CHAPTER LX

TURNER AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY--AND CLAUDE. A LAST LOOK

Turner has not disappeared from the National Gallery; he still has a small shrine there. The oil pictures retained at the National Gallery, with 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' in the place of honour, show an aspect of his achievement, but not the progressive splendour of his genius. In this room hang the two famous works by Claude Lorrain. Every one knows the story, which has been told again in these pages, how Turner, long before his death, bequeathed 'The Sun Rising Through Vapour' and 'Dido Building Carthage' to the nation on the condition that they should hang for ever between two paintings by Claude. Turner outshone Claude in all other fields, as the sun outshines the moon, but he never conquered Claude in the particular classical garden that the Lorrainer cultivated. You may judge for yourself. There they hang, the two great Claudes, between the two great Turners, an arrangement sanctioned by the Court of Chancery; there, if the spirits of the departed do ever visit this earthly scene of competition and aspiration, these two purified souls should have a gallant and courteous encounter.

The twain would look gravely at the Turner pictures, and perhaps Turner would explain, if spirits need explanations, that the supreme work of his life is not here. But there are some works on the walls that would make Claude wonder.

Would he not look entranced at Turner's visions of Venice--four pictures showing how he progressed from topographical facts to impressions of the city fading in the sea, trailing the loveliness of her colour with her: from the hard 'Bridge of Sighs,' with the metallic blue sky, painted in 1833, to the magic 'San Benedetto' of ten years later, the golden sky flecked with crimson, and the golden pathway on the sea, an open gate leading to a land that exists only in the imagination of poets in words and in paint.

Claude would look at this golden path that 'lies o'er the sea invisible,' and at that other splendour, glorious still, though faded like the real Venice, called 'The "Sun of Venice" Going to Sea,' such a sea, such a fishing-boat sailing out from the rose-red city.

Claude would look, and his eyes would glisten, and he would make obeisance, and acknowledge the supremacy of his companion in these paintings of the loveliness and mystery of light and colour.

With the other Turners at the National Gallery Claude would feel on more equal ground, and while looking at 'Ancient Rome,' with the diaphanous buildings, he might murmur the title of his own 'Enchanted Castle,'--fantasy arising firmly from fact, not as in 'Ancient Rome,' fantasy accompanied by uncouth facts.

And Claude would realise the inequalities of 'The Meuse, Orange-Merehantmen going to pieces on the Bar,' the incomparable sky, and the grotesque and ill-drawn figures of the fishermen lolling in their boats; the glory of 'Orvieto,' in the sky, and the unsubstantially of the figures and the fountain in the foreground; the force and swing of the sea in 'Spithead,' and the impossible height of the waves; the loveliness and splendour of the panorama of nature in 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,' and the futility of the 'party of pleasure' in the foreground; and--and--the tumbling splendour of 'Queen Mab's Grotto,' done when the old man was seventy-one, still ambitious, still ready at a moment's notice to realise the unrealisable.

Turner must explain to Claude, as henceforth officials must explain to bewildered visitors, that the works at the National Gallery are but a small part, not very representative, of his colossal life-work; that to see his achievement in all its astonishing variety, it is neeessary to descend to the ground floor of the National Gallery, where a selection of the water-colours is still shown, and where the Sketch-Books are preserved, and then to make the journey to Millbank, home of the magnificence of Turner from the sombre masterpieces of his youth to the golden visions of his maturity--from his early experiments in tinted drawings to his last flashes of colour lost in light--works that have made the child who was born in a dark London court of a crazy mother and a chirpy father--immortal.

End of Project Gutenberg's Turner's Golden Visions, by Charles Lewis Hind