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EARLY ENGLISH
WATER-COLOUR DRAWINGS
BY THE GREAT MASTERS

WITH ARTICLES BY A. J. FINBERG

EDITED BY GEOFFREY HOLME
“THE STUDIO,” Lᵀᴰ^., LONDON PARIS, NEW YORK
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CONTENTS

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INTRODUCTION

Turner was one of the greatest artists this country has produced, and much of his best work—and nearly all the work by which he has endeared himself to his fellow-countrymen, was done in water-colour; yet water-colour painting, though it has played almost as important a part as oil painting in the history of British art, is not yet recognized by our authorities as an independent branch of art. That Turner the water-colour painter is represented at all in our National Gallery is purely an accident. The bulk of his water-colours are in private collections, and it is only on rare occasions that the public can get an opportunity of seeing them.

It is for these reasons that Messrs. Thomas Agnew and Sons’ annual exhibitions of English water-colours, though the outcome of the energy and enterprise of a private firm, have become artistic events of great public importance. The chief feature of these exhibitions has always been a generous supply of Turner’s finished water-colours. They have, therefore, become a regular source of instruction and pleasure to that section of the public which really cares for British art. They open the doors, at any rate for a time, to the chief private collections of Turner’s water-colours; they give students of his work valuable opportunities of enlarging their experience and increasing their knowledge; and they do much to spread and stimulate an adequate appreciation of the achievements not only of Turner but of the other great water-colour painters of this country.

The exhibition which was opened in March of this year (1919) was neither superior nor inferior to those which had gone before, but it attracted a quite unusual amount of interest and attention. This was due, I imagine, at least in part to circumstances connected with the war—to the closing of the public galleries and museums, and to the almost incredible folly of the Government in not reopening them immediately the armistice was signed. After the long-drawn-out agony of the war there was a part of the public which was disposed to turn naturally to the comfort and refreshment which art can give. But though the armistice was signed in November last year, Messrs. Agnew’s exhibition was the first opportunity offered to the public of seeing, under favourable conditions, a fine selection of some of the most beautiful work of our great artists of the past. The public was evidently grateful for such an opportunity and took full advantage of it. This was only another instance of our national good luck in finding that private enterprise and initiative so often step in and perform work of public importance which our Government is too stupid or too supine to perform.

I have said that this exhibition was neither superior nor inferior to its immediate predecessors, but to say that it was not inferior was to give it very high praise. The exhibition, indeed, was one which would have done{2} credit to any of our public galleries. The array of Turner’s masterpieces on the long south wall of the gallery produced an overpowering sense of his incomparable technical skill, his boundless energy, and the infinite variety of his mind. In the centre of the wall, in a place of honour, was enthroned the regal Lake Nemi (Plate XV), resplendent with something brighter than the sunshine of Italy, a gorgeous and intoxicating dream of sensuous beauty. Beneath it hung the awe-inspiring Longships Lighthouse (Plate XIII), and on the right the beautiful and pathetic “Blue Rigi” (Plate XVII), tender and wistful, in which the helplessness and restlessness of old age only made more manifest the sorrows and regrets with which the painter’s heart was filled. Grouped round these great masterpieces of his full strength and waning powers were works of his early manhood, like the Cassiobury (Plate V), with its horses and dogs, a robust jovial scene, the Lake of Thun (Plate VI), the restrained and elegant Castle of Chillon (Plate VII), the dainty, coquettish Scarborough, several of the Rhine drawings of 1817, and many of his proudest and most exultant drawings, like the Byronic Florence, from near San Miniato (Plate XVI), the Saumur (Plate X), and the Saltash (Plate XXI), Prudhoe (Plate XXII), Richmond Bridge (Plate XI), Windsor Castle, Coventry, and the somewhat operatic Worcester (Plate XII), of the “England and Wales” series; nor must I forget the impressive Lowestoft, a grey and gloomy tragedy as grim and moving even as the Longships.

And as no man stands alone—not even the greatest of geniuses—the educational value of this array of masterpieces was increased by a fine display of the works of those English water-colour painters who had been born and had worked before Turner, and of his contemporaries. The early topographical draughtsmen whom Turner first set out to imitate and rival, were represented by Paul Sandby’s The Swan Inn, Edmonton (Plate XXV), Thomas Hearne’s Thaxted Church, Essex, Thomas Malton Junior’s two quaint views of Bath, and many other drawings, mostly in the “stained” manner, by Wheatley, J. I. Richards, Ibbetson, William Payne, Dayes and others. Richard Wilson, the chief influence in directing Turner’s genius to imaginative design, was perforce unrepresented, as he does not seem to have worked in water-colour; but Gainsborough was represented by one of his charming drawings in chalk, and there was a noble group of nine of John R. Cozens’s austerely beautiful drawings, among them the large Lake Albano, and the charming Villa Negroni (Plate XXIX). Turner’s contemporaries were well represented by over seventy drawings, which included three of his friend Girtin’s early works, and at least one fine example of his robust maturity—a masterly view of the ruined Lady Chapel of Fountains Abbey. Cotman had two fine early Girtinesque drawings, Gormire Lake, Yorkshire (Plate XXXIV), and Bridge over River (Plate XXXIII), a nobly designed Lake Scene (Plate XXXVI), in monochrome, and a brilliantly{3} coloured view of Rouen (Plate XXXV). There were also two of Copley Fielding’s most ambitious sea-pieces—The Pilot Boat (Plate XLII) and Seaford from Newhaven Pier, and a number of admirable drawings by De Wint, David Cox, Varley and Prout.

After being got together with much labour and thought, and having served its purpose for a month or two, this exhibition seemed destined to suffer the usual fate of such undertakings, which is to be speedily dispersed and soon forgotten. It occurred, however, to the Editor of The Studio that a permanent record of it would make a strong appeal to many of those who had seen and enjoyed the exhibition, and would enable a large number of those lovers of British water-colours who had not been able to visit Messrs. Agnew’s gallery to realize something of its interest and beauty.

Such is the origin, such is the purpose of the present volume. It was naturally gratifying to me to be invited to supply the text for such a work. But the value of a book like this depends very little on its letterpress, and much on its illustrations. The colour processes have in recent years made extraordinary progress and the reproductions of the wonderful drawings collected by Messrs. Agnew will be sure of a very hearty and a very wide welcome.{4}

THE TURNERS

As Turner’s drawings formed the chief feature of the exhibition I will begin my comments with them. The best way to arrange my notes seems to be to take the drawings in their chronological order, disregarding the sequence in which they were hung in the exhibition. By beginning in this way, with the earlier drawings, we shall be able to study the gradual development of Turner’s mind and skill.

These two subjects were sketched during the summer of 1792, when Turner was seventeen years of age. He was then a student at the Royal Academy schools, where he attended the life class diligently during the winter and spring months. In the early part of the summer of 1792, he went to Bristol to visit his uncle’s friends, the Narraways, and went from there to South Wales, Hereford, Great Malvern, Worcester, Evesham, Tewkesbury and Gloucester. Several of the pencil drawings made during this tour were exhibited some years ago at Mr. Walker’s gallery in Bond Street.

These two highly finished and accomplished water-colours are good examples of the work of the industrious apprentice. One searches them in vain for signs of originality, for some promise of a new way of thinking or feeling, a new vision, or a new form of expression. Their aims are conventional, and their modest triumphs are triumphs of the commonplace virtues—intelligence, docility, and above all, industry working upon a foundation of natural talent. In them Turner was trying to do exactly what the successful topographical and antiquarian draughtsmen of the day were doing,—Sandby, Rooker, Hearne and Dayes—and the precocious boy has already succeeded in doing such work nearly as well as it can be done.

53. Malmesbury Abbey, 1794 (Plate II).

Though a year later in execution than the Evesham drawings, this was based on sketches which had been made in 1791. These are now in the National Gallery (Turner Bequest, VII C. and D.) One is inscribed in Turner’s handwriting, “The Ruins of the Tower at the West End of Malmesbury Abbey, taken from the Friars Walk, 1791.” It is carefully worked in water-colour with brown ink outlines. The other drawing is similarly worked and represents the same tower from a point of view a little more to the left and lower down. The picturesque features of these two views have been cunningly combined in the finished drawing.{5}

Turner exhibited a drawing of Malmesbury Abbey at the Royal Academy in 1792. I was once misled by other writers into thinking that this drawing might be the one which was then exhibited. The date, 1794, disproves this. The present drawing is probably a reduced replica of the exhibited work.

156. Willesden Church, circa 1796.

I believe this is the drawing which was described as “Kilburn Church” in the J. E. Taylor sale. It is worked in blue and grey washes. It is connected, I think, with Turner’s activities as a teacher of drawing.

> 147. Water Mill, 1797-1798 (Plate III).
152. A Mountain Stream, 1798 (Plate IV).
159. Mountainous Landscape, 1798.

These drawings are separated from the views of Evesham by an interval of five or six years. Turner was now twenty-three years of age. His exhibits at the Royal Academy in 1796 and 1797 had proved him to be the most accomplished topographical and antiquarian draughtsman which this country had produced, but the limitations of such work were too narrow to satisfy either his ambitions or his powers of expression. He had made up his mind by this time to be an artist and not merely a draughtsman. He had felt the glamour of Richard Wilson’s paintings, and their rich and sombre harmonies of colour were haunting his imagination. There is a small pocket-book, bound in green leather, in the National Gallery, labelled by Turner on the back, “Studies for Pictures. Copies of Wilson,” which contains many colour sketches done from memory of pictures by Wilson which he had seen in public exhibitions or private collections. All the drawings and sketches from nature Turner made at this time show the influence of Wilson’s work. He was trying hard to see nature as Wilson had seen it, and he had evidently taken a strong dislike to the neat “bit-by-bit” style of painting of the “Evesham” and “Malmesbury Abbey” period. He had also begun painting in oil on rather a large scale; another influence which made for breadth of style.

In the Water Mill (Plate III) the results of his early training in topographical and antiquarian work are evident in the treatment of all the quaint details of the old mill. The irregularity of its structure, the effects of age and weather on the shapes of the roofs, and the colouring of the tiles, bricks and woodwork are rendered with intense sympathy and the most delicate and accurate observation. This delight in the irregularity and picturesqueness of old buildings, and the effects of weather, use and decay reminds one of Prout’s drawings; yet there are no traces of Prout’s mannerisms and shortcomings in this beautiful work of the young master, and there is a breadth and ease in Turner’s drawing which we look for in vain in Prout’s numerous productions.{6}

In the first volume of “Modern Painters” Mr. Ruskin wrote: “we owe to Prout, I believe, the first perception, and certainly the only existing expression of that feeling which results from the influence among the noble lines of architecture, of the rent and the rust, the fissure, the lichen, and the weed, and from the writing upon the pages of ancient walls of the confused hieroglyphics of human history.” The Water Mill shows that Turner forestalled Prout by a good many years. If it were my business to point out to people the qualities of sight, brain-power and manual dexterity which distinguish the works of great artists from those of inferior ones, I should choose the best drawing of Prout I could secure and ask my students to compare it carefully with the Water Mill. Such comparison would show that Turner did everything that Prout did, and did it better; every picturesque detail is rendered with the same affectionate interest and fidelity; but while Prout seems to be working with a certain stiffness and rigidity, as though practising a formula, Turner’s rendering is delicate, supple, and without any self-consciousness or display.

In A Mountain Stream (Plate IV) Turner has got completely away from his early “bit-by-bit” manner of working. The scene is grasped as a whole, and every detail and part is subordinated to the general effect. This is a fine example of the early development of Turner’s executive mastery. Every touch is inspired by the general conception.

Turner spent the summer of 1798, when this drawing was made, in North Wales, visiting Kilgerran, Harlech, Conway and Carnarvon castles, and the neighbourhood of Snowdon. In the “Hereford Court” Sketch Book (Turner Bequest, XXXVIII) there are several Wilsonesque water-colours similar to this.

The Mountainous Landscape is probably a leaf of the “North Wales” Sketch Book, a smaller book in use at the same time as the “Hereford Court” Sketch Book. It is slighter and more summary than the Mountain Stream, being worked with a few simple washes put on at once with unerring skill and knowledge. This masterly little sketch was erroneously ascribed to Alexander Cozens in the catalogue; though why, I cannot imagine, as it does not bear the faintest resemblance to that artist’s style. But the mistake was productive of an incident which caused considerable amusement amongst students of Turner’s works. The art critic of one of the leading London papers happens to be a superior person who finds Turner too “vulgar” for his refined taste. This delightful critic dismissed the whole collection of Turner’s wonderful drawings in the exhibition as mere “works of commerce,” and singled out this Mountainous Landscape, because he was told it was by Alexander Cozens, as one of the finest things in the exhibition. Yet there are still people who ask “What’s in a name?” Probably if Turner’s “Blue Rigi” had been described in the catalogue as by Alexander{7} Cozens this amusing critic, who seems to judge pictures rather by what he is told than by what he sees, might have found that it possessed some artistic merits.

158. Crosses and Brasses, Whalley Abbey, circa 1799.

This was done to be engraved in Whitaker’s “History of the Parish of Whalley,” and is therefore a mere “work of commerce.” I suppose some people must think an artist lowers himself somehow if he sells his work or accepts an order to make a drawing. Work done under these conditions, they seem to think, must be done carelessly, hastily, and half-heartedly, otherwise there would be no point in the sneer. This is a curious example of modern ways of thinking. Work has become low, plebeian; only the groundlings work; the really superior person has a private income (or his wife has) and devotes himself to doing things which will benefit humanity at large in the dim and distant future. Some of this muddle-headedness, so far as art is concerned, is probably due to the current cant about “utterance,” emotion and self-expression, though some of it may be due to a genuine though vague and unpractical desire for the general good. I will merely remark that Turner was emphatically not a superior person of this kind. He looked upon himself always as a workman. He retained even late in life, as Mr. Ruskin once happily remarked, “some little English sense and practical understanding.” He believed in work, and he was prouder of his enormous powers of work than of his genius, his success, or even his money. But he expected to be paid for his work, and he grumbled vigorously when any of his works failed to sell. On the other hand, he never scamped his job, or offered an employer work which was not done as well as he could do it.

How unsparing of his time and labour he was is proved by this drawing of the Whalley crosses and brasses. The subject gave him no chance of using those of his gifts which gave him most pleasure to use. It gave him no opportunities of what our modern sentimentalists call emotion or “utterance.” As the subject called only for sheer plodding labour, he gave that, and he gave it in full measure. The drawing once belonged to Mr. Ruskin.

145. Norbury Park, circa 1797.

This is a study of natural colouring and effect; a note of the autumn tints on a charming stretch of country. Wilson is quite forgotten for the moment. The young artist is content to put down on the paper, as neatly and swiftly as possible, a faithful record of what he sees. This drawing was probably made in September 1797, when Turner was at Norbury Park. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in the following year A Study in September of the Fern House, Mr. Lock’s Park, Mickleham, Surrey. It would be interest{8}ing to know what has become of this drawing. I can find no trace of it in Christie’s records or elsewhere.

16. Cassiobury: The House seen across the Park, circa 1800 (Plate V).

Another example of Turner’s “commercial work,” and like the Whalley brasses done as well as he could do it. This is one of the numerous drawings and paintings he made for the noblemen and gentlemen of England of their houses and grounds. It was done for George, 5th Earl of Essex, who was one of Turner’s earliest patrons. As Viscount Malden, before he succeeded to the earldom, he had employed Turner in 1795 to make views of the house and grounds at Hampton Court, Herefordshire. The drawing of A Waterfall, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (1682-’71) is a view of the cascade in those grounds.

The introduction of the huntsmen, horses and dogs in the foreground of the Cassiobury drawing gives it a sporting and jovial character which is thoroughly in harmony with the spirit of the place. Turner was quick in noting characteristic details of this kind and used them with propriety and effect. Yet the drawing has a fine spaciousness and stateliness which the artist’s noble patron would appreciate. I believe this water-colour must have been lower in tone and darker in colour when it was first done than it is now. The pencil drawing from nature of the mansion from which the water-colour was painted is in the “Fonthill” Sketch Book, p. 41. The curious will find it reproduced in my book on “Turner’s Sketches and Drawings.”

34. Lake of Thun, 1809 (Plate VI).

Fortunately this drawing is dated, otherwise one would be tempted to consider it as having been painted some years earlier. It was sketched during Turner’s first tour in Switzerland, in 1802, and may have been begun soon afterwards. It is Wilsonian in colour, but a certain massiveness and heaviness in the design suggest that he was thinking rather too much of the composition of Poussin and the old masters. It is in an excellent state of preservation.

18. Castle of Chillon, 1810 (Plate VII).

Another fruit of the 1802 tour in Switzerland, and, like the preceding drawing, painted for Sir J. E. Swinburne. It is more beautiful than the Lake of Thun. The colour is a lovely harmony of deep blues, russet browns and dull crimsons. There is no formalism or heaviness in the design. I hope the fortunate owner of this exquisite drawing will keep it carefully from undue exposure to a strong light, as the blues in it are very sensitive to such influences. When once they have faded they can never be coaxed back. So many of Turner’s drawings of this kind have been ruined by ex{9}posure to the light that one cannot but be anxious that this, one of the most beautiful of them all, should be preserved for the delight of the coming generations.

Turner seems to have repeated this subject, as I remember another version of it in Mrs. Stern’s possession which was sold at Christie’s in 1908. Doubtless there are some slight differences in the two drawings, but the design and general effect were similar. Mrs. Stern’s drawing had the same restraint and elegance as this one.

21. Patterdale Old Church, circa 1810 (Plate VIII).

Another well-preserved drawing. The indigo and other blues are unfaded. When this drawing was exhibited at the Royal Academy (Old Masters) in 1886, it was described in the catalogue as the original of an engraving of this subject which was published in Mawman’s “Excursion in the Highlands,” 1805. This must be incorrect. The “P.P.” (Professor of Perspective) at the end of Turner’s signature proves it to be a later drawing, as Turner was not elected Professor of Perspective till 1807.

36. Vale of Pevensey, from Rosehill Park, circa 1816.

One of a series of views of Rosehill, Sussex, (now known as Brightling Park) and of places in the neighbourhood, made for Mr. John Fuller, M.P., about 1816. These drawings were inherited by Sir Alexander Acland-Hood, who sold them at Christie’s in 1908. The present drawing has suffered from exposure to a strong light. The indigo having disappeared the general effect is lighter and the colour warmer than when it was first painted. Yet in spite of this, how fine the drawing is! Its complexion, one might say, has changed, but all its native nobility of character remains. How splendidly the subject is conceived, what a glorious composition it makes, yet how truthful and sympathetic the drawing is as a representation of the rolling downs of Sussex, its lusty and happy trees, its exhilarating vistas of the distant sea and rugged coast-line. The elaborate and beautifully drawn pencil study from which this picture was painted is in the National Gallery, in the “Views in Sussex” Sketch Book (Turner Bequest, CXXXVIII, p. 19). The drawing was engraved in aquatint by J. C. Stadler (the same size as the original) for Mr. Fuller, printed in colours, and finished by hand. These prints, Mr. Rawlinson tells us, are excessively rare.

17. Mayence and Kastel, 1817.

19. Lurleiberg: the Bend of the River, 1817.

35. Rolandswerth Nunnery and Drachenfels, 1817 (Plate IX).

37. Mayence, 1817.

These are four out of the fifty-one Rhine drawings which Turner made for Mr. Walter Fawkes in the summer and autumn of 1817. Thornbury{10} dates these drawings 1819, which is a mistake, and says that they were done “at the prodigious rate of three a day.” But no man, not even Turner, marvellously rapid worker as he was, could have produced these fifty-one drawings at such a rate. What really happened was this: the sketches for these drawings were actually made in twelve days, between August 18 and 30, 1817; the fifty-one water-colours were then painted from these pencil sketches between the end of August and November 13 (the day Turner handed the complete series “in a slovenly roll” to Mr. Fawkes at Farnley Hall). We do not know exactly where the work was done, but it was probably partly at inns, for Turner could work anywhere and under any conditions, and partly when staying with Lord Darlington at Raby Castle, or with Lord Strathmore at Hylton Castle or Gibside. The documentary evidence which has enabled me to correct Thornbury’s statements is given in detail in my account of “Turner’s Water-Colours at Farnley Hall” (The Studio office).

The drawings of this series are not hurried sketches from nature, they are carefully pondered and perfectly elaborated works of art. The painting of the dark cloud crossing the sun in the Mayence and Kastel is a striking instance of Turner’s technical mastery. It must have been floated on while the paper was wet and allowed—or rather made—to run into just the right shapes. Its evanescent effect, its melting, imperceptible gradations, could have been got in no other way.

The broad calm river, the spacious design, and the beautifully drawn rocks in the Rolandswerth Nunnery and Drachenfels (Plate IX) make it a delightful drawing. This view must have been taken from near Oberwinter, looking north, in the direction of Bonn.

Nearly all the drawings in this series were painted over a grey preparation, put on over the white paper before the work was begun. By wiping out or scraping away this preparation the white paper was laid bare and Turner was thus enabled to get his high lights and his general effect of light and dark very rapidly. But the presence of the grey preparation forces the drawings into a low key and makes grey the predominant note in the colour scheme. The colour harmonies are, therefore, generally silver rather than golden. The drawing of Mayence is, however, an exception to the rule, as it is painted direct upon the white paper without any grey preparation. It therefore stands out from its companions as being more limpid in workmanship and more luminous in effect than they are.

129. Florence from Fiesole, circa 1817.

134. Turin, from the Church of the Superga, do.

137. Lake of Nemi, do.

These three drawings were made as illustrations to James Hakewill’s “Pic{11}turesque Tour of Italy,” and they were worked from Hakewill’s sketches, as Turner at that time had never visited Italy. They formed part of Mr. Ruskin’s collection and were exhibited at the Fine Art Society’s galleries in 1878. It is stated in the text of Hakewill’s book that the view of Florence from Fiesole was “taken from the garden of the Franciscan convent at Fiesole,” but Mr. Ruskin has pointed out that the little bend of wall within which some monks are standing in the foreground on the left is not really a part of the Franciscan garden, but is one of the turns of the road in the ascent to Fiesole.

Mr. Ruskin regarded the Turin, from the Superga as one of his “very chiefly valued possessions.” And well he might. It is indeed a most exquisite and delightful piece of work. Each time I see it, it gives me a fresh thrill of pleasure; its colour is so cheerful and happy, the subject-matter is so well chosen—the contrast between the distant snow-clad mountains and the comfortable sheltered existence of the people of the city—and the design is so daring, so original, and carried out with such consummate skill and resource.

Mr. Ruskin tells us that the inlaid diamond-shaped mosaics in the pavement, which complete the perspective of the distance, are Turner’s own invention. “The portico is in reality paved with square slabs of marble only.” Perhaps Turner mistook some indications in Hakewill’s sketch for these insertions, or perhaps he felt that the bare space in the foreground wanted variety and calmly invented this artifice for the purpose. I notice that though these diamond-shaped mosaics look quite plausible and satisfactory in the drawing, Turner has altered them in the engraving, reducing the width of the black band and introducing another lozenge within the white centre.

The Lake of Nemi is, as Mr. Ruskin said, “consummate in all ways.” He goes on to point out how the light trees on the right have been left while the distant lake and crags were being finished; and that the towers and buildings of the Capuchin’s Convent high up on the right were painted before the sea horizon, “which is laid in afterwards with a wash that stops before touching the houses.” The town beyond the convent is Gensano, and the distant mountain on the Mediterranean is Monte Circello.

153. Valley of the Washburne, near Farnley, circa 1818 (Plate XIV).

136. Steeton Manor, near Farnley, do. (Plate XVIII).

32. Scarborough, 1818.[B]

Between 1812 and 1818, Turner made a series of nearly fifty drawings of views of Farnley Hall, inside and outside, and of places of interest in the grounds and in the neighbourhood. The Valley of the Washburne (Plate XIV) {12} shows us the first stages through which most of these drawings passed. The whole subject is drawn very carefully in chalk on brown paper. A few touches of body-colour in the foreground and a slight wash over part of the sky begin the later stages, but then the drawing was for some reason carried no further. Yet one cannot regret this, for there is such a freshness, such overflowing vigour and happiness in what has been done that the most exigeant criticism can demand no more. This is a good example of what I have noticed repeatedly, that Turner’s drawings were always delightful at each stage of their development; and from the commencement they had a certain completeness and finality. They never suggest “work.” They always look as though the artist were just enjoying himself by putting down on the paper, without any effort whatever, the thoughts which had taken possession of his mind.

I do not know why this drawing was not “carried on,” as Turner would have expressed it. There is a superb and completely finished water-colour of a very similar view of the banks of the Washburne in the Farnley Hall collection, so perhaps Mr. Fawkes did not want another drawing of quite the same subject.

When I was at Farnley a few years before the war, I went to the Washburne intending to make a sketch of this picturesque view. But I found the banks covered with such a dense overgrowth of trees that the little river was entirely shut out from sight. The rocky crest of the Chevin was, however, still unaltered, and there was Caley Park on the slopes very much as when Turner had drawn it; and there was Leathley Church with its square tower, the Farnley place of worship, where the late owner of Farnley, the Rev. Ayscough Fawkes, was for many years incumbent.

Steeton Manor House (Plate XVIII) is near Skipton. This drawing is on a smaller scale than most of the series.

The Fawkeses, in Turner’s time, were fond of Scarborough, and Turner was sometimes there in their company. Mr. Fawkes bought Turner’s large drawing of Scarborough which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1811 (there is a repetition of this drawing in the Wallace Collection). But by 1818, when Mr. Morland Agnew’s lovely drawing was made, Turner’s style had changed. The earlier “Scarborough” is reserved and stately in design, but its breadth verges on emptiness. It is as though the artist was a little afraid of nature and was determined to keep her at arm’s length, for fear of offending the shades of Poussin, Claude and the other great old masters. But by 1818 he had got over his shyness. He had by then taken nature to his bosom. He delights in the sheer loveliness and infinite variety of English scenery. His manner of painting has become more sensitive and refined, to enable him to render the subtle qualities of form and atmosphere. Our modern theorists tell us that if an artist{13} is in love with what he sees and bent on reproducing it, he ceases to “express himself” and becomes a mere mechanic. But this is because they fail to understand that healthy and imaginative artists do not sit at home in the dark anxiously feeling their pulse and worrying about their emotions and their moods. When Turner painted this lovely drawing of Scarborough he was as passionately absorbed in the variety and ever-changing beauty of physical nature as a poet like Wordsworth. The eye was the organ of his mind and spirit. He not only looked at nature, but he understood her, and loved her with intense and self-forgetting devotion. A drawing like this proves—what nobody should ever doubt—that an artist may be a realist and also a poet.

The late Mr. Francis Bullard has drawn attention (in a privately printed catalogue of some of Turner’s engravings which he generously presented to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) to some valuable remarks by Mr. Santayana on the subject of naturalism in poetry which apply with so much force to Turner’s realism that I will venture to quote them. After pointing out that our interest in nature need not necessarily be shallow and egotistical, Mr. Santayana writes: “Our emotion may be ingenuous; it may be concerned with what nature really is and does, has been and will do for ever. It need not arise from a selfish preoccupation with what these immense realities involve for our own persons, or may be used to suggest to our self-indulgent fancy. No, the poetry of nature may be discerned merely by the power of intuition which it awakens and the understanding which it employs. These faculties, more, I should say, than our moodiness or stuffy dreams, draw taut the strings of the soul, and bring out her full vitality and music. Naturalism is a philosophy of observation, and of an imagination that extends the observable; all the sights and sounds of nature enter into it, and lend it their directness, pungency, and coercive stress. At the same time, naturalism is an intellectual philosophy; it divines substance behind appearance, continuity behind change, law behind fortune. It therefore attaches all those sights and sounds to a hidden background that connects and explains them. So understood, nature has depth as well as surface, force and necessity as well as sensuous variety. Before the sublimity of this insight, all forms of the pathetic fallacy seem cheap and artificial. Mythology, that to a childish mind is the only possible poetry, sounds like bad rhetoric in comparison. The naturalistic poet abandons fairyland, because he has discovered nature, history, the actual passions of man. His imagination has reached maturity.”

By the time the Valley of the Washburne and Scarborough drawings were made Turner’s imagination had reached its maturity. In much of his work done after this period one misses something of the earlier freshness, spontaneity, and what, for want of a better word, I must call “integrity.”{14}

These shortcomings are most noticeable in his large oil paintings. The Wordsworthian calm and absolute sincerity of the earlier paintings, like The Frosty Morning, Lord Essex’s Walton Bridges, the Windsor and the Abingdon, give place to the Byronic Bay of Baiæ (1823), the two Mortlakes (1826-27), Dido Directing the Equipment of the Fleet (1828) and the Ulysses and Polyphemus (1829). Instead of the profoundly imaginative realism of the earlier works, we get the unrest of romanticism, with its vague and empty pomp, its cloying self-indulgence, its warm, voluptuous atmosphere. Yet even in the rush of romantic intoxication Turner could often touch the deepest chords of our imagination, especially in his water-colours, with works of the most intense sincerity and sublime insight. We have two examples of such works in the present exhibition, The Longships Lighthouse and the Lowestoft.

But before coming to these drawings, which form part of the “England and Wales” series, I must refer to the following subjects:—

29. Florence, from near San Miniato, circa 1825 (Plate XVI).

23. Saumur, circa 1829 (Plate X).

132. Wilderness of Sinai, circa 1832-34 (Plate XIX).

This view of Florence is the earliest example in the exhibition of an Italian scene painted from Turner’s own impressions. Yet in spite of this it seems to me to miss something of the charm of the drawings made from Hakewill’s sketches. It is richer in colour and more gorgeous in effect than they; yet it suggests, at least to my mind, more of the opera than of reality. It might have been painted as an illustration to Byron’s “Childe Harold.” It has been stated that this drawing was engraved in “The Keepsake” for 1828, and Mr. Rawlinson says (in his valuable book on “The Engraved Work of Turner”) “there are two apparently identical drawings of this subject, one in the possession of Lord Northbourne, the other in the possession of Mr. J. Beecham.” But the foreground and figures in this drawing (which was once in Sir Joseph Beecham’s collection) are different from those in the engraving. I think therefore that Lord Northbourne’s version, which I do not remember to have seen, must be the original from which “The Keepsake” engraving was made.

Saumur (Plate X), on the other hand, was engraved for “The Keepsake” for 1831, and it was republished in Heath’s “Gallery of British Engravings.” It has a magnificent sky, full of the moving pageantry of the heavens, and it is superbly designed. Another and different view of this subject was engraved in the “Rivers of France.” One would hardly recognize the chateau of the Queen of Sicily, on the rock by the bridge, as the same building in the two engravings.

The Wilderness of Sinai (Plate XIX), like the Hakewill drawings, was done{15} from the sketch of an amateur, a Major Felix. Turner always lavished more than his usual care and labour on such work. For sheer delicacy and cunning of hand it would be hard to find its equal. The engraving was published in Finden’s “Landscape Illustrations of the Bible” (1836). The rock in the foreground is said by the Arabs to be the one which Moses struck when the Israelites were athirst. The alert figures in the foreground and the two mounted men beyond show how well Turner could draw such things when he wanted to.

We have now to turn our attention to the “England and Wales” series, the most ambitious of Turner’s publications, which occupied much of his time between 1825 and 1838. The scheme as originally planned was to include one-hundred-and-twenty drawings, but the venture was financially unsuccessful and it was abandoned after about a hundred drawings had been made and engraved. Posterity has not endorsed the contemporary indifference to this series. The plates are probably the best known and most widely appreciated of all Turner’s engravings, and the original drawings are certainly the most popular and most eagerly sought after by collectors of his water-colours. They are eminently characteristic of the artist; full to overflowing of evidence of his extraordinary knowledge, powers of observation and incomparable technical skill, and they display freely all his faults of mind and character. Parts of his work are like Shakespeare’s, incorrect, capricious and wanton. Like Shakespeare his imagination was crowded with a tumultuary confusion of images. He had all Shakespeare’s reckless and unquestioning confidence in himself and in his own powers, so that his work often seems vehement and negligent. But if he had Shakespeare’s faults he had also much of Shakespeare’s greatness. We have only to change the word poet to painter to apply Dryden’s encomium of Shakespeare to him. “All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too.... I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind.... But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him. No man can say, he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,

The “England and Wales” series was represented in Messrs. Agnew’s exhibition by eight beautiful drawings:—

30. Saltash, 1825 (Plate XXI).

22. Prudhoe Castle, circa 1826 (Plate XXII).

24. Windsor Castle, circa 1829.

20. Richmond Bridge—Play, circa 1830 (Plate XI).{16}

33. Coventry, circa 1832.

25. Worcester, circa 1833 (Plate XII).

27. The Longships Lighthouse, Land’s End, circa 1834 (Plate XIII).

31. Lowestoft, circa 1835.

The most glorious in colour of these drawings is, I think, the Windsor Castle, but the Richmond Bridge (Plate XI) runs it very close. The latter subject is interesting because it was the first water-colour by Turner which Mr. Ruskin acquired; “my father buying it for me,” he tells us, “thinking I should not ask for another—we both then agreeing that it had nearly everything characteristic of Turner in it, and more especially the gay figures!” Mr. Ruskin was naturally very much attached to this drawing and he was never tired of trying to analyse it; but “after thirty years’ endeavour, I finally surrender that hope—with all similar hopes of ever analysing true inventive or creative work.” He drew attention, however, as an instructive piece of composition, to the way the parasols in the foreground repeat and reverse the arches of the bridge, and the feather head-dresses of the ladies repeat the plumy tossing of the foliage. These are merely Turner’s habitual tricks of composition. We find these habits of design in most of his earlier and later work, but the results are not always equally fortunate. One of the most exquisite and perfect examples of this practice of placing and grouping the figures and objects so as to repeat or emphasize the most salient features of a landscape, is afforded in my opinion by the large oil painting of Walton Bridges, which was painted in 1809 for the Earl of Essex. In some of the later drawings and paintings the results are not always so happy.

The execution of the Richmond Bridge is unequal. The group of figures in the foreground on the right is imperfectly imagined and fumbling in touch, but the smaller figures on the left are vivid and alert; the big group of trees on the right, with the sunlight striking athwart them, is dashed in with extraordinary vigour and certainty. The drawing is in splendid condition, and the general effect is breezy, reckless, gorgeous—and, I cannot help thinking, a trifle vulgar, probably on account of the gay foreground figures. It certainly has everything “characteristic” of Turner, the beauties and the defects.

In the Coventry and Worcester (Plate XII) there is some flagging of Turner’s power—hints of weariness and a sense of effort. There is some “swelling into bombast” in them. But the Longships Lighthouse (Plate XIII) is one of the most wonderful and flawless drawings ever made by Turner, or any other artist. Turner must have been nearly sixty years of age when he made it, but there are no signs of human weakness in it. It is all pure gold and immortal work. For once Turner had found a subject exactly suited to his genius, “a fit subject for his wit.”{17}

It is of course impossible to do justice in words to the grandeur and terrible beauty of this wonderful drawing, but Mr. Ruskin has so nearly succeeded in this impossible task that I will venture to quote his words. “In the Longships Lighthouse, Land’s End, we have clouds without rain—at twilight—enveloping the cliffs of the coast, but concealing nothing, every outline being visible through their gloom; and not only the outline—for it is easy to do this—but the surface. The bank of rocky coast approaches the spectator inch by inch, felt clearer and clearer as it withdraws from the garment of cloud—not by edges more and more refined, but by a surface more and more unveiled. We have thus the painting, not of a mere transparent veil, but of a solid body of cloud, every inch of whose increasing distance is marked and felt. But the great wonder of the picture is the intensity of gloom which is attained in warm grey, without either blackness or blueness. It is a gloom, dependent rather on the enormous space and depth indicated, than on actual pitch of colour, distant by real drawing, without a grain of blue, dark by real substance, without a stroke of blackness; and with all this, it is not formless, but full of indications of character, wild, irregular, shattered, and indefinite—full of the energy of storm, fiery in haste, and yet flinging back out of its motion the fitful swirls of bounding drift, of tortured vapour tossed up like men’s hands, as in defiance of the tempest, the jets of resulting whirlwind, hurled back from the rocks into the face of the coming darkness; which, beyond all other characters, mark the raised passion of the elements. It is this untraceable, unconnected, yet perpetual form—this fulness of character absorbed in the universal energy—which distinguishes Nature and Turner from all their imitators. To roll a volume of smoke before the wind, to indicate motion or violence by monotonous similarity of line and direction, is for the multitude; but to mark the independent passion, the tumultuous separate existence of every wreath of writhing vapour, yet swept away and overpowered by one omnipotence of storm, and thus to bid us

this belongs only to Nature and to him.”

And in a later chapter of the same volume (“Modern Painters,” Vol. I.) Mr. Ruskin again refers to this drawing as “a study of sea whose whole organization has been broken up by constant recoils from a rocky coast.” “The entire disorder of the surges,” he continues, “when every one of them, divided and entangled among promontories as it rolls in, and beaten{18} back part by part from walls of rock on this side and that side, recoils like the defeated division of a great army, throwing all behind it into disorder, breaking up the succeeding waves into vertical ridges, which in their turn, yet more totally shattered upon the shore, retire in more hopeless confusion, until the whole surface of the sea becomes one dizzy whirl of rushing, writhing, tortured, undirected rage, bounding, and crashing, and coiling in an anarchy of enormous power, subdivided into myriads of waves, of which every one is not, be it remembered, a separate surge, but part and portion of a vast one, actuated by internal power, and giving in every direction the mighty undulation of impetuous line which glides over the rocks and writhes in the wind, overwhelming the one, and piercing the other with the form, fury, and swiftness of a sheet of lambent fire. And throughout the rendering of all this, there is not a false curve given, not one which is not the perfect expression of visible motion; and the forms of the infinite sea are drawn throughout with that utmost mastery of art which, through the deepest study of every line, makes every line appear the wildest child of chance, while yet each is in itself a subject and a picture different from all else around. Of the colour of this magnificent sea I have before spoken; it is a solemn green grey (with its foam seen dimly through the darkness of twilight), modulated with the fulness, changefulness, and sadness of a deep, wild melody.”

The only drawing in the whole series which can be compared for tragic power with the Longships Lighthouse is the Lowestoft. The time represented is an hour before sunrise in winter. A violent storm with rain is passing over the sea; through it the lighthouses and coast are dimly seen. Mr. Ruskin speaks of the “most hopeless, desolate, uncontrasted greys” in this drawing.

26. Lake Nemi, circa 1840 (Plate XV).

This representation of the afternoon of a hot and cloudless day was hung immediately above the Longships. It is a truly superb drawing, as fine in its way as the Longships, yet how different! It is so full of purely sensuous delight that one would suppose it the work of some voluptuary who had turned his back on all the sorrows and terrors of life; one who lived only for the gratification of his senses. That some people should shrink from the sternness and cruelty of Longships I can understand; but I simply cannot imagine how any one accessible to the pleasures of pictorial art can resist the triumphal appeal of this regal and happy drawing. It would be difficult to bring together two other drawings which illustrate so well the truly Shakespearean range of Turner’s mind.

28. The Rigi at Sunrise—Lake of Lucerne (“The Blue Rigi”) (Plate XVII).

With a fine sense of congruity Messrs. Agnew hung beside the Lake of{19} Nemi a masterpiece of Turner’s latest manner—“The Blue Rigi.” This was painted in 1841, in circumstances described in his own inimitable way by Mr. Ruskin, in the “Epilogue” to his notes on his own collection of Turner’s drawings. There are signs in the drawing that the painter’s age was beginning to tell on him. He was getting near the end of his career as a water-colour painter, though his career as an oil painter lasted a few years longer: for the Burial at Sea; The Opening of the Walhalla; Rain, Steam and Speed; The Sun of Venice Going to Sea, and the other late Venetian paintings were yet to come; which supports the contention that water-colour makes sterner demands on the artist’s physique than oil painting. In “The Blue Rigi” the laboured execution and trembling touch hint at the artist’s physical disabilities. But these signs of weakness harmonize so well with the subject-matter that they only heighten the pathos of this incomparably beautiful drawing.

I think that Turner made hardly more than a dozen finished drawings after “The Blue Rigi.” This was partly because the sustained effort such work demanded was too much for him, and partly because there was no demand among his patrons for such work. But he could still make sketches like the Mouth of the Grand Canal (Plate XXIII), Lake of Lucerne: Brunnen in the Distance (Plate XX) and the Alpine Stream, marvellous in their freshness of colour, the vigour and delicacy of their washes, and full of poetical suggestion and pictorial enchantment. The old war-horse no doubt regretted that his patrons would give him no opportunities to elaborate these wonderful sketches—for the distinction which modern criticism has obliterated between a sketch and a “finished” drawing was ingrained in Turner’s mind—but we cannot share these regrets. The gain in fullness and authority of statement would have provided little compensation for the loss of delicacy and freshness, and effortless vigour of execution.

But these remarks have taken me slightly out of my chronological course. The following sketches I am inclined to date conjecturally somewhere between 1835 and 1840.

126. Rheinfels Castle.

Can this drawing be correctly named? It does not seem much like the other drawings and engravings of the old fortress of Rheinfels which I have compared with it. And what is the meaning of “Dib,” which Turner has written in pencil in the foreground? I cannot help wondering whether “Dib” was meant to refer to Dieblich, on the Moselle. If it did, the mountain on the right would be the Niederburg, and the two buildings on the mountain beyond would be the two castles of the Knights of Cobern. Turner passed along this part of the Moselle in 1834. But, as a famous{20} commentator once said, I put forward this suggested emendation without much confidence in its correctness.

115. A Gorge (Plate XXIV).

131. Alpine Scene.

133. Swiss Landscape.

I can offer no suggestion as to the identity of the places represented in these sketches, except that A Gorge may be one of the falls of the Reichenbach.

39. The Rainbow.

This is a strange drawing which I do not understand. The rainbow has only two colours, viz. yellow and crimson lake.

138. Ehrenbreitstein.

135. Alpine Stream.

The latter sketch contains an entrancing play of colour and suggestion. What a fine foundation for the airy structure raised above it that band of rich darkness makes which runs straight across the centre of the design! I suppose it represents loose rocks in shadow. Above them a range of mountains, faintly touched with crimson, rises out of the pale blue mist, with an opalescent sky above; on the right a cluster of white roofs carries the eye to a narrow defile. The foreground is just as elusive as the distance and middle distance. There are streams flowing among the stones, but those touches of white, are they birds or foam? And is that a figure on the right almost lost in the shadow of the rocks? What a beautiful dream it all is! And I cannot help wondering what earthly place suggested the dream. It reminds me vaguely of the neighbourhood of Bellinzona. Somewhere north of Lugano I fancy the happy wanderer might chance at daybreak upon some such scene as Turner has suggested.

130. Lake of Lucerne: Brunnen in the Distance (Plate XX).

There can be no doubt about the locality which furnished the motive of this lovely vision, though I believe some years ago the drawing was described as a “View on the Rhine.” There in the distance are the two Mythens; and there at the edge of the lake is Brunnen. The drawing must have been made at or near Treib, on the Lake of Lucerne.

127. Mouth of the Grand Canal (Plate XXIII).

On the right is the Dogana, with the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore in the distance; on the left are tall buildings which once were palaces and are now mostly hotels, among them probably the Palazzo Giustiniani, which became the Hôtel de l’Europe, where Turner put up during his later visits to Venice. It is no good my trying to describe the colour of such a drawing. When it was sold at Christie’s in the Beecham sale an enthusi{21}astic scribe writing in one the newspapers said that it was “as if drawn by a butterfly.” I remember that the expression struck me at the time as—impressionistic, but I think I know what the writer felt. There is something that makes one think of butterflies in its elusiveness and its fluttering beauty of colour.

160. An Iceberg.

This must have been done about 1845, and it is the latest of Turner’s sketches in the exhibition. It belongs to the time when Beale’s “Voyage” had set him dreaming about icebergs and whalers. There is a draft of some attempted poetry scribbled on the drawing, which I have spent perhaps more time than it is worth in trying to decipher. The only words I can feel sure about are the following:—

Those who remember the oil painting called, Whalers (boiling blubber) entangled in floe-ice, endeavouring to extricate themselves—it was on loan at the Glasgow Art Gallery when last I saw it—may be able to form some vague idea of what Turner was thinking about when he made this fantastic and almost incomprehensible sketch.{22}

TURNER’S PREDECESSORS

But the wonderful array of Turner’s works was far from exhausting the interest of this memorable exhibition. Grouped round the Turners were about thirty drawings by his predecessors, i.e. English water-colour painters who were born before him, and about seventy drawings by his contemporaries, i.e. artists who were born at or about the same time as Turner, or whose period of work coincided with his lifetime. There were also some drawings by later artists. I propose to speak of the former group in this chapter.

Perhaps the earliest topographical drawings in the exhibition were the two views of Bath, made in 1777, by Thomas Malton, the younger (1748-1804)—the West Front, Town Hall (51) and Pulteney Bridge (55). Though cold and precise these drawings have very great charm, and they are crowded with topographical and antiquarian interest. But they belong to an undeveloped stage of the art of water-colour painting. The details of architecture are drawn carefully and accurately, the figures are life-like though rather stiff, and the indications of light and shade explain the shapes of the buildings and knit the whole composition together. But the drawings do not go beyond this. The few pale washes of colour diversify the surface, but do not suggest either colour or atmosphere. Every object, the roadway, figures, buildings and the sky, has the same texture, which makes the general effect monotonous and abstract.

Though Paul Sandby (1725-1809) was born before the younger Malton, his drawing of The Swan Inn, Edmonton (Plate XXV) is, I fancy, some ten or perhaps twenty years later in point of execution than these Bath drawings; Sandby’s style, however, was always less abstract than Malton’s. Compared with the Bath views this drawing by Sandby is like a window opened on nature; it is flooded with light, the warm sunshine plays on and through the trees, lighting up the road, the figures and the whole scene. Yet Sandby’s care for detail is as great as Malton’s. Each house, each garden, each tree has its individual character fully recorded with unflagging industry and spirit. The spectator’s interest is awakened by the variety of shapes, colours and incidents, and sustained by the artist’s evident alertness and thorough enjoyment of the spectacle. Sandby was one of the first English artists to rob topographical delineation of its abstractness and impersonality. He throws the charm of his genial personality over the scene. And though his work is always alert, interesting and full of charm, this Edmonton drawing is, I think, one of the most delightful of his works that I have seen.

The best drawing by Edward Dayes (1763-1804) in the exhibition was probably the view of Norwich Cathedral (Plate XXVI), which is dated 1793. Dayes, for all his cleverness and skill, was not as likeable a man as Sandby.{23} He seems to have been deficient in geniality, generosity and sympathy. These defects of character show in his work. He often seems bored and ill at ease with his subjects; he was seldom if ever capable of taking the delight and interest in a scene which Sandby took in his Edmonton drawing. There is a certain coldness, not only of colour and effect, but of interest in this Norwich Cathedral drawing. It is nevertheless a clever piece of work, and though perhaps not so truthful and accurate as Malton’s views of Bath, it shows much greater technical skill than they possess.

Turner, I believe, got his first lessons in perspective from Malton’s father’s “Treatise,” and both Sandby and Dayes had a great deal of influence on his early work. Some of the earliest drawings by Turner in existence were copied or adapted from Sandby’s drawings or engravings, and for a short period, about the years 1794 and 1795, his style, handling, and colour were so closely modelled on Dayes’s work that many drawings by the elder artist are mistaken for Turner’s. Indeed, some of Dayes’s best drawings in public and private collections are wrongly attributed to Turner. This is no small compliment to Dayes, and it probably accounts for the want of proper appreciation from which he now suffers.

Of the connection between Turner and the greatest of his predecessors, John Robert Cozens (1752-1799 (?)), it is difficult to speak with much certainty. Nearly all recent writers on Turner say that he was greatly influenced by Cozens’s work; but I have failed to discover any certain evidence of this influence in his early work, unless it be in choosing the same subject—Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps—for one of his oil paintings that Cozens had chosen for one of his water-colours. The dominant influence in Turner’s early work, as I have already pointed out, is Richard Wilson rather than John R. Cozens.

But Cozens’s work was greatly admired by some of Turner’s early patrons, especially by Dr. Monro, and tradition says that Dr. Monro induced Turner to copy many of the drawings by Cozens which he possessed. I have found it hard to discover evidence in support of this tradition. I do not remember to have seen a copy of any of Cozens’s works which was unmistakably done entirely by Turner; in the drawings of this kind traditionally attributed to Turner, at least the pencil outlines are nearly always clearly recognizable as by Girtin. Even if we accept these copies as Turner’s, they show that he possessed, at that time, very little appreciation of the higher beauties of Cozens’s work. No attempt is made in them to reproduce either the general effect or the light and shade of the originals; they rob Cozens’s work of its grandeur and austerity, and substitute for these qualities mere prettiness and conventionality.

Indeed it is incorrect to call these drawings copies; they are nothing more than exercises in laying washes and inventing systems of light and shade,{24} based upon Cozens’s work. Their mode of production and purpose may be thus described: the outlines were first drawn in pencil with bold, firm strokes, by a careless and free hand, which bears remarkable resemblances to that of Girtin. These outlines must have been done direct from Cozens’s drawings, but what was done afterwards seems to have been done without reference of any kind to them. These outlines were then given to another artist, who clothed them according to his own fancy with a commonplace arrangement of light and shade. That these exercises in blue and grey tinting and the arrangement of light and shade were done by Turner we cannot know for certain, but the tradition that they were, seems too insistent to be ignored. Though the characteristic beauties of Cozens’s work counted for little or nothing in these academical exercises, yet they show that Turner was brought early into contact with the work of the first great master of English water-colour painting, and so far as this work exercised any influence on him it must have been to his advantage.

Cozens was represented in Messrs. Agnew’s exhibition by no less than nine drawings. The largest and most important was the Lake Albano (44), with the Castel Gandolfo in the middle distance. An excellent reproduction in colour of this impressive drawing was published in “The Development of British Landscape Painting in Water-Colours” (The Studio, 1918). Cozens was the first English artist to suggest in his drawings something of the grandeur and beauty of the Alps. A Swiss Valley (Plate XXVII) is one of his finest drawings of this kind. It owes much of its dramatic effect to its magnificently designed sky, which is as daring as it is original. The scene represented is probably in the Splügen Pass. Less moving, less dramatic, are the two Roman views. In the Farnesina Gardens (Plate XXVIII) is a pensive sylvan scene of great elegance and charm. The Villa Negroni (Plate XXIX) is a wonderfully fascinating and original design with its noble group of pines and cypresses silhouetted against the sky. In the foreground we get the brow of the hill on which the trees are standing, with sheep feeding near an ancient statue; the ruins on the left, in the middle distance in the plain below, are fragments of the Claudian Aqueduct, those on the right are some of the Neronian arches. The Villa Negroni was situated near the Porta S. Giovanni. It has now ceased to exist and its place has been taken by the Casino Massini.

It is interesting to compare Cozens’s view of Lake Nemi (Plate XXX) with Turner’s two drawings of the same subject, one made nearly twenty years later from Hakewill’s sketch, the other drawn from his own impressions fifty years later. The earlier view, like the Cozens, shows the town of Gensano on a hill in the middle distance, with Monte Circello and the Mediterranean in the distance. There is less exaggeration in Cozens’s drawing than in the Turners, and a certain gauntness and strangeness repels one{25} at the first glance as much as Turner’s charm and glow of colour attract. Yet when one gets over the first feeling of strangeness in this drawing, as well as in all of his works, it exerts a very potent charm over the imagination. His drawings are unequal, but when he is at his best, as in the Lake Albano and the Villa Negroni, they possess a haunting beauty which almost overawes the spirit. Such works “draw taut the strings of the soul, and bring out her full vitality and music.”{26}

TURNER’S CONTEMPORARIES

The greatest of Turner’s contemporaries, John Constable (1776-1837), never took seriously to water-colour painting. He was not like Turner, equally at home with all pictorial mediums, with oil, water-colour, pastel, with etching and mezzotint engraving. That he could work freely and well in water-colour is proved by drawings from his hand in the Victoria and Albert Museum and in the Salting Bequest at the British Museum. But he was happier with oil paint; and when his powers had matured he used water-colour mainly for slight and hasty notes, like Landscape with Cottage (123) in Messrs. Agnew’s exhibition. I imagine that an artist like Mr. Wilson Steer would be delighted with this brilliant sketch, which has many affinities with his own work in water-colour. The other contribution by Constable to this exhibition was a large unfinished drawing of Derwentwater (161). This is little more than what artists call a “lay-in”; it consists mainly of preliminary washes of pale colour. “Well begun is half done” the moralists tell us; but having made so good a beginning Constable seems to have hesitated and finally abandoned the work.

Turner’s friend and youthful rival, Thomas Girtin, was born in 1775, the same year as Turner, but he died in 1802, at the early age of twenty-seven. A life so tragically short did not permit of the production of a large and varied body of work. Towards the end of his short career he devoted much time to his great panorama of London, which after being exhibited in Spring Gardens is said to have been sold, “about the year 1825,” to some person in Russia and has not been heard of since. The number of his water-colours is therefore limited, and all of them are not entirely worthy of his genius and deservedly high reputation.

That he was not well represented in this exhibition is hardly surprising. But he had at least one fine architectural drawing in his best manner—the ruins of the Lady Chapel of Fountains Abbey (57); The Road through the Village (2), and three specimens of his earlier work, Winchelsea Church (140), St. Augustine’s Priory, Canterbury (141), and Kenilworth (Plate XXXI). These early drawings were made soon after the termination of his apprenticeship to Edward Dayes, and they bear evident marks of Dayes’s influence. St. Augustine’s Priory was done from a sketch by a Mr. James Moore, an amateur who at one time employed Dayes to work up his sketches, but who afterwards engaged Girtin for the same purpose. Moore’s pencil drawing which provided the material for this water-colour is now in the Ashmolean Museum, to which it was generously presented by Mr. Thomas Girtin, the great-grandson of the artist.

The view of Lincoln (Plate XXXII), which is attributed to Girtin, bears very little resemblance to Girtin’s characteristic style of work. The composition is too crowded for Girtin, and the drawing and painting of the{27} cathedral are quite unlike Girtin’s treatment of architecture. I cannot but feel that this attribution to Girtin was made without proper consideration. Yet the drawing is a fine one, and it is evidently the work of a gifted and accomplished artist. In my opinion it is much more probably the work of Peter De Wint than of Girtin. De Wint spent a good deal of time at Lincoln, at first as a visitor to William Hilton, his fellow-apprentice at J. R. Smith’s. Hilton’s sister afterwards became De Wint’s wife. The treatment of the architecture is exactly in his manner.

De Wint (1784-1849) was represented in the exhibition by about a dozen other drawings, amongst them the High Torr, Derbyshire (38) and Crowland Abbey (14). The most delightful was probably the early River Scene (12), a very peaceful and happy design, though slightly faded in colour. John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) was born only seven years later than Girtin. He came to London in 1798, and a few years afterwards became a member of the sketching society which Girtin had founded. Two of his early drawings were in Messrs. Agnew’s exhibition, and both of them show that he had learnt much from Girtin. The less successful of the two, the Bridge over River near a Town (Plate XXXIII), is dated 1803. As in others of Cotman’s early drawings the architecture is tortured into strange and fantastic shapes which destroy all ideas of probability. The bridge in this drawing looks as though a moderate breeze would blow it over; it is certainly unsafe for traffic. There can, I think, be no doubt that this is a representation of the old Welsh Bridge at Shrewsbury. The drawing is worked almost entirely in brown, though some dark blue has been introduced in parts. The general effect is muddy, and the washes have been rubbed and worried, as though the artist had often been in difficulties with his work. The other drawing, Gormire Lake, Yorkshire (Plate XXXIV), though it must have been painted about the same time, for it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1804, is more successful and already contains evidence of that distinctive manner of working with which Cotman’s name is connected. Like the Shrewsbury drawing, it is painted almost entirely in brown and blue, but the washes have not been worried. The richly blotted washes preserve all their freshness and lustre. Their beautiful quality gives a charm and dignity to the drawing which is worthily supported by the massive simplicity of the design. The placing of the cattle in the water, and the two figures at the side of the tarn, is worthy of Cotman’s impeccable sense of design. As the dignity and authority of such a drawing are the result of selection and the ruthless omission of irrelevancies, every detail which is admitted must possess significance and must contribute actively to the general effect. The two oars carried on the shoulder of the man in the foreground are good examples of the telling use Cotman could make of what, to other artists, might be insignificant details. The force and grandeur of{28} the whole design may be said to depend entirely on the lines made by these oars, for without them the spell would be broken.

In A Lake Scene (Plate XXXVI) we see how sedulously Cotman developed the characteristic qualities of his style. Eschewing the charms of colour, he concentrates all his powers on the massive simplicity of design and the correct and happy placing of every detail. The Church in Normandy (Plate XXXVII), done in pencil with a few washes of sepia, is a good example of his intelligent and accomplished architectural work. His latest drawing, Rouen (Plate XXXV), belongs to the period when he was influenced by, and attempted to rival, Turner’s brilliance of colour. The design is firmly built up, but the absence of emphasis gives it rather an academic air. For once Cotman has abandoned his usual method of painting. The effect of light and brilliance is obtained by an extensive use of the knife or razor over all the sky and distance, and some of the foreground. I do not remember having seen any other drawing by Cotman in which the knife has been so freely used.

Samuel Prout (1783-1852) was actually a year younger than Cotman, yet he seems to have belonged to an earlier generation of artists. We somehow feel towards Cotman as to a contemporary. The things he cared most about, perfection of workmanship and design, are disengaged from the accidents of time. That is what we mean, I suppose, when we class him among the immortals. Compared with Cotman, Prout is mortal, and bound rather heavily with the shackles of time and circumstance. His work was always in the mode of his day, and as fashions change his work appears old-fashioned. This large drawing of Folkestone (Plate XXXIX) certainly looks to me old-fashioned; I am almost tempted to say frumpish. But as I happen to be fond of old-fashioned things, I like it very much. There is a clumsiness, a heavy-handedness, about the workmanship which harmonizes very happily with the subject-matter. The composition is wanting in fineness of feeling and perception. There is a certain awkwardness in the way the church on the cliff projects over the roof of the wooden hut in the foreground, which might easily have been avoided with a little tact and cunning. But the whole drawing is so vigorous, so solid and strong, that it seems to express the blunt, downright habits of thought and feeling of the typical Englishmen of the early part of the nineteenth century. As our rude forefathers spoke, so Prout painted. His Coast Scene (79) has much of the bluntness and directness of the Folkestone, but not the same fullness and authority of statement. A Road through a Village (162) comes nearer the Folkestone in these respects, but the choice of subject-matter is not so fortunate. These are all comparatively early drawings of Prout, done before he turned foreign tourist and became a fashionable drawing-master. His later manner is exemplified by two pleasing drawings of architectural{29} “bits” in Normandy (113 and 119). The touch is still clumsy, but it has become systematized, and something of the old sincerity seems to have gone.

John Varley (1778-1842) is an attractive figure in the history of English water-colour painting, but his work rarely seems quite worthy of his obvious powers. Perhaps he did too much. In 1808 he sent fifty-two drawings to the exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, and between 1805 and 1812 his exhibits actually amounted to three hundred and forty-four. No wonder so many of his drawings are uninspired and commonplace. Yet he had great technical ability and the right sort of feeling, as drawings like Bala Lake (65) and A Welsh River (71) prove. All he wanted was something of Cotman’s concentration and scrupulousness. As it is, his best works are often his unpretentious sketches done direct from nature, of which the view of Leyton, Essex (Plate XXXVIII) is a very good example; it is brisk, alert, genial and convincing.

William Turner (1789-1862) was one of the many pupils of John Varley. After leaving Varley he settled in Oxford, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He is generally called William Turner of Oxford, to distinguish him from the other Turner. This view of Kingley Vale, Chichester (Plate XL), bears little resemblance to Varley’s broad and dashing style. This was painted towards the end of the artist’s life, as it was exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1851, when it figured in the catalogue as View from the side of Bow Hill, on the South Downes, near Chichester, looking over the Groves of Yew Trees, and Stoke Park, toward the Sea. This is a full and accurate description of the subject, as Kingley Valley is at the foot of Bow Hill. To the modern eye, which is perhaps over-fond of broad and slap-dash work, there is rather too much insistence on details and small forms in this drawing; but in an unambitious drawing, aiming at nothing more than topographical interest, this is not necessarily a fault. There is a certain naïveté and truthfulness about the record which gives it great charm. The subject, too, is well chosen, the effect of sunlight is successfully rendered, and the stretch of blue distance is restful to the eye and agreeable to the imagination.

George Fennell Robson (1788-1833) painted little but Scottish lake and mountain scenery. He was fond of dramatic effects of storm and cloud, and his work is powerful, accomplished and well sustained. Ben Venue, from Lanrick (Plate XLI) is as good an example of his masculine style as one could find. It is probably the drawing which was exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1851, under the title Ben Venue, from the head of Loch Achray. The meadow on the left is Lanrick Mead, which was the gathering-place of the Clan Alpine.

The two largest drawings in the exhibition were Copley Fielding’s (1787-{30}1855) two sea-pieces, The Pilot Boat (Plate XLII) and Seaford, from Newhaven Pier (76). I have confessed on other occasions that I cannot share the general enthusiasm for Copley Fielding’s work. It is, I acknowledge, nearly always pleasing in effect; but it strikes me as superficial, and it lacks the “bite,” the tremendous energy of mind and inexhaustible knowledge of Turner’s work. But these two large drawings are very favourable specimens of Fielding’s style. They are cheerful in colour, breezy in effect, and full of movement. The Pilot Boat is probably the better of the two; but I wish there was more sense of weight and the power of resistance in the waves. The date on the Seaford drawing is indistinct. When it was exhibited at the Old Masters at Burlington House in 1908, the compiler of the catalogue read the date as “1858,” which must surely be a mistake, as Fielding died in 1855. I think I am right in reading the date as “1830,” but it is difficult to identify this particular drawing among the list of Fielding’s exhibited works, as there are several titles which might fit it. I think it is probably the Pier at Newhaven, Sussex, No. 85, in the Water-Colour Painters’ exhibition of 1830; but it might also be the Scene at Entrance of Newhaven Harbour, No. 161, which was exhibited the following year, or No. 205, Scene at Newhaven in the same exhibition.

After Cotman and Turner I think David Roberts (1796-1864) was the most skilful draughtsman of architecture of his time. He was not perhaps a great artist; the oil paintings with which he delighted the public of his own time leave us now unmoved, in spite of their eminently respectable qualities. They are too sedate to have a strong effect on the imagination. But his work with the point—pencil, chalk or etching-needle—is delightfully easy, graceful and accomplished. A Ruined Abbey (109) is certainly a view of Melrose Abbey. It was probably drawn in 1836, about the same time as the view of Durham (121), which happens to be dated, “Sep. 14, 1836.” I believe an artist can only draw and paint well the scenes of his native country; but Roberts’s public was bored with English and Scottish views, and very much preferred his Spanish and Eastern subjects. Roberts was at Granada in February 1833, when the picturesque street scene here reproduced (Plate XLIII) must have been drawn.

We have now finished our review of the large group of works by Turner’s contemporaries which was included in Messrs. Agnew’s exhibition. But, as I have said before, there were also a few drawings by later artists—by H. G. Hine (1811-1895), E. M. Wimperis (1835-1900) and Thomas Collier (1840-1890). It was probably a mere accident that these three artists belonged to the Institute of Painters in Water-Colours (now the Royal Institute), while nearly all the leading artists in the group of Turner’s contemporaries belonged to the “Old” Water-Colour Society. There is little evidence of Turner’s influence in the works of Wimperis and Collier.{31} It would be more accurate to describe these artists as the successors of De Wint than of Turner. They carried on the De Wint tradition of healthy realism and freely handled washes with great success; yet each artist preserves his individuality, and their works are steadily increasing in value. The fine drawing of Beeston Castle by Collier (Plate XLIV) is an excellent specimen of his spirited and truthful work.

Alexander J. Finberg
{32}

NOTE

The Numbers given after the titles of the Illustrations refer to the Catalogue of Messrs. Agnew’s Exhibition which will be found at the end of the Volume.{33}

PLATE I

OLD ABBEY, EVESHAM.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (139)

(In the possession of C. Morland Agnew, Esq.)

PLATE II

MALMESBURY ABBEY.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (53)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE III

WATER MILL.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (147)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE IV

A MOUNTAIN STREAM.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (152)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE V

CASSIOBURY: THE HOUSE SEEN ACROSS THE PARK.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (16)

(In the possession of C. Morland Agnew, Esq.)

PLATE VI

LAKE OF THUN.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (34)

(In the possession of R. W. Lloyd, Esq.)

PLATE VII

CASTLE OF CHILLON
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (18)

(In the possession of R. W. Lloyd, Esq.)

PLATE VIII

PATTERDALE OLD CHURCH.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (21)

(In the possession of C. Morland Agnew, Esq.)

PLATE IX

ROLANDSWERTH NUNNERY AND DRACHENFELS.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (35)

(In the possession of C. Morland Agnew, Esq.)

PLATE X

SAUMUR
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (23)

(In the possession of R. W. Lloyd, Esq.)

PLATE XI

RICHMOND BRIDGE—PLAY
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (20)

(In the possession of R. W. Lloyd, Esq.)

PLATE XII

WORCESTER
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (25)

(In the possession of R. W. Lloyd, Esq.)

PLATE XIII

THE LONGSHIPS LIGHTHOUSE, LAND’S END
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (27)

(In the possession of C. Morland Agnew, Esq.)

PLATE XIV

VALLEY OF THE WASHBURNE, NEAR FARNLEY.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (153)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE XV

LAKE NEMI
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (26)

(In the possession of R. W. Lloyd, Esq.)

PLATE XVI

FLORENCE, FROM NEAR SAN MINIATO.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (29)

(In the possession of R. W. Lloyd, Esq.)

PLATE XVII

THE RIGI AT SUNRISE—LAKE OF LUCERNE
(“THE BLUE RIGI”) BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (28)

(In the possession of Walter J. H. Jones, Esq.)

PLATE XVIII

STEETON MANOR, NEAR FARNLEY.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (136)

(In the possession of C. Morland Agnew, Esq.)

PLATE XIX

WILDERNESS OF SINAI.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (132)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE XX

LAKE OF LUCERNE: BRUNNEN IN THE DISTANCE
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (130)

(In the possession of Walter J. H. Jones, Esq.)

PLATE XXI

SALTASH.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (30)

(In the possession of R. W. Lloyd, Esq.)

PLATE XXII

PRUDHOE CASTLE.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (22)

(In the possession of R. W. Lloyd, Esq.)

PLATE XXIII

MOUTH OF THE GRAND CANAL
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (127)

(In the possession of Walter J. H. Jones, Esq.)

PLATE XXIV

A GORGE.
BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. (115)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE XXV

THE SWAN INN, EDMONTON.
BY PAUL SANDBY, R.A. (64)

(In the possession of C. Morland Agnew, Esq.)

PLATE XXVI

NORWICH CATHEDRAL.
BY EDWARD DAYES (144)

(In the possession of C. Morland Agnew, Esq.)

PLATE XXVII

A SWISS VALLEY
BY J. R. COZENS (43)

(In the possession of C. Morland Agnew, Esq.)

PLATE XXVIII

IN THE FARNESINA GARDENS, ROME.
BY J. R. COZENS (41)

(In the possession of C. Morland Agnew, Esq.)

PLATE XXIX

VILLA NEGRONI, ROME
BY J. R. COZENS (42)

(In the possession of C. Morland Agnew, Esq.)

PLATE XXX

LAKE NEMI.
BY J. R. COZENS (45)

(In the possession of C. Morland Agnew, Esq.)

PLATE XXXI

KENILWORTH.
BY THOMAS GIRTIN (146)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE XXXII

LINCOLN.
BY THOMAS GIRTIN (7)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE XXXIII

BRIDGE OVER RIVER NEAR A TOWN.
BY J. S. COTMAN (78)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE XXXIV

GORMIRE LAKE, YORKSHIRE.
BY J. S. COTMAN (74)

(In the possession of R. W. Lloyd, Esq.)

PLATE XXXV

ROUEN
BY J. S. COTMAN (3)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE XXXVI

A LAKE SCENE.
BY J. S. COTMAN (1)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE XXXVII

CHURCH IN NORMANDY.
BY J. S. COTMAN (9)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE XXXVIII

LEYTON, ESSEX (1830).
BY JOHN VARLEY (122)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE XXXIX

FOLKESTONE.
BY SAMUEL PROUT (86)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE XL

KINGLEY VALE, WITH CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL IN THE DISTANCE.
BY WILLIAM TURNER OF OXFORD (77)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE XLI

BEN VENUE, FROM LANRICK.
BY G. ROBSON (66)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

PLATE XLII

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

THE PILOT BOAT.
BY COPLEY FIELDING (70)

PLATE XLIII

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

GRANADA.
BY DAVID ROBERTS, R.A. (88)

PLATE XLIV

BEESTON CASTLE.
BY T. COLLIER (82)

(In the possession of Messrs. Thos. Agnew & Sons)

DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITION OF SELECTED WATER-COLOUR DRAWINGS BY ARTISTS OF THE EARLY ENGLISH SCHOOL HELD AT MESSRS. THOMAS AGNEW AND SONS’ GALLERIES, LONDON, MARCH-APRIL 1919