and Abednego' (517, below), are very lamentable instances. Except as subjects for curious study, they are of no value whatsoever" (Notes on the Turner Gallery, p. 43).

510.

PILATE WASHING HIS HANDS. J. M. W. Turner, R.A. (1775-1851). See on p. 574. Exhibited at the Academy in 1830. A very unsuccessful picture on the text :-

"And when Pilate saw he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person; see ye to it" (Matthew xxvii. 24).

J. M. W. Turner, R.A. (1775-1851). See on p. 574. This and the following picture (515) were exhibited at the Academy in 1831. The full title was "Watteau Painting: Study by Fresnoy's Rules"

White, when it shines with unstained lustre clear,
May bear an object back, or bring it near.

These two lines are a translation from Du Fresnoy's Latin poem on the Art of Painting-a work which Dryden translated, and Sir Joshua Reynolds annotated. The picture is only interesting as showing Turner's study of the precepts and practice of his art: note the introduction of an artist's name into the title (cf. under XXII. 536, p. 612).

515.

LORD PERCY UNDER ATTAINDER, 1606.

J. M. W. Turner, R.A. (1775-1851). See on p. 574. A poor picture, showing Lucy, Countess of Carlisle, and Dorothy Percy, visiting their father, Lord Percy, when he was under attainder on suspicion of being implicated in the Gunpowder Plot-interesting only as showing the persistence with which, in spite of failure, Turner attempted figure subjects. 517.

THE FIERY FURNACE.

J. M. W. Turner, R.A. (1775–1851). See on p. 574. Exhibited in 1832, and painted in friendly rivalry with Jones's picture (see under XX. 389, p. 514). The figures are very bad (see under 507, p. 657); but "there is a smirched blackness and sweeping flame about this small picture that is very grand, obscure as all else in it is" (Thornbury, i. 321).

529.

WAR. THE EXILE AND THE ROCK LIMPET.

J. M. W. Turner, R.A. (1775–1851). See on p. 574. Exhibited in 1842, as a companion to "The Burial of Wilkie" (XIX. 528, p. 637), which Turner called "Peace." The picture represents Napoleon on the shore of St. Helena at sunset, watching a solitary shell. "Once a noble piece of colour, now quite changed just at the focus of light where the sun is setting, and injured everywhere. The figure is not, however, in reality quite so ill-drawn as it looks, its caricatured length being in great part owing to the strong reflection of the limbs, mistaken by the eye, at a distance, for part of the limbs themselves. The lines which Turner gave with this picture are very important, being the only verbal expression of that association in his mind of sunset colour with blood before spoken of (under XXII. 508, p. 620)—

The conceit of Napoleon's seeing a resemblance in the limpet's shell to a tent, was thought trivial by most people at the time; it may be so (though not to my mind); the second thought, that even this poor wave-washed disc had power and liberty, denied to him, will hardly, I think, be mocked at "1 (Notes on the Turner Gallery, pp. 70, 71).

531.

SHADE AND DARKNESS. THE EVENING

OF THE DELUGE.

J. M. W. Turner, R.A. (1775-1851). See on p. 574. This and the companion picture (532) were exhibited in 1843, when "Turner, tired now of plain sober truth, or deter

1 The picture was ridiculed at the time of its appearance by Thackeray, and also parodied in Punch, which called it "The Duke of Wellington and the Shrimp (Seringapatam, early morning)—

And can it be, thou hideous imp,

That life is, ah! how brief, and glory but a shrimp!"

These criticisms hurt Turner sorely, says Mr. Ruskin, and his want of articulateness (see p. 583) had its tragic side. But the comic critics were not without excuse, for Mr. Ruskin himself records how Turner "tried hard, one day, for a quarter of an hour, to make me guess what he was doing in the picture of Napoleon, before it had been exhibited, giving me hint after hint in a rough way; but I could not guess, and he would not tell me" (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. xi. § 30 n.)

mined to puzzle and astonish by prismatic experiments a public that would not buy his pictures and did not comprehend his genius (see p. 590), launched out into some of his wildest dreams" (Thornbury, i. 347).

532. LIGHT AND COLOUR. THE MORNING AFTER THE DELUGE.

545.

J. M. W. Turner, R.A. (1775-1851). See on p. 574-
WHALERS.

J. M. W. Turner, R.A. (1775-1851). See on p. 574. Exhibited in 1845-Turner's first picture of a subject, suggested by Beale's Natural History of the Sperm Whale, which he repeated twice in the following year (546, now at Nottingham, and 547, now at Glasgow).

549. UNDINE GIVING THE RING TO MASANIELLO, FISHERMAN OF NAPLES.

J. M. W. Turner, R.A. (1775-1851). See on p. 574. Undine, a water-spirit, was sent to live with an old fisherman and his wife, to console them for the loss of their daughter. She grew up a beautiful girl, full of tricks and waywardness; but without the gift of a soul: that she might not have until some noble knight should love her well enough to marry her. When the marriage was to be performed, her adopted parents produced a ring, but Undine exclaimed, "Not so! my parents have not sent me into the world quite destitute; on the contrary, they must have anticipated with certainty that such an evening as this would come." And so saying she left the room and reappeared with a ring (De La Motte Fouqué's Undine). Of this and the two following pictures marking the period of Turner's decline, Mr. Ruskin wrote: "They occupy to Turner's other works precisely the relation which Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous hold to Scott's early novels" (Notes on the Turner Gallery, p. 75). The "Undine,” in particular, was much ridiculed at the time of its exhibition. Mr. Gilbert à Beckett called it "a lobster salad"—a similitude which Turner himself once applied to his own work (see p. 590). 550. THE ANGEL STANDING IN THE SUN.

J. M. W. Turner, R.A. (1775-1851). See on p. 574. "And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come

and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great" (Revelation xix. 17, 18).

551. THE HERO OF A HUNDRED FIGHTS.

J. M. W. Turner, R.A. (1775-1851). See on p. 574. A picture, now at least, quite undecipherable, suggested by the German invocation upon casting the bell, called in England "Tapping the Furnace."

600. THE BLIND BEGGAR.

:

John Laurens Dyckmans (Flemish: 1811-1888).

"A blind old man is standing in the sunshine by a church door before him is a young girl, who is holding out her hand for alms to the passers-by; an old lady coming from the church is feeling in her pocket for a sou; some other figures are seen in the porch at their devotions before a crucifix. Painted at Antwerp, signed J. Dyckmans, 1853" (Official Catalogue).

Sir William Boxall, R.A. (English: 1800-1879). Boxall, who was born at Oxford and educated at Abingdon, was a portrait painter of considerable repute in his day. He was elected A.R.A. in 1851, and R.A. in 1863. He was also Director of the National Gallery from 1865 to 1874, the purchase of the Peel collection being the most notable event of his term of office.

613.

UNCLE TOBY AND WIDOW WADMAN.

C. R. Leslie, R.A. (English: 1794-1859). A repetition, painted in 1842, of No. 403 (see Room XX. p. 514).

765. MAW-WORM.

R. Smirke, R.A. (English: 1752-1845). Robert Smirke, the principal of the early English genre painters, was a native of Cumberland, and originally a painter of coach panels. He was educated at the Academy schools, and was elected R.A. in 1793, but he seldom exhibited there, being chiefly employed as a book illustrator.

A scene from Bickerstaffe's play of the Hypocrite, Act ii. Sc. 1, adapted from Colley Cibber's Non-Juror.

851. VENUS SLEEPING.

Sebastiano Ricci (Venetian: 1659-1734).

For a reference to this painter, see p. 393.

893. THE PRINCESS LIEVEN.

Sir T. Lawrence, P.R.A. (English: 1769-1830).
See under 144, p. 445.

A small bust portrait, from the Peel Collection.

996. A CASTLE IN A ROCKY LANDSCAPE. Hobbema (Dutch: 1638-1708). See under X. 685, p. 235. 1015. FRUIT, FLOWERS, AND DEAD BIRDS.

Jan van Os (Dutch: 1744-1808).

Prominent amongst the flowers is the red cockscomb. A picture by the most distinguished flower painter of his time, and characteristic, in an interesting particular, of Dutch pictures of this kind generally. "If the reader has any familiarity with the galleries of painting in the great cities of Europe, he cannot but retain a clear, though somewhat monotonously calm, impression of the character of those polished flower-pieces, or still-life pieces, which occupy subordinate corners, and invite to moments of repose, or frivolity, the attention and imagination which have been wearied in admiring the attitudes of heroism, and sympathising with the sentiments of piety. Recalling to his memory the brightest examples of these... he will find that all the older ones agree,if flower-pieces—in a certain courtliness and formality of arrangement, implying that the highest honours which flowers can attain are in being wreathed into grace of garlands, or assembled in variegation of bouquets, for the decoration of beauty, or flattery of noblesse. If fruit or still-life pieces, they agree no less distinctly in directness of reference to the supreme hour when the destiny of dignified fruit is to be accomplished in a royal dessert; and the furred and feathered life of hill and forest may bear witness to the Wisdom of Providence by its extinction for the kitchen dresser. Irrespectively of these ornamental virtues, and culinary utilities, the painter never seems to perceive any conditions of beauty in the things themselves, which would make them worth regard for their own sake: nor, even in these appointed functions, are they ever supposed to be worth painting, unless the pleasures