Part 3

Sunday, 20 ” ” Mr. Lister, Turner and Dr. Bree dined.

Wednesday, 2 March ” Walter’s birthday. Charles and Fanny Brandling, Mr. Creevy, Turner, Mr. Alston and Rowland dined with us.

Sunday, 13 March, 1825. Mr. Parker and Mr. Turner dined with us and John Ibbetson and Mr. Wharton.

Sunday, 3 April ” Turner, Anne and Godfrey dined with us. * * * Went to Baker Street Chapel with Fanny and Eliza.

Wednesday, 6 ” ” Hawksworth and Eliza married at St. George’s by the A. bishop of York. We had a large dinner party and the Infant Lyra in the evening.

Sunday, 17 ” ” Fanny B. and Hawkey called. Drove with Fanny Brandling to Mr. Clarke’s house. His first visit. T. Parker and Turner dined with us.

Friday, 22 ” ” Tom Parker and Mr. Turner dined with us. A ball at Mrs. Stanhope’s. Did not go.

Sunday, 1 May, 1825. Ill. Mr. Lister, C. Brandling, Edward Parker and Mr. Turner dined with us.

Sunday, 15 ” ” Mr. Wodehouse and Turner dined with us. Ayscough came from Oxford.

Friday, 3 June ” Walter was this evening condemned to his bed. He kissed me and cried bitterly. Came back several times to kiss and said he knew he never more should get out of it. I passed a wretched night.

Sunday, 14 Aug. ” Mr. Alston and Turner dined.

Saturday, 27 ” ” Turner dined in Baker Street. Said he was going next morning to the Hague.”

This entry enables us to date with certainty the “Holland Sketch-Book” (CCXIV) in the National Gallery. Mr. Walter Fawkes died on the 25th of October of this year, probably before Turner got back to London from his tour in Holland.

Mrs. Fawkes spent a few days in London in May the following year, and Turner dined with her on two occasions, on Tuesday the 2nd and Sunday the 7th of May. The diary was continued till 31st December, 1838, but I can find no further mention in it of Turner’s name.

Thornbury says, “Turner was so sensitive that he could never make up his mind to visit Farnley after his old friend’s death.” And we have Ruskin’s testimony that Turner could never speak of the Wharfe, about whose shores the shadows of old thoughts and long-lost delights hung like morning mist, but his voice faltered.

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[Sidenote: TURNER’S RELATIONS WITH MR. H. FAWKES]

On the death of Mr. Walter Fawkes Farnley Hall passed to his son, Mr. Francis Hawksworth Fawkes. He was a boy when Turner first became friendly with the family. He had romped, walked, shot with Turner, and had sat at his elbow while he was making many of the wonderful drawings in the Farnley Collection. No doubt young Hawksworth was one of the party in the carriage which Turner insisted upon driving tandem from the shooting tent on the Farnley moors, and which he managed to capsize “amid shouts of good-humoured laughter"--an exploit which earned the artist the nickname of “Over-Turner.” It was to young “Hawkey” that Turner called one day in 1810, when he stood on the terrace at Farnley watching the storm rolling and shafting out its lightning over the Wharfedale hills--the storm effect he was to paint in his picture of _Hannibal Crossing the Alps_. The same boy sat watching him for three hours as he sat one morning between breakfast and lunch-time making the beautiful drawing of _A First-Rater taking in Stores_, the artist all the time “working like a madman” and “tearing up the sea with the eagle-claw of a thumbnail.” It was young Hawksworth who induced his father to buy the large oil painting of _Dort_ from the exhibition of 1818.

After Turner’s death, Mr. Hawksworth Fawkes furnished Thornbury with the following account of his connection with the great artist. “When Turner was so much here (at Farnley) in my father’s lifetime, I was but a boy, and not of an age to appreciate or interest myself in the workings of his mind or pencil. My recollection of him in those days refers to the fun, frolic, and shooting we enjoyed together, and which, whatever may be said by others of his temper and disposition, have proved to me that he was, in his hours of distraction from his professional labours, as kindly-minded a man and as capable of enjoyment and fun of all kinds as any that I ever knew.

“Though often invited, Turner never came here after my father’s death; and, as I have seldom gone to London, our meetings since I had learnt his value had been few and far between: but up to the last time that I saw him, about a year before his death, he was always the same to me that I had known him in my boyhood, always addressed me by my boy name, and seemed ever anxious to express in his kindness to me his attachment to my father, and still glowing recollections of his ‘auld lang syne’ here.”

Thornbury says that when Mr. Hawksworth Fawkes visited London “he would go and sit in the Queen Anne Street gallery for hours, but he was never shown into the painting-room. On one occasion he invited Turner to dinner at a London hotel, when he took, as was his wont latterly, a great deal too much wine. For once he became vain, and, staggering about, exclaimed, ‘Hawkey, I am the real lion--I am the great lion of the day, Hawkey.’”

After Mr. Walter Fawkes’s death one of those wonders of the North, a goose-pie and presents of game were sent to Turner from Farnley regularly at Christmas time. The twenty-fifth pie was already packed when the news reached Farnley of the painter’s death. The three last letters Turner wrote to Mr. Fawkes acknowledging these annual presents have been preserved and published. In the one written on the 24th December, 1849, Turner finishes by saying: “I am sorry to say my health is much on the wane. I cannot bear the same fatigue, or have the same bearing against it, I formerly had--but time and tide stop not--but I must stop writing for to-day, and so I again beg to thank you for the Christmas present.” In the letter dated 17th December, 1850, the aged artist wrote: “Old Time has made sad work with me since I saw you in town. I always dread it with horror now. I feel it acutely now, whatever (it is)--gout or nervousness--it has fallen into my pedestals, and bid adieu to the marrow-bone stage.” These words, and indeed all the letter, are written in Turner’s curiously involved and confused style, but it was evident that the great painter’s career was nearly run. He died on the 9th December of the following year, and was buried eleven days later in the crypt of St. Paul’s beside Sir Joshua Reynolds, with all the magnificence due to his genius.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: THE FARNLEY HALL COLLECTION]

It will be seen from the foregoing account of the personal relations between Mr. Walter Fawkes and Turner that the Farnley Hall Collection is mainly concerned with Turner’s work between the years 1804 and 1821. These works, therefore, belong to what Mr. Ruskin has described as Turner’s first period, when “he laboured as a student, imitating successively the works of the various masters who excelled in the qualities he desired to attain himself.” This classification of Mr. Ruskin’s is evidently made in the interests of Turner’s later work, the period Mr. Ruskin admired most. But the _parti-pris_ and insufficiency of a classification which dismisses the period during which the paintings and drawings of the Farnley Hall Collection were produced as one of mere imitation of the old masters are sufficiently exposed by a glance at the illustrations with which the present publication is enriched. To speak of the creator of the _The Passage of Mont Cenis_, _Scarborough_, _Otley from the Chevin_, and _The Valley of the Wharfe from Caley Park_ as a mere imitator seems to me quite absurd. My own view is that Turner’s period of imitation and apprenticeship had come to an end by the time he was thirty years of age (1805). By that time he was a complete master of every form of pictorial expression. The period between his thirtieth and forty-fifth years was the period of his freshest and happiest inspiration, as well as that of his soundest and most perfect workmanship. His oil paintings produced during these years are as solidly and carefully worked as those of the old Flemish and Dutch masters. They are built to defy the centuries. A picture like the so-called _Pilot Boat_ (_Shoeburyness Fisherman hailing a Whitstable Hoy_)--painted more than a hundred years ago--is a model of perfect craftsmanship. It has no cracks, and Time has only mellowed the exquisite pearly harmonies of its colour and the indescribable charm of its wonderful surface. The _Trout Stream_, the _Spithead_, and _Frosty Morning_, have the same gift of immortality. It is only Turner’s later paintings which have cracked and faded and tarnished, and lost the “unthrifty loveliness” with which they were dowered when they were first exhibited.

I may, I hope, be pardoned for preferring the classification of Turner’s “periods” adopted in my study of “Turner’s Sketches and Drawings” to Mr. Ruskin’s sweeping generalization. Turner’s Farnley work impinges on three of these periods--it begins with that of 1802 to 1809, when Turner was producing his own glorious sea-pieces; it covers the next period, from 1809 to 1813, when Turner was developing that deep and solemn conception of the poetry of rural life, which found expression in the _Frosty Morning_, _Abingdon_ and _Windsor_; and it runs half-way into the period of Turner’s greatest academical and popular success--that of 1813 to 1830. Of these three phases of Turner’s dazzling and complex genius I regard the middle one as the most important. The works produced in those years founded a genuinely national school of homely realism, and show Turner as the leader and inspirer of the Norwich School, and the master of David Cox, De Wint and all that is best in English water-colour painting. The spirit which animated this period is the spirit which informs nearly all the oil paintings and water-colours in the Farnley Hall Collection.

At the death of Mr. Walter Fawkes, Turner’s works at Farnley Hall consisted of seven oil paintings and about two hundred water-colours. Since then the collection has been reduced to about two-thirds of its original size. Various drawings have been given as presents to different members of the family, and accidents of various kinds have happened to a few of the drawings. One of Mr. Walter Fawkes’s sons was given a couple of drawings to decorate his room at Eton. One of the drawings got dirtied and the boy put it in a basin of water to clean it, with disastrous results--a very expensive way of learning the difference between an oil painting and a water-colour. But the biggest gap in the collection was made by one of the present owner’s predecessors, the Rev. Ayscough Fawkes, who sent forty-nine water-colours and three oil paintings to Christie’s in June, 1890.

No complete list of the original collection has yet been published. The following list is as nearly exhaustive as I have been able to make it. I have broken this list up into eight groups for convenience of reference, viz., (1) The oil paintings, (2) The early Swiss drawings, (3) The Rhine drawings, (4) Yorkshire, marine and other subjects,(5) The Wharfedale Series, (6) Birds, (7) Vignettes, (8) Italian and later Swiss drawings. Where the works have passed from the possession of Mr. F. H. Fawkes, the present owner of the collection, I have indicated in brackets the collection into which they have passed, or the latest appearance in the sale-room or exhibition of which I have a record. Where there is no entry in brackets after the title the work is still at Farnley Hall.

THE OIL PAINTINGS.

1. London from Greenwich Park. 36” × 48". (National Gallery, No. 483.)

2. Shoeburyness Fisherman hailing a Whitstable Hoy--sometimes called Pilot with Red Cap hailing a Smack in Stormy Weather. 36” × 48".

3. The _Victory_ returning from Trafalgar, beating up Channel in three positions: fresh breeze. 27” × 40". (Christie’s, 1890; Sir Donald Currie.)

4. Scene in the Apennines, with peasants driving sheep. 13½” × 19¼"--panel. (Christie’s, 1890; E. L. Raphael, Esq. Exhibited R. A. 1892; Guildhall, 1899.)

5. The Sun rising in a Mist. 27” × 40". (Christie’s, 1890; Mrs. Johnstone Foster.)

6. The Lake of Geneva, from above Vevey, and looking towards the Valley of the Rhone. 41½” × 65¼". (Christie’s, 1890; Sir Donald Currie.)

7. Dort, or Dordrecht--the Dort Packet-boat from Rotterdam becalmed. Signed and dated “J. M. W. Turner, R.A., 1818, Dort.” Exhibited R.A. 1818. 62” × 91½".

8. Rembrandt’s Daughter. Exhibited R.A. 1827. 46½” × 44½".

A free rendering of the _London from Greenwich Park_ was engraved in the “Liber Studiorum” and published 1st January, 1811. The plate is inscribed, “Picture in the possession of Walter Fawkes, Esq., of Farnley.” Turner must, however, have bought back or exchanged the picture, as it was in his gallery at the time of his death, and thus passed into the National Gallery. Soon after its first exhibition at Marlborough House, in 1856, Mr. Ruskin published a curious “note” upon it, bewailing in eloquent terms the fact that Turner should waste his genius upon such an unworthy subject as London and a view of the Thames. “What a sorrowful matter it is,” he explained, that there was no one who “had sense and feeling enough” to tell Turner to paint the Rhone instead of the Thames, the Simplon instead of Richmond Hill, and Rouen Cathedral instead of Greenwich Hospital. Turner found his way at last to these subjects, Mr. Ruskin added, “but not till many and many a year had been wasted on Greenwich and Bligh Sands.” We need not on the present occasion trouble to examine too curiously the reasons which induced Mr. Ruskin to take such an entirely perverse view of the kind of subjects an English landscape painter ought to choose. It is sufficient to point out that an artist can only paint with his full power those scenes which he knows and loves intimately. Turner was born in London, and the Thames with its shipping about London Bridge stirred Turner’s imagination with memories of his boyhood, his early dreams and aspirations, in a way that the Rhone, or the Rhine, or the Danube could never stir it. No doubt these rivers are broader and deeper than the Thames, fairer to the eye of the tourist, and richer in historical associations; but these advantages are no compensation for that affectionate intimacy which guides and inspires the artist when he is dealing with scenes familiar to him since his boyhood. I will not hesitate to assert that Turner’s paintings and drawings of his native land and its rivers and ports stir my imagination and emotions far more powerfully and harmoniously than those of foreign parts. In spite of the tranquil splendour of the Farnley _Dort_, the magnificence of Mr. Naylor’s _Cologne_ and Mr. Ralph Brocklebank’s _Ehrenbreitstein_, and the intricate play of cunning line and gorgeous colour in the water-colour of _Heidelberg_ (in the Donald Currie Collection), I would not exchange any of these works for the sober harmonies and beautiful feeling of _London from Greenwich Park_, or the more moving drama of the fisherman’s daily life on the Thames enshrined in the _Shoeburyness Fisherman hailing a Whitstable Hoy_.

The picture of the _Victory_ returning from Trafalgar was painted about the same time as the _Shoeburyness Fisherman_. It is hallowed by association with Nelson’s glorious end, but it is lacking in that unity and energy of pictorial motive which make the _Shoeburyness Fisherman_ such a masterpiece of sea-painting.

_Rembrandt’s Daughter_ is the only picture in the Farnley Collection which was bought by Mr. Walter Fawkes’s son, Mr. Hawksworth Fawkes. It was not well chosen. It shows Turner as an imitator and humble admirer of other artists, rather than as the great creative genius he was. It is not a typical work of the artist, but it throws an interesting side-light on the moods of hesitation and tentative experiment in which he occasionally indulged. Rembrandt and his wife are supposed to be surprising their daughter--an entirely mythical personage--while she is reading a love-letter. There are some fine passages of colour in the girl’s dress. The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1827.

EARLY SWISS DRAWINGS.

9. Glacier and Source of the Arveiron, going up to the Mer de Glace. Exhibited R.A. 1803. 27” × 40".

10. The Great Fall of the Reichenbach; in the valley of Hasle, Switzerland. Signed and dated “J. M. W. Turner, R.A., 1804.” Exhibited R.A. 1815. 40” × 27". (Plate IX.)

11. The Passage of Mount St. Gothard; taken from the centre of the Teufels Broch (Devil’s Bridge), Switzerland. Signed and dated “J. M. W. Turner, R.A., 1804.” Exhibited R.A. 1815. 40½” × 27".

12. Blair’s Hut on the Montanvert, and Mer de Glace, Chamounix. 11” × 15".

13. The Valley of Chamounix. Signed and dated “J. M. W. Turner, R.A., p.p., 1809(?).” 11¼ × 15⅝". (Plate III.)

14. Lake of Thun. 11” × 15½".

15. The Staubbach, Valley of Lauterbrunnen. Signed and dated “J. M. W. Turner, 1809.” 11” × 15".

16. The Lake of Brienz: Moonlight. Signed “J. M. W. Turner, R.A.” 11” × 15½". (Plate XII.)

17. Bonneville, Savoy. 11” × 15⅜". (Plate I.)

18. Vevey, Lake of Geneva. 11” × 15½". (Christie’s, 1890; Sir Donald Currie.)

19. Sallenches. 11” × 15½". (Christie’s, 1890; Humphrey Roberts’s sale, May, 1908.)

20. Chamounix; Mer de Glace. 11” × 13½". (Christie’s, 1890; Humphrey Roberts’s sale, May, 1908.)

21. Lausanne and Lake of Geneva. 11¼” × 15½". Signed and dated “J. M. W. Turner, R.A., 1807.” (Christie’s, 1890; A. J. Forbes-Leith, Esq.)

22. Source of the Arveiron. 11” × 15½". (Christie’s, 1890; Turner House, Penarth, Pyke-Thompson Bequest.)

23. Lake of Lucerne, from Flüelen. 26½” × 39½". (Christie’s, 1890; Sir Donald Currie.)

24. MontBlanc, from the Vald’Aosta. 26” × 39½". (Christie’s, 1810; Sir Donald Currie.)

All these drawings were based on sketches made during Turner’s first tour in Savoy and Switzerland, in 1802. The earliest are dated 1803 and 1804, others were executed four or five years later, and a few may not have been completed till about 1815. They evidently owe a great deal to the inspiration of Richard Wilson and Nicholas Poussin, though we find in them that same large and masculine grip of natural form and structure which we see in pictures like the _Bridgewater Sea-Piece_ and _Calais Pier_. In some of the drawings, indeed--the _Great Fall of the Reichenbach_ and _The Passage of Mount St. Gothard_, for instance--the calm, unhurried elaboration of rock forms gives them a certain cold and prosaic air. Such drawings lack the gloomy majesty and lyrical intensity of feeling of paintings like _The Trossachs_, _Conway Castle_ and _Kilgarran Castle_. For work of this kind a certain vagueness and generalisation of execution are necessary, and Turner was, after 1804, already beginning to feel his way towards a greater clarity and lucidity of expression than Wilson had attempted. The Farnley drawings represent, therefore, what I may call the aftermath of Turner’s early romantic mood. They are conceived under the influence of that taste for the gloomy, mysterious and picturesque fostered by Milton, Young’s “Night Thoughts,” and Walpole’s “Castle of Otranto”; but the fulness of representation and cheerful and varied colour of their execution are not altogether in harmony with their original intention. In these respects the original sketches of _The Pass of St. Gothard_ in the National Gallery (LXXXV, 33, 34, and 35) are more satisfactory to the imagination than the larger and more elaborate drawing in the Farnley Collection. The absence of romantic passion is, however, atoned for by the stateliness and grandeur of the design.

The two drawings of this group which make the strongest appeal to my feelings are the moonlit view of The _Lake of Brienz_ and the gloomy and majestic _Glacier and Source of the Arveiron_ which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803. Both these drawings are darker and more Wilsonesque in colour and effect than the others. The starkness and bigness of drawing in the group of pine trees in the foreground of the _Glacier and Source of the Arveiron_ strike the imagination with Miltonic power and certainty. The blues in the _Lake of Brienz_ have slightly faded, but the rich sombre harmony of the drawing is in no way impaired.

Another powerful and impressive drawing is the _Lake of Thun_. This differs in some important respects from the design engraved and published in the “Liber Studiorum.”

An altogether different note is struck in the graceful and charming subject of _Bonneville_. Here all is peace and serenity. The foreground is filled with the amenities of untroubled rural life, the distant blue and white peaks of the mountains making an excellent foil to the graceful foliage, white walls and bridge of the little town which nestles at their feet. The foreground, indeed, is only redeemed from insipidity by the sharp, firm drawing of the ripples and stones.

THE RHINE DRAWINGS.

25. Mayence and Kastel. 8-11/16” × 14⅝". (Plate XVIII.)

26. Mayence. 7¾” × 12⅛". (Christie’s, 1890.)

27. Mayence. 8¾” × 13⅞". (Christie’s, 1890; Taylor Sale, July 1912.)

28. Palace of Biebrich. 8” × 13½". (Christie’s, 1890; Turner House, Penarth.)

29. Johannisberg. 8-13/14” × 13½". (Plate XXIII.)

30. Rüdesheim, looking to Bingen Klopp. 8¼” × 13½". (Christie’s, 1890.)

31. Bingen and Ehrenfels, from the Lake. 7⅝” × 12¼".

32. Abbey of Bingen, looking towards Lake. 8” × 11½". (Plate XXV.)

33. The Mausethurm, Bingen Loch. 8” × 12¼".

34. Bausenberg in the Brohlthal. 8⅝” × 12¼". (Christie’s, 1890.)

35. Sooneck, with Bacharach in the distance. 8-15/18” × 14½". (Plate XXI.)

36. Fürstenberg. 9¼” × 12¼". (Christie’s, 1890.)

37. Bacharach and Stahleck. 7¾” × 12½". (Christie’s, 1890.)

38. Pfalz, Caub and Gutenfels. 7¾” × 12⅛". (Christie’s, 1890; Sir R. Hardy, Bart.)

39. Oberwesel and Schönburg Castle. 8⅝” × 14". (Christie’s, 1890.)

40. Lurleiberg. 7-13/14” × 12⅛".

41. St. Goarshausen and Katz Castle. 7⅝” × 12". (Christie’s, 1890; G. R. Burnett, Esq.)

42. Lurleiberg. 8” × 12".

43. Lurleiberg and St. Goarshausen. 8” × 12¼".