J. M. W. Turner

by Peter Ackroyd

  Yet he had another subject. In other sketchbooks of the period he introduced classical motifs and figures. In one book he noted down the titles of possible paintings, among them “Dido and Aeneas,” “The Parting of Brutus and Portia,” and “Jason Arriving at Colchis.” He was extending his field of vision. He had been reading widely in classical literature with the help of the best translations, Pope’s versions of Homer and Dryden’s versions of Virgil among them. He also bought all thirteen volumes of an anthology entitled The Works of the British Poets, which suggests that he was embarking upon a serious and single-minded course of self-education; he was always very thorough, and determined, in his preparations. He had purchased casts of the marbles that Lord Elgin had recently brought back from Greece, and in a letter to the noble peer or thief (according to taste) he congratulated him on rescuing work from “the most brilliant period of human nature.” For him the classical world was a dream of nobility and beauty, a vast reservoir of profound feeling and repository of inspired thought.

  Yet the Thames also inspired him. It was for him in part an allegorical river along which the figures of myth or legend might be depicted. In one sketchbook he quoted some lines of Pope which celebrate “the silver Thames.” But if for him it aroused contemplations of classical antiquity, these were placed in the service of his art. It is clear enough, from his jottings and his musings, that he wished to elevate landscape painting into the highest regions of artistic endeavour. He wanted it to emulate the claims of historical painting, and become the medium of allegorical and moral truth. He was intent on being—in the conventional sense, perhaps—a “great” painter. But he would do it on his own terms.

  So what did he do next? He built himself a boat. He noted down the cost of sails and rigging, mast and pump. He was going to be part of the river’s life, to draw and paint while being carried along its waters, and to enjoy the benefits of close observation. He had known the Thames since his earliest years, and had sailed upon it many times; to own a boat must have been a dream of his childhood. He sailed upstream to Hampton Court and Windsor, and then onward to Reading and Oxford; then he went down to the Port of London and the estuary. He completed an extraordinary number of sketches and drawings, as if the fluency of the river itself had inspired him. There are miraculous studies of the trees bending across the river-bank, of barges unloading, of the shadows of buildings on the water. Many of his later oil-paintings are based upon these brief studies.

  But he also completed some oil-paintings directly on to wooden board or canvas, experimenting with the possibilities of light and tone en plein air. He had a portable paint-box (which still survives) with his various pigments wrapped up in bladders. His vision was so powerful and immediate that it could only be captured on the spot. In his water-colour sketches, too, he quickly daubed on the colours and tones with the freedom and spontaneity of fresh inspiration. There were occasions when he drove the paint with his fingers; the colours change as they intermingle.

  When later in the year he sailed downstream to the Pool of London, the riverine landscape of the “silver Thames” was displaced by the black mud and dirt of the working river. He knew this aspect of the river well, as the site of human energy and activity; it was here that he sketched ketches and cutters and guard ships. There is even the calculation of the size of a canvas sail, jotted down on the side of one drawing.

  He was in the process preparing himself for the work that he had contemplated ever since visiting the Victory anchored off Sheerness the year before. This was The Battle of Trafalgar, as seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory. It was exhibited at his gallery in Harley Street, and met with a mixed response. Farington described it as “very crude” and “unfinished”; Turner seems in part to have agreed with the criticism because he reworked the painting, and exhibited it again two years later. On the second occasion the artist, John Landseer, considered it to be a “British epic picture” and “the first picture of the kind that has ever, to our knowledge, been exhibited.”

  The other painting that he exhibited in this year, 1806, was of disharmony in a different key. It was entitled The Goddess of Discord choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of Hesperides—even the length of the title suggests the seriousness of Turner’s intent—and it was shown at the British Institution, a new organisation established in three rooms in Pall Mall to enhance the reputation of British art. For its first exhibition he had chosen once more to depict a classical subject as a statement of his ambition.

  He also sent a painting to the Royal Academy, of course, but was incensed when it was badly hung in the exhibition room. These were matters of intense importance to the Academicians, and to the public, who were rightly annoyed when work was not seen to its best advantage. The painting itself was entitled Fall of the Rhine at Scha fhausen, and is a fine expression of the movement of powerful waters between rocks. At the time, however, it provoked severe criticism for its extravagance. The comments of two newspaper editors, present at the opening, have been recorded. “That is Madness,” one observed on looking at Turner’s canvas. The other concurred with “He is a madman.” The charge of madness was often brought against him in subsequent years and, although it is one he generally ignored, the history of his mother’s lunacy cannot fail to have rendered him sensitive to the subject.

  A visit to a fellow artist in Kent this year provides an opportunity to see Turner in a more entertaining light. The daughter of his close friend, W. F. Wells, recalls the young artist as “light-hearted” and “merry,” filled with “laughter and fun” particularly in the company of children. On one occasion he was sitting on the ground “with the children winding his ridiculously large cravat round his neck.” He exclaimed to her, “See here, Clara, what these children are about!” And she also recalls the occasion of his climbing up a tree, to paint from a different vantage, and of her passing the colours up to him. She adds, interestingly enough, that “his feelings were seldom seen on the surface, but they were deep and enduring. No one would have imagined, under that rather rough and cold exterior, how very strong were the affections which lay hidden beneath.” It is testimony to the essential humanity of the man.

  This happy trip also produced some unexpected results. W. F. Wells conceived the idea that Turner should embark upon a series of landscape drawings, of all kinds and in all settings, that would then be engraved under Turner’s own direct supervision. “For your own credit’s sake,” his daughter remembered him telling the artist, “you ought to give a work to the public which will do you justice.” He was referring here not to the manifest superiority of Turner’s painting, but to the possibility of engraving work that might after his death be shoddily executed. Turner should provide a living example. Turner is supposed to have replied that “there will be no peace with you till I begin. Well, give me a sheet of paper there, rule the size for me, tell me what subject I shall take.” He completed the first five drawings, with pen and brush, in the company of Wells and his family in Kent; they were then despatched to the engraver, Charles Turner. He had previously executed the engraving of The Shipwreck, and was deemed to be ingenious and trustworthy.

  And so commenced a sequence of works which were given the general title of Liber Studiorum. His title was inspired by Claude’s Liber Veritatis—Claude being the artist he most wanted to emulate. His intention was to publish two parts every year, each part containing five prints with a frontispiece. His purpose was to create a magnum opus that might rival the work of Claude, and he divided his productions into six different categories—Historical, Pastoral, Elevated Pastoral, Mountain, Marine and Architectural. It was conceived as a complete statement, and once more suggests Turner’s desire to move on and conquer each new territory. He was an overreacher as well as an over-turner.

  It was a series that could have gone on until his death, but in fact he managed only some fourteen parts, and seventy-one engravings, altogether. He was sole publisher, using various engravers as his technicians�
��although he did engrave for himself eight of his drawings. As might have been expected, he was an exacting employer who relied upon the strictest standards of line and tone. He executed the drawings in sepia ink with water-colour, marking out the salient features in pen and washing in the shading with brush; from these original drawings the engraver would then work, cutting the lines into the soft wax of the copper plate. One engraver recalled how Turner would often go to Hampstead, and “would spend hours on the heath studying the effects of atmosphere and the changes of light and shade, and the gradations required to express them.” Engraving is in certain respects the art of light and shade. It was natural and fitting that Turner, of all painters, should be drawn towards it.

  By the beginning of 1807 he had moved down-river from Isleworth to Hammersmith, where his address was 6 West End, Upper Mall. The house has been described as modest and comfortable but, more importantly, its garden ran down to the bank; Turner seems not to have been able to live away from water for very long. The Thames was the centre of his being. In the garden there was also a summer-house, which he used as a studio. Here he laid his watercolours on the floor to dry. When a friend expressed some surprise that he could work in such humble surroundings he replied that “lights and a room were absurdities and that a picture could be painted anywhere.” It was part of his sturdy practicality in all matters pertaining to his art.

  The neighbourhood itself proved to be less than ideal, however, since the area behind his house was soon being dug up for the creation by the Middlesex Water Company of the West Middlesex Water Works. This did not prevent Turner from speculating in land in other locations. He bought at auction for ninety-five pounds a cottage and half an acre of ground near Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire; this may have been designed to harbour Sarah Danby and her children. In the spring of 1807 he also purchased some land in Twickenham. Here he began making plans for the construction of a villa, a gentleman’s residence appropriate to his situation in life. There is no reason why an artist of genius should not also be an astute businessman.

  In this period he lived with his father in Hammersmith, and commuted to his gallery in Harley Street—a journey of some two hours by foot, which was no great distance for either father or son. He was in fact more than ever engaged in London life. He was busily involved in the publication of his Liber Studiorum, for example, the first number of which was published in the summer of this year. It included five separate plates, engraved by Charles Turner from Turner’s recent drawings of the Thames. Turner the artist, however, was something of a martinet with Turner the engraver. In the following year he left a peremptory note upon a proof, stating: “Sir, You have done in aquatint all the Castle down to the rocks: Did I ever ask for such an indulgence?”

  He was exhibiting at his own gallery, of course, and in this year he displayed Sheerness and the Isle of Sheppey, with the Junction of the Thames and the Medway from the Nore together with other Thames views. In most of these paintings the river itself is shown at peace, with all the signs of human labour decorating its banks, but Sheerness and the Isle of Sheppey depicts more turbulent and dangerous waters. These are the twin poles of Turner’s imagination, serenity and storm, tranquillity and chaos.

  He was also exhibiting at the Royal Academy works of a quite different character. One oil-painting is entitled A Country Blacksmith disputing upon the Price of Iron, and the Price charged to the Butcher for shoeing his Poney. This homely if prosaic title is in itself an indication that Turner was trying his hand at the anecdotal or realistic genre of painting inaugurated by the Flemish painter Teniers the Younger, but recently made fashionable by the Scottish artist David Wilkie. The year before, Wilkie’s Village Politicians had been judged the success of the show; Turner was not to be outdone, especially by an artist some ten years younger, and so he set out to prove that he could manage the same kind of painting with more skill and fluency.

  He also exhibited Sun Rising Through Vapour; Fishermen cleaning and selling Fish, in a literal manner outshining Wilkie’s The Blind Fiddler of the same year. The conflation of “sun” and “vapour” already suggests Turner’s later sense of palpable light and incandescence. It was reported that Turner had deliberately reddened his sun so that it would cast into shade Wilkie’s contribution. This is in fact inaccurate, since the solar disc is mysterious and pale, but it is clear that Turner did not necessarily welcome competitors. When one collector asked him the price of the Blacksmith painting he replied “that he understood Wilkie was to have 100 guineas for his Blind Fiddler and he should not rate his picture at a less price.” He was always of a combative nature. His connection with the Royal Academy was strengthened this year, when he was appointed Professor of Perspective. He was in fact the only candidate for the position, and so his election was assured. But he delayed four years before giving his first lecture.

  While his father was busy in the house and garden at Hammersmith, Turner acquired a new caretaker for his gallery in Harley Street. Hannah Danby was the niece of his mistress, Sarah Danby, and at the age of twenty-three became a permanent presence in Turner’s life. She remained his caretaker and general custodian until his death, becoming increasingly more eccentric as the years passed; but she was loyal and reliable. It has been rumoured that their relationship was more than that of employer and servant, and that it was she who bore his children, but this seems to have been a case of mistaken identity between the two women who both had the name Danby. Sarah Danby, however, seems to play a less important role in the artist’s life from this time forward.

  He was moving in “society” now more than ever—or, rather, he was visiting the country houses of prospective patrons with a view to painting their estates. In 1808 he spent some weeks at Tabley House in Cheshire, for example, and completed two views of that stately home for its owner Sir John Leicester. The finished paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in the following year, when one newspaper critic said that “mere topography” had in the case of Turner been transformed by a “magic pencil.” Magic is not cheap. It was estimated that the paintings were “of Turner’s 250 guineas size.”

  Turner was not always at work, however, while on the estates of his patrons. Another guest at the house recalled that he “was occupied in fishing rather than painting.” He was indeed a keen and proficient angler, and in that characteristic state of suspended animation he dreamed of verse and painting. He observed, too, the multitudinous effects of the sun upon the water. He often had with him on his travels a copy of Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler, and apparently owned an umbrella which by some strange act of transmogrification became a fishing rod. When he got a bite, according to one observer, “he appeared as much pleased as a boy at school.” A friend, accompanying him on another expedition, has left a description of his behaviour. “Every fish he caught he showed to me, and appealed to me to decide whether the size justified him to keep it for the table, or to return it to the river. His hesitation was often almost touching, and he always gave the prisoner at the bar the benefit of the doubt.” It was not for him simply a pastime. He completed many paintings of fishermen, at work on the sea or on the sands, and included anglers within his landscapes; he even sketched “still lives” of four fish or what he called in one of his verses “the finny race.”

  Young Anglers. Turner loved fishing and enjoyed romping with children. He etched this himself. The scene is Marylebone Fields, not far from his studio in Queen Anne Street.

  He also visited Petworth House, the home of Lord Egremont, in this year. There is an account of a later journey to that house where Turner was seen, by a boy, “smoking a cigar, and on the grass, near him, lay a fine pike.” But the artist’s tackle became entwined with some roots, and a boat was despatched to help clear the tangle of line. “While waiting for the boat,” the boy recalled, “Turner became quite chatty, rigging me a little ship, cut out of a chip, sticking masts into it, and making her sails from a leaf or two torn from a small sketch book, in which I recollect
seeing a memorandum in colour that he had made of the sea and sunset.” He was always good with children, and seemed effortlessly able to enter their world. The account ends with a picture of Turner walking back to Petworth House, holding the pike in one hand, with a bundle of sketches in the pocket of his coat.

  He stayed at Petworth many times after his first visit in 1808, and it became the site and context for many of his most celebrated paintings. Here he came under the amiable patronage of Lord Egremont, who had first purchased a work from him in 1802. Egremont was more relaxed and casual than most of his peers, a man of few words, a welcoming host to painters and writers, and decidedly unconventional in his behaviour. Lord Blessington observed that nothing will convince Lady Spenser that Lord Egremont has not forty-three Children, who all live in the House with him and their respective Mothers; and that the latter are usually kept in the background but when quarrels arise, which few days pass without, each mother takes part with her Progeny, bursts into the drawing room, fights with each other, Lord E, his children, and, I believe, the Company, and makes scenes worthy of a Billingsgate or a Madhouse.

  Egremont was immensely wealthy, of course, but sensitive to Turner’s peculiar genius. It is likely that Turner, himself considered odd or unusual, responded warmly to what were called Egremont’s “eccentric habits.” It was said by one guest at Petworth that the host’s peculiarities . . . were utterly incompatible with conversation, or any prolonged discussion. He never remained five minutes in the same place, and was continually oscillating between the library and his bedroom, or wandering about the enormous house in all directions; sometimes he broke off in the middle of a conversation on some subject which appeared to interest him, and disappeared, and an hour after, on casual meeting, would resume just where he left off.