CHAPTER XLI

1835: AGED SIXTY

SOME REMARKS ON THE 'UNFINISHED' OILS, AND _BLACKWOOD'S_ ATTACK ON HIS 'VENICE' PICTURE OF THIS YEAR

Ruskin, to whom we owe so much, whose prose delights, consoles, inspires, confuses, bewilders and annoys in turn; who, by his very enthusiasm for Turner, occasionally ill-judged and unfair to other painters, is sometimes of disservice to Turner, has nevertheless constructed an edifice of interpretation, praise and blame that must last as long as the pictures themselves. Certain of Ruskin's phrases are unforgettable; one consists of but two words--'Delight Drawings,' designed to describe the water-colours Turner made during the last ten years of his working life; not done for the engraver or for exhibition, but just for his own pleasure. 'I look upon them,' said Ruskin, 'as more valuable than his finished drawings or his oil pictures, because they are the simple record of his first impressions and first purposes, plans or designs of the pictures which, if he had had time, he would have made of each place.'

Since these words were written, we have learnt to esteem even more highly these 'Delight Drawings,' and to regard them as the final and highest expressions of Turner's genius. With the inward eye I see Turner walking about a town with a roll of thin paper in his pocket, as Ruskin has described, making a few scratches upon a sheet or two, mere shorthand indications of all he wished to remember, then at his inn in the evening completing the pencilling rapidly, and adding 'as much colour as was needed to record his plan of the picture.'

Thus in the last decade of his life, when he had mastered his craft, turned away from the works of all other painters to the fair face of nature, did Turner produce his 'Delight Drawings.'

Equally quickly, happily and impulsively did he produce the 'unfinished' oils. Could there be a better name for these 'water-colours writ large,' than 'Delight Pictures,' done like the drawings for his own pleasure, in moments of impulse while he was working upon exhibition pictures, much as a man, when writing a history of a county, might break off to record in a hundred words, a 'thing seen,' something of the present, that had spoken to his heart while studying the present manners and customs of the county?

It is impossible to date accurately all the 'Delight Pictures,' a list of which is given in the chapter towards the end of this book describing the sensation caused by the exhibition of the 'unfinished' oils in 1906. The 'Rocky Bay with Figures,' and the 'Sunrise, a Castle on a Bay,' both founded on sepia drawings for the _Liber_, may have been done as early as 1829 or 1830; the 'Yachting' series certainly belong to 1827; the 'Chain Pier, Brighton,' and the 'Ship Aground' to 1830, and 'The Evening Star' may be as early as 1829, or as late as 1840. Some, the most delicate and evanescent, wonders of light, flushes of colour, may have been painted any time between 1830 and 1840; others, perhaps later, as 'The Burning of the Ships,' and 'Sunrise and a Sea Monster,' which probably belong to the 'Whalers' period. It is impossible to describe them, and as many are reproduced in colour in this volume, the attempt is hardly necessary. The catalogue of the Turner Gallery bravely attempts description and elucidation; but these works were never meant either to be titled or described. I am content merely to look at the crepuscular beauty of the nocturne with the evening star; at the deep green sea lighted near the shore by a gleam of golden sunlight in 'A Rocky Bay with Classic Figures,' unaware until I am told, that Greek galleys are moored in the bay and drawn up on the shore, and that a shadow of a man is haranguing a group of shadowy sailors; at the mist-shrouded castle behind which the sun is rising--Turner the mystic, the initiate in light and colour.

But if these are beautiful, what word can describe the 'Sunrise with a Boat between Headlands,' the 'Hastings,' and the 'Norham Castle, Sunrise,' his final vision of the ruin that he had painted again and again (see Frontispiece). It has now become a mere whisper of light and colour, a half-uttered murmur of the wonder of sunrise. Detail has gone; it is flooded in light; the old familiar foreground has disappeared, leaving only the glory of the sky reflected in the water with the note of red, the blue rampart, and the haze that is all colours. What is to be said about 'Sunrise, with a Boat between Headlands'? I look at it, love it, and easily forget the useful information given in the catalogue to the effect that a water-colour similar in composition, once in the collection of the late Sir James Knowles, is said to be a view on the Lake of Lucerne. Hastings, too, Turner painted again and again, but never did he realise so perfectly the atmospheric vision that he once had of ugly Hastings as in this 'Delight Picture,' with the amber and golden sails rising to the pale blue sky, the amber sail strong against the rosy light on the cliffs. And the misty, yellow sunrise of the 'Bridge and Tower,' with the dreamland viaduct spanning the dreamland river, is it not beautiful? But when he painted that stalwart tree to the right, I think Turner's imagination flagged.

Delight Pictures! Delight Drawings! One of the drawings rises before me as I write, a late one done a few years before his death, that exquisite 'Study on the Rhine,' body colour on grey paper, in the collection of Sir Edward Durning-Lawrence. I have no words to describe this wonder of misty blue and gold, with the moon riding in a sky charged with the mystery of essential colour. We are all, like Ruskin, extravagant at times in speaking and writing of the finest work of Turner. A man, long dead, a contemporary, said: 'There are parts of some of them wonderful, and by God, all other drawings look heavy and vulgar.'

A living man said in my hearing: 'They are the finger of God: there is no other way to describe them.'

I must now take up the story of Turner's exhibited pictures in 1835, which included 'Line Fishing off Hastings,' now in the Victoria and Albert Museum; 'Venice from the Porch of Madonna della Salute,' now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, signed on a floating plank, the picture which _Blackwood_ attacked; and two versions of the magnificent 'Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons,' one shown at the Royal Academy, the other at the British Institution. Turner had watched the conflagration the year before, as the 'Burning of the Houses of Parliament' Sketch-Book of 1834 tells us. There are also water-colours of this subject in the National Collection, and at Farnley, and a vignette in Sir Edward Tennant's collection. As a nocturne the 'Burning of the Houses of Parliament' is as furious as 'The Evening Star' is peaceful. Dim boats push out into the lurid light reflected in the water; other boats linger in the pools and eddies within the shadow of the bridge; the whole scene is a bustle of colour, from pale primrose on the bridge in shadow, to the hurry of red and yellow in the night sky bright with the illumined smoke. The Royal Academy version was, we are told, almost repainted by Turner on Varnishing Day. 'He finished it on the walls the last two days before the gallery was opened to the public'. The authority is Scarlett Davies, whose letter on the subject I have already quoted: 'I am told it was good fun to see the great man whacking away with about fifty stupid apes standing around him, and I understand that he was cursedly annoyed--the fools kept peeping into his colour-box, examining all his brushes and colours.'

Thornbury tells us that Lord Hill, on looking at the picture, exclaimed: 'What's this? Call this painting? Nothing but dabs.' But upon retiring and catching its magical effects, he added: 'Painting! God bless me. So it is.'

In this year the attacks in the press began, heralded by _Blackwood_, with a severe criticism of 'Venice from the Porch of Madonna della Salute.' The writer in _Blackwood_ said:--

'Venice, well I have seen Venice. Venice the magnificent, glorious, queenly, even in her decay--with her rich, coloured buildings, speaking of days gone by, reflected in the _green_ water. What is Venice in this picture? A flimsy, whitewashed, meagre assemblage of architecture, starting off ghostlike into unnatural perspective, as if frightened at the affected blaze of some dogger vessels (the only attempt at richness in the picture). The greater part of the picture is white, disagreeable white, without light or transparency, and the boats, with their red worsted masts, are as gewgaw as a child's toy, which he may have cracked to see what it is made of. As to Venice, nothing can be more unlike its character.'

Poor old Turner! But this 'Venice' as not a good picture. John Ruskin, then sixteen years of age, read the article in _Blackwood_, read it with indignation, and his brain became a tumult of thoughts, and, when the attack was continued, he wrote a letter. Seven years later that letter became a book, the first volume of _Modern Painters._