CHAPTER XVII

1810: AGED THIRTY-FIVE

A QUIET YEAR AND AN EARLY GOLDEN VISION

Enter an early golden vision.

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 itself into foam here and there as it flows over boulders in the river bed.' I know not where this attractive but somewhat hard golden vision was painted, but its date is certainly about 1810. What a simplification of vision and of title after such a medley as 'The Goddess of Discord choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of the Hesperides'; how reposeful is this unsophisticated statement of the seeing eye after the piled up incidents of 'Calais Pier.'

It would seem that Turner was in a reflective peace-with-the-world mood in this year, as indeed he had been since he painted the seventeen large 'beginnings' of riparian and rural oil-pictures mentioned in