CHAPTER XXXVI

1830: AGED FIFTY-FIVE

HE PAINTS THE 'INTERIOR AT PETWORTH' AND MOURNS THE DEATH OF HIS FATHER, AND OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE

Two events mark this year: one sad, the death of his father which affected his whole after life; the other, an epoch in his development as artist, the painting of the 'Interior at Petworth.' But first a few words about other matters.

As I have remarked before, critics are occasionally hard upon Turner, and sometimes they disagree as to what is fine, and what is poor in his work. Ruskin labelled a parcel of vignette beginnings as 'worthless.' Mr. Rawlinson, referring to the numerous small drawings for vignette illustrations, such as Rogers's _Italy_ of 1830, and the _Poems_ of 1834, while calling them 'marvels of execution,' also sees in them 'an unpleasant note,' often a strangely forced and extravagant colour. Monkhouse considered that it would be difficult to find in the whole range of his works two really greater (though so small in size) than the vignettes of 'Alps at Daybreak,' and 'Datur hora quieti.' Personally, I must confess to a feeling of lukewarmness in regard to the vignettes. 'The Burning of the Houses of Parliament' in Sir Edward Tennant's collection is tight and harsh in colour compared with the loose luxuriance of the oil picture.

Some one has said that Turner must on the whole have been an agreeable person to have in a house--if the house were big enough. His visits to Lord Egremont at Petworth were on much the same footing of intimacy as his visits to Walter Fawkes at Farnley. Turner had his own private studio at Petworth, and nobody but Lord Egremont was allowed admission. Even he, who has been described as 'the rough, cunning, honest old noble-man,' had to give a peculiar knock on the door before entering. It is said that Chantrey, when staying at Petworth, imitated Lord Egremont's peculiar knock, and to Turner's anger entered the room and saw him at work. This pair of eccentrics, Turner and Egremont, foregathered happily, and the friendship was severed only in 1837 by Lord Egremont's death.

The _Inventory_ shows that Turner was at Petworth in 1830. One of the books contains a sketch for that quaint, attractive 'View in Petworth Park with Tillington Church in the Distance,' of which an unfinished version is in the National Collection. The finished oil is in the possession of Lord Leconfield. Most of the Petworth sketches are in brilliant tints of opaque colour on grey-blue paper: they resulted one merry day in that startling, delightful oil picture in the National Collection called 'Interior at Petworth.' Here is Turner working entirely for his own pleasure, absolutely indifferent to the forms of things, seeing the havoc through a mist of sunlight with brilliant rays shining down into the octagonal sculpture gallery beyond, and reflected through the Venetian blinds of a window in an alcove to the right. How the room came to be in this state we do not know. The pugs and spaniels are evidently enjoying the upturned table and the disarranged furniture: they caper delightedly over a lady's orange cloak and feathered bonnet.

I must find room for an extract from a curious and interesting article upon 'Turner's Path from Nature to Art,' by Professor Josef Strzygowski, that appeared in the _Burlington Magazine._ The learned professor devotes his pen to 'The Frosty Morning' and the 'Interior at Petworth,' which he considers represent the two poles: Nature and Art. After remarking that in the days when the 'Interior at Petworth' was painted no sketch was regarded as a picture, and so Turner never exhibited the Petworth 'Interior' which 'looks almost like an actual palette, and a palette, moreover, on which the colours have been thoroughly daubed together, dashes of colour from the paint-brush and the palette-knife left as they are, without the least intention of hiding the technique'--Professor Strzygowski proceeds:--

'We do not know what is represented; it seems as if the picture might just as well hang upside down. And when we have realised that we are looking upon an interior, where are the separate shapes expressed? We recognise a large sofa on the right, statues on the left, in front a little dog. But these three shapes, and all the others, are so confused, that no one can define their appearance. But what, then, does the picture really mean? asks the layman. That is the real discovery of modern times. Sketches in which an artist gives nothing more than his momentary impression, _i.e._, lets himself go subjectively, leaving the object, both as regards its meaning and its appearance, quite in the background, are now admitted to be finished works of art. The "Interior at Petworth" is not in Mr. Bell's catalogue. Turner, as we now know, reserved this work, with so many others, as a private confession of faith.... For him the shape no longer exists; he sees only light and colour, and even those transform themselves in a peculiar way. He does not see a fragment of nature through the medium of his temperament; but gives us rather, on the contrary, his own temperament seen through a fragment of nature. Nature is wholly subordinated to his impetuous need for self-expression.... The representation, the "Interior" in itself, has no value for him, except in so far as its space can be exhibited as the recipient of tone and colour: the pictorial symbol, as the medium of his need for expression, is everything to him; the object, the thing and its shape, are nothing. Thus the cautious painter of "The Frosty Morning" becomes an artist; thus the thing he paints is transformed into spiritual significance, its shape becomes pictorial symbol; and the technique, which before was carefully veiled, changes to the boldest impressionism.... Art like this is for epicures.'

Saner and very beautiful is the water-colour, 'On the Lake at Petworth, Evening,' in the National Collection, although I am bound to say that this golden and blue impression is equally beautiful if you look at it upside down.

In the 'Brighton and Arundel' Sketch-Books (1830), we find the following in Turner's handwriting on 'A View Looking Out to Sea with a Sailing Boat':--

'Beautiful effect of----,' 'Green Top' (_e._ to waves), 'foam grey in shade'--'reflections of the Boat ... in water,' 'Reflection of the Boy [?] on the Sail,' 'The warmth of the Tan Sail,' etc.

Perhaps from these notes he painted the luminous and peaceful 'Old Chain Pier, Brighton,' with the sun low in a yellow haze gilding the sail, and the reflections of boat and sail in the still water. Certainly from this 'study' he composed the finished Brighton picture in the collection of Lord Leconfield. 'A Ship Aground,' which appears to be a pendant to 'The Old Chain Pier, Brighton,' is equally luminous and peaceful, in spite of the ground swell, and the movement of the small craft about the disabled ship.

In the 'Dieppe and Rouen and Paris' Sketch-Book, we find sketches of three pictures, probably Claudes or Poussins, with long descriptions in Turner's handwriting, of which the following are samples:--

'The trees are grey and dull green and the whole foreground cold, the earth particularly cold with a few touches of warm red, but the _ground_ in the picture never protrudes itself or through the _Colours_' ... 'The sky is very blue at the top with some small white clouds with grey shadows, but at the Hor. [horizon] yellow, so that the distant mountains are relieved and Blue.'

In another Sketch-Book are a number of water-colours on blue paper, probably connected with _The Rivers of France_ series, published between 1833 and 1835.

Turner suffered a great blow this year in the death of his father, for whom he had a deep affection. 'Dad' had been of great use to his famous son, helping in the preparation of his canvases, attending to the gallery of unsold pictures, and so forth. When they were staying at Twickenham, he would travel to town every morning to open the gallery, riding with the market gardeners, who conveyed him to London for a glass of gin a day (his own arrangement). 'Dad' was as careful of money as was his son, who was wont to chuckle, 'Dad taught me nothing except to save halfpence.'

Turner was never again the same man after the death of his father. In this year Sir Thomas Lawrence also died. The Turner Collection at Millbank contains a sketch of the funeral, looking like a double-page in an illustrated weekly. The following letter shows how the death of Lawrence affected him:--

'Dear Jones,--I delayed answering yours until the chance of this finding you in Rome, to give you some account of the dismal prospect of Academic affairs, and of the last sad ceremonies paid yesterday to departed talent gone to that bourn from whence no traveller returns. Alas! only two short months Sir Thomas followed the coffin of Dawe to the same place. We then were his pall-bearers. Who will do the like for me, or when, God only knows how soon! However, it is something to feel that gifted talent can be acknowledged by the many who yesterday waded up to their knees in snow and muck to see the funeral pomp swelled up by the carriages of the great, _without the persons themselves.'_

Turner's father was buried in the parish church of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, where the painter had been baptized. The plain epitaph was written by Turner; it bears no scriptural text.