The Crown of Wild Olive
been the themes of his mightiest thoughts.
I have no doubt, that the _immediate_ reason of this change was the
impression made upon him by the colors of the continental skies. When
he first travelled on the Continent (1800), he was comparatively a young
student; not yet able to draw form as he wanted, he was forced to give
all his thoughts and strength to this primary object. But now he was
free to receive other impressions; the time was come for perfecting his
art, and the first sunset which he saw on the Rhine taught him that all
previous landscape art was vain and valueless, that in comparison with
natural color, the things that had been called paintings were mere ink
and charcoal, and that all precedent and all authority must be cast away
at once, and trodden under foot. He cast them away: the memories of
Vandevelde and Claude were at once weeded out of the great mind they had
encumbered; they and all the rubbish of the schools together with them;
the waves of the Rhine swept them away for ever; and a new dawn rose
over the rocks of the Siebengebirge.
There was another motive at work, which rendered the change still more
complete. His fellow artists were already conscious enough of his
superior power in drawing, and their best hope was, that he might not be
able to color. They had begun to express this hope loudly enough for it
to reach his ears. The engraver of one of his most important marine
pictures told me, not long ago, that one day about the period in
question, Turner came into his room to examine the progress of the
plate, not having seen his own picture for several months. It was one of
his dark early pictures, but in the foreground was a little piece of
luxury, a pearly fish wrought into hues like those of an opal. He stood
before the picture for some moments; then laughed, and pointed joyously
to the fish;--"They say that Turner can't color!" and turned away.
Under the force of these various impulses the change was total. _Every
subject thenceforth was primarily conceived in color_; and no engraving
ever gave the slightest idea of any drawing of this period.
The artists who had any perception of the truth were in despair; the
Beaumontites, classicalists, and "owl species" in general, in as much
indignation as their dulness was capable of. They had deliberately
closed their eyes to all nature, and had gone on inquiring, "Where do
you put your brown tree?" A vast revelation was made to them at once,
enough to have dazzled any one; but to _them_, light unendurable as
incomprehensible. They "did to the moon complain," in one vociferous,
unanimous, continuous "Tu whoo." Shrieking rose from all dark places at
the same instant, just the same kind of shrieking that is now raised
against the Pre-Raphaelites. Those glorious old Arabian Nights, how true
they are! Mocking and whispering, and abuse loud and low by turns, from
all the black stones beside the road, when one living soul is toiling up
the hill to get the golden water. Mocking and whispering, that he may
look back, and become a black stone like themselves.
Turner looked not back, but he went on in such a temper as a strong man
must be in, when he is forced to walk with his fingers in his ears. He
retired into himself; he could look no longer for help, or counsel, or
sympathy from any one; and the spirit of defiance in which he was forced
to labor led him sometimes into violences, from which the slightest
expression of sympathy would have saved him. The new energy that was
upon him, and the utter isolation into which he was driven, were both
alike dangerous, and many drawings of the time show the evil effects of
both; some of them being hasty, wild, or experimental, and others little
more than magnificent expressions of defiance of public opinion.
But all have this noble virtue--they are in everything his own: there
are no more reminiscences of dead masters, no more trials of skill in
the manner of Claude or Poussin; every faculty of his soul is fixed upon
nature only, as he saw her, or as he remembered her.
I have spoken above of his gigantic memory: it is especially necessary
to notice this, in order that we may understand the kind of grasp which
a man of real imagination takes of all things that are once brought
within his reach--grasp thenceforth not to be relaxed for ever.
On looking over any catalogues of his works, or of particular series of
them, we shall notice the recurrence of the same subject two, three, or
even many times. In any other artist this would be nothing remarkable.
Probably most modern landscape painters multiply a favorite subject
twenty, thirty, or sixty fold, putting the shadows and the clouds in
different places, and "inventing," as they are pleased to call it, a new
"effect" every time. But if we examine the successions of Turner's
subjects, we shall find them either the records of a succession of
impressions actually perceived by him at some favorite locality, or else
repetitions of one impression received in early youth, and again and
again realised as his increasing powers enabled him to do better justice
to it. In either case we shall find them records of _seen facts_;
_never_ compositions in his room to fill up a favorite outline.
For instance, every traveller, at least every traveller of thirty years'
standing, must love Calais, the place where he first felt himself in a
strange world. Turner evidently loved it excessively. I have never
catalogued his studies of Calais, but I remember, at this moment, five:
there is first the "Pas de Calais," a very large oil painting, which is
what he saw in broad daylight as he crossed over, when he got near the
French side. It is a careful study of French fishing boats running for
the shore before the wind, with the picturesque old city in the
distance. Then there is the "Calais Harbor" in the Liber Studiorum: that
is what he saw just as he was going into the harbor,--a heavy brig
warping out, and very likely to get in his way, or run against the pier,
and bad weather coming on. Then there is the "Calais Pier," a large
painting, engraved some years ago by Mr. Lupton:[101] that is what he
saw when he had landed, and ran back directly to the pier to see what
had become of the brig. The weather had got still worse, the fishwomen
were being blown about in a distressful manner on the pier head, and
some more fishing boats were running in with all speed. Then there is
the "Fortrouge," Calais: that is what he saw after he had been home to
Dessein's, and dined, and went out again in the evening to walk on the
sands, the tide being down. He had never seen such a waste of sands
before, and it made an impression on him. The shrimp girls were all
scattered over them too, and moved about in white spots on the wild
shore; and the storm had lulled a little, and there was a sunset--such a
sunset,--and the bars of Fortrouge seen against it, skeleton-wise.
He did not paint that directly; thought over it,--painted it a long
while afterwards.
Then there is the vignette in the illustrations to Scott. That is what
he saw as he was going home, meditatively; and the revolving lighthouse
came blazing out upon him suddenly, and disturbed him. He did not like
that so much; made a vignette of it, however, when he was asked to do a
bit of Calais, twenty or thirty years afterwards, having already done
all the rest.
Turner never told me all this, but any one may see it if he will compare
the pictures. They might, possibly, not be impressions of a single day,
but of two days or three; though in all human probability they were seen
just as I have stated them;[102] but they _are_ records of successive
impressions, as plainly written as ever traveller's diary. All of them
pure veracities. Therefore immortal.
I could multiply these series almost indefinitely from the rest of his
works. What is curious, some of them have a kind of private mark running
through all the subjects. Thus I know three drawings of Scarborough, and
all of them have a starfish in the foreground: I do not remember any
others of his marine subjects which have a starfish.
The other kind of repetition--the recurrence to one early impression--is
however still more remarkable. In the collection of F. H. Bale, Esq.,
there is a small drawing of Llanthony Abbey. It is in his boyish manner,
its date probably about 1795; evidently a sketch from nature, finished
at home. It had been a showery day; the hills were partially concealed
by the rain, and gleams of sunshine breaking out at intervals. A man was
fishing in the mountain stream. The young Turner sought a place of some
shelter under the bushes; made his sketch, took great pains when he got
home to imitate the rain, as he best could; added his child's luxury of
a rainbow; put in the very bush under which he had taken shelter, and
the fisherman, a somewhat ill-jointed and long-legged fisherman, in the
courtly short breeches which were the fashion of the time.
Some thirty years afterwards, with all his powers in their strongest
training, and after the total change in his feelings and principles
which I have endeavored to describe, he undertook the series of "England
and Wales," and in that series introduced the subject of Llanthony
Abbey. And behold, he went back to his boy's sketch, and boy's thought.
He kept the very bushes in their places, but brought the fisherman to
the other side of the river, and put him, in somewhat less courtly
dress, under their shelter, instead of himself. And then he set all his
gained strength and new knowledge at work on the well-remembered shower
of rain, that had fallen thirty years before, to do it better. The
resultant drawing[103] is one of the very noblest of his second period.
Another of the drawings of the England series, Ulleswater, is the
repetition of one in Mr. Fawkes's collection, which, by the method of
its execution, I should conjecture to have been executed about the year
1808, or 1810: at all events, it is a very quiet drawing of the first
period. The lake is quite calm; the western hills in grey shadow, the
eastern massed in light. Helvellyn rising like a mist between them, all
being mirrored in the calm water. Some thin and slightly evanescent cows
are standing in the shallow water in front; a boat floats motionless
about a hundred yards from the shore: the foreground is of broken rocks,
with lovely pieces of copse on the right and left.
This was evidently Turner's record of a quiet evening by the shore of
Ulleswater, but it was a feeble one. He could not at that time render
the sunset colors: he went back to it therefore in the England series,
and painted it again with his new power. The same hills are there, the
same shadows, the same cows,--they had stood in his mind, on the same
spot, for twenty years,--the same boat, the same rocks, only the copse
is cut away--it interfered with the masses of his color: some figures
are introduced bathing, and what was grey, and feeble gold in the first
drawing, becomes purple, and burning rose-color in the last.
But perhaps one of the most curious examples is in the series of
subjects from Winchelsea. That in the Liber Studiorum, "Winchelsea,
Sussex," bears date 1812, and its figures consist of a soldier speaking
to a woman, who is resting on the bank beside the road. There is another
small subject, with Winchelsea in the distance, of which the engraving
bears date 1817. It has _two_ women with bundles, and _two_ soldiers
toiling along the embankment in the plain, and a baggage waggon in the
distance. Neither of these seems to have satisfied him, and at last he
did another for the England series, of which the engraving bears date
1830. There is now a regiment on the march; the baggage waggon is there,