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[1] PAGES 46, 47 & 48

[2] THE ART-JOURNAL.
February 1, 1852

The February edition begins on page 37 and ends on page 68.

[3] OBITUARY.

[4] MR. J. M. W. TURNER, R.A.

[5] The close of the last year added a name to the list of the great men who have passed from among us during that period of time, which ought to, if it does not, excite deep regret beyond the circles with whom that name was closely associated. When a distinguished statesman or a successful commander is taken away from the living, it is long ere the popular voice is silent over the event; the death of one whose genius is of a less stirring and exciting character, is little felt out of its own sphere, and the multitude scarcely know or care “ That from the firmament a star hath fallen.”

[6] It is presumed that our readers have already heard of the lamented death of Joseph Mallard William Turner, R.A., a name so intimately con¬ nected, during the whole of the present century, with the Fine Arts of this country; and it is no disparagement to the artists of undoubted talent whom he has left behind, to affirm that we have lost in him the greatest landscape-painter of the English school; we should scarcely say too much, if we add, or of any other—ancient or modern.

[7] Mr. Turner was born in Maiden-lane, Covent Garden, it is supposed, in 1775, for he was christened in the parish church at St. Paul’s, on May the 14th, of that year.

[8] His father carried on a respectable business as a hair-dresser; and it reflects no little credit on his discernment and wisdom, that he allowed his son to follow the path which nature had marked out for him, as soon as it appeared plain and palpable.

[9] It is unnecessary, even could we afford the space, to travel over the ground which the young man took till he had established his own reputation among the artists of his earlier time; but it may be stated, that he was indebted for much sound advice, and the use of many valuable copies, to the late Dr. Munro, an amateur of high taste, and a connoisseur of no mean judgment.

[10] The Doctor possessed a large and important collection of water-colour drawings, which he liberally allowed some of the young artists of that day to copy; and among those who availed themselves of this privilege, were Turner, and his somewhat older companion, Girtin. To these two we unquestionably owe the distinguished position acquired by our school of water-colour painters ; while it may be remarked, that their drawings bear so close a resemblance to each other, that it requires very nice scrutiny to distinguish between them. Turner’s, however, exhibit more elaborated detail than those of the other, yet no less breadth and richness of effect.

[11] Neither of them, indeed, will bear comparison with the productions of other men of later times: the art of water-colour painting has since been carried to a height of executive power that almost rivals oil; still we have seen drawings by Turner, of forty or fifty years back, of marvellous depth and truth of colouring.

[12] In 1789, he entered as a student at the Royal j Academy, sending to the Exhibition in the following year, a “View of the Archbishop’s Palace at Lambeth,” executed in water-colours ; in 1793, he exhibited his first oil picture.

[13] From 1790 to 1800, when he was elected Associate, he contributed to the annual exhibitions of the Academy nearly sixty works. In 1802, he was placed among the Academicians, his chief pictures of this year being “ The Fall of the Clyde,” and “ The Tenth Plague of Egypt.”

[14] It would he occupying our columns to little good purpose, to fill them with a list of the pictures contributed by this wonderful and indefatigable painter to the Royal Academy and the British Institution during more than half a century ; they have become as familiar to the frequenters of those galleries as “household words;” they have been admired or sneered at as the fancy or judgment of the visitor has dictated. Of the engraved publica¬ tions which have emanated from his pencil, we may allude to the “ Liber Studiorum” published in 1808, and now a very rare work. It consists, as its name implies, of a large number of studies or sketches, made in a remarkably free and powerful manner, in imitation of Claude’s “ Liber Veri- tads.” His “ Rivers of England,” from an exceedingly beautiful collection of drawings in the possession of the artist at the time of his death; his “Rivers of France;” “England and Wales,” from a series of noble drawings belonging to Mr. Windus, of Tottenham, and Mr. Munro ; “The Southern Coast;” his Illustrations of the Poems of Scott, and Byron, and Rogers; are each and all of them works that will confer immortality on the name of the artist, irrespective of the larger and single engravings from his pictures.

[15] It is our firm conviction that the present generation must not sit in judgment upon the genius of Turner. We are too close to his pictures to see them in their right aspect, and the mind has become too unevenly balanced by the opposite opinions of his detractors and his admirers, to pronounce a clear and unbiassed verdict.

[16] Sir Joshua Reynolds had also, in his lifetime, to undergo the same ordeal of praise and calumny ; but posterity has rendered him strict justice, by giving him a place among the greatest masters of Art. We have no doubt of similar honours being awarded to Turner, for we believe him to be the most extraordinary painter (and by this we mean the highest genius) that ever took pencil in hand to delineate the marvellous beauties of the world around us.

[17]It must not be lost sight of by those who would estimate the value of an artist’s works, that there are two standards by which they should be judged,—their truth and their poetry; or, in other words, by the appeal they make to our natural senses, or to our imagination by their ideal beauty. There are some of Turner’s works possessing each of these qualities ; some that have both ; and some, it will be said, though we do not think so, that have neither. It is long before one can sufficiently understand a style of painting altogether new and original, to estimate its merits. Great geniuses have ever been great experimentalists, and Turner’s vast and comprehensive mind disdained to follow in the track marked out by others, however distinguished; hence, he broke away from the trammels which the dogmas of schools would have interposed between him and his genius, and hewed out a way for himself through the world of nature, which none had ever passed before, and which few can hope to follow. He saw things as no one else saw them who had not the same power of perception and analysation ; where most eyes would perceive in a few acres of meadow land an unvaried mass of green, his would see it broken up and diversified by a thousand tints and tones of colour; his would detect in the clouds of a summer’s sunset a multitude of beautiful and harmonious tints, wdiere the ordinary observer would scarcely find half-a-dozen ; and it was by his combination of colours, and by the arrangement of picturesque yet natural objects, that he achieved such wonderful forms of beauty and such magic effects ; and however eccentric some of these might appear, so as to bring upon the painter even the charge of artisticinsanity, there is “method in his madness,” and beauty in his seeming extravagances. There never was an artist who so played with the elements—not in very wantonness, but with purposes of truth, and with actual sensibility, as Turner; his faculties of observation and perception were vast, and his memory must have been wonderfully retentive, for it would have been impossible for the most rapid sketcher, while seated at his sketch-book, to have caught, as he did, the variety of tints and forms exhibited in the passing clouds. The luxuriance of his pencil is its highest charm, elevated by a “ subtle power of expression,” as Mr. Ruskin observes, “ even of the characters of mere material things, such as no other painter ever possessed.”

[18] His summer evening scenes are not those of Claude, nor have his tempests the savage grandeur of Gaspar Poussin’s. Of Turner’s, respectively, it may be said—“ ’Tis strange by fits, by starts ’tis wild; ”but neither are irreconcileable with the varied operations of nature ; “all,” to quote our former authority, “ have this noble virtue—they are, in everything, his own ; every faculty of his soul is fixed upon nature only, as he saw her, or as he remembered her.”

[19] The points he most aimed at in 'his works are light and space ; their highly luminous qualities are their grand characteristics: we scarcely ever see an important object in his foregrounds, but generally in the centre of his pictures ; where, also, is to be found the greatest mass of light, and opposed to the point of sight is the darkest and largest quantity of shade.

[20] We see these principles exemplified in the picture of “ The Golden Bough,” in the Vernon collection ; while the effect of space and air in the same work, produced by the most elaborate and delicate application of touch and tint, carries the eye over miles of distance, where we can discern the exact character of the landscape before us, till it is lost in the harmonious blending of earth and sky, into which fancy only can penetrate.

[21] But in contending for the fidelity of treatment, as regards their natural philosophy, exhibited by Turner in his landscapes, we must perhaps exclude those of the last twenty years, more espe¬ cially, from that of positive actuality ; in fact, many of his professed “ views” are only types of realities; his Venetian and other Italian scenes are more places of his own creation than existing

[22] localities. Italy was the land over which his imagination revelled ; it gave him ideas to mould into whatever form, and to invest with whatever colour, his genius might choose to impart to it; he saw beauty in her palaces, and grandeur in her ruins of departed greatness, and he invested them with a glory which might have belonged to their primitive state, and which is due to them, how low soever they may now have fallen. He revivified Italy, making her not what she is, but what it may be supposed she might have been when holding an exalted position among the nations of the earth; but he put his own peculiar stamp of beauty both on the present and the past. The fact is, Turner’s mind was too poetically constituted to permit him to treat even the most commcn-place theme in a common way ; his faculty of conception was too expansive, his power of invention or creation too fertile, and his taste too refined to per¬ mit him to become a mere imitator of Nature ; the pencil of the artist is like the pen of the poet, and we seem to be reading an epic when studying one of his pictures. Look, for example, at that of “ The Old Temeraire,” exhibited at the Royal Academy a few years since, and engraved by Will- more in the “ Royal Gems of British Art; ” a picture that tells its story in a manner no poet could surpass in descriptive verse.

[23] The works of Turner indicate three distinct periods of his practice; the first shows the closest attention to the most minute detail of nature, and a sober unaffected application of colour ; having made himself perfect master of these qualities, he launched out into a bolder and broader use of his pencil, still adhering closely to form, and using the colours of his palette with amazing force and rich¬ ness ; in his third, or last period, he seems to have neglected form almost entirely, and made colour the only exponent of his ideas. The second class of works are those to which, unquestionably, the highest value will be attached ; they will alone, we suspect, bear the test of time.

[24] We believe that nothing herein stated will be found opposed to otir previously expressed opinions ; when forced to write in terms of deep regret at what we considered the erratic course of his genius, we always rendered homage to its marvellous doings—marvellous even in their very vagueness and wanderings—still more wondrous when confined within reason : at all times, how¬ ever, something of truth and excellence is to be found in his falsities. It is no new thing for genius to be eccentric, even in what it most loves ; and perhaps had Turner been less violently opposed, he would not have so defied public opinion, even for his own sake. His was a mind not to be written down, while his love of notoriety, for he was undoubtedly often impelled by this weakness, might have urged him to pursue a course which kept his name constantly before the public. Per¬ haps he was unwise to have so acted ; he could not thereby add to his real fame, and most certainly his pertinacity has ended in diminishing it.

[25] The pages of the Art-Journal are not the place for repeating the idle gossip respecting Mr. Turner’s private life, and mode of living; we have to write of the artist, and not of the man, and whatever may be laid to his charge, we have no desire

[26] “ To draw liis frailties from their dread abode.”

[27] There is no doubt he lived in a style utterly below his high position and his acknowledged wealth ; there are hundreds who do the like, against whom the finger of scorn is never pointed ; and what, after all, can his detractors say, when it is known that he accumulated riches, not as a miser does, for the pleasure of counting his gold, but for a noble and Christian-like object ? If lie preferred solitude to society, and hoarded his gains—not ill-gotten, but the fruits of long and arduous labours—deny¬ ing himself the social comforts of life, the end he purposed justifies the means he adopted to bring it to pass. Professional men do not make money rapidly and largely like the speculative merchant and thriving trader, but only by slow degrees, and by thrifty habits. Turner, it is said, would demur to the overcharge of sixpence; and Guy, the founder of the hospital that bears his name, would put out his dim rushlight if a friend called in to have an hour’s conversation in the evening, saying “ they could talk as well in the dark as in the light;” and yet thousands have since pronounced a blessing on his name ; many will hereafter do the same by Turner’s. There are various motives which actuate men to deeds of charity; some like to have their benevolence the theme of admiration; others prefer to see the happiness it gives ; and others, again, are contented to know that the good they do lives after them: but all have a claim to the esteem of their fellow men, whatever impulse they follow, so long as it works beneficially. Turner

PAGE 47

[28] has left to the nation the whole of hisfinished pic¬ tures, the number of which is not yet exactly known, but they comprise many of his noblest pro¬ ductions, on the express condition that a suitable gallery he erected for their reception within ten years. Of course so long a period will not he allowed to elapse ere this be done ; in the mean time, arrangements will be made by Mr. Turner’s executors, and by his express directions, that the public shall have an opportunity of seeing them, at his late residence in Queen Anne-street, as soon as they are ready for exhibition ; this will not im¬ probably be during the ensuing season. ITis funded property, and whatever may be added thereto by the sale of his vast collection of unfinished pictures, drawings, sketches, &c., is, with the exception of a few legacies, to be devoted to the erection of an asylum for decayed and destitute artists, without, we believe, any limitation as to the department of Art each one may have followed. Here is a result arising from a diligent, active, and laborious pro¬ fessional career, which has but few counterparts. There is no doubt that to effect such an object was the grand aim of Turner’s life, and that for this purpose he denied himself what most men would consider its chief joys. Therefore, let such a life be “ measured by its worth,” and who would presume to limit its value ?

[29] Mr. Turner died on the 19th of December, at a small lodging he had occupied for some time at Chelsea, though his residence for many years tvas in Queen Anne-street, Cavendish-square, of which he held possession at his death. A very short time before he breathed his last, his attendants, believing him to be still in a state of consciousness, placed him in such a position that he might catch a glimpse of the sun, which was then shining glo¬ riously through the windows of his apartment, thinking that a sight of the orb he had so often studied in its various aspects, might rouse him to observation ; but the windows of his mind and his

[30] 1 sensual vision were alike darkened, so that he

[31] neither saw nor understood. He was buried on the 30th of December, by his own desire, in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, by the side of Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose genius he idolised. Here also re¬ pose others of our distinguished artists ; the presi¬ dents West and Lawrence, Barry, Fuseli, and Opie ; hut among the illustrious dead now resting beneath that noble pile, no name will be more venerated by the lover of Art than his wrhose ashes were last deposited there. Mr. Turner’s funeral was attended by the president of the Royal Academy, and up¬ wards of twrenty of the Academicians ; many of the Associates were also there, but not by invitation, as it was found absolutely necessary to limit the number of invitations, in consequence of the very numerous applications made to the executors from individuals of all ranks, anxious to testify their respect for this great master of art. Several of his patrons and personal friends were present,—Mr. Windus, Mr. Griffith, of Norwood (one of his executors), Col. Thwaites, of the National Gallery, Rev. W. Kingsley, &c.

[32] We have considerably abbreviated our own ob¬ servations for the purpose of affording space for | some critical remarks on the style and character of

[33] Mr. Turner’s works, from the pen of Mr. John Burnet, the eminent engraver, and author of the “ Life of Rembrandt,” &c. &c.; which, we are sure, will be read with interest.

[34] To form a proper opinion of Turner’s position as an artist, we ought to call attention to the state of the arts (particularly water-colour drawing) at the period of his commencement; unfortunately there is no public collection by which the subject could be illustrated, without which it becomes a mere catalogue of names; but the affinity is no less striking than the works of Shakspeare are to those of his contemporaries. Turner’s earliest drawings are like Hearne’s, his Italian scenery resembles the w-orks of Cousins, while those of a later period vie with Girtin in force and breadth of effect; indeed, he frequently worked, in conjunction with Girtin, at the house of Dr. Munro, in the Adelphi. We are not aware that there exist any paintings in oil of this talented young man, who, though ending an irregular life at the early age of twenty-seven, lived long enough to change the stjle of water¬ colour subjects from mere topographical views, to combinations of composition, and effective light and shade. It is observable that notwithstanding the paintings of Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Loutherbourg, the same predominance of colour in drawings of that period is not carried out; hence we see those of Farrington, Paul Sandby, and others, deficient in this respect. Not from any want of richness in the materials, for we find after Turner commenced painting in oil, that his draw¬ ings gradually left their sole dependence upon light and shade, for the more captivating charms of colour; so much are artists and others guided by what is the practice of their contemporaries.

[35] No sooner, however, were the capabilities of watercolour disclosed, than its advantages are exemplified in the drawings of Barrett, Havill, and Bonington, down to the present day. The competition between oil and water-colour painters, led to the adoption of size colour by many artists, particularly by Cousins; the paper was also made of a thick substance, and kept wet during the progress of the drawing. This gives to many of Girtin’s drawings a rich, solid, appearance ; many made use of a paper manufactured with a rough surface, which gives a texture to the drawing conveying the rude appearance of nature ; and paper is now made, not only rough, but very absorbent, especially for sketching, and some of our best draughtsmen, such as Hunt, use a pen-knife to scrape up the lighter portions of the tints, more effectually to render the drawing a complete imitation of the luminous quality inherent in nature’s works. The early drawings of Turner, though possessing little to indicate his future greatness, nevertheless contain the elements of perspective, and architectural correctness; a command of the pencil, which he retained to the last, seldom using a maul-stick. Though Gainsborough, Wilson, and Loutherbourg made few drawings in water-colour, yet their paintings influenced those of the rising artists, particularly Turner; from the first two, he learned the distribution of warm and cold colour ; the noble masses of shadow he acquired principally from Wilson ; witness their pictures in the National Gallery, and the magnificent sea-pieces of Loutherbourg in the painted hall of Greenwich Hospital. The early drawings of Turner gradually assumed a grandeur from the contemplation of the pictures of these artists; and his first oil picture, now in the possession of Mr. Herring, the surgeon, shows a decided emanation from Loutherbourg and Wilson. The pictures of Claude were scarce in England at this time, but the matchless engravings by Woollett were the admiration of the public; to Claude Lorraine, Turner was indebted for many of his finest qualities of composition and colour.

[36] The early compositions of Turner are of a simpler character, and contain fewer parts than his later works ; this not only arises from his being engaged in representations of extensive scenery, such as the embellishment of engraved subjects demanded, where a multitude of objects was required to be given in a small space, but his changing his conduct of light and shade from a breadth of shadow to a breadth of light, which gradually expanded to almost a want of solidity in his last paintings; this was also the reason for adopting a more brilliant style of colour, for objects to be rendered sufficiently distinct, without cutting up the breadth of light, could only be produced by the contact of hot and cold colour. In these pictures he more resembles Wilson and Claude than in his later pieces, both on account of the largeness of forms, and his breadth of shadow. We seldom find his compositions similar to those of Ruysdael or Hobbima, or even Gaspar Poussin ; the grouping of his broken ground and trees is sometimes like Rubens, both in the perspective lines, and the distribution of his hot and cold colour. Cuyp, in his colour and arrangement of composition, was a great favourite, and frequently served as a basis to found a subject upon; amongst others, he spoke highly of the Earl of Ellesmere’s picture of “ The Canal of Dort.” In his lectures on perspective, he instanced not only the assemblage of the lines in repeating the several forms to give richness of effect, but also the unison of the whole breadth of colour. In the treatment of particular objects or subjects, embracing individual places, he would give the most essential features both by their situation on the canvas, and by rendering inferior portions subservient to heighten the effect upon the eye ; also where lines were disagreeable in form, he either made them disappear in the uniform colour of the background, or destroyed their consequence by the repetition of the same shapes in the lights or shades of the sky; this gives greater value to those points which the spectator is most likely to have remembered; and whatever liberties are taken with subordinate portions, the principal features are not only observed, but carefully treated in their light and shade, form and colour: and to the local situation of the several views he not only preserves the character of the trees peculiar to the place, but likewise the weeds or flowers indigenous to the spot. Nor was he less careful in choosing the characters of his figures to embellish the several scenes, for even the most trifling incident was pressed into the service that could excite or heighten the association of ideas ; this it is that gives an imaginative or poetical stamp to his works.

[37] In his Italian compositions, the works of Virgil and Ovid were ransacked to people the scenes restored from the remains of ancient Roman architecture. If the sea-ports of England spring from his pencil, the heroes of Nelson, or of the songs of Dibdin, rise before the spectator, enlisting his feelings in the scene. It may be said the figures in the landscapes of Nicolo Poussin or of Claude may have suggested the first series, or those in Loutherbourg’s the other class, but although hints may have been presented to his mind, his great genius stamped them as his own. And w'hatever similarities may be observed in the pictures ofother artists, Turner’s skies are peculiarly his own ; if in topographical scenery, they not only adorn but render interesting the most barren subject : the variety of forms in the clouds, their perspective elongation and diminution ; the bursts of sunshine from the azure openings ; the rain-charged depositories, emptying their burdens through the prismatic curtains that enshroud them, tend to embody the immortal poetry of the author of the “Seasons” throughout the varied year.

[38] With these few remarks on the composition of Turner's paintings, necessarily rendered less distinct for want of examples to refer to, we must pass on to an examination of his principles of chiaroscuro ; one great test of his excellence in this branch is, that no pictures are translated into black and white of engraving with less deterioration than Turner’s. Certainly no artist has been more fortunate in having the command of so great a number of excellent engravers, nor have many prints been published without his supervision and touching ; yet, with all these advantages, few pictures, denuded of the charm and variety of colour, but lose much of their beauty ; this arises from the happy combination of the aerial with the linear perspective, the contrast of the masses of his shadows with those of his lights, and the forms and situation of the various portions of each. The earlier pictures of Turner are his darkest, but even the darkest masses are void of blackness and heaviness ; neither do we perceive harshness nor want of softness : if a mass of dark trees is brought up against a light sky, its edges are rounded by portions of trees of a more delicate colour, and in accordance with the tone of the adjoining sky, also of a thinner and more leafy character ; if the dark of the picture is composed of a building in shadow, delicate grey tones are painted into it, and touches of warm colour to prevent its looking heavy.

[39]The strongest darks towards the foreground are of a warm hue, as we perceive likewise in the pictures of Wilson and Gainsborough; his strongest dark masses are cleared up and prevented from blackness by a figure or dark object coming against them; if the mass is of a cool tint, he often brings a warm dark in contact, and vice versa.

[40]Callcott, who often imitated him without being aware of it, has a picture in the Vernon Gallery that gives a very good idea of Turner’s dark manner; his pictures of this time have many admirers, who consider there is a greater degree of sublime poetry in them than those of his later period, such as “The Lake of Thun,” in Switzerland, “The Seventh Plague,” and “Fishing-boats going out to a Wreck.” There is certainly a solemnity in the absence of bright and gay colour, and a grandeur in a breadth of dull tones; and we question whether “ The Old Guard Ship at the Nore,” painted upon this principle, now in the collection of James Wadmore, Esq., of Upper Clapton, is not more impressive than the picture, in his own gallery, of “ The Old Fighting Temeraire’ towed to her last moorings,” where hot and cold colour revel in bright opposition.

[41] While we are.on this subject we will notice his treatment of water, and the great excellence he displays in his sea pieces: looking at the works of Backhuysen, Vandervelde, and even Loutherbourg, we perceive a defined edge to each wave, as if the sea had been instantaneously converted into ice; under the pencil of Turner it assumes the peculiarity ofthe watery element—motion, the outline of each wave hurrying into oblivion ; this may be noticed in comparing the picture of Vandervelde with that of Turner, in the gallery of the Earl of Ellesmere; the smallest incident partakes of this character; Backhuysen, Vandervelde, and others, throw in a piece of board, on which to write their names, Turner writes his in the trough of the sea, but in such a style as nature would present, every letter flowing into motion, reminding one of the words of Shakspeare, “ their good deeds are written in water.” This character of agitation he sometimes carried to extreme, as in the picture of Lord Yarborough’s, where fishing-boats are endeavouring to save the crew of a wreck ; when this picture was exhibited lately at the British Gallery, Admiral Bowles remarked to a friend of ours, that “nothing could exist in such a sea.” Turner’s feeling was to exemplify the intrepidity of English sailors, and he considered nothing was too dangerous to depict.

[42] A strong feature is observable in his treatment of troubled water, that, however multitudinous and broken the waves are represented, they are, nevertheless, congregated to produce magnitude and grandeur by largeness of form and masses of shadow. Whatever was the characteristic feature of any circumstance, his mind could comprehend, and the dexterity of his pencil could execute it. Thus, his picture of the Eddy- stone Lighthouse is not a tame topographical representation of the architectural structure in a summer’s day, but its beacon light is exhibited glaring up against a dark, stormy sky, with a sea breaking up on its column, that, but for its warn¬ ing, would ingulf everything. Hail, rain, or sun¬ shine, were made use of as best suited his purpose ; in his picture of “ Hannibal Crossing the Alps,” a bold undertaking under any circumstances, Turner has not only shown the enemy throwing down stones, or other missiles, to add to the diffi¬ culty, but he has represented the passage under the horrors of a snow-storm. Had he painted Buona¬ parte’s retreat from Moscow, he would have realised the scene in all its dreadful appearance : or the burial of Sir John Moore at the “ dead of night,” his work would have vied with the immortal verse of the ode.

[43] It is in his great conception of a subject, and his mode of treating it, that his genius lies; his breadth of effect and of shadow, his brilliant representation of light, are often carried to extremities, that make “ the ignorant laugh;” but even where he oversteps the modesty of nature, his pictures possess aredeem- ing quality in the boundless expanse of space. In the distribution of his lights, however scattered and disjointed they may appear to the eye of a common observer, to skilful investigation they exhibit a magical unity of purpose, like the followers of Lochiel, in Campbell’s poem,

[44] ‘ Their spears are a thousand, their bosoms are one.”

[45] This arrangement in the conduct of his picture always tends to simplicity; if sunshine, he con¬ trives the shadows shall fall in the same direction with the lines of his buildings, by placing the point of sight in or near the sun ; this, it may be said, we often find in the works of Claude and Richard Wilson; but in Turner it becomes a matter of more necessity from the multiplicity of objects represented. The diminution of strength of tone, with the diminution of size in the object, is very peculiar to his manner.

[46] Before entering upon the subject of colour, under the hands of Turner, it may be necessary to make a few remarks upon his change of style, from a dark to a lighter manner. Callcott, who was supposed to follow our great master in the treatment of his subjects, was taken up to a picture of Turner’s in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, by Sir George Beaumont, supposing it was from his own pencil: “Now,” said the amateur artist, “they cannot accuse you of imitating Turner any longer.” “ Why,” replied our late amiable friend, “ that picture is Turner’s.” We mention this to show the fallacy of the public opinion, in imagining that Turner was possessed of a Proteus power; his style was founded on the soundest principles of Art, on which dark or light subjects must be con¬ ducted. The works of Callcott and Turner exem¬ plify the old adage, that there is nothing new: nor is it, especially in Art, to be wondered at. A perpendicular line must be so, and a horizontal one similar, to the end of time: so, also, must be hot and cold colour; their distribution and situa¬ tion have been adopted by those artists whose pic¬ tures exemplify the treatment. Lawrence said shadows ought to be cool, and the lights hot; Turner, on the other hand, insisted that the shadows ought to be hot, and the lights cool. The public imagine from these contradictory statements that there are no fixed principles in Art—it is an ignorant delusion. To the initiated, a picture is like a printed book : amongst all the excellencies of Turner, perhaps, there are none more remarkable than the treatment of the landscape, and buildings with the sky, the outlines of which, if faulty, were swallowed up in the lights and shades of the sky ; if beautiful, everything was sacrificed to their pre¬ dominance. What is termed the sky-line has been a stumbl ing-bloek to thousands, and without examples it is difficult to explain. Soon after writing these remarks we passed over Hungerford-bridge, just as the sun was setting behind Sir Robert Peel’s house. The buildings of the new Houses of Parliament, jutting out from the general mass, conveyed the finest specimen to be seen in London ; and we feel happy to give this tribute to the genius of Barry, whose plan was to embrace Westminster Abbey, the Hall, &c. in one general group. If Turner had been engaged to paint a picture of this scene, this is likely the spot he would have chosen, and would have said so, as his great rival in English scenery,

[47] Richard Wilson, remarked, “If you want a view of St. Paul’s take it from Blackfriars Bridge.”

[48] Fuseli used to say that it would be easy to give breadth if flatness and insipidity could give it, but Turner was never guilty of such subterfuges; the lightest of his pictures have always a redeeming quality in them, the dark touches are small, which, giving solidity to the effect, never inter¬ fere with the breadth of light. We have men¬ tioned the excellent treatment observable in the skies of Turner, compared with those of Claude; they are far more brilliant, but there is a depth and unity in Claude of a very high quality, and if their works were hung together, they would damage each other. In the sea¬ ports of Claude the setting sun is always pre¬ dominant, the surrounding tints of the sky and adjoining buildings are kept of a dull flat tone, which are rendered aerial by the deep dark blue in the base of the picture. The figures and other subjects are more generally in red dresses, or warm tints of colour. Turner adopts the same treat¬ ment, but in a more vivid and powerful manner. His clouds are more agitated, and what may be observed in the exhibition of them, when fresh from the cases their light edges were bright. They are now changed in this particular, but still are faultless from the general forms being of a good shape. This colour was always founded upon the basis of chiaroscuro; hence the change into black and white of engravings is less injurious to the effect than in the works of other artists. The most retiring parts of his distance, if cool, are heightened by a strong red being brought in contact in the foreground, and his near shadows being filled with strong warm colour, are effective in black and white from its being in the right place. The pictures of Turner have a harmonious character, not only from their being painted on a white ground, but from many of them being com¬ menced in water colour ; hence his works have a strong resemblance to fresco painting. This unfortunately makes the oil portion liable to crack and peel off the canvass. His later works have much less oil in the vehicle than his earlier, which adds to the luminous character, by throwing off the light, which oily substances absorb. This may be observed by looking at his pictures in twilight.

[49] It is worthy of observation to perceive pictures under the Daguerreotype process; warm yellow and red colours give out less light than blue and cool tints. With these few critical remarks we must conclude. Turner has given a greater separation between modern pictures, and the old masters ; this distinctive feature will decline as his colours fade, but the poetical imagery of his magical combinations will increase as his pictures become more known. One more remark and we have done. Turner has translated the principles of the old masters into a more captivating style. They cannot be read or deciphered, but they have attracted more attention from the vivacity of the translation.