CHAPTER XI

1804: AGED TWENTY-NINE

HE STUDIES AN ECLIPSE AND PAINTS THE SUNSET

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, and those for his own delight--a 'Calais Pier,' and a 'Stonehenge at Sunset': a 'Jason' and a 'Norham Castle.' It is hard to believe that the broad and simple water-colour, 'Stonehenge at Sunset,' with the magnificent sky, was done about the same time as the 'Calais Pier,' but it was 'Calais Pier' that made Turner known to the public.

Henceforth he was rarely in want of commissions from influential patrons, including the Earls of Egremont, Essex, Lonsdale and Yarborough, Sir John Leicester, Sir John Soane and others. He did not always sell his oil pictures; indeed, as the years went on they remained in increasing numbers on his hands; but that was partly his own desire. Turner was always loath to part with his 'children.' The bulk of his fortune was made out of the engravings.

Yes, Turner was now a successful man, but he was still, as always, a student. The Sketch-Books, as I have said, reveal him better than reams of commentary. Take, for example, the 'Eclipse' Sketch-Book of 1804, showing how he worked and how he strove to understand phenomena, even if the wonders studied did not apply actually to the work at hand. The 'Eclipse' Sketch-Book is brief. Here are the descriptions of the six 'Eclipse' drawings he made in black and white chalk:--'

Commencement of Eclipse. More than half of sun eclipsed. Sun nearly three-quarters eclipsed. Sun nearly lost among clouds. Three-quarters of sun in eclipse. Landscape with clouds, no sun.'

I shall always retain that mental picture of Turner alone, somewhere, studying an eclipse; and also the picture of him, alone, at Stonehenge, studying that solitude, and making of it a water-colour that prefigured the freedom and sensitiveness of his later work. I see it now, the brown, simple foreground, the ancient stones erected to record the appearances of the sun, rising gauntly in the middle distance, and half the drawing tingling with a sunset sky. Was there ever a painter so obsessed by sunsets? But towards the end of his life it was sunrises--always sunrises.

Moonlights, sunsets, sunrises! In them Turner sought light and found hope.