Turner's Golden Visions

So, at last, fifty-nine years after his death one of the wishes of his muddled will is almost obeyed--that his works should be hung 'in a room or rooms, to be added to the Natio...

I leaned against the parapet of the Embankment in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and gazed at the row of cosy little houses on the other side of the road that face the Thames. The house...

'In the name of God, Amen. I, Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A., of Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square, in the County of Middlesex, Esquire, do make and publish and declare t...

In July 1908, it was announced that the Director of the National Gallery had 'discovered' in the private offices, three large water-colours by Turner. Later in the year, in the...

On January 20, 1807, the first part, containing five plates, of the _Liber Studiorum_ was published. It would need a book to give an adequate account of the history of this grea...

Two events mark this year: one sad, the death of his father which affected his whole after life; the other, an epoch in his development as artist, the painting of the 'Interior...

Ruskin, to whom we owe so much, whose prose delights, consoles, inspires, confuses, bewilders and annoys in turn; who, by his very enthusiasm for Turner, occasionally ill-judged...

As Thomas Stothard was a customer of Turner's father, and as many artists lived about Covent Garden, the boy's interest in art must have been early aroused. It is said that at t...

Five more years have passed. Turner has made his North of England tour about which Ruskin wrote so eloquently--and so unconvincingly. Cosmo Monkhouse, while reproving Ruskin for...

In this year Turner is magnificently himself again. His works show an extraordinary variety, ranging from the peaceful and unambitious twin pictures of 'Mortlake Terrace,' one o...

In thinking over Turner the Man, whom Thornbury called the Dumb Poet, again 'Orvieto' rose before the boy. The twin parts of that picture, the earthly foreground and the heavenl...

Turner's art life almost ceased during the years 1847, 1848 and 1849. Three old-new pictures only were exhibited: 'The Hero of a Hundred Fights,' probably an early picture re-to...

Yoshio Markino is not alone in his adverse criticism of the Battle of Trafalgar, as seen from the mizzen starboard shrouds of the _Victory_, known as 'The Death of Nelson, Octob...

The two pictures of Venice exhibited in 1843, so changed, so faded, are in their way among the loveliest things Turner ever painted. 'San Benedetto, Looking Towards Fusina,' was...

The story of Turner's art life really ended in the last chapter: there is little more to tell, yet 'Queen Mab's Grotto,' which he exhibited at the British Institution in 1846, f...

Five years have passed. Turner is now twenty. We will glance back and see how he has fared. At about seventeen he attracted the attention of Dr. Thomas Monro of Bushey, and Adel...

In this appreciation we can go all the way with Ruskin. 'The Snowstorm' in its new home in the new Turner Gallery looks the work of a giant in the interpretation of sea-motion,...

'The Python was a dragon which lived at Crissa, in the vicinity of Delphi, and committed great havoc among cattle and the inhabitants. The Pythian games there celebrated were es...

'Waft me to sunny Baiæ's shore' wrote Turner in the _Fallacies of Hope_, one of the simple lines, a line that it was quite permissible to print in the catalogue of the Academy o...

There was a boy who grew up in the seventies of last century when the name of Turner aroused no particular interest or emotion: he was a classic, and he was treated with the inc...

Of the pictures Turner sent to the Royal Academy of 1803, including a 'Holy Family' (he tried everything in turn), one work dominates the group--the great, dark, studio-made 'Ca...

Sometimes in early life Turner, one might say almost by chance, prefigures the golden visions of his maturity, as in 'Conway Castle,' in the possession of the Duke of Westminste...

From 'Orvieto' as a starting-point, the boy, who is now a man, proceeded in time to explore the art life of Turner, dwelling oftenest on his golden visions, in which this persis...

The Sketch-Books of 1844 tell the happy story of continental rambles, with flashes of humour, such as this written in pencil against a water-colour of 'Rockets': 'Coming events...

In 1824 the British National Gallery was founded, and it was decided by the Committee, which included Sir Robert Peel and Lord Harding, to buy two of Turner's pictures, for pres...

Turner, in his sixtieth year, is on the threshold of the period when colour and light were more and more to obsess him to the exclusion of form and detail. In the _Inventory_, t...

Not until the _Inventory_ was published was it possible to realise the amount of spade work--loving, minute, unwearying--that Turner did from the age of twelve to the age of sev...

More classical pictures with the annoying foregrounds, the dream buildings reflected in the still water, and the beauty of the Turnerian distance. You can take your choice betwe...

Turner was an experimentalist, a seeker. If we did not possess the actual dates when most of his pictures were painted or exhibited, it would be difficult to assign a year to ma...

Of all Turner's pictures, 'Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus' makes the strongest appeal to the popular imagination. Call it scenic, call it theatrical; say that it is like the transf...

In 1850, the year before his death, Turner sent four pictures to the Royal Academy, an heroic attempt on the veteran's part to assure the world that his power had not deserted h...

The route of Turner's memorable first visit to Italy may be followed in detail in the Sketch-Books, between No. CLXXI., called the 'Route to Rome,' and No. CXCII., devoted to th...

'There's a fine subject for you, Turner,' said Clarkson Stanfield, And Turner, who could take a hint from anybody, looked, chuckled, ruminated, no doubt made a pencil sketch, an...

Now, when he is nearing his decline, Turner is described as stooping very much, and looking down. Thinking of Turner 'looking down,' I recall the story that came to Sir Walter A...

Few of the wayfarers who hurry along Maiden Lane from Covent Garden to Bedford Street remember that in this busy, refurbished street Turner was born. London has changed much sin...

The event was heralded by the following paragraph communicated to the Press by the Director and Trustees of the National Gallery:-- 'Unexhibited Oil Paintings; Turner's Bequest....

Venice, 'the last home of his imagination,' if we exclude the mountains of Switzerland, and the Thames of England, where he found his final solace, begins to inspire his brush,...

What a contrast is the cracked and faded picture 'The New Moon' in the National Collection, also called 'I've lost my boat, you shan't have your hoop,' with its sunset sky and y...

The 'Rhine Tour' Sketch-Book of 1817 suggests that Turner was in the mood to be careful about his material necessities, one can hardly call them comforts. Written inside the cov...

Turner has not disappeared from the National Gallery; he still has a small shrine there. The oil pictures retained at the National Gallery, with 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' in...

In 1828 Turner was again in Rome. 'The foreign artists,' says Thornbury, 'who went to see his pictures could make nothing of them. Turner's economy and ingenuity were apparent i...

In the chronology of Turner's art life, the year 1805 may be summed up in the words 'He painted "The Shipwreck."' That, probably, was the art event of the year to him, but I lik...

From this year onward until after 1845, when his health began to fail, Turner spent more and more time on the Continent, making his beloved impressions of the moment, and produc...

The Wizard makes a great effort this year, sending no fewer than six pictures to the Royal Academy, and among them was the famous 'Caligula's Palace and Bridge, Bay of Baiæ,' wi...

Eighteen hundred and fifteen was a wonderful year in the history of Europe, and it has also been called a wonderful year in the art history of Turner. He sent eight pictures to...

1. 'NORHAM CASTLE, SUNRISE' (about 1835)--frontispiece 2. 'VIEW OF ORVIETO' (1830). NATIONAL GALLERY 3. 'LUCERNE AND THE RIGHI: EARLY DAWN' (about 1842). Water-Colour. W. G. RAW...

Another unimportant year as regards the exhibition of pictures. It would almost seem as if Turner were reserving himself, pondering over his Italian experiences; or it may have...

pastoral 'Abingdon' which was sold to Mr. G. Hibbert, and re-purchased by Turner at the Hibbert sale in 1829. It must have been an interesting sight to watch Turner re-purchasin...

Turner was anxious about his health this year, if we may judge from an entry in the 'Chemistry and Apuleia' Sketch-Book detailing the symptoms of the Maltese plague, and the cur...

In one of the Sketch-Books for this year labelled 'Sandycombe and Yorkshire' are the following, on the same page, in Turner's handwriting. We can imagine the reasons why he comp...

Perhaps it is such pictures as 'The Goddess of Discord choosing the Apple by Contention in the Garden of the Hesperides' that folk have in mind when they say that they neither l...

Visitors to the Royal Academy of 1820 saw that the great man had been in Rome. How like Turner it was to call a picture 'Rome from the Vatican: Raeffaelle, accompanied by La For...

Turner sent nothing to the Royal Academy of 1821, and in 1822 he exhibited only the unimportant 'What you Will,' a mere nothing, a memory of some other painter. 'What you Will'...

hope'--Turner's fitting epitaph, and life-long aspiration. He added to the _Fallacies of Hope_ off and on for forty years, and it dealt with almost every conceivable subject fro...

Turner was represented by six pictures at the Royal Academy this year--unimportant, not one worthy of his reputation. There was a topographical Venice, which Chantrey bought on...

This, the beginning of an extract from Byron, accompanied his 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'--that late golden afternoon, Italy basking in the heat haze. The stone pine has been m...

Throughout his life Turner produced, apart from the water-colours for the engravers, which number nearly nine hundred examples, two kinds of work--the pictures done for fame, an...

A somewhat barren year for Turner as regards exhibited work. One picture only was shown, 'The Harbour of Dieppe,' which the present generation saw at the Old Masters Exhibition...

This year, alas! Turner exhibited 'Juliet and her Nurse,' and 'Mercury and Argus.' How strange it is that the hand that was painting Delight Drawings and Pictures for pleasure s...

'The Field of Waterloo,' exhibited in 1818, with its obvious quotation from Byron, is as dead as rider and horse, friend and foe piled in the foreground. It now hangs on the out...

The pictures exhibited in 1837 did not restore Turner to favour. They included the 'Snowstorm, Avalanche and Inundation,' described as a 'tumult of cloud, wind and raging torren...

The Sketch-Books of the period are full of Yorkshire and Farnley subjects, and one of them contains a fragment of a letter from Mr. Walter Fawkes concluding: 'Everybody is delig...

The title in the catalogue is 'A Mountain Stream' and the official description runs: 'The torrent winds swiftly round the base of a rocky cliff surmounted by trees, and lashes i...