CHAPTER XXXIX

1833: AGED FIFTY-EIGHT

HE PAINTS HIS FIRST 'VENICE' PICTURE AND RE-PURCHASES SOME OF HIS OWN DRAWINGS AT AUCTION

Venice, 'the last home of his imagination,' if we exclude the mountains of Switzerland, and the Thames of England, where he found his final solace, begins to inspire his brush, but not the visionary Venice that he was to evolve later, visions of colour and light which seem to be floating from sight even as we look at them. First the spade work--that was Turner's way. As he began painting the sea from the pictures of Van de Velde, so he began painting Venice from the pictures of Canaletto, and in this first interpretation, or rather illustration, of Venice, he introduced, in his quaint, admiring way, his hero for the moment, at work. 'The Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom House, Canaletto Painting,' is a sober topographical performance compared with his later pictures of the bride of the Adriatic. Indeed the quotation from Rogers's _Italy_ gives more of a lilt to the imagination than the picture:--

'There is a glorious city in the sea, The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, Ebbing and flowing; and the salt sea-weed Clings to the marble of her palaces.'

No fewer than twenty-seven pictures of Venice by Turner have been catalogued.

Between 1833 and 1835 were published the beautiful series of _The Rivers of France_ known as _Turner's Annual Tour._ The letterpress was by Leitch Ritchie, but they did not travel together 'as their tastes were dissimilar.' Ritchie gives the following description of the artist's methods:--

'His exaggerations, when it suited his purpose, were wonderful; lifting up, for instance, by two or three stories, the steeple, or rather the stunted cone of a village church. I never failed to roast him on the habit. He took my remarks in very good part, sometimes indeed in great glee, never attempting to defend himself otherwise than by rolling back the war into the enemy's camp. In my account of the famous Gilles de Retz, I had attempted to identify that prototype of "Blue Beard" with the hero of the nursery story, by absurdly insisting that his beard was so intensely black that it seemed to have a shade of blue. This tickled the great painter hugely; and his only reply to my bantering was, his little sharp eyes glistening the while, "Blue Beard! Blue Beard! Black Beard!"'

There were sixty drawings in this wonderful series, most of which are in the Turner Gallery. He did not sell these water-colours, preferring to lend them to the publishers for engraving purposes for which he charged from five to seven guineas each. Ruskin tells how one day Turner brought to him the sixty drawings for _The Rivers of France_ rolled in dirty brown paper, offering them for twenty-five guineas each. Ruskin, to his grief, could not persuade his father to spend the money. In later years he had to pay a thousand pounds for the seventeen which he gave to Oxford. To look through this series is to be again impressed by the range of Turner's genius. Which is the most beautiful? I know not. Sometimes one, sometimes another--the blue mystery of 'The Light Towers of Hève,' the huddled splendour of 'Sunset in the Port of Havre,' the wild translucent sweep of the tidal wave in 'Quellebœuf,' the quiet splendour, infinity on a few inches of paper, of 'The Seine between Tancarville and Quellebœuf,' the poetry of 'Caudebec,' the fantasy of 'Jumiéges,' the charm of 'The Post Road from Vernon to Nantes,' the mystery of 'St. Denis.' Invited to pick one, I should hardly know which to choose. What a parcel of dreams for Turner to bring to Ruskin rolled in dirty brown paper. And while Turner the poet was preparing to realise these dreams, Turner the man was casting his acquisitive eye on former works of his own that came into the market. When Dr. Munro died in 1833, Turner attended the sale of his pictures, and acquired a great many of his own early works; no doubt he bought others too, as among the doubtful drawings catalogued at the end of the _Inventory_, are many by different hands. Turner informed the auctioneer that some of the drawings attributed to him were not his. That must have been an interesting spectacle. For Turner, when he had a grievance, did not conceal it.