volume I., and read this: '"The Snowstorm," one of the very grandest

statements of sea-motion, mist, and light, that has ever been put on canvas, even by Turner.'

In this appreciation we can go all the way with Ruskin. 'The Snowstorm' in its new home in the new Turner Gallery looks the work of a giant in the interpretation of sea-motion, mist and light.

The 'Snowstorm; Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth making Signals in shallow water and going by the lead,' was laughed at by the press when it was shown in the 1842 Academy. The parody of the title that appeared in _Punch_ was almost funny; but the old man did not think it funny: 'A Typhoon bursting in a Simoon over the Whirlpool of Maelstrom, Norway; with a ship on fire, an eelipse, and the effect of a lunar rainbow,' with the following skit on the _Fallacies of Hope_:--

'O Art, how vast thy mighty wonders are To those who roam upon the extraordinary deep; Maelstrom, thy hand is here,'

Thornbury asserts that the critics of all kinds, learned and unlearned, were furious when it was exhibited; some of them described it as a mass of 'soapsuds and whitewash.'

'Turner,' wrote Ruskin, 'was passing the evening at my father's house, on the day this criticism came out; and after dinner, sitting in his arm-chair by the fire, I heard him muttering low to himself, at intervals, "Soapsuds and whitewash" again, and again, and again. At last I went to him, asking why he minded what they said. Then he burst out, "Soapsuds and whitewash! What would they have? I wonder what they think the sea's like? I wish they'd been in it."'

As a matter of fact, Turner had given himself infinitely more trouble over 'The Snowstorm' than over 'The Fighting Téméraire,' and he had been in considerable danger. To paint 'The Snowstorm,' he had put to sea from Harwich in the _Ariel_ in a hurricane, had made the sailors lash him to the mast, and there the student of sixty-seven remained for four hours studying the awful scene. I look at 'The Snowstorm' to-day, and remember. I am filled with awe at the man's power. No, we do not smile at 'The Snowstorm' now; but certain folk still smile at 'War: The Exile and the Rock Limpet,' depicting an attenuated Napoleon, standing against a blood-red sunset, in the shallows of a tidal pool, on the shore of St. Helena, gazing with folded arms out to sea. Turner failed to make this nobly inspired dream a reality--that is all.

_Punch_ made merry over the 'Exile and the Rock Limpet,' calling it 'The Duke of Wellington and the Shrimp (Seringapatam, early morning),' with another parody of the _Fallacies_:--

'And can it be, thou hideous imp, That life is, ah! how brief, and glory but a shrimp! (From an unpublished poem.)'

And remarked that:--

'The comet just rising above the cataract in the foreground, and the conflagration of Tippoo's widow in the Banyan forest by the sea-shore, are in the great artist's happiest manner.'

'Peace, Burial at Sea of the Body of Sir David Wilkie,' was a vision which Turner completely realised, the poetry, the pathos, the grandeur, the decorative splendour--all. The sails of the steamship are dark against the evening sky, as if in mourning, and amidships, in a blaze of torchlight, the body of Wilkie is being lowered to his watery grave. Stanfield, who saw the picture on Varnishing Day, thought the effect of the sails was 'untrue,' which, of course, they are, but Turner would not alter them. 'I only wish I had any colour to make them blacker,' said the old warrior.

From this picture of peace and solemnity I turn to the peace and loveliness of some 'smaller' water-colours of this, his sunset, period.

Ruskin, in his 'Notes on Turner's Drawings exhibited at the Fine Art Society in 1878,' which is printed as the Epilogue to the volume called _Notes on Pictures_, tells how in the winter of 1841-42 Turner brought back with him from Switzerland a series of sketches, fifteen of which he placed, as was his custom, in the hands of his agent, Griffith of Norwood, so that he might obtain commissions for finished drawings of each.

Ruskin tells us that 'he made anticipatorily four, to manifest what their quality would be, and honestly "show his hand." Four thus exemplary drawings I say he made for specimens, or signs, as it were, for his re-opened shop, namely:--

1. The Pass of Splugen.

2. Mont Righi, seen from Lucerne, in the morning, dark against dawn.

3. Mont Righi, seen from Lucerne at evening, red with the last rays of sunset.

4. Lake Lucerne (The Bay of Uri) from above Brunnen, with exquisite blue and rose mists and 'mackerel' sky on the right.

The whole story, which is told in Ruskin's most simple and charming style, is too long to be repeated here. Nine commissions only could be obtained, making ten with the one given to Griffith as commission. 'Turner growled, but said at last that he would do them,' and among them was a 'Lucerne Town,' which Ruskin, by hard coaxing and petitioning, obtained his father's leave to promise to take if it turned out well. It did.

What a wonderful realisation of a dream of colour is another water-colour of this period, reproduced in these pages--'Spietz on the Lake of Thun, Looking Towards the Bernese Oberland.'

On the last page of the Ruskin Catalogue, which is now called Epilogue, the old man, most eloquent and most sorrowful, writes:--

'The "Constance" and "Coblentz" here with the "Splugen" (1), "Bay of Uri" (4), and "Zurich" (10), of the year 1812, are the most finished and faultless works of his last period; but these of 1843 are the truest and mightiest ... I can't write any more of them just now.'

About this time Munro of Novar offered twenty-five thousand pounds for the whole contents of the Queen Anne Street Gallery. Turner hesitated, but finally refused. Frith, in his _Autobiography_, tells the story thus:--

'When Munro of Novar went for his final answer, Turner cried, "No! I won't--I can't. I believe I am going to die, and I intend to be buried in those two (pointing to "Carthage" and "The Sun Rising Through Vapour"), so I can't--besides I can't be bothered. Good-evening!"'

The evening of his life was to last nine years, and Turner found his own way of escape from being bothered.