J. M. W. Turner

by Peter Ackroyd

  Such foibles would not have disturbed Turner in the least. Egremont seems in fact to have given the painter an open invitation to stay that, in later years, was willingly accepted. He did not commission paintings from Turner, but allowed the artist to use his house and his estate as a living studio. Some of the artist’s most famous works—Petworth: The Old Library and The Apotheosis of Lord Egremont (Interior at Petworth) among them—are the result of his enlightened patronage. Turner also completed a series of Petworth drawings on blue paper which evoke specific scenes and objects.

  Petworth was a large and elaborate house, with a succession of rooms on the ground floor that lent it the aspect of a Renaissance palace; the White Library, the Marble Hall, the Carved Room, the Square Dining-Room, the Red Room and the North Gallery were all exquisitely furnished and decorated. One visitor recollected that

  Every door of every room was wide open from one end to the other, and from the front to behind, whichever way you looked; and not a human being visible . . . but the magnitude of the space being seen all at once—the scale of every room, gallery, passage etcetera, the infinity of pictures and statues throughout, made as agreeable an impression on me as I ever witnessed.

  Turner and Egremont often discussed painting together, and one butler remembered an argument between them concerning some vegetables that Turner had depicted floating on the water in Brighton from the Sea. The amiable earl insisted that they would have sunk, whereas the painter was equally adamant that they would float as he had painted them. A tub of water and some identical vegetables were then called for; when they were placed in the water, they did indeed sink. But Turner never altered his painting. He remained true to his visionary conception. He was also very stubborn.

  But by 1808 Turner had made the acquaintance of another rich and enlightened patron. Walter Fawkes had been a member of parliament for Yorkshire, with firm opinions on the importance of democratic change. Like Egremont, he was a progressive landowner and estate manager. Turner visited him at his country house in Yorkshire, Farnley Hall, over a period of sixteen years, characteristically in the summer or autumn. It was a medley of a house, part Jacobean and part late eighteenth century (the contemporary sections having been commissioned by Fawkes himself); it also contained a private museum of Civil War artefacts and memorabilia, some of which the artist drew. Turner was given his own suite of rooms, including a studio, where he was invited to stay even when the Fawkeses were not in residence. Fawkes also became an important and munificent patron of the artist, commissioning both oils and watercolours. The daughters of the house soon became accustomed to this unusual guest, and have left recollections of Turner both at work and at play. They recalled him engaged upon his water-colours, “cords spread across the room as in that of a washerwoman, and papers tinted with pink, and blue, and yellow, hanging on them to dry.”

  The East Lodge gates, made to Turner’s own design, at Farnley Hall, home of Walter Fawkes. Turner’s complete set of drawings of his patron’s house, set in its park overlooking the Wharfe valley, were known a fectionately at his “Wharfedales.” Turner mourned the death of Fawkes in 1825 (“my good Auld lang sine is gone”) and never again returned to Farnley Hall.

  The oldest son of the house, Hawksworth, had other memories. He recalled the artist rapt in the contemplation of a thunderstorm, making notes of its form and colour on a scrap of paper. “Isn’t it grand?” Turner asked the young man. “Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it sublime?” Hawksworth recalled how he was absorbed—he was entranced. There was the storm rolling and sweeping and shafting out its lightning over the Yorkshire hills. Presently the storm passed, and he finished. “There, Hawkey,” he said. “In two years time you will see this again, and call it Hannibal crossing the Alps.”

  The allusion is almost too good, and too precise, to be true. Nevertheless the image of Turner, watching the uproar in the heavens and imagining it above the heads of Hannibal and his troops, is an evocative one.

  There is perhaps more substance to another account of Turner at Farnley Hall. Walter Fawkes had asked the artist to draw a man-of-war, and Turner rose to the challenge. It seems that he began by pouring wet paint till it [the paper] was saturated, he tore, he scratched, he scrubbed at it in a kind of frenzy and the whole thing was chaos— but gradually and as if by magic the lovely ship, with all its exquisite minutiae, came into being and by luncheon time the drawing was taken down in triumph.

  This emergence of form out of chaos, the man-of-war emerging mysteriously from a mist of colour, is an apt description of Turner’s painterly method. He created a dynamic and fluid space in which to work, quite unlike the more rigidly defined ground of previous artists. His tactile sense of creating shape and form—scratching and scrubbing as if he were dealing with some recalcitrant material— gives his work the texture of inspired improvisation and magical creation.

  These forays into country-house society did not, however, prevent him from fulfilling his usual roll-call of exhibitions. He re-exhibited The Battle of Trafalgar at the British Institution, after its relative failure two years previously in his own gallery. At the Harley Street gallery itself, in 1808, he exhibited a plethora of paintings depicting the Thames. It had become his great subject. Many of them were praised for their “Claude-like serenity,” particularly Pope’s Villa at Twickenham and View of Richmond Hill and Bridge, in which the glowing light lends breadth and spaciousness to the scenes. There are other paintings of the sea, such as Margate and Sheerness from the Nore, in which Turner demonstrates his mastery of the delineation of bodies of water—transparent or shadowed, rising or falling, always in vibrant movement.

  He chose quite another kind of painting for the Royal Academy show in 1808, exhibiting a single work entitled The Unpaid Bill, or the Dentist Reproving His Son’s Prodigality; as its title suggests, it was an anecdotal picture in which father expostulates with son. There are some papers on the floor, with the phrase “Tooth drawn” clearly visible. It is hard not to feel, however, that Turner’s real attention was lavished upon all the tools of the dentist’s trade. One half of the painting, caught in the rays of the sun, shows basins and phials, glasses and crucibles, laid out in profusion. There is also a parrot, although this may be Turner’s surreptitious sign for himself. His features, in profile, were often compared to that talkative bird’s. (See p. 1.)

  In the following year he was once more exhibiting at Harley Street and the Royal Academy. No less than thirteen canvases were hung in his own gallery, manifesting the range and variety of his artistic concerns. There were riverscape and seascape; there was the classical grandeur of Thomson’s Aeolian Harp as well as the painterly realism of Harvest Dinner, Kingston Bank. The unforced tenderness and simplicity of this latter painting, with the labourers pausing to rest, to wash, and to eat, manifest all the sympathy of Turner’s nature in relation to the poor and the humble of the world. To one of these paintings in the Harley Street gallery he appended his signature with the initials “PP.” This is to be deciphered as Professor of Perspective.

  A painting expedition to Oxford in the early months of 1810 suggests his practical, rather than theoretical, approach to his subject. He had been asked by a publisher to complete a view of the High Street in that city as a preliminary to a large engraving. He was happy to accept the commission, and set out his terms in a very businesslike manner—“my Pictures are all 3 Feet by 4 Feet, 200 gs [guineas], half which size will be 100, but should not mind an inch or two.” On the agreement of terms he travelled up to Oxford and made a pencil sketch of the street from a hackney coach. But he was very concerned about details. He wished to know how the windows in the High Street were glazed, and whether they projected in a bow. He was also about to introduce some academic figures and wished to know “what kind of staff the Beadles use, and if they wear caps?” No junior draughtsman could have been more exact or particular. When the painting was complete, he was unhappy about the height of the spire of St. Mary’s Church. He informed the publ
isher that “it shall be altered to measure.” Despite the fact that he was “so very busy,” as he put it in a letter, the work was finished to the deadline already proposed. He was in every sense a professional workman who prided himself on his expedition and punctuality. The publisher was so pleased with the result that he sent Turner a present of sausages.

  He was, as we have seen, also a good economist. In this year he was intent on purchasing land as an investment; he bought some acres at Richmond for £400, and some land at Lee Common in Buckinghamshire for £102. He also bought shares in the Atlas Fire Office; he might profit from fiery spectacles in more than an artistic sense. His finances are open for inspection by posterity. He jotted down notes on his savings and holdings on odd pages of his sketchbooks; we know, for example, that by the summer of 1810 he had more than twenty thousand pounds in “Reduced 3% Annuities” and more than four thousand pounds in “Navy 5%.” He also kept lists of the sales of his paintings, with the names of the purchasers in the right-hand column. He was methodical. He bought property, too. One acquaintance noted that “He would occasionally look in at the auction mart by the Bank; and on one of these occasions it occurred to him that two houses were about to be knocked down at a very low figure; he bid, and got them.” With property came the eternal problem of tenants, some of whom proved refractory. He was not always severe with them, however. At his death it was discovered that for some years he had not claimed rent from one recalcitrant tenant.

  In the Royal Academy this year he exhibited three paintings devoted to the stately homes of his patrons, two of Lowther Castle in Westmorland, the home of the earl of Lonsdale, and one entitled Petworth, Sussex, the Seat of the Earl of Egremont: Dewy Morning. He hoped to evoke the freshness and lightness of the morning dew with what was for him still a novel technique in oils. He covered the canvas with a white ground, thus lending a bright and pellucid quality to the paint applied to it. It was an effect he had attained in water-colours, by employing white drawing-paper which, as it were, shone through the washes of colour, and in Petworth . . . Dewy Morning the expanses of water and of sky have a wonderful radiance.

  He returned to some of his favourite subjects in the Harley Street exhibition of this year—a lake, a bridge, an ancient palace, a ruined castle, an avalanche, and a fishmarket on a beach. A surreal and synoptic painting by Turner would have to contain all of these elements. There is a story concerning the painting of the fishmarket that added to the legend of the artist’s parsimony. He brought Fishmarket on the Sands to its purchaser by coach, received a cheque for its safe delivery and left; but he returned two or three minutes later, and asked for three shillings to cover the cab-fare.

  In the following year there was no exhibition in Harley Street. He had decided to alter the gallery and to provide it with a new entrance, around the corner in Queen Anne Street, but as a result he found himself “surrounded by rubbish and paint.” But he continued his work, and to the Royal Academy this year he delivered two great classical subjects, Apollo and Python and Mercury and Hersoé. The latter was inspired by Veronese, but owes its manner to Claude. Its coolness and limpidity, its subtle gradation of tone and colours, its harmonious composition, suggest Turner’s painterly allegiances. It was praised very highly at the time and when the Prince Regent spoke at the Academy banquet he alluded to “landscapes which Claude would have admired.” The newspapers described it as a “master-piece” and “very fine.” The Sun in particular was very enthusiastic and said that the artist “had exceeded all that we or his most partial admirers could expect from his powers.” Turner was so pleased with this notice that he copied it out in his notebook, and wrote a letter of thanks to the editor. This suggests that, despite his own disparagement of newspaper reviewers, he was not entirely immune to criticism. His attitude of indifference was really only a shield against disappointment and hurt.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1811

  Turner returned to the Royal Academy in another capacity in January 1811, since it was in this year that he gave his first lectures as Professor of Perspective. He had been appointed to this post four years before, but nervousness or dilatoriness had kept him away from the lectern. He was worried about his delivery, and jotted down notes in advance on oratorical style and pronunciation. He was in fact never a very conscientious professor; he held the post for thirty years, but managed to give only twelve sets of lectures. On this first occasion there were six lectures, delivered on successive Monday evenings, with such themes as “angular perspective” and “aerial perspective.” He was concerned with the properties of shadows and the nature of reflection. There is a surviving diagram, of glass balls partly filled with water, which he used to complement his words.

  In the last lecture, however, he seems to have forsaken this somewhat dry or demanding discipline for an account of landscape painting and architectural setting. He concluded the series with a paean to national pride when he told those assembled that the nation must look to them “for the further advancement of the profession . . . looking forward with the hope that ultimately the joint endeavours of con-cording abilities will in the pursuit of all that is meritorious irrevocably fix the united Standard of Arts in the British Empire.” His polysyllables are quite a mouthful, but his patriotic message is clear enough.

  Perspective was in some respects a difficult and technically challenging subject, problems compounded by the fact that Turner was not himself a particularly good lecturer. His delivery was not entirely clear, but his manner was compensated by the drawings which he presented as illustrations to his thesis. One of those who attended the lectures recalled that half of each lecture was addressed to the attendant behind him, who was constantly busied, under his muttered directions, in selecting from a huge portfolio of drawings and diagrams to illustrate his teaching; many of these were truly beautiful, speaking intelligibly enough to the eye, if his language did not to the ear.

  Reflections and refractions in two transparent globes, one half-filled with water. Turner was demonstrating the e fect of light on curved surfaces.

  The librarian of the Royal Academy was a constant attendant of these occasions and remarked that “there is much to see at Turner’s lectures—much that I delight in seeing, though I cannot hear him.”

  The artist William Frith has left a description of Turner speaking on another occasion with “the stammering, the long pauses, the bewildering mystery of it, required to be witnessed for any adequate idea to be formed.” And then he recorded Turner’s actual words—“ ‘Gentlemen, I see some—’ (pause and another look round) ‘new faces at this—table—Well—do you—do any of you—I mean— Roman History’ (a pause). ‘There is no doubt, at least I hope not, that you are acquainted—no, unacquainted—that is to say—of course, why not? . . .’ ”

  He had a deep voice and a recognisably Cockney accent, sometimes dropping his “h”s in the approved London style. One periodical writer adverted to his “vulgarity of pronunciation, ” referring to mathematics as “mithematics,” having as “haiving,” and foolery as “follery.” Ruskin reports a conversation of Turner’s, in which he uttered the phrase “Ain’t they worth more?” This is hardly in the class of Dickens’s Sam Weller, and is essentially standard London diction, but it provoked patronising comments. For those who did not possess genius themselves, it was enough that Turner was not a “gentleman.”

  The point is, of course, that like William Blake and William Hogarth—two artists whom in attitude and demeanour he so much resembled—he was a quintessentially London genius, a Cockney visionary. He could never leave for long what he called “the loadstone London,” lodestone here meaning a magnet. He loved crowds, and smoke and glare, and soot and dust and dunghills. The occasional theatricality of his art also betrays his London inheritance. In his work he was perhaps not interested in particular persons—many of the individuals in his canvases were said to resemble the creatures of that popular urban art, Punch and Judy—but in the broad general movement of light a
nd colour.

  His contemporaries often criticised the “crude” theatricality of his paintings, but they were really only recognising his love of transcendent spectacle. It has already been observed how he began his career as a scene-painter at the Pantheon, and like many other London artists he had an affection for the grand effects which were possible in that medium. One contemporary, on seeing Dido building Carthage, or the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire, remarked that he felt as if he were in the presence of the most splendid “drop-scenes” in a theatre. Turner often chose to paint fires and shipwrecks, when these subjects were the stock in trade of nineteenth-century ballets and melodramas. He loved fire in all of its moods and conditions. He resembles the fire-watcher in The Old Curiosity Shop, who sits before the furnace of a factory and whispers, “It’s my memory, that fire, and shows me all my life.”

  Indeed it has been stated that Turner’s paintings did themselves change the art of scenery in the Victorian period. “Scenery now becomes a source of attraction . . .” a critic wrote in 1848. “Now this change we owe to Turner.” There is no reason at all why the artist would have forsworn this legacy. He himself once declared that his inspiration for his famous painting Ulysses deriding Polyphemus came not from Homer but from a song in a pantomime entitled Melodrame Mad:

  I sing the cave of Polypheme,

  Ulysses made him cry out,

  For he ate his mutton, drank his wine,

  And then he poked his eye out.

  Turner may have been ironic, but his instinctive reaching for the songs of the popular stage does suggest his own affinities.

  Like other Londoners, too, he was by instinct a dissenter and nonconformist. He was touched by the general egalitarianism of the citizenry; although many of his patrons were noblemen, he retained a sturdy independence of spirit and of conduct. He moved among printers and engravers, who were well known in London for their radical turn of mind. He had an especial fondness for John Wycliffe and George Fox, who in the fourteenth century and seventeenth century respectively challenged the orthodox rituals of the established faith. In later life he seems implicitly to have supported the causes of Greek independence and Hungarian independence. His close friend Walter Fawkes, who was an MP, was intent upon maintaining “the people’s defence against aristocratic domination and royal despotism.” So we may safely conclude that Turner himself was a reformer.