&r5 MEM - FEIrgi ART
The Fallacy of Hope —2
By BRYAN ROBERTSON IN his final illness, Turner was told by Dr. Price of Margate (where he stayed in his later years in lodgings) that death was near. `Go down- stairs, take a glass of sherry, and then look at me again,' was the reply. But it was hopeless. Even more defeatist, I fear, is our treatment of Turner today. How many of us know Pilate Washing his Hands, painted in 1830 and rarely exhibited? The treatment of figures, let alone the manipulation of paint, is extraordinary: it touches on Rembrandt and Delacroix, and anticipates Redon, Rouault and Kokoschka. How familiar are we with the Skeleton Falling off a Horse in Mid-air? An alarming masterpiece: it could have been painted yesterday and pro- vides a link between Turner and Bacon. And those Burial at Sea paintings with dense black masses floating in a void with the corners of the canvases eliminated: Turner was not ex- tending the vignette conventions of his day, he was experimenting with abstract space and mass and foreshadowing what we now call shaped canvases. Innumerable other paintings, equally prophetic, rarely if ever see the light of day.
It is not generally known that Sir Kenneth Clark discovered a roll of unknown canvases by Turner rotting in the basement of the National Gallery during the early years of the war, when he was director of that institution. Since then matters have improved : Sir John Rothenstein and his successor at the Tate, Norman Reid, both care passionately for Turner and gradually the task of cleaning and restoration has evolved. Turner's representation at the Tate has improved, but lacks a coherent plan: large numbers of unique works have been stored in the basement; other paintings are deployed among the V and A, the National Gallery and elsewhere; whilst the 19,000 watercolours are preserved in boxes at the British Museum.
Turner knew that his work must be considered as a whole. All the anticipatory seeds of the later vision are in early paintings and drawings; they exist throughout the poetry, so brilliantly dissected by Jack Lindsay in his pioneer essay*; whilst later studies refer back to earlier paint- ings and comment on them. At the simplest level, it is imperative to see the effortlessly authoritative and detailed background of archi- tectural structure which lay behind those evanescent, shimmering distillations of light and colour, when the paint seems to have been floated on to the canvas without visible means of support. Turner was a very great draughts- man and this gift strengthened everything he touched. In addition—though this is coincidental —he recorded England as no other artist has ever done: the rivers, the towns, the fields, the churches, palaces, castles and cathedrals. He was in Venice only twice, for very brief periods, though it is currently fashionable to think first of the Venetian paintings when Turner comes to mind. The essential issue remains that whatever fashion takes for itself, Turner's work must be considered in its entirety as a unified activity with endless cross-references and complicities.
* THE SUNSET Snip. (Scorpion Press, 30s.)
Turner's expressed wish that a museum or public gallery should be devoted to his work has been ignored by successive governments. Any visitor to this country who wants to experience what Turner intended must work very hard indeed. Paintings have languished in obscurity because there was no room upstairs, or they awaited restoration. There is a Musee Rodin in Paris. Why can't there be a Turner Museum in England? This is a national debt of honour, perpetually evaded. Burlington House would be a perfect site. (Turner loved the Academy.) A recent development adds insult to neglect. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is staging an exhibition, which opens on March 21, of the late period of Turner in order to show that he was a precursor of abstract expressionism as well as impressionism. It is feeble that the Americans should have been allowed to take the initiative in this manner : we should have offered them a fully comprehensive assembly in the first place. To allow a partial view of Turner to be used as a demonstration piece in the debatable propositions of museum officials is both crass and a betrayal of everything Turner believed in and desired. He would wince when particu- lar works were singled out for praise, for he knew that what he was so obsessively striving to accomplish could be seen only as a unity. A Tate official working on the show has made some comments to the press recently (Guardian, February 3) which make painful reading. Recall- ing the well-known incidents of Turner's bravura last-minute activities on varnishing day at the annual RA show, and his occasional practical assistance to other artists, this enthusiast said, . . it was as if he needed to exhibit an action as well as a picture.' Possibly intended to please our American cousins, eager to extend the premises of their own action painting, this is a false interpretation of Turner greatly conditioned by present-day standards. Turner's vision, his methods and, above all, the giant sweep of his work, are obsessively personal and should be respected—not falsified as a peg for modern practices. The motives behind the American overture are honourable, if misguided. They are surprised and worried by the immensely high insurance valuations, for they are paying all the costs of the show! The whole story is bizarre: it is as if we asked the Americans for an Eakins show, at our expense—but limited to paintings of the Schuylkill river.
The US Turner show is mainly restricted to loans from public sources. A large number of crucially important works are in private collec- tions in this country and abroad; and though the national collections are rich in material, it is misleading to gauge Turner's accomplishment without recourse to these privately-owned con- flagrations, in oil or watercolour: with Turner both are equally important. His achievement in its entirety is without parallel. We remain largely oblivious of its magnitude. His aesthetic aims and practical intentions, quite explicitly stated, have been consistently ignored and remain dis- honoured.
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