Early English Water-Colour Drawings of the Great Masters

As Turner’s drawings formed the chief feature of the exhibition I will begin my comments with them. The best way to arrange my notes seems to be to take the drawings in their chronological order, disregarding the sequence in which they were hung in the exhibition. By beginning in this way, with the earlier drawings, we shall be able to study the gradual development of Turner’s mind and skill.

[A] 128. Church of St. Lawrence, Evesham, as seen through Tower Gateway, 1793.

139. Old Abbey, Evesham, 1793 (Plate I).

These two subjects were sketched during the summer of 1792, when Turner was seventeen years of age. He was then a student at the Royal Academy schools, where he attended the life class diligently during the winter and spring months. In the early part of the summer of 1792, he went to Bristol to visit his uncle’s friends, the Narraways, and went from there to South Wales, Hereford, Great Malvern, Worcester, Evesham, Tewkesbury and Gloucester. Several of the pencil drawings made during this tour were exhibited some years ago at Mr. Walker’s gallery in Bond Street.

These two highly finished and accomplished water-colours are good examples of the work of the industrious apprentice. One searches them in vain for signs of originality, for some promise of a new way of thinking or feeling, a new vision, or a new form of expression. Their aims are conventional, and their modest triumphs are triumphs of the commonplace virtues--intelligence, docility, and above all, industry working upon a foundation of natural talent. In them Turner was trying to do exactly what the successful topographical and antiquarian draughtsmen of the day were doing,--Sandby, Rooker, Hearne and Dayes--and the precocious boy has already succeeded in doing such work nearly as well as it can be done.

53. Malmesbury Abbey, 1794 (Plate II).

Though a year later in execution than the Evesham drawings, this was based on sketches which had been made in 1791. These are now in the National Gallery (Turner Bequest, VII C. and D.) One is inscribed in Turner’s handwriting, “The Ruins of the Tower at the West End of Malmesbury Abbey, taken from the Friars Walk, 1791.” It is carefully worked in water-colour with brown ink outlines. The other drawing is similarly worked and represents the same tower from a point of view a little more to the left and lower down. The picturesque features of these two views have been cunningly combined in the finished drawing.

Turner exhibited a drawing of Malmesbury Abbey at the Royal Academy in 1792. I was once misled by other writers into thinking that this drawing might be the one which was then exhibited. The date, 1794, disproves this. The present drawing is probably a reduced replica of the exhibited work.

156. Willesden Church, circa 1796.

I believe this is the drawing which was described as “Kilburn Church” in the J. E. Taylor sale. It is worked in blue and grey washes. It is connected, I think, with Turner’s activities as a teacher of drawing.

147. Water Mill, 1797-1798 (Plate III). 152. A Mountain Stream, 1798 (Plate IV). 159. Mountainous Landscape, 1798.

These drawings are separated from the views of Evesham by an interval of five or six years. Turner was now twenty-three years of age. His exhibits at the Royal Academy in 1796 and 1797 had proved him to be the most accomplished topographical and antiquarian draughtsman which this country had produced, but the limitations of such work were too narrow to satisfy either his ambitions or his powers of expression. He had made up his mind by this time to be an artist and not merely a draughtsman. He had felt the glamour of Richard Wilson’s paintings, and their rich and sombre harmonies of colour were haunting his imagination. There is a small pocket-book, bound in green leather, in the National Gallery, labelled by Turner on the back, “Studies for Pictures. Copies of Wilson,” which contains many colour sketches done from memory of pictures by Wilson which he had seen in public exhibitions or private collections. All the drawings and sketches from nature Turner made at this time show the influence of Wilson’s work. He was trying hard to see nature as Wilson had seen it, and he had evidently taken a strong dislike to the neat “bit-by-bit” style of painting of the “Evesham” and “Malmesbury Abbey” period. He had also begun painting in oil on rather a large scale; another influence which made for breadth of style.

In the Water Mill (Plate III) the results of his early training in topographical and antiquarian work are evident in the treatment of all the quaint details of the old mill. The irregularity of its structure, the effects of age and weather on the shapes of the roofs, and the colouring of the tiles, bricks and woodwork are rendered with intense sympathy and the most delicate and accurate observation. This delight in the irregularity and picturesqueness of old buildings, and the effects of weather, use and decay reminds one of Prout’s drawings; yet there are no traces of Prout’s mannerisms and shortcomings in this beautiful work of the young master, and there is a breadth and ease in Turner’s drawing which we look for in vain in Prout’s numerous productions.

In the first volume of “Modern Painters” Mr. Ruskin wrote: “we owe to Prout, I believe, the first perception, and certainly the only existing expression of that feeling which results from the influence among the noble lines of architecture, of the rent and the rust, the fissure, the lichen, and the weed, and from the writing upon the pages of ancient walls of the confused hieroglyphics of human history.” The Water Mill shows that Turner forestalled Prout by a good many years. If it were my business to point out to people the qualities of sight, brain-power and manual dexterity which distinguish the works of great artists from those of inferior ones, I should choose the best drawing of Prout I could secure and ask my students to compare it carefully with the Water Mill. Such comparison would show that Turner did everything that Prout did, and did it better; every picturesque detail is rendered with the same affectionate interest and fidelity; but while Prout seems to be working with a certain stiffness and rigidity, as though practising a formula, Turner’s rendering is delicate, supple, and without any self-consciousness or display.

In A Mountain Stream (Plate IV) Turner has got completely away from his early “bit-by-bit” manner of working. The scene is grasped as a whole, and every detail and part is subordinated to the general effect. This is a fine example of the early development of Turner’s executive mastery. Every touch is inspired by the general conception.

Turner spent the summer of 1798, when this drawing was made, in North Wales, visiting Kilgerran, Harlech, Conway and Carnarvon castles, and the neighbourhood of Snowdon. In the “Hereford Court” Sketch Book (Turner Bequest, XXXVIII) there are several Wilsonesque water-colours similar to this.

The Mountainous Landscape is probably a leaf of the “North Wales” Sketch Book, a smaller book in use at the same time as the “Hereford Court” Sketch Book. It is slighter and more summary than the Mountain Stream, being worked with a few simple washes put on at once with unerring skill and knowledge. This masterly little sketch was erroneously ascribed to Alexander Cozens in the catalogue; though why, I cannot imagine, as it does not bear the faintest resemblance to that artist’s style. But the mistake was productive of an incident which caused considerable amusement amongst students of Turner’s works. The art critic of one of the leading London papers happens to be a superior person who finds Turner too “vulgar” for his refined taste. This delightful critic dismissed the whole collection of Turner’s wonderful drawings in the exhibition as mere “works of commerce,” and singled out this Mountainous Landscape, because he was told it was by Alexander Cozens, as one of the finest things in the exhibition. Yet there are still people who ask “What’s in a name?” Probably if Turner’s “_Blue Rigi_” had been described in the catalogue as by Alexander Cozens this amusing critic, who seems to judge pictures rather by what he is told than by what he sees, might have found that it possessed some artistic merits.

158. Crosses and Brasses, Whalley Abbey, circa 1799.

This was done to be engraved in Whitaker’s “History of the Parish of Whalley,” and is therefore a mere “work of commerce.” I suppose some people must think an artist lowers himself somehow if he sells his work or accepts an order to make a drawing. Work done under these conditions, they seem to think, must be done carelessly, hastily, and half-heartedly, otherwise there would be no point in the sneer. This is a curious example of modern ways of thinking. Work has become low, plebeian; only the groundlings work; the really superior person has a private income (or his wife has) and devotes himself to doing things which will benefit humanity at large in the dim and distant future. Some of this muddle-headedness, so far as art is concerned, is probably due to the current cant about “utterance,” emotion and self-expression, though some of it may be due to a genuine though vague and unpractical desire for the general good. I will merely remark that Turner was emphatically not a superior person of this kind. He looked upon himself always as a workman. He retained even late in life, as Mr. Ruskin once happily remarked, “some little English sense and practical understanding.” He believed in work, and he was prouder of his enormous powers of work than of his genius, his success, or even his money. But he expected to be paid for his work, and he grumbled vigorously when any of his works failed to sell. On the other hand, he never scamped his job, or offered an employer work which was not done as well as he could do it.

How unsparing of his time and labour he was is proved by this drawing of the Whalley crosses and brasses. The subject gave him no chance of using those of his gifts which gave him most pleasure to use. It gave him no opportunities of what our modern sentimentalists call emotion or “utterance.” As the subject called only for sheer plodding labour, he gave that, and he gave it in full measure. The drawing once belonged to Mr. Ruskin.

145. Norbury Park, circa 1797.

This is a study of natural colouring and effect; a note of the autumn tints on a charming stretch of country. Wilson is quite forgotten for the moment. The young artist is content to put down on the paper, as neatly and swiftly as possible, a faithful record of what he sees. This drawing was probably made in September 1797, when Turner was at Norbury Park. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in the following year A Study in September of the Fern House, Mr. Lock’s Park, Mickleham, Surrey. It would be interesting to know what has become of this drawing. I can find no trace of it in Christie’s records or elsewhere.

16. Cassiobury: The House seen across the Park, circa 1800 (Plate V).