CHAPTER XXXV

1829: AGED FIFTY-FOUR

THE YEAR OF 'ULYSSES DERIDING POLYPHEMUS'

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 transformation scene at a pantomime; admit that it is all wrong, artistically; that it is lighted from anywhere and everywhere; concede all its impossibilities and incongruities, and the 'Ulysses' still remains a magnificent effort of the imagination, a glory to behold, from the figure of Phœbus, rising with his horses from the sea, to the vast Polyphemus, who, not being a mortal and bearing no resemblance to nineteenth--century man, is the most convincing figure that Turner ever painted. How often I visited the old Turner room at the National Gallery to study this picture or that, but always finding myself, sooner or later, drawn to this supreme effort of his imagination.

And now that he had emptied himself of all he knew and all he had dreamed, of wonder and splendour, came the reaction, and his humorous contempt of the chatter about this masterpiece, the wonder of the 1829 exhibition. (Yet nobody bought it.)

Thornbury recounts that at a dinner party at which Turner was present, a lady (she exists to-day, and is still making similar observations) who had seen the 'Ulysses' said to her neighbour, Mr. Judkins, 'the clerical artist,'--'Don't you now think it is a sweet picture?'

'Turner, glum and shy, opposite, is watching all this. He sees where the lady's eyes fall after she addresses her whispers to Mr. Judkins. His little beads of eyes roll and twinkle with fun and slyness. Across the table he growls:--

'"I know what you two are talking about, Judkins--about my picture."

'Mr. Judkins suavely waves his glass and acknowledges that it was. The lady smiled on the great man.

'"And I bet you don't know where I took the subject from; come now--bet you don't."

'Judkins blandly replied:--

"Oh, from the old poet, of course, Turner; from the _Odyssey_ of course."

'"No," grunted Turner, bursting into a chuckle; "_Odyssey_; not a bit of it. I took it from Tom Dibdin. Don't you know the lines:--

'He ate his mutton, drank his wine. And then he poked his eye out.'"'

To this year also belongs 'Chichester Canal,' unfinished, a scene of peace and quiet beauty, and was it this year or the next that he painted 'The Evening Star,' perhaps in its way one of the most appealing of the 'unfinished' Turners? How beautiful, how perfectly satisfying it would be if only the figure of the Shrimper and the dancing dog had been omitted. Truly a contrast to the splendour of the 'Ulysses.' There the sun was rising in fiery magnificence with the horses of Phoebus dancing up from the waves, and all that mythical world aglow with colour: here the sun is setting over the darkening sea, and in the mystical afterglow gleams the evening star reflected in the water that ripples gently to that lonely beach.

The authority for ascribing 'The Evening Star' to this period is to be found in some verses on page 70 of the 'Worcester and Shrewsbury' Sketch-Book, dated 1829-30, among which the following fragments have been deciphered:--

'Where is the star which shone at ... Eve'--' The gleaming star of Ever ... '-- The first pale Star of Eve ere Twilight comes Struggles with ... '

These broken lines may be a reference to 'The Evening Star,' which Mr. Finberg believes was painted about this time. The Official Catalogue of the Tate Gallery, however, suggests that 'The Evening Star' may be of the same date as 'The New Moon' exhibited in 1840.

Two of the other 'unfinished' oils first exhibited in 1906 may have been painted about this date. Each is similar in composition to sepia drawings for the _Liber Studiorum_, the 'Rocky Bay with Figures' to the 'Glaucus and Scylla,' which was never published, and the 'Sunrise, a Castle on a Bay,' to the 'Solitude.' Turner, of course, gave no title to these suggestions of colour and atmosphere, and he did not exhibit them. It is only literary pictures that require titles or descriptions. In one, the sun has risen behind a mist-shrouded castle on a bay; in the other, sunrays gleam through a natural arch and light the deep green sea. Greek galleys are moored in the bay and drawn up on the shore. A man with outstretched arms may be dimly seen haranguing a group of sailors. We shall never know when or where he painted these 'delight pictures.' They call up the spirit of Turner the poet as the Sketch-Books call up the spirit of Turner the wanderer.

My eyes fall on the following words in his own handwriting, and for the moment he seems to be present, noting nature, ready to record some sudden beauty.

'Moonlight . . . . . . Fish . . . . . . . Temple . . . . . . . . . . . . . Copper Venice . . . . . . . Sunrise . . . . . . . Hare . . . . . . . Ship--Storm . . . . . . Evening Sunset . . . . . .

Visions were then passing through the mind of the dumb poet who once 'confessed that he knew much more of his art than he could explain.'