CHAPTER VI
1790: AGED FIFTEEN
HE EXHIBITS AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY AND IS DESCRIBED AS A LIGHT-HEARTED, MERRY CREATURE
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 the age of nine young Turner made a drawing of Margate Church, shortly before he went to his first school at New Brentford.
An old schoolfellow tells how he drew cocks and hens on the walls, and birds and flowers and trees from the schoolroom windows; and there is a story, which has been learnedly revised by _Notes and Queries_, of a sketch which he made of a coat-of-arms from a drawing at Mr. Tomkison's the jeweller. At the age of thirteen he is described as short and thick-set, with grey-blue eyes and arched eyebrows, a handsome boy, careless of dress, but sturdy and determined.
Turner's education was perfunctory; indeed, he had no real education at all, but he acquired the rudiments at New Brentford and in Mr. Coleman's school at Margate. We are told that he made the journey 'in a hoy, a bluff-bowed cutter-rigged craft, with a long bowsprit and heavy main boom.' That voyage must have been one of the events of his boyhood.
Mr. Palice, a floral drawing-master, also had the honour of instructing him, and Mr. Thomas Malton, a perspective draughtsman. Later he learnt something at Paul Sandby's Drawing Academy in St. Martin's Lane, but more from Mr. Hardwick, the architect, who employed him in adding landscape backgrounds to plans, etc., and who introduced him, it is believed, to the schools of the Royal Academy, where we find him enrolled as a student in 1789. But all this was fugitive and not very important. His real lifelong teacher was Nature, and he learnt how to express the ways of Nature by first studying the works of his contemporaries and predecessors.
He developed slowly. 'Folly Bridge and Bacon's Tower,' which appears as the first item in the _Inventory_, under the year 1787, when he was twelve, is not an original drawing. Turner showed little or none of the early facility of genius. For long years he leaned on and learned from others. 'Folly Bridge' is merely a copy of a steel engraving by J. Besire of a drawing perhaps by E. Dayes. The colouring, says Mr. Finberg, is probably the boy's own invention. It is signed and dated W. Turner, 1787, and hangs to-day on a wall of the new Turner Gallery at Millbank.
From an early age he made money. His father showed his drawings and coloured prints in his shop-window, and sold them at prices ranging from one to three shillings. The acquisition of wealth remained one of the most persistent occupations of his life. He was 'found out,' as Monkhouse says, almost in his childhood, was paid for colouring prints and washing in the skies for architects--excellent practice. The knowing boy knew it. When, in after life, somebody expressed wonder that he should have worked for half a crown a night, he retorted that nothing could have been better practice. Sometimes he received as much as a guinea. An old architect told Thornbury that he paid him that sum in the shop in Maiden Lane for putting in a background.
But the most important episode of Turner's boyhood was the meeting with Girtin, at about twelve or thirteen years of age, in the workshop of the famous engraver, John Raphael Smith--Thomas Girtin, who was to have such an influence on his dawning art, and whose personality was to be one of the happiest memories of his life.
Turner's work up till about the age of fifteen has been summed up thus: (1) Making drawings at home to sell; (2) Colouring prints for John Raphael Smith; (3) Washing in backgrounds for architects; (4) Sketching with Girtin.
Even in those early days Turner was secretive. Nobody was allowed to see him draw, and he was as determined as he was secretive. Thornbury tells the following story:--
'Turner was busy one morning in the bedroom at Maiden Lane, working at some drawings for one of Britton's patrons--I think for the Earl of Essex. Suddenly the door opens and Britton enters, nominally to inquire how the drawings progressed, really to spy out all he could of Turner's professional secrets. In an instant Turner covered up his drawings, and ran to stop the crafty intruder's entrance.
'"I've come to see the drawings for the Earl."
'"You shan't see 'em," said Turner.
'"Is that the answer I am to take back to his lord-ship?"
'"Yes; and mind the next time you come through the shop, and not up the back way. I allow no one to come here "; and so shutting the door on sly Britton, Turner returned to growl at him over his work.'
The _Inventory_ shows that Turner was hard at work at this early age. In Sketch-Book No. II., dated 1789, twenty-five leaves are drawn on; No. III. contains five drawings, and includes his 'First View of Oxford,' signed and dated 1789. In Sketch-Book No. IV. there is a pencil outline of 'Wanstead New Church,' against the belfry of which he has written the word 'Ionic.' As I have said, these Sketch-Books might also be called general-utility books. Thus, in Sketch-Book No. V., containing drawings probably made in the Royal Academy Schools, on the back of a black-and-white chalk of the 'Belvedere Apollo' are these notes, showing that his busy brain was already beginning to consider etching, and that he was already indifferent to spelling:--
1 Get an Etching Ground, 26. 2 Heat the Back of P. 3 Rub it over with the Ball. 4 Dab it over with the Dabber of 'Well Hot. { 5 Smoke it over with Wax Tapur 6 Put some ... at back of Palte (? Plate) 7 Re ... of Wax. Turpentine Varnish and Lamp black.'
About this time Turner began to study oil painting, receiving instruction from no less a person than Sir Joshua Reynolds. Little did Sir Joshua think, when he laid down the brush in 1789, that among the young men in his studio, and perhaps working on his pictures under his superintendence, was a youth whose name was to become as famous as the name of Reynolds.
We can tell exactly what degree of accomplishment Turner had reached at the age of fifteen, as the first drawing he sent to the Royal Academy, the year being 1790, the locality Somerset House, a view of 'The Archbishop's Palace, Lambeth,' is in a state of perfect preservation in the collection of Mr. W. G. Rawlinson. He does not yet show any originality. It is one of the tinted architectural drawings of the period, but the work is conscientious, the drawing firm, and the reflected lights on the houses well rendered. Here, too, are the Turner figures, taller than life, a little grotesque, but accurate as regards the costumes.
He must have been a merry, attractive boy when in congenial company: he did not lack friends. There was Mr. Narraway, whom he visited at Bristol, and the house of Mr. W. H. Wells, the artist, was open to him, where he was a constant and welcome inmate. Mrs. Wheeler has recorded the following charming reminiscences of Turner at this period:--
'In early life my father's house was his second home, a haven of rest from many domestic trials too sacred to touch upon. Turner loved my father with a son's affection; and to me he was as an elder brother. Many are the times I have gone out sketching with him. I remember his scrambling up a tree to obtain a better view, and then he made a coloured sketch, I handing up his colours as he wanted them.... Oh! what a different man would Turner have been if all the good and kindly feelings of his great mind had been called into action; but they lay dormant, and were known to so very few. He was by nature suspicious, and no tender hand had wiped away early prejudices, the inevitable consequence of a defective education. Of all the light-hearted merry creatures I ever knew, Turner was the most so; and the laughter and fun that abounded when he was an inmate of our cottage was inconceivable, particularly with the juvenile members of the family.'
That is a happy glimpse of Turner the boy, and with that I leave his boyhood. He has just had a drawing exhibited at the Royal Academy; he is advancing towards proficiency in water-colour, his first and his last love; but not yet has he reached the 'golden simplicity' that Girtin realised, nor the 'silver sweetness' of Cozens.