MR. THORNBURY'S LIFE OF TURNER.*
ON the 23rd of April, 1775, in a mean house in Maiden-lane, Covent- garden, Joseph Mallord William Turner was born. His father was a barber, who, to the proverbial talkativeness of his profession, added strong economical tendencies. "Dad never praised me except for saving a halfpenny," said Turner, in after years. To avoid the expense, it is said, of the dame's school, the parent himself taught his son to read, and it was not until he had reached the age of ten that young Turner was sent to an elementary school at Brentford. Before this he had giien evidences of his bias towards painting, and at school he was more remembered for the drawings of cocks and hens he made on the walls than for his aptitude for general study. After a short period here he was removed to an academy in Soho. At the age of thirteen he is sent to his third school at Margate. For how long a period he stayed there is not shown, but his father having by this time deter- mined that "Billy shall become a painter," young Turner attends a drawing-school in St. Martin's-lane, kept by Paul Sandby, a Royal Academician. At this period he works in his little bedroom colour- ing engravings for Raphael Smith, the printseller, and making copies • The We of J. M. W. Turner, R.A. Founded on Letters and Papers )furnished by his Friends and Fellow-Academicians. By Walter Thornbury. Two Volumes. London: Hurst and Blacken. of Paul Sandby, which last are hung in the barber's shop at prices varying from one to three shillings. He has found out other ways, too, of making money by touching up amateur drawings, or putting in skies and backgrounds to architects' plans. Now he goes to a Mr. Malton's, a perspective draughtsman, to learn the mysteries of vanish. ing lines, and ylanes, and mathematics. Melton can make nothing of the boy, who is pronounced dull and stupid ; but years afterwards he masters the science, and becomes Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy. Mr. Hardwick, father to the present architect, next takes Turner into his office, where he acquires, from academical eleva- tions of the Parthenon or St. Paul's, gentlemen's seats or temples of the Muses, a knowledge of architecture. Mr. Hardwick did not bind Turner to any agreement, and quickly recognizing the imagina- tive nature of the lad, advised his getting into the Academy as a student. A drawing of an antique statue is sent in and approved, and, after the probationary trial, Turner becomes an Academy student at the age of fourteen. About this time he makes copies of some of Reynolds's pictures at Sir Joshua's studio, and at fifteen exhibits for the first time. The Academy catalogue for 1790 contains Turner's name appended to a " View of the Archbishop's Palace at Lambeth." Still colouring prints and washing in architectural backgrounds, Turner diversifies his labours by sketching tours, in which he carries all his baggage tied in a handkerchief at the end of a stick, and sleeps at small public-houses. Accustomed to plain and simple fare, possessed of a strong constitution, and impressed with a due sense of the value of money, it was a pleasure rather than a hardship for Turner to subsist on these occasions at the moderate rate of a guinea for four or five days. He now commenced teaching, giving lessons, first for five, then ten shillings, and subsequently a guinea. As a teacher he was unsuccessful; he hated the work, was eccentric in manner, and left his pupils too much to themselves. Time rolls on, and the painter is in love with the sister of an old Margate schoolfellow. After the usual exchange of vows, Turner leaves his portrait with the loved one, and, promising to write frequently, starts on a long sketching tour. In his absence the girl is subjected to the persecu- tions of a step-mother, who intercepts Turner's letters. Not hearing from her lover, thinking, perhaps, he has forgotten her, and being unable longer to resist. the chance of escaping from the step-mother's tyranny, she gives her hand to another, and the day is fixed for the wedding. A week before that day Turner returns, explanations ensue, entreaties and arguments are of no avail. The young lady considers herself bound in honour to Number Two, and Turner leaves her in bit- ter grief, declaring he will never marry. Mr. Thornbury lays much stress on this episode, and thinks that it wrought on the painter "in- calculable harm by souring his great and generous nature. The misery of his scathed life, and the constant dwelling on those sad words, `the fallacies of hope,' prove the nnchangeability of his passion." Disappointed in love, Turner devotes himself to art and money-getting with passionate eagerness : he works for publishers, his drawings are sought after, he is introduced to art-patrons, and gradually becomes established in his profession. In 1799 he is made Associate of the Academy, and three years later, at the early age of twenty-seven, attains his diploma as R.A. In the same year he makes his first continental tour through France and Switzerland. From this time we get different glimpses of him. At one time he is engaged on sepia drawings for his famous " Liber Stndiorum," a work which, begun in rivalry of Claude's "Liber Veritatis," elaborated with ex- tremest care, and engraved chiefly with his own hands, shows his wondrous command of landscape art and his boundless powers of truth and imagination. The publication extended over some years, each part containing five prints. It was unsuccessful at first, and stopped suddenly when Turner got more profitable engagements. A single unpublished plate has since sold for 201., and a complete set of the prints for 30001. Again, never idle, he is now painting oil pic- tures at Petworth, now water-colour drawings from memory, full of intricate and delicate detail, in Mr. Fawkes's drawing-room in York- shire, and in his numerous sketching journeys taking notes of every- thing he comes across—interiors, costume, heraldry, every kind of boat and shipping, separate parts of vessels, farming operations, scenes of town life, figures, and animals. He would be seen seated in a boat on the Thames or Medway, painting away on a large canvas, or be met on the Simplon road with his eternal faded umbrella and sketch-book. Then we see him in his suburban retreat at Twickenham, in the garden of which he planted numerous willows, and dug a pond, into which he put the fish lie caught, for Turner was a great fisher- man, and could throw a fly in first-rate style. It was here he kept a gig and an old crop-eared horse. With these he used to sally forth in search of the picturesque, the sketching apparatus stowed under the seat of the gig. The scene changes to the dingy house in Queen Anne-street, with its dust-covered furniture, threadbare carpets, patched and dirty windows. The old father has become his son's willing drudge. He strains the canvases, prepares grounds, opens the door to visitors, and even, so it is asserted, looks after the do- mestic and culinary arrangements. Here was Turner's gallery—a bare and chilly place, in which were heaps of dusty frames and stacks of noble pictures, their faces turned to the wall. The rain would trickle down upon them and the thirty thousand proofs of engravings from the ill-fitting and badly-mended skylights. Behind these neg- lected works the tailless cats that Turner delighted to keep would play at hide and seek. Yet, neglected as these works might appear, Turner had a full appreciation of their value. Fabulous sums were offered for them, but their painter was blind to cheques, -and the flourish of bank-notes moved him not. Strange stories were current of the eccentricities and the unbounded wealth of Turner, who, it was reported, had expressed his determination to be buried in his "Car- usage" as a winding-sheet. " Will you promise," said he to Chantrey, to see me rolled up in it "Yes," said Chantrey ; "and I pro- mise you, that as soon as you are buried I will see you taken up and unrolled." This story is told by the late Mr. Leslie, who, however, does not vouch for its accuracy. Latterly Turner secluded himself from his friends and brother academicians. It was known that he had another home, but no one cared or dared to express openly his curiosity. An accident dis- covered to his old housekeeper at Queen Anne-street that he was residing at Chelsea. In a cottage by the river-side, with a railed-in roof, from which be was accustomed to watch atmospheric effects, the great landscape painter, under an assumed name, breathed his last. The thick-set, florid-complexioned, sturdy-looking old man, whom Leslie described as looking " at first sight like the captain of a river steamer, but a second would find far more in his face than belongs to any ordinary mind," was called by the street boys and tradesmen of Chelsea " Puggy Booth" and "Admiral Booth." It is said that he retired here for the benefit of his health, but darker reasons have been assigned. The love of nature, ever paramount with Turner, forsook him only at the last moment. Up to the period of his last illness he would often rise at daybreak, throw a dressing-gown around him, and ascend to the house-top, "to see the sun rise, and observe the colour flow flushing back into the pale morning sky." He clung to life with great tenacity. When the doctor warned hint his end was near, he would not believe. " Go down stairs," said he, " take a glass of wine, and look at me again." The doctor complied with this ghastly humorous request, but still held out no hope, and the old painter gradually sank. The blinds were raised, so that he might look out on the face of nature for the last time. The beams of the wintry sun shot into the room, and shone on the bed of the dying man. So, on the banks of his favourite Thames, and gazing on that sun to picture which had been his constant effort, died Turner, at the age of seventy-six. Of Turner's artistic powers it is not necessary to say anything here. The able and eloquent pen of Mr, Ruskin has so elaborately dwelt upon the merits and the defects of his style, and has brought to the task such a vast amount of knowledge, derived from incessant study of his subject, that it would be impertinent, and even difficult, for another to add to what he has written. Mr. Thornbury, feeling this, probably, has largely availed himself of Mr. Ruskin's labours. In no other case have we such an opportunity of studying the works of our great painters from the dawn to the full development of their genius as is afforded by the display of Turner's at the South Ken- sington Museum. There we may note the different methods of study he pursued at various periods, and trace the gradual ripening of his power from the first period of brown and grey tones, heavy touch, and sober colour, down to the latest supernatural fantasies, painted apparently, for the sole purpose of defying or perplexing the critics and astounding the public.
Turner's character presents many contradictions. He drove hard bargains with his engravers, and would stipulate for the payment of six shillings coach hire over and above the three or five hundred guineas received for a picture ; yet, although many stories are related of his penury and covetousness, he could, as in one instance he did, return bills for 10001., and on many occasions not only forgave debts owing to him, but furnished to others the means of relieving them- selves from difficulties at a time when there was little prospect of his ever being repaid. He scarcely ever gave away the slightest drawing, and seldom spoke highly of a contemporary, but he would do generous acts for his brother artists, and help the younger ones with sound and sensible advice. He once took down one of his own pictures from the Academy walls and hung a work of great promise, by Bird, (then an unknown man) in its place; on another occasion he passed a wash of lampblack over the sky of his "Cologne," lest its brilliant colour should detract from the merits of two of Lawrence's portraits hung in its immediate neighbourhood. Those who knew Turner slightly, spoke of him as a morose and taciturn man ; his friends gave him credit for a kindly and genial nature, notwithstanding a certain rough demeanour, and a shrewdness of observation and playfulness of wit mingled with satire. He was obstinate even in his friendships, irritable to a fault, yet in illness Turner would attend a friend with womanly tenderness and assiduity ; even when fishing he would throw most of the fish he caught back into the stream, and the boys at Twickenham gave him the name of " Old Blackbirdy," because he would not let them take the nests from his garden hedges. The moral character of Turner, especially in his later years, will not bear close inspection. "A brooding and solitary life could not be ex- pected to lead to anything but a selfish and vicious old age. Latterly Turner resorted to wine while he painted, and at Chelsea, I fear, gave way to even more fatal drinking." It is impossible to read the story of Turner's life without a feeling of melancholy. Mr. Thornbury thus sums it up : " With all the delights of a per- petual study of nature in her loveliest haunts, Turner's life was an unhappy one. Born in a sordid house, his mother insane, the dwarfed mind of his father unable to comprehend him, unfortunate in love, struggling on as a small drawing-master and painter of back- greueds, then battling with the engravers and publishers, with no wife to share his cares and console him in his disappointments, sur- rounded by jealous rivals, neglected by the rich cognoscenti of the day, unable to sell the most favourite works of his genius, Turner arrived at middle life before he could he said to have attained any certainty of fame. In a room that resembled the miserable Barry's, he lived his enthusiast life with no companion but his old house- Ileeper—the somewhat more than housekeeper, other than wife- xnally retiring to # fresh haunt at Chelsea to die, untended but by
the mercenary love of a new mistress, with no hope for the next world, as there had been none in this. Then the melancholy results of an entangled and ill thought-out existence, blunders growing from blunders, and culminating in that of a confused and half-can- celled will.
" Relations disregarded or disliked dispute the will. The charity that has been the great man's thought for forty years falls to ground, and a poor 20,0001. goes to the Royal Academy—a body already groaning with useless wealth.
" Unhappy result of a confused life ! Turner's charity. fast° the ground. The wish, Turner's ambition (his baser part), is gratified. There will be a 10001. statue in St. Paul's, where Turner lies, tran- quilly and without jostling, between Sir Joshua and Barry. There will be a Turner gallery, devoted to his best and worst works. There will be a Turner gold medal given away at stated periods ; but the good he wished to do" (the founding an asylum for decayed artists) "is not done." .
Mr. Thornbury may be congratulated on the completion of an arduous task, the difficulties of which, however, have been in some measure alleviated by, the ready co-operation he has met with on all hands from the friends of the deceased artist, who have only been too glad to place their stores at his disposal. The work has extended at intervals over a period of four years ; and, impressed with the im- portance of the subject, the author has treated it with reverence and earnestness—the style being quieter and more dignified than is usual in some of his previous works. Mr. Thornbury has honestly en- deavoured to paint Turner truly, regarding him neither with the eyes of an enthusiast nor with those of a cynic. He sets the vices and the virtues of the deceased painter before us with equal plainness and manliness, trying to show the man as he himself believes Turner to have been : "an image of gold with feet of clay." Faults there are in the work, of course. The arrangement is somewhat scattered and confused ; extraneous matter, such as the history of the founding of the Royal Academy, is too often introduced, and the same incident is told over again in many. cases. For instance, Mr. Thornbury informs us no less than three times of the not important fact that Turner designed his own doorway in Queen Anne-street, and several instances of inaccuracies in names and dates should be rectified in a subsequent edition. Thus Sir George Beaumont, of " brown-tree " celebrity, is often alluded to as Sir John Beaumont, the Rev. Mr. Judkin has a supplemental " s " added to his name, while, according to a list of Turner's contemporaries, it would appear that Sir Edwin Landseer is seven years younger than Mr. Millais ! The former, according to Mr. Thornbury, was born in "1826, the. year of Caligula's Palace,' * and Mr. Millais in "1819, the year of Richmond Hill.' " Ten years are thus added to Mr. Millais's age, and several deducted from that of the great animal painter.
Allowing for these objections, Mr. Thornbnry's work must not wily be considered as the very best that lie has written, but as a valuable addition to our artistic biography. To the professional student it will be especially interesting, as many technical matters, such as the nature of Turner's materials, and his method of using them, are very fully entered into. Carefully compiled catalogues of all Turner's engraved works—of the pictures he exhibited at the Academy, of those he bequeathed to the nation, and of miscellaneous collections in their present state—are also given, and the volumes are illustrated with portraits of Turner and views of his different residences.
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