Part 1

TURNER’S WATER-COLOURS AT FARNLEY HALL

TEXT BY ALEX. J. FINBERG

“THE STUDIO,” LTD., LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK

[Sidenote: TURNER’S PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH MR. W. FAWKE]

It is not known for certain exactly when or how Turner became acquainted with Mr. Walter Ramsden Hawksworth Fawkes of Farnley Hall. Several biographers say that Turner first met Mr. Fawkes about 1802, when the artist was in Yorkshire making drawings for one of the series of topographical works dealing with parts of Yorkshire which Dr. Whitaker, the vicar of Whalley, prepared and published. But Whitaker’s “History of the Parish of Whalley,” which was published about this date, contains no reference to Farnley, and deals with a part of Yorkshire and Lancashire at some distance from Farnley. The only book of Dr. Whitaker which contains any illustrations connected with Farnley Hall is the “Loidis and Elmete,” published in 1816, and we know that Turner had become intimate with Mr. Fawkes some years before this date.

The first certain piece of evidence connecting Mr. Fawkes with Turner is contained in some of the sketch-books used by the artist during his first tour in Switzerland in the year 1802. Mr. Fawkes’s name is not mentioned in full, but a capital “F” is written in ink on the margin or back of several of the drawings. I take this to mean that a patron whose name began with “F” had looked through Turner’s sketch-books at some time after his return to London, and had selected certain subjects to be carried out from sketches thus marked. That this patron was Mr. Fawkes is established by the drawing made at Chamounix, which is inscribed in Turner’s handwriting “_Mer de Glace, avec le Cabin de Blair_” (page 22 of the “St. Gothard and Mont Blanc” Sketch-Book in the National Gallery). The finished water-colour now in the Farnley Hall Collection, entitled _Blair’s Hut on the Montanvert and Mer de Glace_, is simply an amplification of this sketch. Other subjects in these sketch-books which Turner carried out for Mr. Fawkes are _Bonneville_, _Sallanches_, _The Falls of the Reichenbach_, _The Valley of Chamounix_, _The Fall of the Staubbach_, _The Lake of Lucerne from Flüelen_, _The Lake of Brienz with the Ruins of the Castle of Ringgenberg_, and _Grenoble_.

The first point of connection between Mr. Fawkes and Turner thus seems to have been the scenery of Switzerland and not that of Yorkshire. In a description I have seen of Farnley Hall and its treasures, written soon after it came into the possession of Mr. Walter Fawkes, the only pictures mentioned are a series of “romantic landscapes in Switzerland and Italy, admirably executed by Warwick and Smith.” The “Warwick and Smith” of this description is probably a misprint for “Warwick Smith,” the name by which John Smith, one of the earlier English water-colour painters, was generally known. This series of Smith’s water-colours is still preserved in one of the lumber rooms at Farnley Hall. The drawings represent generally the same subjects as those which Turner treated. Smith’s drawings are nearly all in monochrome, and, though they are not without merit, they look very dull and old-fashioned when compared with the Turners. It seems to me, therefore, extremely probable that Mr. Fawkes was first attracted to Turner as the rising young artist of his day, who was doing the same kind of work as Warwick Smith had done, but who was doing it with much more imagination, vigour, and artistic skill. If this surmise be correct, Turner made his first appearance at Farnley Hall as the successor and transplanter of Warwick Smith. His artistic function was to replace Smith’s rather dull and laboured transcripts with his own brilliant and imaginative drawings.

The earliest of Turner’s works in the Farnley Hall Collection is that of _The Mer de Glace, Chamounix_. This is probably the drawing exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803, under the title “_Glacier and Source of the Arveron going up to the Mer de Glace, in the Valley of Chamouni_.” Mr. Fawkes may have seen the drawing in the exhibition and bought it there or afterwards in the artist’s studio. In a small pocket-book of Turner, apparently in use about the year 1804, there is a note that Mr. Fawkes had bought three water-colours for fifty guineas each. These are described by the artist as _Great Devil’s Bridge Causeway_, _Upper Fall of Riquenbach_ and _Mt. Blanc from St. Martin_. The first two subjects are still at Farnley, the third is probably the _Mt. Blanc from the Val d’Aosta_ which passed from the Farnley Collection before the present owner came into possession. It was lent by Sir Donald Currie to the exhibition of “Old Masters” at the Royal Academy in 1906.

An earlier entry in the same pocket-book is the record of a commission for a small oil picture of _The Bowland, Lancashire_, to be painted for Mr. Lister Parker. Mr. Parker was a neighbour of Mr. Fawkes, and that he was also an intimate friend is proved by the inscription on the back of a fine miniature of Napoleon Bonaparte, which is still preserved at Farnley Hall. This inscription states that the miniature was bought in Paris in 1802, and presented to Mr. Fawkes in the same year by his sincere friend Mr. Lister Parker. So it is probable that Mr. Fawkes may have heard Turner’s work talked about by his Yorkshire friends some time before he bought any of the artist’s drawings, and it is quite possible that he may have made Turner’s personal acquaintance through the intermediacy of those friends.

The next mention of Mr. Fawkes’s name in the Turner sketch-books occurs in connection with the large mezzotint of Turner’s oil painting of _The Shipwreck_ (now in the National Gallery), which the engraver, Charles Turner, executed and published in 1806-1807. The name of “Fawkes” appears fifth in the list of subscribers to this plate, the first four names being the “Wells Family,” Sir William Beechey, Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. Henderson. Mr. Lister Parker’s name appears lower down in the list.

It was probably in London that Mr. Fawkes first met Turner, and the two men had very likely known each other for some time before Turner was induced to pay a visit to his friend’s home in Yorkshire. The first clear piece of evidence of Turner being at Farnley is in connection with Mr. Hawksworth Fawkes’s story of the origin of Turner’s large oil painting (now in the National Gallery) of _Hannibal crossing the Alps_. This picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1812, so the incident described in the following words by Mr. Hawksworth Fawkes--he was a boy at the time--must have taken place in 1810 or 1811: “One stormy day at Farnley Turner called to me loudly from the doorway, ‘Hawkey! Hawkey! come here! come here! look at this thunderstorm. Isn’t it grand?--isn’t it wonderful?--isn’t it sublime?’ All this time he was making notes of its form and colour on the back of a letter. I proposed some better drawing-block, but he said it did very well. He was absorbed; he was entranced. There was the storm rolling and sweeping and shafting out its lightning over the Yorkshire hills. Presently the storm passed, and he finished.

‘There! Hawkey,’ said he, ‘in two years you will see this again, and call it _Hannibal crossing the Alps_.’”

The earliest oil painting of Turner’s that Mr. Fawkes bought was the beautiful sea-piece sometimes called _The Pilot Boat_, and sometimes _Red Cap_. This was exhibited, in the “one-man show” Turner held in his studio in 1809, under the title _Shoeburyness Fishermen hailing a Whitstable Hoy_. There is a pen-and-ink sketch of this picture inside the cover of the “Greenwich Sketch-Book” (cII, Turner Bequest), and on the fly-leaf appears the following record of drawings made, or to be made, for Mr. Fawkes:--

“4 Proofs of ‘Liber Studiorum.’ Mill. Sketch. Per Contra 1 Mill. Drawing. C. Draft. 2 Bardon Tower. Feb. 20. £100.” 3 Farnley. 4 Gordale. 5 Rocks. 7 Weathercote. 8 Geneva. 9 Bolton. 10 Thun.”

And on page 52 of the same book there occurs the following still longer list:--

“Mill, finished. Mill, sketch. Bardon Tower. Armutic Rock. Farnley. Gordale. *The Strid. Weathercote. *Bolton Abbey, West. Lac de Thun. Lac de Geneve. Ps. V. (_Probably the Swiss waterfall known as the “Pisse Vache."_) *Bonneville. Ingleboro. Bolton. Blair’s Hut. Stourback. (_Evidently the Fall of the Staubbach._) Mt. Blanc. Vevey. Grundelwald. *Brintz.” (_The Lake of Brienz._)

* These are among the drawings selected for reproduction in the present publication.

These entries were made, I am inclined to think, either in the year 1809 or 1810. It is easy to identify most of the drawings referred to in this list, in spite of Turner’s rather arbitrary spelling. I can, however, find no trace of the drawings described as _Armutic Rock_ and _Gordale_, and I have never seen either the sketch or the finished drawing of the _Mill_. I am not even sure what mill it can have been. It was probably the one at Otley, which stands close to the lodge at the entrance to the Farnley Hall grounds. A _View of Otley Mills, with the River Wharfe and Mill Weir_, said to have been presented by Mr. Fawkes to the family of its owner, was sold at Christie’s in June 1890, and bought by the famous French dealer, M. Sedelmeyer. It was probably this drawing to which Mr. Fawkes refers in the only fragment of a letter in his handwriting which I have been able to discover among the Turner papers in the National Gallery. The body of the letter has been destroyed, but the last two paragraphs and the signature remain. This fragment says:--

“By to-morrow’s coach I shall send you a box containing two pheasants, a brace of partridges, and a hare--which I trust you will receive safe and good. We have tormented the poor animals very much lately and now we must give them a holiday.

“Remember the Wharfdales--everybody is delighted with your Mill. I sit for a long time before it every day.

“Ever very truly yrs.,

W. FAWKES.”

The “Wharfdales” are evidently the series of drawings of Wharfedale scenery which Turner had in hand for Mr. Fawkes. The allusions to the drawing of the _Mill_ give us a clue to the real bond of union between the two men, viz., the patron’s sincere and unaffected delight in the artist’s work.

Mr. Fawkes’s liberality as a buyer of Turner’s work is demonstrated by some financial jottings made in one of his sketch-books (CXXII, Turner Bequest), during the years 1809 and 1810. In one of these statements of Turner’s assets Mr. Fawkes is debited with £500, in the other he is entered as the artist’s debtor to the extent of £1,000.

In 1811 Turner threw himself enthusiastically into the project of writing a long poem extolling the beauties and recounting the history of all the chief places of interest on the southern coast of England. The poem was to be illustrated by a series of engravings to be made from water-colours specially painted by the artist for the work. The poem was never completed, but Turner seems to have spent the greater part of the summer of 1811 wandering along the coast from Christchurch, in Hampshire, to Land’s End, in Cornwall, diligently making hundreds of wonderfully delicate and accurate sketches, and with equal diligence, and perhaps just as much enjoyment to himself, grinding out even a greater number of lame and halting lines of the most indifferent verse. He returned along the northern sides of Cornwall, Devon and Somerset, sketching and rhapsodizing upon the whole coast from Penzance to the Mendip Hills. This work and play must have kept him too busy to visit Farnley that year.

Turner was back in Devonshire and Cornwall in 1813, but I believe he managed to pay a rather lengthy visit to Farnley in 1812. The “Large Farnley” and “Woodcock Shooting” Sketch-Books (CXXVIII and CXXIX, Turner Bequest) seem to have been used on this occasion. The water-colour of _Woodcock Shooting_ (painted for Sir H. Pilkington, and dated 1813), now in the Wallace Collection, represents a winding road among tall spruce firs, exactly like those which crown the rocky heights of the Otley Chevin. In the latter of these two sketch-books there are several pencil drawings of the fir trees on the slopes of the Chevin, with figures of beaters and sportsmen carrying guns. The former sketch-book contains drawings of Mr. Fawkes’s tent on the Farnley moors, with dogs, guns, game, and ale barrels scattered in the foreground--notes from which the water-colour of this subject in the Farnley Collection was painted. Other pages of the same book contain beautiful drawings, some of them partly finished in colour, of Farnley and Wharfedale from Caley Park. Some loose leaves from this book were in the collection of the late Mr. J. E. Taylor, who presented one of them to Sir Frank Short.

In 1814 Turner was, I believe, too busy sketching the southern coast from Hastings to Margate, and his “Views in Sussex”, to have much time for any lengthy visit to Farnley. But he was certainly there in 1815, as a passage in a letter to the Rev. H. Scott Trimmer proves. The letter is given in full in Monkhouse’s “Turner” (p. 90). It is dated “Tuesday, Aug. 1, 1815.” In it Turner says: “After next Tuesday--if you have a moment’s time to spare, a line will reach me at Farnley Hall, near Otley, Yorkshire, and for some time, as Mr. Fawkes talks of keeping me in the north by a trip to the Lakes, &c., until November.” The evidence of the sketch-books suggests that this trip to the Lakes did not take place.

On the 4th January, 1816, Mr. Walter Fawkes married his second wife, the widow of the Hon. and Rev. Pierce Butler. Fortunately for us this lady kept a diary, which has been carefully preserved at Farnley Hall, and which Mr. F. H. Fawkes has very kindly placed at my disposal. In this diary the names of all visitors were carefully noted, together with the dates of their arrival and departure. The diary was continued to the 31st December, 1838, but Turner’s name does not occur in it after 1826. But for the ten years between 1816 and 1826 this diary forms an extremely valuable record of Turner’s movements. I propose, therefore, with Mr. Fawkes’s kind permission, to publish, for the first time, all the entries which have reference to the great artist.

The first entries of this kind are the following:--

“Wed. 17 July 1816. Left Farnley with Walter, Maria, Amelia, Ayscough, Richard, and Mr. Turner. Met John Parker at Skipton, where we slept and saw Skipton Castle.

Thurs. 18 July Arrived at Browsholme. Heavy rain.

Fri. 19 ” Rained all day. Sat in the house. Late in the evening walked a short way with John Parker and Mr. Turner.

Sat. 20 July Walter drove me in curricle to the Trough of Bolland.

Sun. 21 ” Went to Waddington Church and after to see Mrs. Clarke.

Mon. 22 ” Went with the girls to the Trough to see them fish.

Tues. 23 ” Heavy rain. Drove with Walter. Obliged to take shelter in a farmhouse. Walter bought a print of the Prodigal Son.

Wed. 24 ” Left Browsholme. Got to Malham Village. Dreadful rain.

Thurs. 25 ” Went to see Gordale Waterfall. Returned home. Heavy rain. Turner went on a sketching tour.”

From the frequent references to the rain it is evident that the weather was bad, and the lady does not seem to have enjoyed the excursion very much. But the weather did not prevent Turner from making the sketches he wanted. The sketch-book labelled by him “Yorkshire 2” (CXLV, Turner Bequest) contains the drawings made on this occasion. It is an ordinary-looking book, bound in boards, with brown leather back and corners. The leaves, which number nearly two hundred, are 6 in. × 3¾ in. size, but only a hundred and sixty of them have been drawn on. There are sketches of Skipton Castle at both ends of the book, showing that Turner was not at all particular about the order in which he made his sketches. The drawings on pages 160 to 185 represent views at Skipton, Browsholme, the Trough of Bolland (or Bowland, as it is generally written), and Gordale Scar. But they are all rather hurried in character, which corroborates Mrs. Fawkes’s account of the unfavourable nature of the weather.

At the end of the book Turner has carefully made a list of the numbers and dates of the banknotes he carried with him to meet the expenses of his tour. He took two twenty-pound notes, four of ten pounds, five of five, and four smaller ones, making £110 in all. There is also, on the next page, a note of the expenses incurred on the journey from London to Leeds:--

“Porterage 2 8 Fare to Leeds 2 2 Coachman 1 Dinner at Eaton 5 6 Coachman--Scrooby 1 6 ditto 1 Breakfast, Doncaster 2 3 Brandy and water, Grantham 1 6 Coachman and Guard 4 6 ------------ 3 2 11” ============

These items rather contradict Thornbury’s statements about the extreme meanness and parsimony of the artist’s habits of travel. I may also remark that the great painter’s exuberant imagination has led him to overstate the total of his expenditure by the sum of one shilling.

Taking leave of his friends at Gordale, Turner set off by himself on a sketching tour to collect material for the illustrations to Dr. Whitaker’s projected “History of Richmondshire.” His sketch-book shows that he struck over the hills to Kilnsey Crag and then crossed the wild road from Wharfedale over the Stake Pass to Semmer Water. From Askrigg he made his way to Richmond. He was there on the 31st of July, as we find him on that date writing to Mr. Holworthy, saying that his “journey is extended, rather than shortened, by an excursion into Lancashire.” The weather was still bad, as we learn from a characteristic postscript to this letter, which runs:--“Weather miserably wet. I shall be web-foot like a drake--excepting the curled feather--but I must proceed northward. Adieu.” The sketch-book shows he did “proceed northward” as far as Barnard Castle, and then, turning into Westmorland, went south into Lancashire, after passing through Appleby to Kirkby Lonsdale and Heysham. Riding round Morecambe Bay, and probably crossing the sands at low tide, he seems to have got back to Farnley by about the middle of August.

The diary does not give the date of Turner’s arrival at Farnley, but the shooting began on the 12th, when “all the gentlemen” went to the moors, and on the 13th an unfortunate gun accident wounded one of the party, Mr. Richard Hawksworth. On the 14th, the diary tells us that “Richard” was “pretty well;” on the 15th the entry runs, “Richard pretty well until evening. Sent for Hey” (the doctor), “who said he was dying.” On the 16th “Poor Richard died at 5 o’clock in the morning.” This sad event seems to have dispersed the house party, the entries on Saturday the 17th, and Monday 19th, recording the guests’ departures. Only “Turner and John Parker remained and Miss Coates.” On the 4th September Turner wrote from Farnley Hall to his correspondent, Mr. Holworthy, saying that “having finished nearly what I proposed doing this season in Yorkshire, I think I can do myself the pleasure of waiting upon Mr. Knight at Langold within a fortnight.” This gentleman was evidently Mr. H. Gally Knight, whose sketch of the Temple of Jupiter in the Island of Ægina had formed the basis of Turner’s large oil painting of this subject which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1816. Langold is two miles beyond Carlton, near Tickhill, Yorkshire. On the 11th September Turner writes to the same correspondent, saying that he intends to leave Farnley on “Sunday morning next” and that, if “Mr. Knight is not at Langold, I will be at Belvoir on the Tuesday following.”

That Turner carried out at least the first part of his plan is proved by the entry in the diary, “Mr. Turner went away,” under the date of Sunday, 15th September.

The water-colours Turner made from the sketches taken during this year are among the sunniest and happiest of his works. The lovely _Hornby Castle from Tatham Church_ (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum), and the _Crook of the Lune_ (in the Rev. W. Macgregor’s collection) are perhaps the finest now existing of this series. But the happiness and pure enjoyment of life that breathe through these drawings must have been due to the artist’s memories and associations, rather than to his actual experiences of the places represented, for the weather seems to have been consistently bad during the whole of this summer and autumn. In the letter to Mr. Holworthy referred to above, Turner wrote that his present trip had been “a most confounded fagg.” Though he was on horseback, he added, “the passage out of Teesdale leaves everything far behind for difficulty--Bogged most compleatly, Horse and its Rider, and nine hours making 11 miles.” And in another part of the same letter, he wrote, “As to weather, there is nothing inviting, it must be confessed. Rain, rain, rain, day after day. Italy deluged, Switzerland a wash-pot, Neufchatel, Berne and Morat Lakes all in _one_--all chance of getting over the Simplon or any of the passes _now_ vanished like the morning mist.” So the writer had evidently nursed some project of going to Italy in the latter part of this year, a project which he was not able to carry out till two years later.