PICTURES AND ARTISTS.
A VISIT TO TURNER'$ GALLERY.
Itre availed ourselves of the privilege which is liberally extended to students of art during the time that the Royal Academy is closed to them on account of the coming Exhibition, to take another look at the few of Mr. TURNER'S splendid paintings that enrich the walls of bis gallery. TURNER is not the only painter who rises in estimation after a retro- spective glance at his career in art. If he had only painted the works that hang in the room, TURNER would have placed himself at the head of the British school of landscape painting, and on a level with the greatest masters of any other. Time, by mellowing the resplendent tone of his pictures, has enriched their powerful effect ; sobering dowa to the reality of nature his harmonious and brilliant colouring. His picture of Rake, exhibited two or three seasons ago, and which was considered at the time one of his most garish paintings, now exhibits only an allowable heightening of the hues of nature, to suit the colour.. ine of the poetic fancy. The exquisite harmony of the whole prevents the eye from being painfully sensible of the high key to which it is wrought in the scale of colour. Near it is the famous picture of Richmond Hill ; the foreground of which is made the scene of a rejoicing on the King's Birth-day, in 1820, for the purpose of intro- ducing the gorgeous colours of military uniforms' gags, Sec. These bear down into the deep sober hues of evening in the distant landscape, which the painter is thus enabled to present in all the richness and warmth of the close of a glowing summer's day, over which the cool shade of twilight is just stealing. The distance is magically true aud beautiful. The eye dues not reach the horizon at once, but seems to travel over the wilderness of foliage until the hills that bound the view arrest its progress. Other artists are content to give the effect of distance by mistiness : TURNLR here represents the remotest objects as seen in nature through the clearest atmosphere ; and the effect of distance and space in the landscape is increased. We wish the parade and show away : but if it be necessary to such an effect as this, we can excuse it, were the figures more preposterous than they are. Near to this, a complete contrast to it in tone and colour, yet not the less true to nature, is a lovely scene of the verdurous valley of the Tamar. The foliage is of the cool, gray green, that the trees and herb- age exhibit in a moist climate under a bright but clouded sky. It is fresh, but not cold. At the other end of the gallery, is another green landscape ; a classical composition, with a long stately bridge crossing a river, CsavnE-like in arrangement and tone, having equal space and repose, with greater solidity of substance. These pictures are finished with the utmost care ; and the effect is proportionately real and beautiful. We wish TURNER would return to the sober beauty and elaborate truth of his earlier works, and cease " to gild re- fined gold and paint the lily." His knowledge and experience of the varying effects of nature, and the refinement of his skill in presenting them, are as much shown in his imitations of the subtle gradations of colour in a verdant English landscape, as in the gorgeous hues of Italian sunlight ; and the temptation to go beyond the actual truth of nature is not so great.
The two imaginative architectural landscapes, allegorical of the rise and decline of the Carthaginian empire, show how the probable in scenery and the real in effect transcend the impossible exaggerations of MARTIN'S scenic pictures. The invention here displayed is of the physical rather than of the intellectual kind, however. But this is TURNER'S forte. He is Nature's " property-man; " and brings out stores of wealth in heaps, scarcely knowing when to have done. His .figures here are unexceptionable, as a landscape-painter's. The flood of golden sunshine in which he has steeped one scene, and the paler bril- liance that invests the other, are like Nature's own.
We have seen TURNER in cool and warm effects, and here we admire him also in a wintry scene. The hard frosty ground, the naked trees, the cold, dead, white sky, and the pale, weak, yellow gleam of sunlight, that scarcely relieves the cheerless desolation, or lessens the cold of the air, are imitated with the most delicate truth. Here are no raw white masses of snow and black branches, but the true tone of nature is imitated to perfection ; for the picture conveys the feeling of the season. What a contrast does it present to this river-scene at harvest-time ! It does not need the man stooping to wash his face, to convey an idea of the sultry heat of a summer noon. Nothing can be more simple than this composition ; nor more broad, quiet, and true than its effect. Even in these and the other pictures, comprising but a hundredth part of what TURNER has painted, it is extraordinary to find every effect dif- ferent: but, as far as our observation extends, the painter might chal- lenge any one to produce two effects alike in his works. What other landscape-painter, ancient or modern, could bear the same test? Is not this a striking proof of the truth and skill of TURNER'S imitation, as well as the quickness and delicacy of his perception of the appear- ances of nature ?
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