of human presence1 human handiwork4 ,this1 however1 is entirely a different point of view from that of the classical painters4 ,from the delicate tints which1 up to #agie-f1 had characterized the work of ,turner1 in common with that of his contemporaries of the ,english water-colour school1 he passed1 almost suddenly1 in #agig1 to a larger and stronger style and a bolder range of colour1 although the latter was still limited as compared with the fuller tones of his middle and later years4 ,at first1 in #agif1 the pale blues and greens were simply deepened and strongly accented1 as was seen in the superb drawings of ,snowdon and ,cader ,idris which were shown last year 7#aijh7 at the ,franco-,british ,exhibition1 and to some extent in the ,distant ,view of ,exeter1 in the ,tatham ,sale of the same year4 ,soon1 however1 these tones were combined and contrasted with deep1 rich1 golden browns4 ,in #agig1 #agih1 and #agii1 ,turner sent to the ,royal ,academy ,exhibitions a series of magnificent drawings of large size1 all showing a striking advance in range and power4 ,eight views of ,salisbury ,cathedral painted for ,sir ,r4 ,colt ,hoare 7two are in the ,victoria and ,albert ,museum71 the fine ,crypt of ,kirkstall ,abbey 7,sloane ,museum71 the still finer ,warkworth 7,victoria and ,albert ,museum7 and the famous ,norham ,castle 7the late ,mr4 ,laundy ,walters71 with several others1 mark a new departure in his art4 ,turner always said that he owed his success in life to the ,norham ,castle4 ,thirty years later1 when he was illustrating ,scott's works1 and was the guest of ,sir ,walter at ,abbotsford1 walking up ,tweedside one day in the company of ,cadell the publisher1 as they passed ,norham ,turner took off his hat4 ,on ,cadell asking the reason1 he replied1 8,that picture made me40 ,probably he considered that it was to its influence that he owed his election as an ,associate of the ,royal ,academy in #agii1 the year of its exhibition4 ,some recent writers have contended that this great expansion of ,turner's art was due to the influence of his friend and companion ,thomas ,girtin1 but they have adduced no evidence to support that theory4 ,girtin1 it is needless to say1 was a very great painter1 and his early death in #ahjb was a severe loss to ,english art4 ,and no doubt he and ,turner1 in their constant intimacy1 must have continually and considerably affected each other--indeed up to #agie it is often exceedingly difficult to distinguish between the two men's work4 ,but1 so far as ,i have been able to study ,girtin's early drawings1 ,i cannot discover in those executed before #agig--the year which witnessed ,turner's new departure--any of the breadth and boldness which marked both men from #agig onwards4 ,certainly no work of ,girtin's of #agif--the year previous--approaches in force ,turner's ,snowdon and ,cader ,idris1 which already in design if not in colour herald his all-round expansion of #agig4 ,nor does the current opinion of that day appear to support the view just alluded to--quite the contrary4 ,the 8,st4 ,james's ,chronicle0 of #agig1 after praising ,turner's ,transept of ,ewenny ,priory and ,choir of ,salisbury ,cathedral in the ,royal ,academy ,exhibition of that year1 goes on to remark that1 8,mr4 ,girtin's drawings in general appear to be formed in the style of ,turner40 ,again1 8,the ,sun0 of #agii devotes a long paragraph to the eulogy of ,turner's ,carnarvon ,castle1 concluding with the remark1 8,this is a drawing that ,claude might be proud to own02 it then praises ,girtin's ,bethgellert1 but prefaces its notice with the observation 8,we do not remember to have seen the name of the artist before the present year4 ,the drawing is something after the style of the preceding artist0 ,turner4 ,redgrave also effectually disposes of the question in 8,a ,century of ,painters10 #ahff1 ,vol4 ,,ii41 page #djb4 ,moreover1 ,turner's great drawings of #agig1 #agih and #agii have characteristics which are not at all those of ,girtin4 ,already there is visible something of that wonderful delicacy1 that sense of mystery1 of #8infinity1' that indefinable charm which we call #8poetry1' which distinguishes his work--and especially his work in water-colour--from that of every other landscape painter--work all the more remarkable in that it proceeded from a man born in a back lane off the ,strand1 without any education worthy of the name1 and throughout his life unable to speak or write grammatically--yet withal a man of strong intellect1 keenly ambitious1 a reader1 and a voluminous writer of poetry4 ,one drawing only of this period is reproduced here--,distant ,view of ,lichfield ,cathedral 7,plate ,v474 ,it suffers from the unavoidable reduction in size1 but it is characteristic of ,turner's altered style4 ,unfortunately it has at some time been varnished1 probably by the painter himself1 as have two others equally important1 of the same period--,the ,refectory of ,fountains ,abbey and a replica of the ,cader ,idris--both of which are now in ,america4 ,gainsborough treated several of his drawings similarly1 as did ,girtin1 ,varley1 ,barrett and others of the early ,english school1 their object being avowedly to rival in water-colour the depth and richness of oil painting4 ,but not unfrequently1 as here in the ,lichfield1 the varnish in time disintegrates the colouring matter and produces a curious granulated look1 not unlike aquatint4 ,indeed1 the fine ,fountains ,abbey just alluded to was sold not many years ago at a well-known ,london auction room1 as a coloured aquatint1 and fetched only #e4 ,after ,turner's election in #agii as an ,associate of the ,royal ,academy1 he exhibited fewer water-colours and more oil pictures1 although he was continually producing drawings1 mostly of large size and on commission4 ,for the next few years his style did not greatly alter1 although a steady growth in power and range is visible4 ,several large views of ,edinburgh and its neighbourhood1 a series of ,fonthill commissioned by ,beckford1 another of ,chepstow executed for the ,earl of ,harewood1 together with the ,welsh castles of ,conway1 ,carnarvon1 ,st4 ,donat's and ,pembroke1 are among the most important4 ,the ,stonehenge reproduced here 7,plate ,,vii47 is probably the work of about #ahjc-ahjd4 ,he made also during this period a few drawings for engraving1 but1 with the exception of the well-known ,oxford ,almanacks1 these were chiefly on a small scale and gave him but little scope2 nor was he fortunate in his engravers until in ,james ,basire1 the engraver to the ,university1 he met with an artist of higher standing4 ,the ,university commissioned from ,turner ten large drawings for the headings of the ,oxford ,almanacks1 all of which he executed between #agih and #ahjd4 ,they are preserved in the ,university ,galleries1 and are noticeable alike for their architectural draughtsmanship1 their admirable composition1 and their general breadth of treatment4 ,about this time1 and also in connection with a commission for engraving1 he was first attracted to that ,yorkshire scenery which was afterwards to have such an important influence on his career4 ,dr4 ,whitaker1 the ,vicar of ,whalley1 on the borders of ,lancashire and ,yorkshire1 a wealthy and learned antiquary1 required some illustrations for his forthcoming 8,history of the ,parish of ,whalley10 and ,turner was recommended to him1 it is said by a ,harrogate bookseller1 as a young artist of fast-rising reputation4 ,it was during this visit that he made the acquaintance of ,mr4 ,walter ,fawkes1 the squire of ,farnley1 near ,leeds1 at whose hospitable mansion1 ,farnley ,hall1 he was shortly to become a frequent and an honoured guest4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it is time that reference should be made to the sketches1 which form such an important part of the volume of ,turner's work in water-colour4 ,from the outset of his career1 on every journey1 he made copious studies--at first mainly in pencil1 but sometimes in water-colour and occasionally in crayon or oil--of every paintable spot he visited1 keeping usually a separate pocket-book for each tour4 ,the sketches were sometimes rapid1 sometimes elaborate4 ,especially he made notes in colour of skies1 clouds1 water1 and any striking atmospheric effects which he might chance to see4 ,these although often slight1 and usually swiftly executed1 were nevertheless singularly accurate4 ,in a pocket-book of #agih ,i find twenty-five such1 with a list describing each3--,twilight1 ,clear1 ,rain ,coming1 ,sunny1 ,crimsoned1 ,showery1 ,gathering after ,fog1 and so on4 ,these sketches and studies he continued to make and to store throughout his life1 even up to his last journey on the ,continent in #ahde4 ,by the decision of the ,court of ,chancery1 at the end of a long litigation over his will1 they were awarded--nineteen thousand in all--to be the property of the nation1 and after many years delay they are now being admirably arranged and catalogued at the ,national ,gallery by ,mr4 ,finberg1 who writes on them here4 ,it is needless to say that to the student of ,turner's life work they are of the utmost interest and importance1 and often--especially the later ones--of surpassing beauty4 ,the examples which have recently 7#aijh7 been placed on view in the ,national ,gallery are mostly of ,turner's earlier periods1 but one or two belong to quite the close of his life2 some are drawings nearly finished but discarded4 ,in #ahjb ,turner visited the ,continent for the first time4 ,he was naturally impressed with ,calais1 his first ,french town1 and on his return he painted the well-known picture of ,calais ,pier 7,national ,gallery71 and the still magnificent but now much darkened ,vintage at ,mcon 7the ,earl of ,yarborough74 ,but it was in ,switzerland1 ,savoy and ,piedmont that he spent most of his time1 and the results may be seen in the fine drawings of ,bonneville1 ,chamounix1 and the ,lake of ,geneva in various collections1 the ,falls of the ,reichenbach1 the ,glacier and ,source of the ,arveron1 and others at ,farnley1 and the superb large body-colour sketches of ,the ,devil's ,bridge and the ,st4 ,gothard ,pass1 in the portfolios of the ,national ,gallery4 ,three of his ,swiss drawings he sent to the ,royal ,academy ,exhibition of #ahjc4 ,from #ahjc to #ahab he was continually receiving commissions1 both for oil pictures and water-colours1 from influential patrons1 including the ,earls of ,egremont1 ,essex1 ,lonsdale1 and ,yarborough1 ,sir ,john ,leicester1 ,sir ,john ,soane1 and other wealthy amateurs4 ,in #ahjg he started his well-known ,liber ,studiorum in rivalry of the ,liber ,veritatis of ,claude ,lorraine1 which had recently been successfully reproduced in engraving by ,english publishers4 ,for this he made about a hundred drawings in sepia--a colour he rarely used elsewhere--as guides for the professional engravers whom he employed on the work4 ,nearly all these drawings1 which are mostly slight1 are now in the ,national ,gallery4 ,during the ten years between #ahjc and #ahab1 ,turner's style in water-colour underwent a gradual1 but a very considerable change4 ,he left the dark blues and deep golden browns which1 as we have seen1 marked his first departure in #agig from the 8tinted manner0 of his early days1 and he gradually adopted a lighter and more natural range of colour4 ,this new style is best seen in the work of what is known as his 8,yorkshire period10 which began about #ahji1 and continued1 with various developments1 up to about #ahbj4 ,his subjects were at first mainly taken from the neighbourhood of the stately house in the beautiful valley of the ,wharfe which has become a place of pilgrimage to ,turner students from all parts of the world--,i refer1 of course1 to ,farnley ,hall4 ,its then owner1 ,mr4 ,walter ,fawkes1 was up to his death a kind friend and liberal patron of the painter1 who was a frequent visitor at the house1 and retained the friendship of the family down to his latest years4 ,farnley ,hall is still filled with drawings by ,turner of its surroundings1 the neighbouring ,wharfedale1 important ,swiss and other foreign landscapes1 illustrations to ,scott's and ,byron's ,poems1 studies of birds1 fish1 etc4 ,it also contains some important oil pictures by him4 ,to one series of water-colours--the 8,rhine ,sketches0--,i shall have occasion to refer later4 ,ruskin admirably describes the characteristics of these #8,yorkshire drawings' 78,modern ,painters10 ,vol4 ,i41 pp4 #abd1 #abe73-- 8,of all his ,turner's drawings1 ,i think those of the ,yorkshire series have the most heart in them1 the most affectionate1 simple1 unwearied serious finishings of truth4 ,there is in them little seeking after effect1 but a strong love of place2 little exhibition of the artist's own powers or peculiarities1 but intense appreciation of the smallest local minuti4 ,these drawings have1 unfortunately1 changed hands frequently1 and have been abused and ill-treated by picture-dealers and cleaners2 the greater number are now mere wrecks4 ,i name them not as instances1 but proofs of the artist's study in this district2 for the affection to which they owe their origin must have been grounded long years before4444 8,it is1 ,i believe1 to these broad1 wooded steeps and swells of the ,yorkshire downs that we1 in part1 owe the singular massiveness that prevails in ,turner's mountain drawing1 and gives it one of its chief elements of grandeur4444 ,i am in the habit of looking to the ,yorkshire drawings as indicating one of the culminating points of ,turner's career4 ,in these he attained the highest degree of what he had up to that time attempted1 namely1 finish and quantity of form1 united with expression of atmosphere1 and light without colour4 ,his early drawings are singularly instructive in this definiteness and simplicity of aim40 444 8,turner evidently felt that the claims upon his regard possessed by those places which first had opened to him the joy and the labour of his life could never be superseded4 ,no alpine cloud could efface1 no ,italian sunshine outshine the memories of the pleasant days of ,rokeby and ,bolton2 and many a simple promontory dim with southern olive1 many a lone cliff that stooped unnoticed over some alien wave1 was recorded by him with a love and delicate care that were the shadows of old thoughts and long-lost delights1 whose charm yet hung like morning mist above the chanting waves of ,wharfe and ,greta40 ,from #ahji to #ahbj1 ,turner's powers were rapidly developing1 and he was producing many important oil pictures1 some of which--,the ,frosty ,morning1 ,crossing the ,brook1 ,somer ,hill1 ,walton ,bridges and ,raby ,castle--were1 perhaps1 among the finest of his whole life4 ,he was also busy with drawings for engraving--chiefly for book illustrations1 and probably for this reason he seems to have executed comparatively few water-colours for commissions or for sale4 ,one1 however1 the magnificent ,chryses 7,mrs4 ,t4 ,ashton71 which he sent to the ,royal ,academy in #ahaa1 calls for notice4 ,it is a large1 impressive work1 closely resembling in design the ,glaucus and ,scylla of the ,liber ,studiorum1 but on a broader and nobler scale2 the colour-scheme intermediate between that of his early and his middle time4 ,what is so remarkable is its extraordinary ,greek feeling4 ,colour apart1 it at once recalls the scenery and the sentiment of the ,greek ,islands1 although ,turner never in his life saw them4 ,many will remember the effect which the drawing produced in the ,winter ,exhibition of #ahhg at ,burlington ,house4 ,mr4 ,morland ,agnew's beautiful ,scarborough1 reproduced here 7,plate ,,viii471 also belongs to this period4 ,one of ,turner's earliest series of book illustrations was his 8,southern ,coast of ,england10 which he began about #ahab and continued to #ahbf4 ,he agreed with ,w4 ,b4 ,cooke1 a fine line-engraver and an enterprising publisher1 to supply forty drawings of views along the coast1 from the ,nore on the east to the ,bristol ,channel on the west2 many other leading water-colour artists of the day--,de ,wint1 ,clennell1 ,prout1 and others--being also contributors4 ,turner was to receive seven and a half guineas apiece for the drawings1 which were of small size2 but although this price was soon raised to ten1 and later to twelve guineas1 he became dissatisfied1 and broke with ,cooke1 who1 however1 judging from the correspondence1 appears to have treated him fairly4 ,he had1 moreover1 given him many other commissions for drawings and had held exhibitions of these1 and the engravings from them1 at his rooms in ,soho ,square4 ,the ,southern ,coast drawings are elaborate1 highly finished1 and in a rather warmer tone of colour than hitherto4 ,many are extremely beautiful1 but in some there is visible that crowding of lights and foreground figures1 which from this time onwards is not unfrequent in ,turner's work4 ,the majority of the drawings are now1 alas1 so faded as to give but little idea of their pristine beauty4 ,what they all were like originally1 may still be seen in the beautiful ,clovelly ,bay in the ,national ,gallery of ,ireland 7,vaughan ,bequest71 and in the ,lulworth ,cove reproduced here 7,plate ,,ix474 ,about the same time1 ,turner made a fine series of drawings1 all on a large scale1 of the beautiful country which lies inland among the hills1 between ,hastings and ,tunbridge ,wells4 ,these were commissions from a well-known and eccentric ,m4,p41 8,jack ,fuller10 whose country-seat 8,rose ,hall0 7now known as 8,brightling ,park07 lies in the heart of that neighbourhood4 ,four were effectively engraved as coloured aquatints1 but were never published2 the rest were reproduced as ,line ,engravings in the 8,views of ,hastings and its ,vicinity0 7afterwards called 8,views in ,sussex071 published a few years later4 ,the series remained for a long time unbroken1 but it was dispersed at ,christie's last year 7#aijh74 ,all the 8,sussex0 drawings were of the highest quality1 sober in colour and treatment1 as befitted the character of the scenery1 but the majority have been badly faded by long years of exposure to sunlight4 ,somewhat similar in character to the 8,southern ,coast0 drawings1 but a little later and even more highly finished1 is a series which ,turner made in #ahah-ahai from camera obscura sketches by ,hakewill1 an architect1 to illustrate the latter's 8,picturesque ,tour in ,italy10 published in #ahbj4 ,ruskin1 who possessed many of these1 ranked them very highly and frequently alludes to them in 8,modern ,painters0 and elsewhere4 ,in the 8,notes on his ,drawings by ,j4 ,m4 ,w4 ,turner1 ,r4,a41 #ahgh10 his last important work on art1 he describes them 7p4 #bb7 as 8a series which expresses the mind of ,turner in its consummate power1 but not yet in its widest range4 ,ordering to himself still the same limits in method and aim1 he reaches under these conditions the summit of excellence1 and of all these drawings there is but one criticism possible--they #8cannot be better done'40 ,by the kindness of ,mr4 ,morland ,agnew1 two of the 8,hakewill0 series1 ,the ,lake of ,nemi 7,plate ,,xi47 and ,turin from the ,superga 7,plate ,,xii471 are reproduced here4 ,in #ahag or #ahah ,turner began the drawings which were to illustrate one of his most famous works1 the sumptuous 8,history of ,richmondshire10 which still admittedly remains the finest topographical book ever published4 ,the subjects--which were chosen for ,turner by a local committee of gentlemen--were all taken from that romantic district in the ,north ,riding of ,yorkshire1 on the borders of ,lancashire and ,westmorland1 of which the town of ,richmond is the centre4 ,the work was to be the magnum opus of ,dr4 ,whitaker whose earlier ,histories of ,whalley and ,craven had also been illustrated by ,turner1 and his publishers1 ,messrs4 ,longman1 spared neither pains nor expense in its production4 ,turner was paid twenty-five guineas each--then his usual price--for the drawings1 which are now worth from one to three thousand guineas apiece4 ,although simple in style and in colouring as compared with the work of his later years1 they have pre-eminently the charm of the #8,yorkshire period' already alluded to4 ,the finest of the series1 ,the ,crook of the ,lune1 is1 by the courtesy of its owner1 the ,rev4 ,w4 ,mac,gregor1 reproduced here 7,plate ,,xiii474 ,the necessary reduction in size makes it difficult fully to appreciate the great beauty of this drawing1 which ,i regard as one of the most consummate works of ,turner4 ,although it must have been1 one would imagine1 a most intricate and difficult subject for a painter1 and notwithstanding that he has treated it with extraordinary minuteness of detail--you can find at least twenty different walks in it--yet all this wealth of exquisite detail is perfectly subordinated to the unity and harmony of the composition as a whole4 ,the other 8,richmondshire0 drawings are scattered in various collections2 many1 alas1 are sadly faded from constant exposure to light1 notably the ,hornby ,castle1 in the ,victoria and ,albert ,museum1 which has become a complete wreck4 ,may ,i be permitted here to draw attention to the fact--apparently little known1 but none the less true--that1 with the exception of some of the darker early works1 no ,turner drawing can be continuously exposed unprotected to light1 without its ruin being eventually only a question of time4 ,the more delicate--the more 8,turneresque0 it is--the quicker will that ruin be accomplished4 ,usually the fading is so gradual that it is unnoticed by the owner1 but it is certain1 and1 it need not be added1 the depreciation in value is equally certain4 ,i would refer anyone who thinks this an over-statement to the ,blue ,book on the subject1 published in #ahhh 7,report of the ,science and ,art ,department on the ,action of ,light on ,water-,colours4 ,h4,m4 ,stationery ,office1 #ahhh74 ,several striking object lessons of the effect of exposure may also be seen at the ,national ,gallery in ,turner drawings which have been returned after exhibition in provincial ,galleries4 ,up to about #ahcj1 ,turner's finished drawings were mainly in transparent water-colour1 but from a quite early period he employed body-colour in his sketches1 especially whenever speed was necessary4 8,body-colour10 it need hardly be said1 is ordinary paint mixed with ,chinese white or some other opaque white substance in place of water1 and is frequently used on a grey or neutral coloured paper1 by which means the work is much more rapid4 ,he had recourse to that method on one memorable occasion4 ,in #ahag he went for a three weeks' tour in the ,rhine district1 and during that time produced no less than fifty drawings of fair size1 i4e41 at the rate of about three a day4 ,he first stained the paper a uniform bluish-grey1 which1 although itself sombre in tone1 effectively shows up the body-colour work1 and must have effected an immense economy of time as compared with ordinary transparent colour4 ,when he returned to ,england he took the drawings in a roll straight to ,farnley ,hall1 and ,mr4 ,fawkes1 to his delight1 bought them at once for #ejj4 ,for a long time they remained in a portfolio unbroken1 one of the treasures of the house1 but a few years ago some were dispersed at ,christie's4 ,one of these1 ,goarhausen and ,katz ,castle1 is reproduced here 7,plate ,x474 ,in #ahah ,turner went ,north to make drawings for 8,the ,provincial ,antiquities of ,scotland10 an important illustrated work in which ,sir ,walter ,scott1 then in the height of his ,waverley fame1 was keenly interested1 and for which he was gratuitously writing the letterpress4 ,sir ,walter wished the illustrations to be given to a fellow ,scotsman1 the ,rev4 ,john ,thomson1 of ,duddingston1 an able landscape painter1 but the publishers insisted that ,turner's was the name in vogue with the public1 and the work was accordingly divided4 ,the drawings1 which are all highly finished and of fine quality1 are entirely of ,lowland scenery1 including ,bothwell1 ,crichton1 and ,roslyn castles1 three or four ,edinburgh subjects--one1 ,edinburgh from the ,calton ,hill1 very striking--and the seaside fortresses of ,tantallon and ,dunbar4 ,they were afterwards presented by the publishers to ,sir ,walter in recognition of his services in ensuring the success of the book1 and they remained at ,abbotsford until quite recent years4 ,in #ahai ,turner paid his first visit to ,rome1 and remained there some time1 going a good deal into ,english society at the ,embassy and elsewhere4 ,he painted a few oil pictures1 but not many water-colours2 among the most interesting is a fine series of studies in the ,campagna1 most of which are in the ,national ,gallery4 7,the 8,hakewill0 drawings of ,rome were probably all finished before he left ,england47 ,his visit to ,rome would appear on the whole to have unfavourably affected his art4 ,his oil paintings especially1 from this time began to be more and more fantastic in subject1 florid in colour1 and complicated in design4 ,no doubt there are brilliant exceptions1 such as ,childe ,harold's ,pilgrimage1 and others1 but the old simplicity and sobriety had gone4 ,in the water-colours also the tendency to 8foxiness0 and florid colour is noticeable1 although not so pronounced2 it is visible in the ,campagna sketches just alluded to4 ,the change was soon recognised by his admirers4 ,in #ahbj 7the year following71 ,i find in the 8,annals of the ,fine ,arts0 the following discriminating criticism of an exhibition of his works which was held that year at the town house of ,mr4 ,fawkes of ,farnley3-- 8,turner appears here in his original splendour and to his greatest advantage4 ,those who only know the artist of late and from his academical works will hardly believe the grandeur1 simplicity and beauty that pervade his best works in this collection4444 ,the earlier works of ,turner before he visited ,rome and those he has done since for this collection are like works of a different artist4 ,the former1 natural1 simple and effective2 the latter1 artificial1 glaring and affected40 ,from #ahbj until about #ahdj1 apart from his sketches1 ,turner's work in water-colour was almost entirely for engraving4 ,this entailed a great demand on his time1 as he invariably also supervised the execution of each engraving4 ,proof after proof had to be submitted to him1 to be returned by him again and again1 touched1 scraped1 and drawn upon for correction1 before he would pass it4 ,as he had an intimate knowledge of the engravers' technical processes and always took pains to explain to them his reasons for the alterations which he required1 he gradually educated them to understand his aims and methods1 and so stimulated their ambition1 that the best of their plates mark probably the highest point which landscape engraving in line has ever touched4 ,i refer especially to those of 8,the ,southern ,coast10 ,rogers's 8,poems0 and 8,italy10 8,byron's ,works10 8,scott's ,poetical and ,prose ,works10 and 8,picturesque ,views in ,england and ,wales40 ,in #ahbd we find ,turner at work on the well-known 8,rivers of ,england10 the drawings for which1 along with its companion series 8,the ,ports of ,england10 have for so many years--too many1 alas1 for their welfare--been exposed for long periods and daily copied at the ,national ,gallery4 ,these show a richer and more elaborate colour-scheme1 as compared with the simpler work of the 8,yorkshire0 period4 ,an example1 the ,norham ,castle 7,no4 ,,xiv471 is given here4 ,both series were well reproduced in mezzotint on steel1 which metal had just begun to supersede copper for engraving4 ,in #ahbf he commenced what was to have been his magnum opus in line engraving--his 8,picturesque ,views in ,england and ,wales40 ,in this ill-fated work1 which was from first to last commercially a failure1 he proposed to depict every feature of ,english and ,welsh scenery--cathedral cities1 country towns1 ancient castles1 ruined abbeys1 rivers1 mountains1 moors1 lakes and sea-coast2 every hour of day--dawn1 midday1 sunset1 twilight1 moonlight2 every kind of weather and atmosphere4 ,the hundred or more drawings which he made for the work are mostly elaborately finished and of high character4 ,some are perhaps over-elaborated2 in some the figures are carelessly and at times disagreeably drawn2 but for imaginative1 poetical treatment1 masterly composition1 and exquisite colour1 the best are unsurpassed4 ,i have ventured to say elsewhere1 that in my opinion there are at least a dozen drawings in the 8,england and ,wales0 series any one of which would alone have been sufficient to have placed its author in the highest rank of landscape art4 ,two of the series are represented here--,mr4 ,schwann's beautiful ,launceston 7,plate ,,xv47 is the earlier 7#ahbg72 the striking and very attractive ,cowes 7,plate ,,xviii471 belonging to ,mr4 ,yates1 is a few years later4 ,turner was paid at the rate of sixty to seventy guineas apiece--to-day they are worth from one thousand to two thousand five hundred guineas each4 ,a new phase in his water-colour art of #ahcj-ahcf calls for notice1 viz41 his numerous small drawings for vignette illustrations1 the first and the most important of which were for the far-famed plates of ,rogers's 8,poems0 and 8,italy40 ,the drawings for these are markedly different from any of his previous work1 and many of them strike what ,i cannot but regard as an unpleasant note4 ,marvels of execution1 delicate1 highly imaginative1 and poetical in feeling as they are1 they are often strangely forced and extravagant in colour4 ,and this applies to nearly all his drawings for vignettes4 ,probably his reason for thus falsifying his colour was connected with the form of engraving1 as at the same time he was producing some of his finest and sanest work for the 8,england and ,wales10 8,turner's ,annual ,tours0 7now better known as the 8,rivers of ,france07 and other engravings of ordinary 7not vignette7 shape4 ,whatever may have been his motive1 it appears to me that owing to this unnatural colouring1 the exquisitely engraved vignettes themselves are in many cases finer than the drawings for them4 ,many1 however1 of the small drawings of this time are superb1 including several of those on grey paper4 ,in the 8,rivers of ,france0 series1 ,jumiges1 ,caudebec1 ,saint ,denis1 ,rouen from ,st4 ,catherine's ,hill1 and ,the ,light ,towers of the ,hve 7all in the ,national ,gallery71 are masterpieces1 as are also many of the illustrations to 8,scott's ,poetical and ,prose ,works40 ,in ,turner's later years he frequently did not sell his drawings for engravings1 but lent them to the publishers1 charging usually five to seven guineas apiece4 ,he kept many in his possession up to his death1 as he did nearly the whole of his sketches4 ,one day he brought the sixty drawings for the 8,rivers of ,france0 to ,ruskin1 rolled in dirty brown paper1 offering them to him for twenty-five guineas apiece4 ,to ,ruskin's grief he could not induce his father to spend the money4 ,in later years he tells us he had to pay #a1jjj for the seventeen which he gave to ,oxford6 ,a long succession of books were illustrated by ,turner between #ahcj and #ahcf1 containing in all nearly three hundred and fifty plates1 mostly of small size4 ,when it is remembered that he also closely supervised the smallest details in the engraving of each one1 and that at the same time he was engaged on a number of oil pictures of the highest importance many of which were finished and exhibited1 and others left in various stages of completion 7including most of those recently added to the ,tate ,gallery71 it may be doubted if such a volume of work was ever before produced in six years by any painter4 ,with #ahch1 however1 his work for the engravers practically came to an end4 ,he was now a rich man and able to refuse tempting offers for the pictures which he had determined to leave to the nation2 as for example his ,old ,tmraire1 which a wealthy ,midland manufacturer is said to have offered to cover with sovereigns4 ,from #ahch to #ahde1 when his health began to fail1 he spent an increasing time each year on the ,continent1 and it was during this period that his water-colour art passed into what many regard as its highest1 as it was its latest phase4 ,i refer especially to the magnificent ,sketches of this time1 the large majority of which are in the ,national ,gallery4 ,he revisited ,venice1 which had cast her enchantment on him in earlier years1 and he returned again and again to the ,lake of ,lucerne1 which1 after ,yorkshire1 was probably1 up to the last1 of all places in the world the dearest to his heart4 ,it would be difficult to say how many times he drew the town1 the lake1 the mountains1 and especially the ,righi4 ,there are the ,red ,righi1 the ,blue ,righi1 the ,dark ,righi1 the ,pale ,righi1 and a hundred other versions--each different1 each a #8vision of delight4' ,he made drawings also in many neighbouring parts of ,switzerland1 ,piedmont1 and ,savoy4 ,the sketches and drawings of this period have all the old delicacy1 combined with a greater breadth of treatment1 and an amazing wealth and range of colour4 ,sixty years' experience had given ,turner's hand--which up to the very last retained its extraordinary delicacy and certainty--a marvellous cunning4 ,in many cases the drawings were swiftly painted1 in others carefully stippled in details2 usually with a dry brush worked over body-colour4 ,sir ,hickman ,bacon's beautiful ,swiss ,lake 7,plate ,,xxii471 ,lausanne 7,plate ,,xxv471 ,the ,seelisberg1 ,moonlight 7,plate ,,xxviii471 ,mr4 ,ralph ,brocklebank's highly finished ,schaffhausen 7,plate ,,xxix471 and ,tell's ,chapel1 ,fluelen 7,plate ,,xxx47--which ,ruskin believed to be ,turner's last sketch on the ,continent--along with most of the reproductions from the ,national ,gallery1 are examples of this time4 ,this last phase of ,turner's art was1 however1 at the time neither understood nor appreciated1 probably owing largely to the new development which had recently taken place in his oil pictures4 ,in these he had set himself1 in his old age1 the last and hardest tasks of his life--the painting of pure light1 of swift movement1 of the tumultuous1 elemental forces of ,nature4 ,some of the ,venice subjects1 the marvellous ,snow ,storm at ,sea1 and the ,rain1 ,steam and ,speed1 were entirely misunderstood and ridiculed4 8,blackwood's ,magazine0 led the attack1 and 8,punch0 and ,thackeray added their satire4 ,no doubt several of his late oil pictures were far-fetched in subject1 fantastic in treatment1 and eccentric in colour4 ,probably1 also1 no one knew better than he that he had not reached the goal of his ambition2 but he also knew that his critics understood his aims as little as they did the difficulties which he had to encounter in striving to reach them1 and the old man felt the attacks keenly4 ,ruskin tells us that he came one evening to his father's house in ,denmark ,hill1 after an especially bitter onslaught on the ,snow ,storm at ,sea--,vessel in ,distress off ,harwich1 of #ahdb1 which the critics had described as 8soapsuds and whitewash40 ,ruskin heard him1 sitting in his chair by the fire1 muttering to himself at intervals 8,soapsuds and whitewash10 again and again and again4 8,at last10 he says1 8,i went to him asking1 #8,why he minded what they said8' ,then he burst out #8,soapsuds and whitewash6 ,what would they have8 ,i wonder what they think the sea's like4 ,i wish they'd been in it4'0 ,as a matter of fact1 ,turner had actually been on board the boat at the time lashed to the mast1 at the risk of his life4 ,nor has the work of his later years always been understood in our days4 ,not many years ago a distinguished ,german oculist read a paper at the ,royal ,institution which was afterwards published in which he endeavoured to prove that what he considered eccentricities of colour in ,turner's later oil pictures were due--not to his attempts to paint the unpaintable--but to a senile affection of his eyes1 which caused an unnatural distortion of his vision to yellow in everything4 ,but ,professor ,liebreich can hardly have been aware that although the oil pictures upon which he rested his theory1 being mainly attempts to depict objects or scenery seen in full sunlight1 necessarily tended towards yellow as their prevailing colour1 yet at the very same time1 and up to his death1 ,turner was daily producing the sanest1 most delicate1 most refined water-colour drawings in the palest as well as the deepest tones of every colour on his palette6 ,all the ,swiss1 ,venetian and other sketches of #ahch to #ahde1 which are the crowning glory of the ,water-,colour ,rooms in ,trafalgar ,square1 were executed during the period when1 according to ,professor ,liebreich1 ,turner's sight was permanently and hopelessly affected6 ,no doubt he recognised that water-colour was unsuited as a medium for his new aim at painting pure light1 and confined himself accordingly1 for such subjects1 to oil painting4 ,the attacks of the critics1 however1 had had their effect on the public1 and ,turner in his later years began to find difficulty in selling even his drawings4 ,ruskin1 in his 8,notes on his ,drawings ,exhibited at the ,fine ,arts ,society1 #ahgh10 tells with inimitable charm and pathos how the old painter1 returning in the winter of #ahdb from a tour in ,switzerland1 brought back with him a series of important sketches1 fourteen of which he placed1 as was his custom1 in the hands of ,griffiths1 his agent1 with a view to the latter's obtaining commissions for finished drawings of each4 ,although the price asked for a large finished drawing was only eighty guineas1 and notwithstanding the great beauty of the sketches1 nine commissions only could be obtained4 ,ruskin1 his father1 ,munro of ,novar1 and ,bicknell of ,herne ,hill1 all chose one or more1 but other former patrons saw in them what they regarded as a new style1 and declined them4 ,thirty years after1 ,ruskin--with pride for ,turner's sake1 he tells us--sold his ,lucerne ,town for a thousand guineas2 it has since changed hands at two thousand4 ,the ,lake of ,constance1 which at the time no one would buy1 was given to ,griffiths in lieu of his commission2 it fetched two thousand three hundred guineas at ,christie's in #aijg6 ,after #ahde ,turner's health gradually failed2 he continued to work at his oil paintings up to his death in #ahea1 but1 so far as is known1 he executed comparatively few water-colour sketches or drawings during his last years4 ,little has hitherto been said as to ,turner's technique in water-colour although the subject is one of great interest1 but1 unfortunately1 my point of view is solely that of a student1 and technique can only be adequately dealt with by an artist4 ,much valuable information1 however1 on the question will be found in ,redgrave's 8,century of ,painters10 ,vol4 ,i41 and in ,roget's 8,history of the ,old ,water-,colour ,society40 ,from the first he was a great innovator1 choosing his materials and often inventing his methods without regard to custom1 precedent1 or anything but the attainment of the precise effect which he desired at the time4 ,signs of scraping1 spongeing1 the use of blotting-paper1 etc41 are constantly to be seen in his drawings4 ,in some1 including one in my own possession1 the marks of his thumb are distinctly visible in places4 ,but the result always justified the means employed6 ,with his oil pictures1 especially those painted after #ahcj1 his experiments1 as we know1 were often disastrous in their ultimate effects1 but it is extremely rare to find any of his water-colours which have suffered in the smallest degree when they have been properly kept4 ,but alas1 as has already been pointed out1 only too many1 and amongst those some of the finest1 have been1 and still are being1 irretrievably damaged and changed by continual exposure to light1 both in ,public ,galleries and on the walls of their owners4 99 99 99 99 99 ,in the foregoing pages ,i have endeavoured to avoid adding to the already sufficient volume of #8sthetic criticism' of ,turner's art1 and ,i shall confine myself now to the briefest summary of what seem to me the distinctive features of his work in water-colour4 ,what first strikes one in his drawings1 apart from their technical skill1 is their individuality2 they always stand out amongst the work of other artists1 however great4 ,the chief cause of this is hard to define1 but ,i should say that it is that they almost invariably possess a certain quality of imaginativeness1 of what is termed #8poetry4' ,no matter how simple was his subject1 he instinctively saw it from its most beautiful1 its most romantic side4 ,if it had little or no beauty or romance of its own1 he would still throw an indefinable charm round it by some gleam of light1 some veiling mist1 some far-away distance1 some alluring sense of mystery1 of #8infinity4' ,and ,turner was a true poet1 although he had little enough of the look or the manners of one4 ,throughout his life he was a reader and a voluminous writer of poetry1 but his want of education debarred him from ever expressing himself coherently in verse4 ,the same cause1 together with his lack of a sense of humour1 interfered also with the perfect expression of his art1 especially in his classical and religious pictures1 and prevented him from seeing what was incongruous or at times unpleasing in them4 ,but only a poet deep-down could have won as he did from ,nature her most intimate secrets2 could so have caught and so inimitably have portrayed her every mood and charm4 ,and it is this impress of his deep love for the beauty and the grandeur of ,nature--a love as strong as ,wordsworth's1 as intense as ,shelley's--which is perhaps the greatest cause of the enduring attractiveness of ,turner's work4 ,without it1 he would never have toiled as he did all his life1 from dawn to dark1 year in and year out1 observing and recording in those nineteen thousand studies every kind of natural scenery1 every changing contour of mist and cloud1 every differing form and structure of tree1 every movement or reflection in water1 every transient effect of light1 storm1 wind or weather4 ,then he often had a deep meaning in his pictures1 beyond what was to be seen on the surface1 beyond1 perhaps1 what he himself could have always explained4 ,sometimes1 no doubt1 it was far-fetched1 sometimes fantastic1 yet it gives a character to his art which mere technical skill or perfect design do not by themselves attain4 ,by the modern school of landscapists this would probably be regarded as a defect or even a heresy4 ,pictorial art1 they say1 should not be #8literary1' should not be intellectual4 ,but to me it seems that the work of the highest artists--of ,leonardo1 ,michael ,angelo1 ,holbein1 ,rembrandt1 for example--almost invariably appeals to the intellect as well as to the senses4 ,mind1 sensibly or insensibly1 intentionally or unintentionally1 speaks to mind4 ,as has been well said apropos of ,ruskin's writings on ,turner3 8,what if ,ruskin's torch lights up some beauty that the painter himself was never aware of8 ,as a great man's inventions will carry more readings than his own1 so the meaning of a great painter is not to be limited to his expressed or palpable intentions4 ,there is a harmony between the imaginings of both and ,nature1 which opens out an infinite range of significance and supports an infinite variety of interpretations40 ,after ,turner had attained manhood--say from #ahjg onwards--his creative power constantly and increasingly made itself felt4 ,it is more evident in his oil pictures than in his water-colours1 because in the latter1 more or less throughout his life1 he was employed on illustrative1 topographical1 work4 ,but at an early period it is visible in his drawings1 notably in his ,liber ,studiorum 7#ahjg-ahai74 ,leaving aside actual landscapes such as ,solway ,moss1 ,ben ,arthur1 etc41 his creative1 imaginative power is seen in such subjects as sacus and ,hesperie1 ,peat ,bog1 ,procris and ,cephalus1 ,the ,lost ,sailor and other plates of the ,liber4 ,it also appears from time to time in later drawings4 ,yet a recent biographer has advanced the astonishing theory that1 whatever were ,turner's merits1 up to almost the end of his life he was not a 8creative0 artist1 merely an illustrator1 and this idea has been characteristically caught up and repeated by the latest ,german writer on ,modern ,art4 ,but is there any truth in it8 ,i think not4 ,the painter of ,the ,frosty ,morning1 and ,crossing the ,brook 7,national ,gallery72 of ,the ,guardship at the ,nore 7,lady ,wantage72 of ,childe ,harold's ,pilgrimage and ,ulysses ,deriding ,polyphemus 7,national ,gallery72 of ,the ,shipwreck 7,national ,gallery71 and a dozen other great ,sea ,pictures1 not a 8creative0 artist8 ,the draughtsman of ,chryses 7,mrs4 ,t4 ,ashton71 ,the ,land's ,end 78,southern ,coast071 ,the ,longships ,lighthouse 78,england and ,wales071 ,the ,alps at ,daybreak and ,the ,vision of ,columbus 78,rogers's ,poems071 ,the ,plains of ,troy 78,byron's ,poems071 ,the ,mustering of the ,warrior ,angels 78,milton's ,poems078 ,if these1 and scores of others which might be added1 are not examples of 8creative0 art1 where are 8creative0 landscapes to be found8 ,is ,martin's ,plains of ,heaven to be regarded as the type8 ,or is there no such thing as 8creative0 landscape art8 ,but1 after all1 does the question need arguing8 ,may one not just as well ask whether ,botticelli1 ,michael ,angelo1 ,raphael1 ,rubens1 ,rembrandt1 were 8creative0 artists8 ,of ,turner's technical skill in water-colour1 there is no need to speak2 his command of his material was absolute and has never been equalled4 ,and his sense of design1 of balance1 of rhythm--of what is termed 8style0--was always present4 ,he had caught it at the outset of his career from his close study of ,richard ,wilson1 who had inherited it as a tradition from ,caspar ,poussin1 ,claude1 and the painters of the seventeenth century4 ,rarely is there anything tentative about his drawings4 ,they are decisive--the design was almost invariably seen by him as a whole1 from the beginning4 ,often his work did not please him1 and if it was finished it was discarded2 if unfinished1 it was carried no further--as may be seen in several of the drawings recently 7#aijh7 exhibited at the ,national ,gallery1 and a good many of the oil pictures at the ,tate ,gallery4 ,he was also emphatically a great colourist--one of the greatest2 during the latter half of his life he thought in colour1 and composed in colour1 and it was with him an integral part of every design4 ,that is why his drawings can never be adequately reproduced by ordinary photography4 ,during middle life1 as has been pointed out1 his colour at times became forced and florid1 but it was never more pure1 never more beautiful1 never more noble1 than in his latest sketches4 ,at times1 no doubt1 ,turner's water-colours1 especially those executed between #ahbj and #ahcf1 have a tendency to undue complexity of design1 and to overcrowding both of subject and lights4 ,possibly to some extent this was due to the prevailing standard of ,english art and ,english taste at that time4 ,then1 perhaps even more than now1 high finish was too often unduly insisted on4 ,but you will never find too high finish or overcrowding in the drawings which he made for himself6 ,his figures1 also1 were frequently unsatisfactory4 ,it was not that he could not draw them--at first they were dainty and careful1 as may be seen in the two early drawings1 ,plates ,i4 and ,,iii4 ,but in his later years he seemed to regard figures simply as points of light1 colour or composition--they were always effective as such--and he often treated them carelessly--sometimes even coarsely--to the detriment of some of his otherwise most beautiful works4 99 99 99 99 99 ,turner is often claimed by the militant school of landscapists of to-day as one of the first and greatest #8impressionists4' ,in a certain sense no doubt this is true1 but his #8impressionism1' it seems to me1 was wholly different in nature from theirs4 ,during his life1 as we have seen1 he made thousands of sketches1 some slight1 some elaborate1 of places1 scenery1 and natural effects--shorthand memoranda1' so to speak--many of which may certainly be called #8impressionist4' ,but all these were founded on1 or were intended to add to1 his accurate1 minute and exhaustive study of natural forms1 and a draughtsmanship which has probably never been equalled by any other landscape painter4 ,then1 as is notorious1 he frequently altered certain features of landscapes or buildings to suit the requirements of his pictures--their symmetry1 their accent1 their colour-scheme--or in order to convey some suggestion as to their meaning4 ,in a letter still preserved1 he declares himself opposed to literalism in landscape--8mere map-making0 he terms it4 ,and when for any reason he thus altered the actual features of a scene1 he still almost always contrived to preserve the impression of it as a whole--usually under its best aspect1 at its choicest moment4 ,in this sense also he was an #8impressionist4' ,again1 when towards the close of his life he began to attempt the representation 7mainly in oil colour7 of pure sunlight--as in his latest ,venice pictures2 or of form in swiftest movement--as in ,rain1 ,speed and ,steam2 or of the mighty contending forces of ,nature--as in his ,snow ,storm off ,harwich1 he painted such subjects in the only method by which they could be intelligibly rendered4 ,in the same way ,whistler1 in his ,nocturnes1 demonstrated for the first time in ,western art1 the beauty of prosaic and even ugly objects1 seen in dim light4 ,both perforce adopted the #8impressionist' method1 because it was the only effective1 indeed the only possible one4 ,but to me it appears that there is all the difference in the world between these phases of #8impressionist' art and the principles of the modern landscape school1 whose works a brilliant set of writers in the press of to-day are continually calling upon us to admire4 ,the advanced #8impressionists' both in ,france and in ,england seem to go out of their way to represent the ordinary aspects of nature with a manifest determination to avoid any but the vaguest rendering of form1 no matter how clearly defined in such circumstances those forms may seem to ordinary ,philistine vision4 ,they also ordinarily abjure as #8literary' any kind of appeal to the intellectual faculties1 and apparently confine their aim to the production of a more or less startling1 but generally cleverly managed patterning of light1 shade1 and colour1 obtained usually by means of masses of coarse1 solid1 and often ragged pigment1 carefully arranged so that the effect intended may be found1 like a fire-plug1 at a certain exact1 calculated spot4 ,surely ,turner's #8impressionism' was far removed from this8 ,surely it is hard that he should be charged with being the precursor of the landscape school to which ,i have alluded1 whatever may be its merits8 99 99 99 99 99 ,possibly it is too soon as yet to predict what will be ,turner's ultimate place in art4 ,like every really great artist 7,i use the word in its widest sense7 he will be judged1 not by his defects or his mistakes--even if they be many and palpable--but by the heights to which he attained1 and the mark which he has left for others to follow4 ,for myself1 ,i believe that if his water-colours are allowed to remain unfaded for future generations1 they1 along with his best oil pictures1 will be counted worthy to entitle him to a place amongst the greatest painters of all centuries and all schools4 ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson4 ,in common with the ,editor of ,the ,studio1 ,i desire to acknowledge my deep obligations to the various owners of valuable drawings by ,turner1 who have kindly allowed them to be reproduced here4 ,there were1 however1 others which ,i should like to have seen represented1 but as these were not available1 the ,editor desired to replace them with examples from my own collection4 ,this must explain what will otherwise seem the undue proportion of the latter4--,w4 ,g4 ,r4 ,,the ,,turner ,,drawings ,,in ,,the ,,national ,,gallery1 ,,london4 ,,by ,a4 ,j4 ,,finberg4 ,the usual way of painting a landscape nowadays is for the artist to take his easel and canvas out into the fields1 and to work as far as possible with the scene he is representing before his eyes4 ,the scene1 with the artist's chosen effect1 is of course constantly changing1 so the artist can work only for a short time each day4 ,the effect itself will probably last for a period varying from a couple of minutes to about half an hour1 according to circumstances2 but the painter may be usefully employed in getting his work into condition for about an hour before the effect is due1 and he may work on for perhaps another hour while the effect is still fresh in his memory4 ,as one sitting of this kind will not enable the artist to carry his work far1 it is necessary that he should return day after day to the scene2 and if he is determined to paint it entirely on the spot1 he must be prepared to devote some months at least to the work4 ,the habit of painting and finishing pictures entirely out of doors was1 ,i believe1 introduced by the ,pre-,raphaelites during the fifties1 but before this1 ,constable and other artists had worked largely from rather elaborate colour studies made out of doors4 ,turner did not work at all in this way4 ,all his pictures were painted in the studio1 and generally from very slight pencil sketches4 ,so far as ,i know he never made even a slight colour study from nature for any of his pictures4 ,as the methods of work employed by the great artists are of very great interest1 ,i think it will be worth while to take one of his wellknown works and to trace its evolution somewhat in detail4 ,the beautiful drawing of ,norham ,castle1 reproduced here 7,plate ,,xiv471 will do very well for this purpose4 ,this drawing was made to be engraved in a series known as the 8,rivers of ,england40 ,charles ,turner's really fine mezzotint of it was published in #ahbd1 so the drawing must have been made at least a year or two before this date4 ,the pencil sketch on which it was based was made some quarter of a century earlier--to be quite accurate1 in the summer or autumn of #agig4 ,at that time ,turner was a young man of twenty-two1 but he had already made his mark as one of the best topographical and antiquarian draughtsmen of the day4 ,he had been a regular exhibitor at the ,royal ,academy for eight years1 and publishers and amateurs were beginning to compete for his productions4 ,it was his habit every summer to map out for himself a lengthy sketching tour1 his aim being to accumulate in his portfolio a pencil drawing made by himself of every building or natural feature that he might be called upon to illustrate4 ,these subjects were dictated by the taste of the time1 which generally ran towards the ruined abbeys and castles of the middle ages4 ,as ,turner's subject-matter was prescribed for him in this way1 he did not1 like the modern artist1 have to waste any time looking for promising subjects4 ,he had merely to study the numerous guide-books that were even then in existence1 to make out a list of the more important castles1 abbeys1 and ,gothic buildings1 and to hurry from one to the other as fast as the coaches or his own sturdy legs could carry him4 ,the methodical and stolidly business-like manner in which he set about and carried through this part of his work is calculated to shock the gushing and casual temperament of the artist of to-day4 ,turner's programme in #agig was an extensive one1 and1 what is much more remarkable1 he carried it out4 ,he seems to have taken the coach into ,derbyshire1 as he had already appropriated everything of interest in the ,midland counties4 ,he carried two sketch books with him1 each bound handsomely in calf1 the smaller with four heavy brass clasps1 the larger with seven4 ,the pages in the smaller book measure about #aj by #h inches1 those of the larger about #ad by #aj4 ,both these books are now in the ,national ,gallery collection1 and will shortly1 ,i hope1 be made accessible to students and the general public4 ,the campaign opens with two drawings of1 ,i think1 ,wingfield ,manor1 then comes a church with a tall spire on a hill which ,i cannot identify2 then we have one drawing of ,rotherham ,bridge with the chapel on it1 then one of ,conisborough ,castle1 single views of the exterior and interior of ,doncaster ,church1 three different views of the ruins of ,pontefract ,church1 and then two neat drawings of the ,chantry on the ,bridge at ,wakefield4 ,it is not till he gets to ,kirkstall ,abbey that the artist seems to pause in his breathless rush to the ,north4 ,there are no less than nine drawings of this subject1 all made from different points of view2 one of these leaves containing the sketch of the ,crypt--from which ,sir ,john ,soane's impressive water-colour was made--contains just a fragment of colour1 and has been for many years among the drawings exhibited on the ground floor of the ,national ,gallery4 ,in this way we can follow ,turner to ,knaresborough1 ,ripon1 ,fountains and ,easby ,abbeys1 ,richmond1 ,barnard ,castle1 ,egglestone ,abbey and ,durham1 and then along the coast to ,warkworth1 ,alnwick1 ,dunstanborough1 ,bamborough and ,holy ,island4 ,judging from the drawings1 ,i think it probable that ,turner spent the best part of a day at ,holy ,island1 but he got to ,berwick in time to draw a general view of the town and bridge1 and to make a slight sketch with his limited gamut of colours--black1 blue1 and yellow only--of the evening effect4 ,the next morning he was up in time to see the sun rise from behind the towers of ,norham ,castle1 and to trace a slight and hurried pencil outline of the main features of the scene4 ,there is only this one sketch of the subject1 and it does not contain the slightest suggestion of light and shade or of effect4 ,but there were ,kelso and ,melrose and ,dryburgh and ,jedburgh ,abbeys close by waiting to be drawn1 and ,turner evidently felt he must hurry on4 ,having drawn these ruins in his neat and precise way he turned south and struck into ,cumberland4 ,in the larger sketch book a drawing inscribed ,keswick follows immediately after one of the views of ,melrose ,abbey4 ,then comes ,cockermouth ,castle1 the ,borrowdale1 ,buttermere1 ,st4 ,john's ,vale1 ,grasmere1 ,rydal1 ,langdale1 and ,ulleswater with ,helvellyn in the distance4 ,then follow in rapid succession ,ambleside ,mill1 ,windermere1 ,coniston1 ,furness ,abbey1 ,lancaster1 and after a single drawing of ,bolton ,abbey we find ourselves in ,york1 where the ,cathedral and the ruins of ,st4 ,mary's ,abbey and ,bootham ,bar must have detained the artist for perhaps two or three days4 ,the tour1 however1 is not yet at an end1 for the ,hon4 ,mr4 ,lascelles 7who became ,earl of ,harewood in #ahbj7 wants some drawings of ,harewood ,house and of the ruins of ,harewood ,castle1 and ,mr4 ,hewlett wants some subjects to engrave in his forthcoming 8,views in the ,county of ,lincoln40 ,it is1 therefore1 through ,howden1 ,louth1 ,boston1 ,sleaford1 and ,peterborough that ,turner makes his way back to ,london4 ,he must have been back by ,september1 for among the drawings exhibited at the ,royal ,academy in the following ,may was one described as 8,a ,study in ,september of the ,fern ,house1 ,mr4 ,lock's ,park1 ,mickleham1 ,surrey40 ,he can1 therefore1 hardly have been away much more than three months1 if so long1 but his strenuous vacation had yielded an abundant crop of useful material4 ,it must have been ,october before ,turner was fairly back in his studio in ,hand ,court1 ,maiden ,lane1 and had settled down to work up this material4 ,by the following ,april he had four important oil paintings and six water-colours ready for the ,exhibition4 ,one of these oil paintings 7the ,dunstanborough ,castle7 now hangs in the ,melbourne ,national ,gallery1 to which it was presented by the late ,duke of ,westminster2 two others 7,winesdale1 ,yorkshire--an ,autumnal ,morning and ,morning amongst the ,coniston ,fells7 hang in the little ,octagon room in ,trafalgar ,square1 and the fourth is on loan to the ,albert ,memorial ,museum1 ,exeter4 ,this is the ,buttermere ,lake1 with part of ,cromack ,water1 a really fine painting1 though it has darkened considerably4 ,as the first important oil painting in which ,turner's genius was clearly manifested1 ,i should rejoice to see it hanging in ,trafalgar ,square4 ,the pencil drawing on which it was based contains some work in water-colour1 possibly made direct from nature1 but the details and general effect have been entirely recast in the finished work4 ,among the water-colours were the gloomy and superb ,kirkstall ,abbey1 now in the ,soane ,museum1 to which ,i have already referred1 and the drawing of ,norham ,castle1 with which we are now more particularly concerned4 ,the drawing exhibited in #agih is not the one here reproduced4 ,the exhibited drawing is probably the one now in the possession of ,mr4 ,laundy ,walters4 ,a photographic reproduction of it was published in ,sir ,walter ,armstrong's 8,turner0 7p4 #cd71 and it is worth pausing a moment to compare this with the original pencil sketch and to consider in exactly what relation these two drawings stand to each other4 ,the usual way of describing the process by which a slight sketch from nature is converted into a finished drawing is to say that the artist copied his sketch as far as it went and then relied upon his memory for the further elaboration that was required4 ,an artist's memory is assumed to consist of images of the scenes he has witnessed1 which he has some mysterious power of storing somewhere in his mind1 something like1 ,i suppose1 the undeveloped exposures in a ,kodak4 ,according to this theory we should have to assume that the particular sight of the sun rising behind ,norham ,towers which had greeted ,turner on the morning he hurried from ,berwick to ,kelso had been treasured up in the inner recesses of his consciousness1 and then some months afterwards1 when the appropriate moment came1 he had only to select this particular image from among the millions of other images in the same mysterious storehouse1 to develop it and copy it on to his canvas4 ,i need hardly add that this desperate theory is quite fanciful and absurd1 and in flat contradiction to the teachings of modern psychology4 ,a description that would not be open to such objections would run something like this3 ,when we are dealing with the processes of artistic creation we have to assume an intelligent human agent1 and analogies drawn from purely mechanical sources can only mislead us4 ,we must not assume that an artist's senses and intellect work like the mechanism of a camera1 or in any other abnormal way1 unless we have some strong evidence to support us4 ,and we must also remember that a visual image is a useful abstraction in psychology1 but in the conscious life of an intelligent human being it is merely an element within the ordinary life of thought and feeling4 ,let us therefore assume that ,turner not only made no effort to retain the exact visual impression of the scene in question1 but that he did not even attempt to separate this impression from the general whole of thought and feeling in which it was experienced4 ,the particular matter of sense-perception would then become incorporated in the general idea or the object--in the ordinary way in which sense qualities are preserved in ideas4 ,when ,turner therefore sat down to make his picture1 what he would have prominently and clearly before his mind would be a general idea of ,norham ,castle as a ruined border fortress1 a scene of many a bloody fray and of much bygone splendour and suffering4 ,in short1 his idea would be what the art-criticism of the ,henley type used to describe contemptuously as 8literary02 that is1 it was steeped in the colours of the historical imagination1 and was practically the same as that which a man like ,sir ,walter ,scott or any cultivated person of the present time would associate with the same object4 ,instead1 therefore1 of having a single image before his mind which he had merely to copy1 ,turner started with a complex idea1 which might1 indeed1 have been expressed more or less adequately in the terms of some other art1 but which he chose on this occasion to express in pictorial terms4 ,in this way we can understand why ,turner did1 as a matter of fact1 frequently and constantly attempt to express his ideas in the form of verbal poetry1 and why1 in the drawing we are now considering1 he felt himself justified not only in filling out his sketch with details that were neither there nor in the real scene1 but also in taking considerable liberties with the facts contained in the sketch1 altering them and falsifying them in ways that could not be defended if his aim had been to reproduce the actual scene itself4 ,the colouring too of ,mr4 ,walter's drawing owes much more to ,turner's study of ,wilson's pictures than to his visual memory of natural scenes2 that is to say1 the colour is used as an instrument of expression1--as a means to bring the imagination and feelings of the spectator into harmony with the artist's ideas1 as well as to indicate in the clearest possible manner that it was not the artist's intention to represent the actual scene in its prosaic details4 ,this picture1 with the others exhibited in #agih1 settled the question for ,turner's brother artists and for himself that he was a genuinely imaginative artist and not a merely clever topographical draughtsman4 ,the following year he was elected an ,associate of the ,royal ,academy1 at the early age of twenty-four1 and throughout his long life he always regarded himself as entitled to take any liberties with actual topographical facts that the expression of his ideas demanded4 ,the success of the first ,norham ,castle drawing induced ,turner to repeat the subject several times4 ,the late ,mrs4 ,thwaites had another water-colour of it in her collection1 there are at least three unfinished versions in the ,national ,gallery1 and ,i have seen a version of it in oil4 ,the subject was engraved in the 8,liber0 from what purported to be the picture in the possession of the ,hon4 ,mr4 ,lascelles1 but really from a fresh design made by the artist4 ,then ,turner painted the subject again for ,mr4 ,fawkes of ,farnley1 and again1 about #ahbb or #ahbc1 he made the drawing for the 8,rivers of ,england0 series1 here reproduced4 ,what is so interesting in all this is that the details in each of these versions are different1 yet they all seem to have been based on the same pencil sketch4 ,the relative size of the castle varies in each drawing1 as well as the details of its embrasures and crumbling masonry2 the character of the river banks also varies4 ,in the earlier versions the right bank is steep and rocky1 as suiting the solemn and gloomy effect of the subject2 in the latest version1 where the humble pastoral life of the present is thrown more into prominence1 this bank becomes flat and peopled with fishermen1 their boats and cows4 ,in one of the many anecdotes told of ,turner he is represented as saying to an artist who had complained of the disappointment he had experienced on revisiting a certain place1 8,don't you know you must paint your impressions0--or words to that effect4 ,i don't know how true the story is--and ,i may confess that ,i have almost got into the habit of disbelieving all the stories told about ,turner--but whether true or not this particular anecdote is certainly well invented4 ,turner knew quite well how large a part his subjective feelings and ideas played in all his work1 and it made him shy of revisiting places that had once impressed him4 ,but when he spoke of his 8impressions0 we must be careful not to suppose that he could have used the expression in the way it is often used now4 ,he did not abstract his particular visual impressions from the emotional and ideational context in which they were experienced4 ,in so far as ,impressionism means this kind of abstraction1 ,turner was never an impressionist4 ,and as his first ideas of places were steeped in the colouring of his own subjective life1 so his ideas were ever taking on different hues as his temper and character changed4 ,in this way he could use the same sketch again and again and always get different effects from it2 the sensuous datum was merely a point of departure for each fresh improvisation1 a form into which he could pour his meditations1 but a flexible1 plastic form which readily took the shape of its spiritual content4 ,these considerations may help us to understand what is apt at first to strike the student of ,turner's drawings and sketches as strange and incomprehensible4 ,turner was always sketching from nature1 and often making drawings that contain an amazing wealth of detail and definition1 yet the usefulness of his sketches seemed to vary in inverse ratio to their definition and to the time spent upon them4 ,the beautiful drawings never seemed to lead to anything1 all the pictures being painted by preference from the slightest and vaguest sketches4 ,thus the sketch book which contains the sketch of ,norham ,castle is filled with over ninety drawings1 most of them full of detail and delightfully precise and graceful in handling4 ,turner made good use of most of this material1 but the most prolific 8breeding0 subject--to use one of ,richard ,wilson's expressions--was unquestionably the hurried scribble of ,norham1 which was so slight as not to indicate even the general shape of the ruined tower with precision1 and which left the number of windows or embrasures entirely undetermined4 ,but when we see how ,turner used his sketches we can easily understand that this absence of definition must often have been a positive advantage to him when he came to paint his pictures4 ,there was less 8to put him out10 fewer obstacles in the way of his subjective utterance1 the form was more fluid and tractable to his immediate purpose4 ,the more detailed studies were of course not wasted1 for the knowledge they gave him enabled him to fill out the slightest hints of his 8breeding0 subjects with an inexhaustible wealth of plausible detail4 ,the ,national ,gallery collection contains just on three hundred of ,turner's sketch books1 and practically the whole of his work done immediately in the presence of nature4 ,this data enables us to speak with absolute authority upon the difficult question as to the relation between ,turner's art and nature4 ,they prove that he very seldom1 if ever1 painted a picture simply 8out of his head40 ,in everything he did--even1 ,i believe1 in the case of what have been called his classical nonsense pictures--there was a nucleus of immediately perceived fact4 ,this sensuous basis is seldom1 if ever1 absent from his work1 but it is invariably overlaid and distorted by the purely subjective forces of the artist's personality1 which appropriate the data of sense1 and mould them into any shape they choose4 ,it is impossible1 especially since 8,modern ,painters0 was written1 to overlook the important part played by natural fact in all of ,turner's creations1 but it is just as important not to overlook the equally obvious and certain truth that ,turner never uses nature simply for its own sake1 but only as a means of expression4 ,the methods employed in the particular case we have just studied are1 with few exceptions1 the methods which he adopted during the whole of his career4 ,yet ,turner did undoubtedly upon occasion paint in oil directly from nature4 ,an instance of this kind is described by ,sir ,charles ,eastlake in 8,thornbury0 7p4 #aec1 #crd edition74 ,eastlake met ,turner during his second visit to ,devonshire1 probably in the summer of #ahac1 and accompanied him to a cottage near ,calstock1 the residence of ,eastlake's aunt1 where they stayed for a few days4 ,another artist was with them1 a ,mr4 ,ambrose ,johns1 of ,plymouth4 ,it was during their rambles in the neighbourhood of ,calstock that ,turner gathered the material for his picture of 8,crossing the ,brook40 ,eastlake says that 8,turner made his sketches in pencil and by stealth10 that is to say1 he did not like to have people looking over his shoulder while he was at work4 ,the sketch book ,turner used on this occasion is with the others in the ,national ,gallery4 ,but after the three artists had returned to ,plymouth1 8in the neighbourhood of which he 7,turner7 remained some weeks1 ,mr4 ,johns fitted up a small portable painting-box1 containing some prepared paper for oil sketches1 as well as the other necessary materials4 ,when ,turner halted at a scene and seemed inclined to sketch it1 ,johns produced the inviting box1 and the great artist1 finding everything ready to his hand1 immediately began to work4 ,as he sometimes wanted assistance in the use of the box1 the presence of ,johns was indispensable1 and after a few days he made his oil sketches freely in our presence4 ,johns accompanied him always2 ,i was only with them occasionally4 ,turner seemed pleased when the rapidity with which those sketches were done was talked of2 for1 departing from his habitual reserve in the instance of his pencil sketches1 he made no difficulty of showing them4 ,on one occasion1 when1 on his return after a sketching ramble to a country residence belonging to my father1 near ,plympton1 the day's work was shown1 he himself remarked that one of the sketches 7and perhaps the best7 was done in less than half an hour40 8,on my enquiring afterwards10 ,sir ,charles ,eastlake adds1 8what had become of those sketches1 ,turner replied that they were worthless1 in consequence1 as he supposed1 of some defect in the preparation of the paper2 all the grey tints1 he observed1 had nearly disappeared4 ,although ,i did not implicitly rely on that statement1 ,i do not remember to have seen any of them afterwards40 ,there are about a dozen small oil sketches of ,devonshire subjects in the ,national ,gallery1 which are doubtless part of those made under the circumstances described by ,sir ,charles ,eastlake4 ,they are made on a brownish millboard1 prepared with a thin coating of paint and size4 ,on the back of one of them there happens to be some lettering showing that ,johns had laid violent hands on the covers of some parts of ,william ,young ,ottley's 8,british ,gallery of ,pictures10 then being issued serially4 ,several of these paintings have long been hung among the exhibited drawings2 e4g41 ,nos4 #gdf1 #gej1 #ged1 #geh1 and one1 ,no4 #hdi1 which has somehow got the obviously incorrect title of ,bridge over ,river ,lugwy1 ,capel ,curig4 ,these paintings have undoubtedly sunk very much into the absorbent millboard1 thus proving that ,turner's remark to ,eastlake about the disappearance of the grey tints--which he 8did not implicitly rely on0--was justified4 ,but otherwise the work is in good condition1 and ,i have very little doubt that when ,mr4 ,buttery comes to take them in hand1 he will be able to bring them back to something like their original freshness4 ,the chief point of interest with regard to them1 from our present point of view1 is the curious fact that ,turner does not seem to have made the slightest use of them in any of the ,devonshire pictures he painted on his return4 ,he evidently found his tiny little pencil sketches much more suggestive and adaptable to his purposes4 ,even the large oil picture of ,crossing the ,brook is based entirely on his slight and rapidly made little pencil notes4 ,another point of interest is that even when painting in oil face to face with nature he did not merely copy what he had in front of him4 ,as our illustration shows1 these sketches are as carefully composed as his pictures4 ,they are indeed only technically sketches from nature2 in reality they are designs for pictures or pictures in miniature1 though they happen to have been painted out of doors4 ,even in working direct from nature ,turner remained firmly entrenched in his artistic position as the master of nature4 ,he still retained his power of selection1 taking what suited his purpose1 ignoring the rest1 and supplementing from the stores of his own knowledge what for his purpose were the defects of the momentary image before his eyes4 ,the fact that ,turner always worked in this way makes it exceedingly difficult to separate his sketches from nature from the studies or designs for his pictures4 ,throughout his sketch books and amongst his loose drawings there are a large number of sketches in colour1 and one's first impulse is to assume that these were made immediately from nature4 ,but careful observation shows that ,turner was in the constant habit of working over his pencil sketches in colour when away from the scenes he had depicted4 ,in this way the beautiful little sketch of 8,edinburgh from ,st4 ,margaret's ,loch10 here reproduced 7,plate ,,vi471 is much more probably the draft of a picture the artist had in his mind's eye than a study from nature4 ,but the point whether such a drawing was made 8on the spot0 or not is relatively unimportant2 what is more important is to realise how very small a part the merely imitative or representative study of the colour and tone 7as opposed to form7 of nature played in ,turner's work4 ,his colour is never merely descriptive4 ,the whole bent of his mind is so essentially pictorial that1 whether he works face to face with nature or from what is loosely called 8memory10 his slightest sketch as well as his most elaborate work is always an attempt to express a subjective conception1 and never a merely literal transcript of what is given in sense-perception4 ,perhaps the most important group of drawings in the national collection are those which ,turner made during the last ten years of his working life1 i4e41 between #ahce and #ahde4 ,these drawings were not made for sale or for exhibition1 hence ,mr4 ,ruskin's description of them as 8delight drawings10 because they were done entirely for the artist's own pleasure and delight4 ,several of them are reproduced in this volume1 among them the beautiful sketch of 8,lucerne0 7,plate ,,xxi47 realized for ,mr4 ,ruskin in #ahdb1 the almost equally fine 8,bellinzona1 from the road to ,locarno0 7,plate ,,xxiv471 and 8,zurich0 7,plate ,,xxvii474 ,these inimitable and delightful sketches have been very widely admired1 as they deserve to be1 but they have also been praised1 somewhat perversely as it seems to me1 for their truth and accuracy of representation4 ,as ,mr4 ,ruskin has pointed out1 these sketches 8are not1 strictly speaking1 sketches from nature2 but plans or designs of pictures which ,turner1 if he had had time1 would have made of each place4 ,they indicate1 therefore1 a perfectly formed conception of the finished picture2 and they are of exactly the same value as memoranda would be1 if made by ,turner's own hand1 of pictures of his not in our possession4 ,they are just to be regarded as quick descriptions or reminiscences of noble pictures40 ,mr4 ,ruskin is also unquestionably correct when he adds 8that nothing but the pencilling in them was done on the spot1 and not always that4 ,turner used to walk about a town with a roll of thin paper in his pocket1 and make a few scratches upon a sheet or two of it1 which were so much shorthand indication of all he wished to remember4 ,when he got to his inn in the evening1 he completed the pencilling rapidly1 and added as much colour as was needed to record his plan of the picture0 78,ruskin on ,pictures10 pp4 #hf-g74 ,it is not my intention now to dwell upon the beauty of these incomparable drawings1 on their passionate intensity and emotional sincerity1 their nervous eloquence and elusive suggestiveness4 ,the point ,i wish to insist on at present is that they must not be regarded as attempts to reproduce or imitate the merely superficial qualities of physical nature1 as attempts to give an accurate representation of effects of air or light1 or of the shapes and forms of mountain1 water or cloud4 ,the artist is not immersed in the definite character of physical objects4 ,he seems to feel that as a spiritual and self-conscious being he is something higher than the merely natural1 and it is as modes of expression of human freedom and self-consciousness that these lyrical fragments must be regarded4 ,the colour and tone of ,turner's work must therefore be taken as strictly ideal1 that is1 as a medium of subjective expression1 as a mode of spiritual manifestation1 and not as an attempt to represent the merely abstract qualities of sense-perception4 ,and what is true of ,turner's colour and tone is also true of his form4 ,i doubt if he ever made a tolerably careful and elaborate drawing of a natural scene from the beginning to the end of his long career--nearly all his elaborate drawings being of architectural subjects4 ,but instead of the prosaic and plodding drawings that other artists make 7see1 for example1 the elaborate pencil studies of trees by ,constable in the ,victoria and ,albert ,museum71 we find hundreds and hundreds of nervous1 eager pencil sketches4 ,when we come to study these ravishing sketches with care we make the astonishing discovery that the bugbear of the drawing school1 the prosaic accumulation of particular physical facts known in art academies as 8nature10 is simply a hideous abstraction of the theoretical mind4 ,nature1 in this sense of the word1 never existed for ,turner4 ,the world he saw around him was replete with intelligence1 was permeated with spirit2 where other artists see only the bare1 unrelated physical fact and sensuous surface1 his mind is already busy with the inner and invisible significance1 and his cunning hand is instantly shaping forth a pictorial embodiment of his own insight and passionate convictions4 ,on the whole1 then1 this was ,turner's consistent attitude towards nature1 though of course1 in his earlier years1 his sketches were comparatively less swift and eloquent than they afterwards became4 ,and there was indeed a short period during which the merely physical fact was forced into undue prominence4 ,this period culminated in the first visit to ,italy in #ahai-ahbj4 ,here the novelty of the scenery and buildings stimulated the thirst for detailed observation which had been gradually growing on ,turner during the previous six or seven years4 ,but in ,england the very quickness and strength of his intuitions had always prevented the desire for precise observation from gaining the upper hand4 ,in ,italy his powers of intuition were useless4 ,he was disoriented4 ,everything disconcerted and thwarted him4 ,his rapid glance no longer penetrated to the inner essence of the scenes around him4 ,he did not understand the people and their ways1 and their relation to their surroundings4 ,for a time he seemed to become less certain than usual of his artistic mission4 ,but he set to work with his usual pluck and energy to assimilate his strange surroundings by tireless observation of the outside4 ,the result was a vast accumulation of disorganized or of only partially organized impressions4 ,it is conceded on all hands that ,turner's artistic work went all to pieces as a result of his ,italian experiences4 ,the ,bay of ,bai contains faults altogether new in his completed works4 ,even the feeblest of his earlier works had been animated by some central idea or emotion1 to which all the parts were subordinated1 and which infused into them whatever of life or significance they possessed4 ,in the ,bay of ,bai the artist has an unusual quantity of material on his hands1 but he can neither find nor invent a pictorial idea to give coherence to his disconnected observations4 ,the picture is made up of bits of visual experiences elaborately dovetailed into one another1 but which absolutely refuse to combine into any kind of conceptual unity4 ,yet if we confine our attention to the merely formal and abstract side of art1 there is assuredly much to move us even to enthusiastic admiration among the immense quantity of sketches accumulated during this ,italian visit4 ,the very fact that ,turner's inspiration was checked prevented his sketches from possessing their wonted rudimentary or forward-pointing character4 ,instead of being hasty drafts of the pictures that thronged instantly into his mind upon contact with the scenes of his native land1 they became more like the drawings which less completely equipped creative artists are in the habit of making2 they became 8studies0 in the modern use of the term4 ,the conditions of their production gave full play to ,turner's marvellous powers of draughtsmanship and formal design4 ,before drawings like ,rome from ,monte ,mario who can help waxing enthusiastic over the exquisitely deft and graceful play of hand1 the subtle observation and the almost superhuman mastery of the design8 ,no wonder ,mr4 ,ruskin has declared that 8no drawings in the world are to be named with these 444 as lessons in landscape drawing0 78,ruskin on ,pictures10 p4 #aeg74 ,but before assenting wholly to this dictum we must remember that1 in spite of all their attractiveness1 ,turner found these drawings worse than useless for his general artistic purposes1 and that only bad and foolish pictures came from them2 and the more carefully we study the matter the more clearly do we see that nothing but bad and foolish pictures could come from work in which the spirit of curiosity and of cold and accurate observation is predominant4 ,we have fixed our attention thus far upon the sketches and drawings made from nature in the ,national ,gallery collection1 to the exclusion of the finished water-colours4 ,this may seem all the more inexcusable1 as ,i have preferred to treat these sketches rather with regard to their bearing upon the artist's finished work--as stages in the development of the complete work of art--than as independent productions which can be accepted entirely for their own sake4 ,but in a short paper like the present it is impossible to do justice to all the sides of such an important collection as the ,drawings of the ,turner ,bequest4 ,numerically1 the finished drawings form only a small fraction of the whole collection--about two hundred out of a total of over #bj1jjj drawings4 ,among them are about two-thirds of the 8,rivers of ,france0 drawings1 and most of the 8,ports0 and 8,rivers of ,england10 and ,rogers's 8,vignettes40 ,these drawings were engraved during ,turner's lifetime and under his active superintendence2 they are1 therefore1 amongst the best known of his works4 ,the whole of the finished drawings have1 moreover1 been constantly on exhibition for more than fifty years4 ,there remains1 therefore1 little either of praise or blame to be said of them that has not already been said many times4 ,while1 on the other hand1 the studies and sketches are only now on the point of being made accessible to the public4 ,the practically complete series of ,turner's sketches and studies from nature seems to call for comprehensive treatment4 ,their careful study throws a wholly new and unexpected light upon the fundamental and essential qualities of ,turner's attitude towards nature1 and therefore upon the essential character and limitations of his art4 ,or where the light is not altogether unexpected--as it would not be perhaps in the case of a diligent and methodical student of ,turner's completed works--the sketches amplify and illustrate in an abundant and forcible way what before could only have been surmised4 ,i propose1 therefore1 to devote the remainder of my limited space to an attempt to indicate as briefly as possible the main features of ,turner's conception of nature1 as it is revealed in his sketches1 and to point out its importance both for the proper understanding of his finished work and for its bearing upon some adverse criticisms that have been brought against his work4 ,in my opening remarks ,i ventured to contrast ,turner's attitude towards nature with the attitude of the majority of contemporary artists4 ,my intention in thus opposing these two different methods of work was not to suggest that one of them was either right or wrong in itself1 or that one way was necessarily better or worse than the other4 ,my intention was exactly the opposite4 ,there is not one type of art production to which all artists must conform1 and two totally different methods of procedure may each be positively right and equally valid4 ,i will even go farther than this and confess that ,i regard the present-day method of working from nature as the only right and proper way of attaining the results that are aimed at4 ,but it is the result1 the purpose of the artist1 that justifies the means1 and this applies with just as much force to ,turner's way of working as to the modern way4 ,to condemn ,turner's procedure1 therefore1 simply because it differs from that now in vogue1 would be as unwise and unfair as to condemn the modern way because it differed from his4 ,different conceptions of the aim and scope of art involve different attitudes towards nature1 and necessitate different methods of study4 ,let us begin with the current conception--the conception of the landscape artist of to-day and of the public for which he works4 ,the aim of this art is what is called 8naturalness10 that is1 the picture should be made to look as much like nature as possible4 ,the standard of excellence here is just the ordinary common appearance of physical reality4 ,a picture that looks like nature is good1 and one that looks 8unnatural0 is therefore bad4 ,this kind of art is capable of giving a great deal of innocent pleasure to people who like to be reminded of scenes they love or are interested in4 ,but it has its limits4 ,it cannot go beyond the bare physical world4 ,and it is bound to treat even this limited area of experience from a strictly limited point of view4 ,it is bound to take the physical world as something which exists in entire independence of the spectator1 as something which is indeed given in sense-perception1 but which the spectator emphatically finds and does not make4 ,now so far as we take nature in this sense we have to do with an external power which is utterly indifferent to our merely human aims and purposes1 and the artist can only look upon himself as a passive recipient1 a tabula rasa1 on which external nature is reflected4 ,this is the standpoint of the prosaic intelligence1 the level upon which much of the ordinary reflection and discussion of the day moves4 ,but man is not really a passive mirror in which a foreign nature is reflected1 nor is he satisfied merely to submit himself to natural influences and vicissitudes4 ,man is never really satisfied to take the world as he finds it1 but sets to work to transform it into what he feels it ought to be4 ,the social and political world1 with its realms of morality1 art and religion1 came into existence as a protest against the merely natural4 ,in this world1 created and sustained by human intelligence and will1 the physical world is not abolished or destroyed1 but it is transformed into a more or less willing accomplice of a strange and higher power4 ,it is in this new form which nature assumes under the sway of intelligence and will that we find it in ,turner's works4,b ,in his presence the external world loses its stubborn indifference to human aims and becomes saturated with purely human aspiration and emotion4 ,its colours and shapes cease to belong to the merely physical world4 ,they become instead the garment in which the inward spiritual nature of the artist robes itself4 ,nature in this new aspect is no longer a merely hostile and mechanical system of laws2 a soul has been breathed into it which we recognize as identical with our own4 ,now it is evident that these two kinds of art1 the passive and the active1 with their totally dissimilar aims1 cannot and ought not to represent nature in the same way4 ,the art which uses nature as a medium for the expression of ideas and feelings cannot attain its object by representing physical objects in the simple and direct way appropriate to the art which aims merely at naturalness4 ,the artist's intention must make itself manifest even in the manner in which he represents physical objects1--indeed1 he has no other way of expressing his ideas4 ,the active or creative artist will therefore make it clear that he has broken entirely with the disconnected1 accidental and prosaic look of everyday existence which it is the one aim of the passive artist to retain4 ,from this point of view the charges that are often brought against ,turner1 that his colour is forced and unnatural1 will leave us cold and indifferent4 ,to make such an objection is merely a proof of mental confusion4 ,the creative artist must break with the prosaic vision of nature1 if only to make it evident that his objects are not there for their own sake and for their immediate effect1 but to call forth a response and echo in the mind of the observer4 ,turner's colour--8dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere0--is one of his most potent instruments of expression1 and must be judged as we judge1 let us say1 the verbal magic of ,shelley's verse1 as a work of free beauty1 fashioned in response to the deepest and truest cravings of man's nature4 ,that ,turner's art moves mainly among the highest interests of man's spiritual nature accounts to some extent for the pre-eminent position he now occupies among modern artists4 ,it is always as an artist conscious of man's high destiny that he claims to be judged1 and though he often stumbled and his hand faltered1 he never once sank to the level of the passive and prosaic imitator of nature's finitude4 ,this is not the place to inquire minutely into ,turner's failings and shortcomings1 nor to study their connection with the innumerable masterpieces in which he dared and sometimes attained the very highest of which art is capable4 ,an adequate discussion of the subtle inter-connection of ,turner's triumphs and failings would involve the raising of questions of which ,english criticism seems to prefer to remain in happy ignorance4 ,i cannot therefore attempt to justify my conviction that he is not only the greatest artist our nation has yet produced1 but also one of the greatest of modern artists1 a man we must rank with ,rembrandt and ,jean ,franois ,millet4 ,but this at least will be generally conceded1 that he fully deserves that consideration and sympathy1 which the ready instinct of mankind reserves for those who devote themselves without stint and without measure to the highest and most difficult tasks4 ,a4 ,j4 ,,finberg4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,i ,,the ,,archbishop',s ,,palace1 ,,lambeth ,,first ,,exhibited ,,drawing4 ,r4,a4 #agij4 ,,size #ae #aj ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,ii ,,the ,,mouth ,,of ,,the ,,avon4 ,,circa #agib4 ,,size #aa #h ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,iii ,,peterborough ,,cathedral ,,from ,,the ,,north ,,circa #agid4 ,,size #g #d ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,iv ,,the ,,pent1 ,,dover ,,circa #agid4 ,,size #aj #h ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,v ,,distant ,,view ,,of ,,lichfield ,,cathedral ,,circa #agih4 ,,size #cj #ai ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,vi ,,edinburgh3 ,,from ,,st4 ,,margaret',s ,,loch ,,circa #ahja4 ,,size #g #e ,,in ,,the ,,national ,,gallery1 ,,london ,illustration3 ,plate ,,vii ,,stonehenge3 ,,sunset ,,circa #ahjd4 ,,size #h #f ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,viii ,,scarborough ,,circa #ahab4 ,,size #af #aa ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,c4 ,,morland ,,agnew1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,ix ,,lulworth ,,cove ,,circa #ahac4 ,,size #h #e ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,x ,,goarhausen ,,and ,,katz ,,castle ,,circa #ahag4 ,,size #ab #g ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xi ,,the ,,lake ,,of ,,nemi ,,circa #ahah4 ,size #h #e ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,c4 ,,morland ,,agnew1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xii ,,turin3 ,,from ,,the ,,church ,,of ,,the ,,superga ,,circa #ahah4 ,,size #h #e ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,c4 ,,morland ,,agnew1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xiii ,,the ,,crook ,,of ,,the ,,lune ,,circa #ahah4 ,,size #af #aa ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,,rev4 ,,william ,,macgregor ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xiv ,,norham ,,castle ,,circa #ahbb4 ,,size #h #f ,,in ,,the ,,national ,,gallery1 ,,london4 ,no4 #age ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xv ,,launceston ,,circa #ahbg4 ,,size #ae #aa ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,j4 ,f4 ,,schwann1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xvi ,,barnard ,,castle ,,circa #ahbg4 ,size #h #f ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xvii ,,on ,,the ,,lake ,,at ,,petworth--,,evening ,,circa #ahcj4 ,,size #g #e ,,in ,,the ,,national ,,gallery1 ,,london4 ,no4 #dbe;d ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xviii ,,cowes ,,circa #ahcj4 ,,size #af #aa ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,w4 ,,yates1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xix ,,venice3 ,,the ,,salute ,,from ,s4 ,,giorgio ,,maggiore ,,circa #ahci4 ,,size #ab #i ,,in ,,the ,,national ,,gallery1 ,,london4 ,no4 #ed ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xx ,,venice3 ,,casa ,,grimani ,,and ,,the ,,rialto ,,circa #ahci4 ,,size #aa #g ,,in ,,the ,,national ,,gallery1 ,,london4 ,no4 #ced ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xxi ,,lucerne ,,circa #ahdj-da4 ,,size #ab #i-c_/af ,,in ,,the ,,national ,,gallery1 ,,london4 ,no4 #bhh ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xxii ,a ,,swiss ,,lake ,,circa #ahdj-da4 ,,size #aa #i ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,,sir ,,hickman ,,bacon1 ,,bart4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xxiii ,,bellinzona3 ,,from ,,the ,,south ,,circa #ahdj-da4 ,size #ab #h ,,in ,,the ,,national ,,gallery1 ,,london4 ,no4 #gfd ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xxiv ,,bellinzona3 ,,from ,,the ,,road ,,to ,,locarno ,,circa #ahdj-da4 ,,size #aa #i ,,in ,,the ,,national ,,gallery1 ,,london4 ,no4 #hd ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xxv ,,lausanne3 ,,from ,,le ,,signal ,,circa #ahdb-dc4 ,,size #ac #i ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xxvi ,,lausanne ,,circa #ahdb-dc4 ,,size #ad #i-ac_/af ,,in ,,the ,,national ,,gallery1 ,,london4 ,no4 #hbd ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xxvii ,,zurich ,,circa #ahdj-dd4 ,,size #ab #i-c_/af ,,in ,,the ,,national ,,gallery1 ,,london4 ,no4 #bhg ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xxviii ,,the ,,seelisberg3 ,,moonlight ,,circa #ahdb-dc4 ,,size #aa #i ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xxix ,,schaffhausen3 ,,the ,,town ,,circa #ahdc-de4 ,,size #ah #ac ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,r4 ,,brocklebank1 ,,esq4 ,illustration3 ,plate ,,xxx ,,tell',s ,,chapel1 ,,fluelen ,,circa #ahde4 ,,size #aa #i ,,from ,,the ,,collection ,,of ,w4 ,g4 ,,rawlinson1 ,,esq4 ,,footnotes3 ,a 8,biographies of the ,great ,artists--,j4 ,m4 ,w4 ,turner1 ,r4,a410 ,sampson ,low1 #ahig1 p4 #bg4 ,of the many biographies of ,turner1 this1 although slight1 gives probably the best and truest view of him and his work4 ,b ,turner's conception of nature1 ,i may remark1 is identical with that of ,sir ,joshua ,reynolds1 who says3 8,my notion of nature comprehends not only the forms which nature produces1 but also the nature and internal fabric and organisation 444 of the human mind and imagination40 7,seventh ,discourse47