CHAPTER XV

1808: AGED THIRTY-THREE

HE WRITES P.P. AFTER HIS NAME AND PAINTS IN A GARDEN AT HAMMERSMITH

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, October 21st, 1805, at the Battle of Trafalgar on board the _Victory._ We all admire this work for the splendour of the decorative scheme, the gathered masses of golden brown, and the towering fantasy of the sails. To me it is the most attractive of the earlier pictures. I never look at the details; but those details aroused adverse criticism while the picture was being painted, and after exhibition. Turner cared little about accuracy; he was an artist, not an illustrator. When he was asked to paint the 'Trafalgar' picture as a companion to 'A Sea Fight' by de Loutherbourg, he had not the slightest intention of producing an accurate representation of the death of Nelson. He saw the scene decoratively, and decoratively he painted it.

Some of the contemporary criticisms are amusing. Nelson's Flag-Captain pronounced it to be 'more like a street scene than a battle, and the ships more like houses than men-of-war.' A Greenwich pensioner is said to have exclaimed: 'I can't make English of it, Sir. It wants altering altogether.' Another remarked: 'What a Trafalgar! It is a d----d deal more like a brickfield.'

Turner was instructed daily, while painting 'The Death of Nelson,' by the naval men about the court, and it is said that on eleven successive occasions he altered the rigging to suit the fancy of eleven successive naval visitors. Turner treated their criticisms as jokes: they amused him. He knew precisely what he meant to do. 'The Death of Nelson' was shown at the British Institution; later he painted another version, which is now at Greenwich Hospital.

To the Royal Academy he sent 'The Unpaid Bill, or the Doctor reproving his Son's Prodigality.' I have not seen this picture, which suggests Wilkie, and is probably not worth a journey of discovery.

In the Royal Academy catalogue of this year, 1808, we find for the first time the words, Professor of Perspective, after Turner's name, and in addition to the address 64 Harley Street, that of West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith.

Turner was proud of his Professorship; this he showed by often affixing, in his correspondence, the letters P.P. to his name.

As might be expected, his lectures on Perspective were unlike the lectures of any other professor. Thornbury remarks: 'When Turner lectured on perspective he was often at a loss to find words to express the views he wished to communicate, but when the spirit did stir within him, and he could find utterance to his thoughts, he soared as high above the common order of lecturers as he did in the regions of art.'

Thornbury, whose stories and comments one always quotes with trepidation, his inaccuracies being so consistent, continues with the following humorous paragraph:--

'Turner's want of expression rendered him almost useless as a Professor of Perspective, though he took great pains to prepare the most learned diagrams. He confessed that he knew much more of the art than he could explain. His sketch-books contain many drawings evidently made in preparation for these lectures. On one memorable occasion the hour had come for his lecture. The Professor arrived--the buzz of the students subsided. The Professor mounts his desk--every eye is fixed on him and on his blackboard. But the Professor is uneasy--he is perturbed. He dives now into one pocket--now into the other--no! Now he begins, but what he says is 'Gentlemen, I've been and left my lecture in the hackney-coach.' I have no doubt the Professor would rather have painted five epical pictures than have had to deliver one lecture on Perspective.'

Among the Turner relics lent by Mr. C. Mallord Turner to the Tate Gallery are the manuscripts of the Lectures on Perspective. Mr. D. C. MCColl, in an article on 'Turner's Lectures at the Academy' which he contributed to the _Burlington Magazine_, said:--

'I am not yet in a position to say whether the labour of disentangling that part of the text which deals with the ordinary problems of perspective, would be repaid by its result; but the series concludes with a review of landscape painting by Turner, which certainly deserved to be printed. However halting in expression, Turner's word upon Dürer, Holbein, Titian, Rubens, Claude, Wilson and Gainsborough should not be lost. The lecture also on 'Reflexes'--_i.e._ reflections of light and colour--and incidental passages in the other lectures should be put on record.'

Turner's word, halting in expression, upon many great painters, together with his own aesthetic searchings, may be found, as the reader knows, in the _Inventory._ In the 'Tabley' Sketch-Book, dated 1808, there is a long involved passage on reflections, beginning 'Reflections not only appear darker but longer than the object which occasions them, and if the ripple or hollow of the wave is long enough to make an angle with the eye, it is on these undulating lines that the object reflects, and transmits all perpendicular objects lower towards the spectator....'

Turner's 'Windmill and Lock' in the collection of Sir Frederick Cook at Richmond is clearly based on a close study of Rembrandt's 'Mill.' Pages 17 and 19 of the 'Greenwich' Sketch-Book contain the following 'halting in expression' notes:--

'... Rembrandt is a strong instance of caution as to reflected light and Correggio (?) to refracted light. Two instances of the strongest class may be found in the celebrated pictures of the Mill and La Notte. The Mill has but one light, that is to say, upon the mill, for the sky altho' a greater body or mass if reduced to black and white yet is not perceptible of sun's ray by any indication of form, but rather a glow of approaching light, but the sails of the mill are loaded with the ... ray, while all below is lost in ... gloom without the value of Reflected light which even the sky commands, and the ray upon the mill insists upon, while the 1/2 gleam upon the water admits the reflection of the sky. Ev ... twilight is all reflection but in Rembrandt it is all darkness and gleam of light, etc'.

I turn with relief from Turner on Perspective and Reflected Light to the thought of his pretty country retreat at West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, whither he went, it is said, to be near de Loutherbourg, 'whose imaginative genius he much admired.'

'A friend' communicated to Thornbury the following glimpse of the life at Hammersmith:--

'The garden, which ran down to the river, terminated in a summer-house; and here, out in the open air, were painted some of his best pictures. It was there that my father, who then resided at Kew, became first acquainted with him; and expressing his surprise that Turner could paint under such circumstances, he remarked that lights and room were absurdities, and that a picture could be painted anywhere. His eyes were remarkably strong. He would throw down his water-colour drawings on the floor of the summer-house, requesting my father not to touch them, as he could see them there, and they would be drying at the same time.'

In that happy mood no doubt he painted the seventeen 'beginnings' of pictures, exhibited for the first time in 1910 in Room XI. of the new Turner Gallery--large beginnings of riparian and rural scenes, free and decorative, that he no doubt exhibited in his own studio, inviting patrons to commission 'finished' pictures from these delightful suggestions.

He spent happy days making them, and in the garden at Hammersmith, but it is probable that the important event of 1808 to Turner, ever ambitious, ever reaching forward, ever clutching at fame, was the privilege of writing the letters P.P. after his name.