CHAPTER XLVII

1841: AGED SIXTY-SIX

HOW TURNER DID IT? HE 'GRASPED THE HANDLE AND PLUNGED THE WHOLE DRAWING INTO A PAIL OF WATER'

Turner was represented by six pictures at the Royal Academy this year--unimportant, not one worthy of his reputation. There was a topographical Venice, which Chantrey bought on Varnishing Day before he had seen it; and the rather decorative, rather splendid, rather fatigued picture called 'Depositing of Giovanni Bellini's three pictures in the Church of the Redentore, Venice,' not one of which modern expert criticism allows to Bellini. Little that would have mattered to Turner; he was concerned with the look of the pageant only, a little confused--gold, red and blue surging in sunlight. No doubt it pleased the old man to add the name of Giovanni Bellini to the famous painters who are associated with the descriptions of his pictures.

The titles of the Sketch-Books of this year evoke all manner of visions of beautiful places and the works associated with them--Lucerne, the Rhine, Thun, Zug, Goldau, Fluelen, Bellinzona, Como, Splugen and Grenoble.

In the Salting Collection at the British Museum is a 'Bellinzona' of the period, faint greens, faint purples, with touches of red, the form all lost in colour, brooded over by the ridge of snow mountains, the pencilled line of which has been left. In the possession of Sir Hickman Bacon is a water-colour simply called 'A Swiss Lake,' the still water reflecting the rosy hills, and the delicate blues and yellows of the sky--just iridescent atmosphere floated upon the paper. I look at it, wonder how it was done, and decide that the explanation by Leitch, the water-colour painter, told by Mr. Shaw Sparrow in _The Studio_, as to 'how Turner did it,' does not help me.

Leitch informed a friend of Mr. Sparrow's that he once accompanied Pickersgill to Turner's studio, and there watched the great man working, or shall I say composing. There were four drawing-boards, each of which had a handle screwed to the back. After the subject had been lightly sketched in, Turner grasped the handle and plunged the whole drawing into a pail of water by his side. 'Then quickly he washed in the principal hues that he required, flowing tint into tint, until this stage of the work was complete. Leaving this first drawing to dry, he took the second board and repeated the operation. By the time the fourth drawing was laid in, the first would be ready for the finishing touches; and Leitch was greatly impressed by the commonsense of the whole proceeding.'

Commonsense and genius, knowledge and daring, cunning and simplicity: result--Turner's later water-colours.