Turner's Water-Colours at Farnley Hall

It is not known for certain exactly when or how Turner became acquainted with Mr. Walter Ramsden Hawksworth Fawkes of Farnley Hall. Several biographers say that Turner first met Mr. Fawkes about 1802, when the artist was in Yorkshire making drawings for one of the series of topographical works dealing with parts of Yorkshire which Dr. Whitaker, the vicar of Whalley, prepared and published. But Whitaker’s “History of the Parish of Whalley,” which was published about this date, contains no reference to Farnley, and deals with a part of Yorkshire and Lancashire at some distance from Farnley. The only book of Dr. Whitaker which contains any illustrations connected with Farnley Hall is the “Loidis and Elmete,” published in 1816, and we know that Turner had become intimate with Mr. Fawkes some years before this date.

The first certain piece of evidence connecting Mr. Fawkes with Turner is contained in some of the sketch-books used by the artist during his first tour in Switzerland in the year 1802. Mr. Fawkes’s name is not mentioned in full, but a capital “F” is written in ink on the margin or back of several of the drawings. I take this to mean that a patron whose name began with “F” had looked through Turner’s sketch-books at some time after his return to London, and had selected certain subjects to be carried out from sketches thus marked. That this patron was Mr. Fawkes is established by the drawing made at Chamounix, which is inscribed in Turner’s handwriting “_Mer de Glace, avec le Cabin de Blair_” (page 22 of the “St. Gothard and Mont Blanc” Sketch-Book in the National Gallery). The finished water-colour now in the Farnley Hall Collection, entitled Blair’s Hut on the Montanvert and Mer de Glace, is simply an amplification of this sketch. Other subjects in these sketch-books which Turner carried out for Mr. Fawkes are Bonneville, Sallanches, The Falls of the Reichenbach, The Valley of Chamounix, The Fall of the Staubbach, The Lake of Lucerne from Flüelen, The Lake of Brienz with the Ruins of the Castle of Ringgenberg, and Grenoble.

The first point of connection between Mr. Fawkes and Turner thus seems to have been the scenery of Switzerland and not that of Yorkshire. In a description I have seen of Farnley Hall and its treasures, written soon after it came into the possession of Mr. Walter Fawkes, the only pictures mentioned are a series of “romantic landscapes in Switzerland and Italy, admirably executed by Warwick and Smith.” The “Warwick and Smith” of this description is probably a misprint for “Warwick Smith,” the name by which John Smith, one of the earlier English water-colour painters, was generally known. This series of Smith’s water-colours is still preserved in one of the lumber rooms at Farnley Hall. The drawings represent generally the same subjects as those which Turner treated. Smith’s drawings are nearly all in monochrome, and, though they are not without merit, they look very dull and old-fashioned when compared with the Turners. It seems to me, therefore, extremely probable that Mr. Fawkes was first attracted to Turner as the rising young artist of his day, who was doing the same kind of work as Warwick Smith had done, but who was doing it with much more imagination, vigour, and artistic skill. If this surmise be correct, Turner made his first appearance at Farnley Hall as the successor and transplanter of Warwick Smith. His artistic function was to replace Smith’s rather dull and laboured transcripts with his own brilliant and imaginative drawings.

The earliest of Turner’s works in the Farnley Hall Collection is that of The Mer de Glace, Chamounix. This is probably the drawing exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803, under the title “_Glacier and Source of the Arveron going up to the Mer de Glace, in the Valley of Chamouni_.” Mr. Fawkes may have seen the drawing in the exhibition and bought it there or afterwards in the artist’s studio. In a small pocket-book of Turner, apparently in use about the year 1804, there is a note that Mr. Fawkes had bought three water-colours for fifty guineas each. These are described by the artist as Great Devil’s Bridge Causeway, Upper Fall of Riquenbach and Mt. Blanc from St. Martin. The first two subjects are still at Farnley, the third is probably the Mt. Blanc from the Val d’Aosta which passed from the Farnley Collection before the present owner came into possession. It was lent by Sir Donald Currie to the exhibition of “Old Masters” at the Royal Academy in 1906.

An earlier entry in the same pocket-book is the record of a commission for a small oil picture of The Bowland, Lancashire, to be painted for Mr. Lister Parker. Mr. Parker was a neighbour of Mr. Fawkes, and that he was also an intimate friend is proved by the inscription on the back of a fine miniature of Napoleon Bonaparte, which is still preserved at Farnley Hall. This inscription states that the miniature was bought in Paris in 1802, and presented to Mr. Fawkes in the same year by his sincere friend Mr. Lister Parker. So it is probable that Mr. Fawkes may have heard Turner’s work talked about by his Yorkshire friends some time before he bought any of the artist’s drawings, and it is quite possible that he may have made Turner’s personal acquaintance through the intermediacy of those friends.

The next mention of Mr. Fawkes’s name in the Turner sketch-books occurs in connection with the large mezzotint of Turner’s oil painting of The Shipwreck (now in the National Gallery), which the engraver, Charles Turner, executed and published in 1806-1807. The name of “Fawkes” appears fifth in the list of subscribers to this plate, the first four names being the “Wells Family,” Sir William Beechey, Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. Henderson. Mr. Lister Parker’s name appears lower down in the list.

It was probably in London that Mr. Fawkes first met Turner, and the two men had very likely known each other for some time before Turner was induced to pay a visit to his friend’s home in Yorkshire. The first clear piece of evidence of Turner being at Farnley is in connection with Mr. Hawksworth Fawkes’s story of the origin of Turner’s large oil painting (now in the National Gallery) of Hannibal crossing the Alps. This picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1812, so the incident described in the following words by Mr. Hawksworth Fawkes--he was a boy at the time--must have taken place in 1810 or 1811: “One stormy day at Farnley Turner called to me loudly from the doorway, ‘Hawkey! Hawkey! come here! come here! look at this thunderstorm. Isn’t it grand?--isn’t it wonderful?--isn’t it sublime?’ All this time he was making notes of its form and colour on the back of a letter. I proposed some better drawing-block, but he said it did very well. He was absorbed; he was entranced. There was the storm rolling and sweeping and shafting out its lightning over the Yorkshire hills. Presently the storm passed, and he finished.

‘There! Hawkey,’ said he, ‘in two years you will see this again, and call it Hannibal crossing the Alps.’”

The earliest oil painting of Turner’s that Mr. Fawkes bought was the beautiful sea-piece sometimes called The Pilot Boat, and sometimes Red Cap. This was exhibited, in the “one-man show” Turner held in his studio in 1809, under the title Shoeburyness Fishermen hailing a Whitstable Hoy. There is a pen-and-ink sketch of this picture inside the cover of the “Greenwich Sketch-Book” (cII, Turner Bequest), and on the fly-leaf appears the following record of drawings made, or to be made, for Mr. Fawkes:--

“4 Proofs of ‘Liber Studiorum.’ Mill. Sketch. Per Contra 1 Mill. Drawing. C. Draft. 2 Bardon Tower. Feb. 20. £100.” 3 Farnley. 4 Gordale. 5 Rocks. 7 Weathercote. 8 Geneva. 9 Bolton. 10 Thun.”

And on page 52 of the same book there occurs the following still longer list:--

“Mill, finished. Mill, sketch. Bardon Tower. Armutic Rock. Farnley. Gordale. *The Strid. Weathercote. *Bolton Abbey, West. Lac de Thun. Lac de Geneve. Ps. V. (Probably the Swiss waterfall known as the “Pisse Vache.") *Bonneville. Ingleboro. Bolton. Blair’s Hut. Stourback. (Evidently the Fall of the Staubbach.) Mt. Blanc. Vevey. Grundelwald. *Brintz.” (The Lake of Brienz.)

* These are among the drawings selected for reproduction in the present publication.

These entries were made, I am inclined to think, either in the year 1809 or 1810. It is easy to identify most of the drawings referred to in this list, in spite of Turner’s rather arbitrary spelling. I can, however, find no trace of the drawings described as Armutic Rock and Gordale, and I have never seen either the sketch or the finished drawing of the Mill. I am not even sure what mill it can have been. It was probably the one at Otley, which stands close to the lodge at the entrance to the Farnley Hall grounds. A View of Otley Mills, with the River Wharfe and Mill Weir, said to have been presented by Mr. Fawkes to the family of its owner, was sold at Christie’s in June 1890, and bought by the famous French dealer, M. Sedelmeyer. It was probably this drawing to which Mr. Fawkes refers in the only fragment of a letter in his handwriting which I have been able to discover among the Turner papers in the National Gallery. The body of the letter has been destroyed, but the last two paragraphs and the signature remain. This fragment says:--

“By to-morrow’s coach I shall send you a box containing two pheasants, a brace of partridges, and a hare--which I trust you will receive safe and good. We have tormented the poor animals very much lately and now we must give them a holiday.

“Remember the Wharfdales--everybody is delighted with your Mill. I sit for a long time before it every day.

“Ever very truly yrs.,

W. FAWKES.”

The “Wharfdales” are evidently the series of drawings of Wharfedale scenery which Turner had in hand for Mr. Fawkes. The allusions to the drawing of the Mill give us a clue to the real bond of union between the two men, viz., the patron’s sincere and unaffected delight in the artist’s work.

Mr. Fawkes’s liberality as a buyer of Turner’s work is demonstrated by some financial jottings made in one of his sketch-books (CXXII, Turner Bequest), during the years 1809 and 1810. In one of these statements of Turner’s assets Mr. Fawkes is debited with £500, in the other he is entered as the artist’s debtor to the extent of £1,000.

In 1811 Turner threw himself enthusiastically into the project of writing a long poem extolling the beauties and recounting the history of all the chief places of interest on the southern coast of England. The poem was to be illustrated by a series of engravings to be made from water-colours specially painted by the artist for the work. The poem was never completed, but Turner seems to have spent the greater part of the summer of 1811 wandering along the coast from Christchurch, in Hampshire, to Land’s End, in Cornwall, diligently making hundreds of wonderfully delicate and accurate sketches, and with equal diligence, and perhaps just as much enjoyment to himself, grinding out even a greater number of lame and halting lines of the most indifferent verse. He returned along the northern sides of Cornwall, Devon and Somerset, sketching and rhapsodizing upon the whole coast from Penzance to the Mendip Hills. This work and play must have kept him too busy to visit Farnley that year.