J. M. W. Turner

by Peter Ackroyd

  From Cowes he travelled on to Petworth, the stately home of another patron, where again he could be found hard at work in the studio provided by Lord Egremont. He rose early and worked while the other guests slept. Among the works which eventually emerged out of this disciplined routine were Petworth Park: Tillington Church in the Distance and The Lake, Petworth, Sunset. The painting of the sun setting over the lake is, in particular, an extraordinarily serene and opulent composition. A later anecdote revealed that “when Turner painted a series of landscapes at Petworth, for the dining-room, he worked with the door locked against everybody but the master of the house.” He needed privacy and seclusion; more importantly, perhaps, he needed to know that he would not be interrupted. His host had asked him to complete some paintings to be set in the wall-panels of the dining-room, known as the Carved Room, beneath some suitably formal sixteenth-century portraits. Turner obliged, and by the summer of the following year two of them were ready for display.

  CHAPTER TEN

  1827–1833

  Turner visited Margate in 1827, in part because he was suffering from ill health. It may have been thought that the sea air and the sea breeze might help to cure or at least to alleviate what seems to have been faulty breathing and a persistent cough. It should be remembered that, in London during this period, no one was ever wholly well. The smoke and fumes, as well as the miasma of vapours that rose from the river, helped to contribute to the highest mortality rate in the country. It would have been surprising if Turner had not been affected.

  He came to enjoy the Margate air, and the general amenities of this seaside town. He had lived there as a child, for a short period, and it seems that he was drawn to old haunts. In his water-colours, for example, he often returned to the site of earlier work. He sketched the same scene at Knaresborough in 1797 and in 1826. He visited Norham Castle on at least three occasions—in 1797, 1801 and 1831—as if he were testing the development of his vision.

  From 1827 onward he often went down to Margate for summer weekends, either by coach or by steamer, and was once seen on the boat eating shrimps out of a handkerchief. He had more than the sea view to anticipate. One of the “amenities” of Margate was Sophia Caroline Booth, already twice a widow (it should be remembered that Turner enjoyed the company of Dido-like widows), who kept a boarding-house by the promenade. They grew very close, so close in fact that in the neighbourhood he was known as “Mr. Booth.” After Turner’s death she told an acquaintance that “with the exception of the first year he never contributed one shilling toward their mutual support!!!” She was, however, quite a wealthy widow and may have wished to retain her financial independence. Instead he rewarded her with his poetry, “verses in honour of herself and her personal charms.” Eventually he took her with him to London—to a secret cottage in Chelsea, naturally by the river— where they also lived as if they were man and wife.

  The relationship remained unknown until after his death, one of the many secrets lodged within the breast of this always secretive man. One friend declared that he delighted “in mistifying others,” and this propensity may plausibly be associated with the nature of his work itself. One family who knew him well, the Redgraves, remarked of his paintings that he “ever studied to preserve a sense of mystery” in them. He may not have been deliberately secretive, however; he may have been naturally reticent, unable to discuss or reveal those things which were closest to him. Artists in any case are not often eloquent.

  There were two paintings of Nash’s castle at Cowes in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1828, together with another oil-painting of Dido’s mythological career and a rather strange work entitled Boccaccio relating the Tale of the Birdcage. The strangeness lies in the fact that Boccaccio did not in fact relate any tale about a bird-cage, the oddity compounded by the fact that in the background of this Italianate scene rises the distinctive shape of East Cowes Castle.

  He was in fact eager to return to Italy again. He had regular professional work to complete, in particular the watercolours for the England and Wales series of engravings, but in the first week of August 1828 he left London for Rome. He stayed first in the south of France where the heat “almost knocked me up.” As soon as he arrived in the Italian capital, however, he set to work. He labored continually, beginning eight or nine pictures as well as finishing three of them. He wrote to a friend, “but as the folk here talked that I would show them not, I finished a small three feet four to stop their gabbling; so now to business . . .”

  His works were not always appreciated by the Italian artists, however, who according to one acquaintance of Turner’s “could make nothing of them.” When he exhibited some of his paintings in apartments in the Quattro Fontane, however, the reaction was decidedly more interesting. Among them were Regulus and The Vision of Medea, which had a wildness and extravagance of colour that astounded his contemporaries. “You may imagine,” one English artist wrote back from Rome, “how astonished, enraged or delighted the different schools of artists were, at seeing things with methods so new, so daring, and excellencies so unequivocal.” And that was the truth of it. His painterly techniques, indeed his whole artistic vision, was so “new” that it was scarcely recognised or understood.

  He left Rome at the beginning of 1829, and once more his coach was overturned in a snow-drift. This was either a normal occurrence on continental journeys or Turner was spectacularly unlucky with his transport. A fellow traveller left a description of him as a “good-tempered, funny, little, elderly gentleman.” This companion did not know who Turner was but remarked that “he is continually popping his head out of the window to sketch whatever strikes his fancy.” On one occasion the driver would not stop to take in a sunrise and Turner muttered, “Damn the fellow! He has no feeling!” The correspondent went on to say that he “speaks but a few words of Italian, about as much of French, which two languages he jumbles together most amusingly. His good temper, however, carries him through all his troubles. I am sure you would love him for his indefatigability in his favourite pursuit.” This testimony, from a wholly unbiased witness, suggests an almost Dickensian figure of a Cockney traveller. It is interesting that once more his amiability is stressed, in contrast to those who preferred to illustrate his less convivial qualities.

  On his return to England he began to prepare for that year’s exhibition at the Royal Academy, where he placed one of his favourite paintings. Ulysses deriding Polyphemus is also one of his most famous works. The story is out of Homer but the light and colour are from Rome. John Ruskin described it as “the central picture in Turner’s career,” not least because of the visionary poetry of its conception. He has somehow managed to combine the natural and the mythological in a new synthesis, so that like one of Shakespeare’s late plays we may call it a “romance.” In the following month there was a large exhibition of his water-colours, from the England and Wales series of engravings, at the Egyptian Hall along Piccadilly.

  But his delight in public recognition perhaps waned in this year, since in the autumn of 1829 his father died. William Turner had been the artist’s principal confidant and friend; he had been his assistant, too, in all the business of the artist’s studio and gallery. He was also his son’s greatest admirer. These were impossible roles for anyone else to fill, and there is no doubt that Turner suffered a grievous blow from his father’s death. After the funeral and burial in St. Paul’s Church in Covent Garden—where Turner was baptised and where his parents were married—he sought refuge with some old friends of the family. It was said by them that he was “fearfully out of spirits” and confessed that it was as if he had lost an only child. This strange reversal of dependence, with the old man becoming his son, suggests an intense and overwhelming affection. The same friends noted that “Turner never appeared the same man after his father’s death; his family was broken up.” Truly he felt himself to be alone in the world, despite the comforting presence of Mrs. Booth, and sensed above him the shadow of death itself.

  Imme
diately after his father’s funeral he signed his last will and testament. He left sums to his relatives, as well as annuities to Sarah and Hannah Danby; he also made bequests to the Royal Academy. He was anxious that his name should be preserved after his death, and so made arrangements for the inauguration of a Turner gold medal to be awarded every two years. The rest of his estate was left for a “College or Charity” devoted to the care of “decayed English artists.” He also left two paintings to the National Gallery, Dido building Carthage and The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire, on condition that they were hung perpetually between two landscapes of Claude. He changed his will on many occasions, as if he was preoccupied both with his legacy and with his posthumous fame. In a version prepared two years later he left funds for the maintenance of the gallery in Queen Anne Street “concurring with the object of keeping my works together.” The preservation of the collection became of paramount importance to him. He was used to calling it his “family” and he did not wish it to be dispersed. He wanted his achievement to be seen steadily and as a whole. For that reason he began to buy up examples of his earlier work when they appeared at auction. But there was also an element of self-assertion in this, amounting almost to innocence. In another version of his will he left one thousand pounds for a monument to himself in St. Paul’s Cathedral. This act of bravura suggests that he was not at all sure of the continuance of his fame after his demise.

  Soon after his father’s death Turner began work on a painting that seems to embody and reflect his mood of desolation. Calais Sands, Low Water is a painting of fisherwomen collecting bait in the wet sand; they are all bowed low, as if in mourning, as the sun sets over the quiet waters. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in the spring of 1830, and he would continue to hang work in that place until the year before his death; he rarely missed a season, and had become himself something of a monument within the institution. Of course many anecdotes about him now circulated among the other members, particularly concerning his behaviour on “varnishing days.” These were the days when artists were allowed to put the finishing touches to their paintings hanging upon the walls. There was often rivalry, albeit unspoken and unacknowledged, between various artists in their search for immediate attention.

  On one occasion Constable and Turner had paintings next to one another. Constable was busy adding lake and vermilion to his scene. Turner walked up, and looked from one painting to the other. Then he brought in his palette “and putting a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his grey sea, went away without saying a word.” Of course the bright lead made Constable’s colours weaker in comparison. Another artist happened to come into the room and Constable complained to him that “He has been here, and fired a gun.” At the last minute Turner took up his brush and turned the red spot into a buoy. On another occasion the artist David Roberts remonstrated with him for adding so much blue to his sky that his own painting looked dim in contrast. “You attend to your business,” Turner replied, “and leave me to attend to mine.”

  This pugnacious, or competitive, quality was also evinced in disputes about the hanging of his paintings. Every artist of course wished to make sure that his work was seen to the best advantage and in the best light. Constable was on the hanging committee, one year, and aroused Turner’s ire by removing a painting by Turner and replacing it with one of his own. They both attended a reception soon after this unfortunate incident and, according to one observer, “Turner was down upon him like a sledge-hammer; it was no use his endeavour to persuade Turner that the change was for his advantage, and not his own. Turner kept at it all the evening, to the great amusement of the party . . .” Another account explained that “Turner opened on him like a ferret; it was evident to all present Turner detested him . . . I must say that Constable looked to me and I believe to everyone else, like a detested criminal, and I must add Turner slew him without remorse.”

  There were many occasions when he sent in unfinished canvases that he would then “work up” with brush and knife (and fingers) on the spot. On one occasion, in fact, he completed an entire work on panel while it was hanging on the walls of the Academy. He would arrive early in the morning and work continually, for hours on end, never stopping to look at anyone or anything else. He would work inches from the canvas, and never once needed to step back to see the overall effect. Farington was told how he had been seen “to spit all over his picture, and, then taking out a box of brown powder, rubbed it over the picture.” The brown powder was undoubtedly snuff. Sometimes he would stand upon a wooden box to gain the requisite height for the work. And he always wore an old, tall beaver hat. He was of course a great object then for attention and whispered comment. “What is that he is plastering the picture with?” one artist asked another. “I should be sorry,” came the reply, “to be the man to ask him.” When he had completed his work he shut up his box of paints and walked away without giving his finished canvas another glance. He said nothing, and left the Academy quickly. “There, that’s masterly,” the artist Daniel Maclise commented, “he does not stop to look at his work; he knows it is done, and he is off.” A fellow artist described him in his hat and black dress-coat, with large wrappers around his head and his throat which sometimes dangled into the palette of paints. “This, together with his ruddy face, his rollicking eye, and his continuous, although, except to himself, unintelligible jokes, gave him the appearance of that now wholly extinct race—a long-stage coachman.”

  There were occasions when he volunteered practical advice to his colleagues. He said once to Maclise, who was working beside him, “I wish, Maclise, that you would alter the lamb in the foreground, but you won’t.” Maclise did as requested. “It is better,” Turner said, “but not right.” Whereupon he took the artist’s brush and made the alteration—with which Maclise agreed. On another occasion he added some colour to a canvas by Sidney Cooper whereupon Cooper was told “Don’t touch it again—he has done in a moment all that it wanted.” Cooper went up to Turner in order to thank him, “whereupon he nodded, and gave a sort of grunt, but vouchsafed never a word.” He seemed to be able to tell at a glance what was wrong with any picture. He walked past a canvas entitled Squally Day and said to the artist, of a small horse in the composition, “You have got him turned the wrong way.” To an artist who had depicted a farmhouse in flames he muttered, as he passed, “Put more fire in your house.”

  Of his exhibits in the spring of 1830 Calais Sands, Low Water is perhaps the most memorable. But at the time it provoked much less comment than Jessica, a flaming portrait of the character in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The yellow background of the painting caused consternation among the public and the critics alike. It has been suggested that Turner painted it as an experiment, just to see if it could be done, but his daring earned him a great deal of abuse. When Wordsworth saw it he said that “it looks to me as if the painter had indulged in raw liver until he was very unwell.” The theme of jaundice appeared on more than one occasion. The critic in the Morning Chronicle declared that “it looks like a lady getting out of a large mustard-pot,” and another artist noted that the work was “roundabout proof that Turner was a great man; for it seems to me that none but a great man would have dared paint anything so bad.”

  Jessica, or “The Mustard Pot” as it became known, found its place in Lord Egremont’s collection at Petworth. Indeed for Turner after the death of his father, as well as the death of Walter Fawkes, that stately home often became a refuge from the London world. There are a series of landscapes, as well as a number of luminous interiors, that testify to the depth of his affection for the place and for its master. The affection was reciprocated and the earl of Egremont came to possess fifteen of Turner’s oil-paintings.

  Turner travelled in the summer months of 1830 and 1831. In 1830 he journeyed extensively through the Midlands to find subjects for the water-colours which would become the engravings in the series entitled England and Wales . In the following year he travelled to
Scotland, having accepted the invitation to illustrate a new edition of Scott’s Poetical Works. The publishers knew that his illustrations would improve the sale of the collected poems immeasurably, but Turner seemed at first reluctant to undertake the commission. He and Scott had not enjoyed each other’s company on a previous visit to Scotland (see p. 101). In the end he agreed and wrote to Scott asking him “how long do you think it will take me to collect the materials in your neighbourhood.” It was a very business-like letter; there was no mention of the great honour of being in the company of the illustrious writer, and all the other compliments conventional on such an occasion. No doubt he considered that he was honouring Scott with his presence. Scott had in fact only a short time to live but he seems to have been a companionable host at Abbotsford; he and Turner would set off on expeditions to inspect the local scenery, for which Scott provided an appropriate historical commentary.

  He did not accompany Turner to Fingal’s Cave, however, which the artist visited on what was for him a typically stormy and rain-driven day. “After scrambling over the rocks on the lee side of the island,” he wrote later, “some got into Fingal’s cave, others would not. It is not very pleasant or safe when the wave rolls right in.” He was one of those who did manage to enter the cavern, of course, for he sketched its interior. He never bowed to the fury of the elements when he anticipated a new scene or prospect opening out before him. He completed other water-colours of the Scottish landscape, of lochs and mountains; there are great vigour and energy in the execution, great majesty in the composition.

  In the exhibition of 1832 he displayed Sta fa, Fingal’s Cave, a wonderful composition of sea and smoke and storm in which the varying lights of the sky and water are given physical depth and texture; it is like some symphony of mist. It was greatly praised by the critics, one of whom described its “sublimity of vastness and solitude.” It was not purchased for another thirteen years, however, and the buyer was reported to have said that it was “indistinct.” Turner’s reply has been the object of much speculation. He either said “Indistinctness is my fault” or “indistinctness is my forte.” Whatever the interpretation, indistinctness is certainly the key. It may also help to describe another painting that he placed on exhibition in this year, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the Burning Fiery Furnace. He seems to have been inspired to paint this scene from the Book of Daniel in friendly rivalry with another artist, who had told him of his intention of depicting the biblical scene. “A good subject,” he had said. “I will paint it also.” It is a scene of indistinct figures and turbid fire, dismissed by one critic as one of his “unintelligible pieces of insanity.” The painting was considered to possess a “scorching” glare, and it was speculated that the canvas was made of asbestos—a tribute, perhaps, to the vivid immediacy of Turner’s colours.