At the last, we accept the extravagance of his contradictions; the determination which did not resolve those contradictions but defined him as a person; the discontent that kept driving him to attempt the impossible and make his dreams real; the ‘dark side’ but also that which was sun-lit.
Notes
1 Eastlake, Journals, i, p.273.
2 Whittingham, Ruskin as Turner’s Executor, p.7.
3 Eastlake, Journals, i, p.235.
4 Will, 2, p.27.
5 Ibid., p.32.
6 Times, 24 December 1851.
7 Jones, ‘Recollections’, in Letters, p.10.
8 Whitley, 1821–37, pp.282–3.
9 Ruskin, Modern Painters, v, pp.v-vii.
10 W. M. Rossetti, Rossetti Papers, 1903, p.383; Falk, p.233.
11 Harris, Life and Adventures, pp.288–9.
12 Robertson, Sir Charles Eastlake, p.303, citing letter of Ruskin to Wornum, 3 May 1862, in National Gallery archives.
13 Ruskin, Diaries, II, p.619.
14 Ruskin, Modern Painters, v, p.372.
15 Gowing, introduction to Finberg, Sketches and Drawings, p.xx.
16 Jones, ‘Recollections’, in Letters, p.10.
17 The huge collection of watercolours presented a separate problem of selection. A committee met at the National Gallery in December 1856 to choose 102 items for display at Marlborough House. Warrell, Through Switzerland, p.148.
18 Hawthorne, English Notebooks, ii, pp.382–9.
19 Finberg, p.450.
20 The first codicil, 1832, refers to ‘the object of keeping my works together.’ Will, 1, p.29. One cannot help but think that Somerset House would have made the best home for Turner.
21 Whittingham, Ruskin as Turner’s Executor, p.27.
22 Th. 1877, pp.362–5.
23 Wilton, p.248.
24 Dossier.
25 Jones, ‘Recollections’, in Letters, p.3.
26 Roberts, TS, 9, 1, p.7.
27 Ibid.
28 Wilton, Life and Work, p.470.
29 Letters, p.xxvi n.2.
30 Will, 2, p.20.
31 Ibid., p.21.
32 Walbrook, ‘Light on an Old Mystery’, Daily Telegraph, 27 June 1924.
33 Th. i, p.40.
34 G. Jones’s copy of Th. i.
35 Th. i, preface.
36 Walbrook, ‘Light on an Old Mystery’, Daily Telegraph, 27 June 1924.
37 Will, 2, p.21.
38 Ibid., p.22.
39 Th. 1877, p.127.
40 Dossier.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Stillman, Autobiography, i, pp.162–5.
44 Schuyler, American Architecture, pp.289–90.
Portrait of Turner, by J. Hogarth after Count Alfred D’Orsay, 1851
Appendix
47 Queen Ann (or Anne) Street
Although Turner (and subsequently many writers) refer to it as number 47, his property seems to have been given other numbers by various authorities. For a while in the early nineteenth century, it was considered part of 44 Queen Anne Street and later was one of several properties included in number 47. Turner’s first use of ‘47’ occurs in a note to T. J. Pettigrew, watermarked 1824. Turner mostly favoured the then common spelling ‘Ann’ but sometimes used ‘Anne’, which is the way the Queen herself spelt it, and the way it is spelt now.
In Richard Horwood’s map of the 1790s, the site where he built his Queen Anne Street house and gallery is shown as part of a gap between 44 Queen Ann Street and 64 Harley Street.
In the St Marylebone parish rate books for 1811–12, Wimpole Ward, 44 Queen Ann Street is an address shared by five different tenants and/or ratepayers: the Earl of Effington, rent £260; William Brown, £14; Robert Bennett, £45; John Jones, £20; and Joseph William Turner, Esq., £20. Turner’s section of the property seems to have been a mews building which had a door giving access to his first gallery running back over the garden behind his house at 64 Harley Street; ‘47 Queen Anne Street’ is in quite different hands at this date.
In Peter Potter’s map of 1832, Turner’s Queen Anne Street property is shown without a number between 47 Queen Ann Street and 64 Harley Street, facing north, near the south-west corner of Queen Anne and Harley Street.
In the 1841 census, Hannah Danby is listed as the only inhabitant present on the night preceding 6 June at one entry for 47 Queen Anne Street. In another entry, on a different page, for presumably another house named 47 Queen Anne Street, many people in another household are listed.
In the 1850 rate books for St Marylebone parish, Turner’s property is called ‘44c Queen Anne Street’.
name of occupier Josh Mallard William Turner
name of owner Duke of Portland
description of property house
gross estimated rental 72
rateable value 65
poor rate 6.10.
rate for repairing,
cleaning, and lighting
streets 2.16.10
In the 1851 census (30–31 March), the only inhabitant listed at ‘47a Queen Ann St.’ is Hannah Danby, serv. age sixty-four. At ‘47 Queen Ann St.’ are Edward Bullen, married, age fifty, magistrate, his wife Mary Ann, forty-eight, two daughters and nine servants. At ‘64 Harley St.’ are Edward Harran, forty-six, inn-keeper, his wife Sarah, daughter Sarah (age ten), three servants and two lodgers. One wonders what Magistrate and Mrs Bullen thought of their neighbours the artist and his solitary servant. In several legal papers in the Turner family dossier 47 Queen Anne Street is also referred to as 46a. It is described as ‘a messuage or tenement, gallery, outbuildings, and other erections on the south side of Queen Ann St. West’. The papers concern ‘the residue of a 60 year lease from April 1822 at a yearly rent of £60’.
The house was thirty-five feet wide but had only five windows at the front, presumably to avoid window tax. It was built of the yellow-brown bricks known as London Stock and (unfashionably) was not stucco covered. In 1859, when the street was renumbered, it became number 23 Queen Anne Street. Jabez Tepper, the lawyer for the relatives in the Chancery case, lived in the house some of the time between 1868 and 1871. The house was demolished in 1882.
Turner’s death mask, attributed to Thomas Woolner, 1851
Abbreviations (see Select Bibliography for full details)
AR C. R. Leslie, Autobiographical Reflections
B&J Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J. M. W. Turner
Century Richard and Samuel Redgrave, A Century of British Painters
Dossier a collection of MS material kept by Turner descendants
finberg A. J. finberg, The Life of J. M. W. Turner
Geese Selby Whittingham, Of Geese, Mallards and Drakes
IGI International Genealogical Index
Letters John Gage, ed., Collected Correspondence of J. M. W. Turner
Lindsay Jack Lindsay, J. M. W. Turner: his Life and Work
Monkhouse W. Cosmo Monkhouse, Turner
Powell Cecilia Powell, Turner in the South
Pye-Roget John Lewis Roget, ed., Notes and Memoranda
TB Turner Bequest
Th. Walter Thornbury, The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A.
TS Turner Studies
TSN Turner Society News
Watts Alaric Watts, biographical sketch in Leitch Ritchie, Liber Fluviorum
Will Selby Whittingham, An Historical Account of the Will of J. M. W. Turner, R.A.
Wilton Andrew Wilton, Turner in his Time
Selected Bibliography
All titles published in London except where cited.
General
Armstrong, Sir Walter, Turner, London and New York, 1902
Ballantine, James, Life of David Roberts, 1866
Bayes, Walter, Turner, a Speculative Portrait, 1931
Berger, John, About Looking, London and New York, 1980
Boswell, James, London Journal, 1950
Bretherton, F. F., The Origins and Progress of Methodism in Margate, Ma
rgate 1908
Broughton, Lord (J. C. Hobhouse), Recollections of a Long Life vol. iii, 1910
Bryant, Arthur, The Age of Elegance, 1954
Burnet, John, Turner and His Works (incl. memoir by Peter Cunningham), 1852
Butlin, Martin and Joll, Evelyn, The Paintings of J. M. W. Turner, 2 vols, 1977, rev. edn 1984
Butlin, Martin with Mollie Luther and Ian Warrell, Turner at Petworth, 1986
Carey, William, Some Memoirs of the Patronage and Progress of the Fine Arts, 1819
Cobbett, William, Rural Rides, 1830, repr. 2 vols, 1908
Colvin, Howard, Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840, 1978
Cooper, T. Sidney, R. A., My Life, 2 vols, 1890
Creevey, Thomas, The Creevey Papers, ed. H. Maxwell, 2 vols, 1904
Cunningham, Peter: see Burnet
Disraeli, Benjamin, Sybil, 1845, rep. 1954
Eastlake, Lady, Journals and Correspondence, 2 vols, 1895
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, English Traits, 1856 (in Collected Writings, vol. 5, Cambridge, Mass., 1994)
Falk, Bernard, Turner the Painter, 1938
Farington, Joseph see Grieg; and Garlick, Macintyre and Cave
Finberg, A. J., A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, 2 vols, 1909
The History of Turner’s Liber Studiorum, 1924
In Venice with Turner, 1930
Turner’s Sketches and Drawings, 1910, repr., New York, 1960
The Life of J. M. W. Turner, 2nd edn, Oxford, 1961
Turner’s Watercolours at Farnley Hall, n.d.
Finley, Gerald, Turner and George IV in Edinburgh, 1981
Forster, John, Life of Dickens, 3 vols, 1873
Frith, William Powell, My Autobiography, 3 vols, 1887
Gage, John, Colour in Turner: Poetry and Truth, 1969
J. M. W. Turner: ‘A Wonderful Range of Mind’, 1987, New Haven, Conn. and London
Turner: Rain, Steam and Speed, 1972
ed., Collected Correspondence of J. M.W. Turner, Oxford, 1980
Garlick, K., Macintyre, A. and Cave, K., eds, The Diary of Joseph Farington, 16 vols, New Haven, Conn. and London 1978–84
George, M. Dorothy, London Life in the Eighteenth Century, 1925, repr. 1966
Goodall, Frederick, Reminiscences, 1902
Gotch, Rosamund, Maria, Lady Callcott, 1937
Gowing, Lawrence, Turner: Imagination and Reality, NY, 1966
Graves, Charles, Leather Armchairs, 1963
Greaves, Margaret, Regency Patron: Sir George Beaumont, 1966
Greig, J., ed., The Diary of Joseph Farington, 8 vols, 1922–8
Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, The Life of J. M. W. Turner R.A., 1879
Hampden, John, ed., An Eighteenth Century Journal 1774–76, 1940
Harris, Frank, His Life and Adventures, 1947
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Passages from the English Notebooks, Boston, 1870
Haydon, Benjamin Robert, Autobiography and Journals, 1853, ed. M. Elwin, 1950
Hazlitt, William, Selected Writings, ed. R. Blythe, 1970
Collected Works, 1903
Herrmann, Luke, Ruskin and Turner, 1968
Hibbert, Christopher, The Grand Tour, 1987
Hill, David, In Turner’s Footsteps through the Hills and Dales of Northern England, Oxford 1984
Turner in the Alps, 1992
Turner on the Thames, New Haven, Conn. and London, 1993
Turner’s Birds, Oxford, 1988
Homer, The Odyssey, trans. R. Fitzgerald, New York, 1961
Hunt, J. D., The Wider Sea: a Life of John Ruskin, 1982
Hutchison, Sidney, The History of the Royal Academy 1768–1968, 1968
Jones, George, MS ‘Recollections of J. M. W. Turner’, in Gage, Collected Correspondence of J. M. W. Turner, pp.1–10
Sir Francis Chantrey R.A., 1849
Kennedy, Ludovic, Nelson and his Captains, 1975 (first published as Nelson’s Band of Brothers, 1951)
Kitson, Michael, Turner, 1964
Leslie, Charles Robert, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, R.A., 1845
Autobiographical Reflections, 2 vols, 1860
Leslie, George D., The Inner Life of the Royal Academy, 1914
Leslie, Robert C., A Waterbiography, 1894, repr. Southampton 1985
Lesure, F. and Nichols, R. eds, Letters of Claude Debussy, 1987
Lindsay, Jack, The Sunset Ship: The Poems of J. M. W. Turner, 1966
J. M. W. Turner: his Life and Work, London and Greenwich, Conn., 1966
Lloyd, Mary, Sunny Memories, privately printed, 1880 (pp.31–8 repr. TS 4, 1, p.22)
Marryat, Captain Frederick, Jacob Faithful, 1929
Marsden, Christopher, The English at the Seaside, 1947
Mayhew, Henry, London Labour and the London Poor, 4 vols, vols i–iii 1851, vol. iv 1862
Miller, Thomas, Turner and Girtin’s Picturesque Views, 1854
Monkhouse, W. Cosmo, Turner, 1879
Moore, Thomas, Memoirs, vol. iii 1853
Nevill, Ralph, London Clubs, 1911
Nicholson, Kathleen, Turner’s Classical Landscapes, Princeton, 1990
Owen, Felicity and Brown, David Blaney, Collector of Genius, New Haven, Conn. and London, 1988
Powell, Cecilia, Turner in the South, New Haven, Conn. and London, 1987
Raistrick, Arthur, The Pennine Dales, 1968
Rasmussen, Steen Eiler, London: The Unique City, 1934, repr. 1961
Rawlinson, W. G., Turner’s Liber Studiorum, 1878, 2nd edn 1906
Redding, Cyrus, Fifty Years’ Recollections, Literary and Personal, 2 vols, 1858
Past Celebrities Whom I Have Known, 1866
Redgrave, Richard, A Memoir, ed. F. M. Redgrave, 1891
Redgrave, Richard and Samuel, A Century of British Painters, 2 vols, 1866, 2nd edn 1890, repr. 1947
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, Discourses, ed. P. Rogers, 1992
Richardson, Jonathan, Works, ed. J. Richardson Jr, 1773
Ritchie, Leitch, Liber Fluviorum, 1853
Robertson, David, Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World, Princeton, 1978
Rogers, Samuel, Table Talk, 1856
Roget, John Lewis, A History of the ‘Old Water-Colour’ Society, 2 vols, 1891 ed., Notes and Memoranda respecting the Liber Studorium by John Pye, 1879
Ruskin, John, Praeterita (including Dilecta), 1885–9
Elements of Drawing, 1857
Notes by Mr. Ruskin on his Drawings by Turner, 1878
Modern Painters, 6 vols, 1897–8 edn
The Works of John Ruskin, Sir E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn, eds, 39 vols, 1903–12
The Harbours of England, repr. 1907
Diaries, J. Evans and J. H. Whitehouse, eds, 3 vols, Oxford, 1956–9
Ruskin Today, K Clark, ed., 1964
Sandby, W., The History of the Royal Academy of Arts, 2 vols, 1862
Schetky, S. F. L., Ninety Years of Work and Play, sketches from the career of John Christian Schetky, Edinburgh, 1877
Schuyler, Montgomery, American Architecture and Other Writings, Cambridge, Mass. 1961
Shanes, Eric, Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales, 1979
Turner’s England 1810–38, 1990
Turner’s Human Landscape, 1990
Sickert, Walter, A Free House!, ed. O. Sitwell, 1947
Simond, L., Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain during the years 1810 and 1811, 1815
Smith, J. T., A Book for a Rainy Day, 1845, repr. 1906
Nollekens and his Times, 1829, repr. 1920
Smith, Sydney, Selected Writings, ed. W. H. Auden, 1956
Smollett, Tobias, Travels through France and Italy (1766), Works, 1872
Stainton, Lindsay, Turner’s Venice, 1985
Stillman, W. J., Autobiography of a Journalist, 2 vols, 1901
Stokes, Adrian, Painting and the Inner World, 1963
Summerson, John, Georgian London, 1962
Swinburne, C. A., Life and Works of J. M. W. Tu
rner R.A., 1902
Thomson, David, England in the Nineteenth Century, 1950
Thornbury, Walter, The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A., 2 vols, 1862, one-vol. rev. edn 1877, repr. 1904
Timbs, John, Lives of the Wits and Humourists, vol. ii, 1862
Anecdote Lives, 1872
Trevor-Roper, Patrick, The World through Blunted Sight, 1970
Trimmer, Sarah, Some Account of the Life and Writings of Mrs Trimmer, 2 vols, 1814
Turner, Charles, Diary, MS in Osborn Collection, Beineke Library, Yale University; repr. Whitman 1907 and Will, 2, 1995
Uwins, Thomas Mrs, Memoir of Thomas Uwins, 2 vols, 1858
Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. R. Fitzgerald, 1983, repr. 1993
Walden, Sarah, The Ravished Image, 1985
Walton, lzaak, The Compleat Angler, 1653, repr. 1962
Whitley, W. T., Art in England 1800–20, Cambridge, 1928
Art in England 1821–37, Cambridge 1930
Artists and their Friends in England 1700–1799, vol. ii 1928
Whitman, Alfred, Charles Turner, 1907
Whittingham, Selby, Ruskin as Turner’s Executor, 1995
Of Geese, Mallards and Drakes, 3 vols, 1993–6
An Historical Account of the Will of J. M. W. Turner, R.A., 5 parts, 2nd edn, 1996
Wilkinson, Gerald, Turner on Landscape, 1982
Turner’s Early Sketchbooks, 1972
Wilton, Andrew, The Life and Work of J. M. W. Turner (with catalogue of watercolours), 1979
Turner Abroad, 1982
Turner in his Time, 1987
Woodforde, James, Diary of a Country Parson, ed. J. Beresford, 1935, repr. Oxford 1978
J.M.W. Turner Page 57
