Chapter 21

Mr. Ruskin has amused himself with a fanciful contrast between the boyhood of Giorgione at Venice, and of Turner in Covent Garden. There is no reason to believe that any disadvantage accrued to Turner from his somewhat uncheerful birthplace. It is hardly the Venetians who are the most alive to the beauties of Venice. But Mr. Ruskin is fond of mounting a richly-caparisoned charger of the imagination, and caracoling round a crotchety circus; and his feats in this respect are so elegantly and admirably fantastic, that we almost forbear to smile, out of deference to so perfect a non-perception of humour, when we find him tracing the painter back to _Covent Garden Market_ in all his paintings. Mr. Ruskin detects in the corners of Turner's foregrounds 'always a succulent cluster or two of green-grocery!' The artist's _Hesperides_ gleam with Covent Garden oranges; in his _Shipwrecks_ chests of them are flung upon the waters; and in his _St. Gothard_ a litter of stones reflects Covent Garden wreck after the market! What wonder Mr. Turner was tempted to exclaim now and then about his arch-critic--'He knows a great deal more about my pictures than I do. He puts things into my head, and points out meanings in them that I never intended.'

A silver salver, engraved with heraldic devices, seen at the house of Mr. Tomkisson, the famous piano-forte-maker, is said to have first inspired the boy Turner with a love for art. He commenced to imitate the drawing of a certain rampant lion that especially took his fancy. Very soon after this the father announced that his son William was going to be a painter. The reader will note that the early ambitions of the boy were at once humoured. There would seem to have been no attempt usual with poor parents anxious for the commercial success of a child, to thrust the boy into a trade or employment which, though distasteful, would have been profitable to him. Old Mr. Turner probably knew little enough of art, and could have had but a poor opinion, in a pecuniary sense, of the profession to which his son was desirous of attaching himself. But no obstacles were thrown in his path; he was soon placed with Mr. Thomas Malton, a perspective draughtsman, who kept a school in Longacre, and was the son of the author of a practical book on _Geometry and Perspective_. Certainly his poverty and low birth in no way hindered the painter; had he been born to rank and wealth, he could only have had his will: and he had it without these.

The little education he ever received was obtained at a school at Brentford; but he could never write or spell correctly. It is probable that his passion for art absorbed his every thought. Not that he succeeded with his perspective studies, however, for Mr. Malton brought the boy back to his father as a pupil quite beyond all hope. Yet the real talent of the young painter was already developing itself. Some of his drawings exhibited in the Maiden Lane shop found purchasers among his father's customers. An engraver employed him to colour prints. Two or three architects engaged him to fill in skies and backgrounds to their plans. Soon he had entered the office of Mr. Hardwick, the architect, who regularly employed him.

It is curious to learn that, later in life, Turner, pointing admiringly to a green mezzotinto of a Vandevelde--a large vessel bearing up against the waves--would exclaim, '_That_ made me a painter!' Yet he stood before the work of one of those 'Van-somethings and Back-somethings,' who, Mr. Ruskin tells us, have 'more especially and malignantly libelled the sea.' 'I feel utterly hopeless in addressing the admirers of these men, because I do not know what it is in their works which is supposed to be like nature.' It seems that Turner was more catholic in his tastes than his panegyrist.

In 1789, following the advice of Mr. Hardwick, Turner became a student of the Royal Academy. In the same year Reynolds ceased to paint, owing to the failure of his sight. That Turner, who had been admitted to the President's studio to copy portraits, was present when the great painter laid aside his brush with the solemn words, 'I know all things on earth must come to an end, and now I am come to mine,' is one of those suppositions in which biographers are prone to indulge, but which few readers will be found to credit. In these days Turner's drawing was in advance of his colour: an order of things which was afterwards reversed.

In 1790 he first exhibited at Somerset House: the picture being 'Lambeth Palace.' From that time, down to 1850 inclusive, hardly a season being missed, Turner's name appears in the catalogues of the Academy. In all, two hundred and fifty-seven pictures by Turner were hung on the walls of the Academy exhibitions, while nearly twenty more were to be seen at the British Institution. He relinquished all idea of becoming a portrait-painter about the time of the death of Reynolds. His own portrait in the National Gallery was painted when he was seventeen. It is executed with skill, although without any charm of colour. It represents a young man of large heavy features, but of a not unattractive appearance altogether.

Upon a story of a love affair in the painter's early life, we are inclined to lay no great stress. There is no evidence that it affected his after-life, or that any excuse can be found in it for the faults of his character. Speaking of his own love of money, he would sometimes say apologetically, 'Dad never praised me for anything but saving a halfpenny.' A disappointment in love is more likely to make a man a profligate than a miser; if it affects him at all seriously, it will more likely produce a reckless waste than a sordid passion for money-making. The painter was prospering. He taught in schools, first charging five shillings a lesson, then raising his terms to ten shillings, next charging a guinea. What system of painting did he teach, this suspicious jealous man, who always worked with locked doors--who would never permit another even to see him draw--who seemed to hold (but it was a then prevalent belief with his profession) that art was producible by some occult process--was a mystery and a secret, like a conjurer's trick? He founded his style very much on that of his friend and contemporary Girtin, the water-colour painter. Both delighted in a golden yellowness of tone which it is probable Girtin had originated. Turner's regard and reverence for him and his works seem to have been very great. He always spoke kindly of him as 'poor Tom!' Of one of his drawings in the British Museum, Turner said, 'I never in my whole life could make a drawing like that; I would at any time have given one of my little fingers to have made such a one.' At another time he said, 'If Tom Girtin had lived, I should have starved!' Girtin died in 1802; in the same year Turner was made a Royal Academician; he had been two years before admitted to the honours of Associateship. The influence of Girtin upon English art has hardly been sufficiently recognised. Mr. Ruskin has had too little to say on behalf of one to whom it is evident that Turner owed very much.

Turner's rapid advance in his profession may be traced in his frequent change of residence. In 1796 he had quitted his father's house in Hand Court, to occupy rooms at No. 26 Maiden Lane. In 1800 he was at No. 64 Harley Street. The following year he had moved to No. 75 Norton Street. In 1804 he was back again in Harley Street. In 1808 he was Professor of Perspective, of Harley Street, and of West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith. He moved to Queen Anne Street in 1812, and that continued to be his address in the Academy catalogues up to the time of his death. But from the year 1814 to 1826 he was also the tenant of a house at Twickenham, which he first called 'Solus,' and afterwards 'Sandycombe' Lodge. He died in December 1851, at a small house near Cremorne Gardens, Chelsea. This he first tenanted probably about the year 1845.

A few continental visits, and tours in England, Scotland, and Wales, all undertaken apparently with professional objects,--incessant squabblings with his engravers, the most wearisome haggling with picture-dealers, genuine hard work, and the production of very perfect specimens of landscape art, and the outlines of Turner's life seem to be fairly sketched. His passion for his profession was intense, yet with it was the keenest love of its emoluments. His industry was beyond all praise, his energy indefatigable; he seemed to live perpetually before his easel, or with his sketch-book in his hands, and yet he had a broker's view as to the worth of everything he did; he appraised his every pencil-stroke, with the full determination of having his price for it. There is hardly a story of his ever giving away a drawing. A lady, in whose house he was residing, playfully asked him to make a sketch of her favourite spaniel. 'My dear madam,' said the painter, astounded and indignant, 'you don't know what you ask!' He once gave three sketches to aid an amateur artist, and most intimate friend and patron, who had brought his painting into an embarrassed condition; the sketches showed him the way out of his difficulty. Undoubtedly this action was very kind; but in the end the miser prevailed over the gentleman. Turner growlingly asked for his sketches back again!

The details of his life are not agreeable, and not of much more interest than the outlines. Mr. Ruskin fixes the following as the main characteristics of Turner--_uprightness, generosity, tenderness of heart_ (extreme), _sensuality, obstinacy_ (extreme), _irritability, infidelity_.' By the light of all these 'Seven Lamps,' few people will have seen Turner besides Mr. Ruskin. Of the last four characteristics the painter will be generally found guilty; the first three remain as yet, at best, not proven. We are not tempted, just now, to account highly the uprightness of a man who could, and did, defraud the public by the sale of 'sham proofs' of the engravings of his pictures--of the generosity which made provision for his own memorial in stone in St. Paul's, yet left without bread his surviving 'housekeepers' and natural children--of the tenderness of heart which permitted that his father, moved from the shop, should play a servant's part in the gallery in Queen Anne Street, straining canvases, varnishing pictures, and showing in visitors, with a suspicion that he cooked the dinner even if he did not take the shillings at the door. 'Look'ee here,' said the poor old man, who, it is right to state, saw no humiliation in acting lackey to his prosperous son, 'I have found out a way at last of coming up cheap from Twickenham, to open my son's gallery. I found out the inn where the market-gardeners baited their horses; I made friends with one on 'em, and now, for a glass of gin a day, he brings me up in his cart on the top of the vegetables!' As a set-off to all this, we have now and then a spasmodic act of kindness: he rebukes Wilkie for talking about the fine effect of the snow falling while poor Lawrence's coffin was being lowered into the grave in the crypt of St. Paul's: he drives away the boys who injure his blackbirds: he sometimes gives half-a-crown when others would only offer a penny: and there is a story (very vague indeed) of his once lending £20,000 without security. But these are but the halfpennyworth of bread compared to the vast quantity of sack. The matter seems fairly summed up in the story of the man who said, 'Turner is not ungenerous; _he once paid the toll over Waterloo Bridge for me_!'

Mr. Ruskin charges Turner's faults upon his contemporaries and the public who failed to appreciate his genius. But is this for a moment sustainable? _Was_ he unappreciated? His rise could hardly have been more rapid. He was a Royal Academician when he was twenty-seven. His merits were recognised almost immediately upon his becoming an exhibitor. Anthony Pasquin (Williams), who did not speak well of every one, loudly commends Turner's genius, and judgment, and originality, in 1797.[24] He was quite early a favourite with the public and the critics. His prices were always high. Mr. Ruskin has declared in his _Economy of Art_, that more than one hundred pounds should never be given for a water-colour drawing, nor more than five hundred for an oil-painting. But the sums Turner received were greatly in excess of these limits. For the 'Rise and Fall of Carthage' he was offered £5000. There is no evidence of his complaining of want of recognition by the public. He was dissatisfied, it is true, at the time of Shee's death, that he had not been made President; but this, as he well knew, was a matter that rested entirely with the Academy. 'What has the Academy done for me?' he would ask petulantly; 'they knighted Calcott, why don't they knight me?' This involved no charge against his critics. He was passed over for the same reason that Paley was neglected; because, as the courtly phrase went, he was not a 'producible man.' In fine, though he began with nothing, a barber's son in Hand Court, Maiden Lane, he died worth £140,000, and was buried in St. Paul's! This hardly looks like want of appreciation.

[24] It may be noted, however, that in 'The Georgian Era' (1834) occurs the following passage:--'Some have gone the length of saying that in marine views Turner has wrested the palm from all competitors; but with this, few, surely, will agree who have seen the sea pieces of Powell, an artist who, though but recently deceased, has had no biographer to commemorate his poverty or his genius.' The works of Powell, however admirable, are not likely now to be preferred to Turner's. 'The Georgian Era' is not a work of much repute.

It has been the fashion to talk as though Mr. Ruskin had _discovered_ Turner. Nothing can be further from the fact. Turner had been an exhibitor for more than fifty years when Mr. Ruskin commenced to write about his pictures. He had reached the _Rock Limpet_ stage of his career. He could then produce little beyond frantic whirls of colour, and there was a not unnatural tendency to smile at these achievements in the galleries, and the Hanging Committee were often puzzled to know whether they had or not hung the pictures upside down. All that Mr. Ruskin could do, and he did it superbly, was to bring people to think less of what Turner then was, and more of what he had been. It is all very well to denounce severely those who smiled at, or the critics who said they could not comprehend, the later Turners. It is presumable that pictures are sent to exhibitions to be applauded or condemned, as the world may judge. Mr. Thackeray may be rated for his confession, in a magazine article of the day, that he did not understand the _Rock Limpet_, though he added a kindly longing 'for the old day, before Mr. Turner had lighted on the "Fallacies," and could see like other people.'[25] But was Mr. Ruskin in any better plight? Was _he_ any nearer the painter's meaning? Hear his own story:--

'He (Turner) tried hard one day, for a quarter of an hour, to make me guess what he was doing in the picture of "Napoleon" before it had been exhibited, giving me hint after hint in a rough way. But I could not guess, and he wouldn't tell me!' It is hard after this to censure so amiable a jester as the late Mr. a'Beckett, for burlesquing the strange picture called 'Hurrah for the whaler _Erebus_--another fish!' in the words proposed to be substituted--'Hallo, there--the oil and vinegar--another lobster salad!'[26]

[25] 'What can I say of the Napoleon of Mr. Turner? called (with frightful satire) "The Exile and the _Rock Limpet_." He stands in the midst of a scarlet tornado looking at least forty feet high. "Ah!" says the mysterious poet from whom Mr. Turner loves to quote--

"Ah! thy tent-formed shell is like The soldier's nightly bivouac, alone Amidst a sea of blood....... ......_but you can join your comrades!_"

FALLACIES OF HOPE.

'These remarkable lines entirely explain the meaning of the picture; another piece is described by lines from the same poem, in a metre more regular--

"The midnight torch gleamed o'er the steamer's side, And _merit's corse_ was yielded to the tide."

(This was the burial of Wilkie at sea: now in the National Gallery.)

'When the pictures are re-hung, as sometimes I believe is the case, it might, perhaps, be as well to turn these upside down and see how they would look _then_. The Campo Santo of Venice, when examined closely, is scarcely less mysterious; at a little distance, however, it is a most brilliant, airy, and beautiful picture. O for the old days before Mr. Turner had lighted on "The Fallacies" and could see like other people!'--_An Exhibition Gossip_, by Michael Angelo Titmarsh, _Ainsworth's Magazine_,1843.

[26] _The Almanack of the Month_, 1846--in which see also a comical drawing, by Mr. Richard Doyle, of 'Turner painting one of his pictures,' and the accompanying letterpress:--'Considerable discussion has arisen as to the mode in which Turner goes to work to paint his pictures. Some think he mixes a few colours on his canvas instead of on his palette, and sends the result to be exhibited. Another ingenious theory is that he puts a canvas in a sort of pillory, and pelts it with eggs and other missiles, when appending to the mess some outrageous title, he has it hung in a good position at the Academy. Our own idea is, that he chooses four or five good places in which he hangs up some regularly framed squares of blank canvas; a day or so before the opening of the Exhibition, we believe he goes down to the Academy with a quantity of colours and a nine pound brush, with which he dabs away for a few minutes, and his work is finished,' etc. etc.

'Cut off in great part,' says Mr. Ruskin, 'from all society, first by labour and last by sickness, hunted to his grave by the malignities of small critics and the jealousies of hopeless rivalry, he died in the house of a stranger.' As Mr. Leslie, his fellow-academician, remarks upon this passage truly enough, 'This was Turner's own fault. No death-bed could be more surrounded by attentive friends than his might have been, had he chosen to let his friends know where he lived.' But he seldom answered letters; his place of residence was a profound mystery to all; and he was living under an assumed name. To the Chelsea street-boys he was known as 'Puggy Booth,' and by his neighbours he was deemed to be an old admiral in reduced circumstances. His house in Queen Anne Street was closed, terribly out of repair--black with dirt. After much knocking at the door it was opened, if at all, by an old woman, her face half-concealed, owing to some cancerous disfigurement; she had kept the visitor waiting while she assumed a large apron--hung always behind the door on a peg, handy for the purpose,--which hid the grimy and tattered state of her dress. The drawing-room was tenanted by half-a-dozen Manx cats. In the other rooms, rats and mice made havoc with hoarded drawings and engravings. Many of the pictures in the gallery were warped and cracked, and mildewed by neglect and damp. At Sandycombe Lodge, a few of the academicians, including Mr. Mulready, had once been regaled with tea; and Mr. Pye, the engraver, had been treated to cheese and porter; but of the hospitalities of Queen Anne Street there are no records. Rogers, poet and satirist, expressed his wonder at a beautiful table adorning the painter's parlour. 'But how much more wonderful it would be,' he went on, 'to see any of his friends sitting round it!' And there is the story of the visitor who praised the wine of which he had had two glasses, a year intervening between them. 'It ought to be good,' said Turner; 'it's the _same bottle_ you tasted before!' True or false, and their accuracy has been much questioned, that such stories could be repeated at all, says quite enough for the kind of life led by the painter at his gallery. And what claims upon society had the man who chose to conduct himself towards it after this manner?

Yet it is curious to note that Turner was in many ways fitted to be socially successful. He had very considerable humour, and highly appreciated the jests of others, even when they were directed against himself. He sat for a long time shaking with laughter, on a high seat at the Academy, one varnishing day, when Mulready had said 'that his cows were like the dough pigs, with currant eyes, in the bakers' shops.' He was gay and playful at times, and shone in careless conversation. Personally he was not less liked than as a painter he was respected by his fellow-academicians; and yet, from some mental warp, he closed his doors against the world, shunned his friends, preferred to live miserably and obscurely, hoarding his money, and treasuring his works. It is difficult to believe that he was not afflicted, late in life, with some morbid affection of mind that amounted almost to insanity, not alleviated by a manner of life that was far from regular, and habits that were anything but temperate. The more he avoided refined society, the more he found pleasure in dissipation of the lowest kind. 'Melancholy' Burton derived relief and amusement listening to the ribaldry of the bargemen. Turner found these and other solaces, it would seem, in his occasional mysterious absences from home, and indecorous sojournings at Wapping and elsewhere.