finity, liquid, measureless, unfathomable "1 (Modern Painters, first edition, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. §§ 7, 9, 10). This picture is a good example of Turner's rendering of full Venetian light. His rendering of the dream-like mystery of the sea-city is better observed in the later Venetian pictures in this room. 548. QUEEN MAB'S GROTTO. Exhibited in 1846, when the lines given by Turner in the Catalogue were— Frisk it, frisk it, by the moonlight beam. A piece of painted poetry, which is of special interest as definitely suggesting what must already have occurred to many visitors, namely, the affinity between Turner's imagination and Shelley's. Look back at the large pictures in Turner's latest manner, with "their vast landscape melting into indefinite distance," and see if they do not recall the light and aerial descriptions which abound in Shelley's Prometheus, where The spirits of the mind Or, look again at Mr. Ruskin's description of the double tones in the "Téméraire” (XXII. 524, p. 615); does it not read like a version of some scene in Shelley, which is luminous and radiant while it is yet 1 This picture was hung at the Academy next a view of Ghent, by Turner's old friend, George Jones, R.A. On varnishing day at the Academy, Turner said to him: "Why, Joney, how blue your sky is ! but I'll out-blue you." And immediately scrambling upon a box, joking and chuckling, he deepened the sky of his Venice with a scumble of ultramarine. "I've done you now, Georgey," he said, as he passed on to another picture. In his absence, as a joke, Jones determined to baffle the great man, and instantly set to work and painted the sky of Ghent a blank white, which, acting as a foil, made Turner's Venetian sky look preposterously blue. Next day Turner laughed heartily when he returned to his picture to find himself checkmated. "Well, Joney," he said, "you have done me now. But it must go," and he never altered the sky any more (Thornbury, ii. 241). 2 In describing the cloud-scenery of the sky, and vast realms of landscape, as well as in his eye for subtle colour, Shelley is the Turner of poetry" (Stopford Brooke : English Literature Primer, § 150). Mr. Ruskin has often compared Turner's skies with Shelley's, see, e.g., Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. ii. § 10; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. iv. § 18; Arrows of the Chace, vol. i. p. 30; and see under XXII. 508, p. 621. Dim and dank and gray, In this picture the affinity between the poet in verse and the poet on canvas is closer still. Turner refers to A Midsummer Night's Dream (though the line he quotes is not to be found there), and his conception of the fairy's grotto seems to be compounded from that play, and from Mercutio's speech in Romeo and Juliet O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you. gallops night by night Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love. Turner's picture was called "incomprehensible" and "a riddle," and he was told (like Mercutio): "thou talk'st of nothing"to which he might have made Mercutio's answer— True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Which is as thin of substance as the air. But in the realisation of his dream, Turner's grotto is that of Shelley's "Queen Mab" (a personification of the imaginative power) rather than of Shakespeare's. The details indeed are different, but does not the general effect of this picture strangely resemble Shelley's description of Mab's palace?— When those far clouds of feathery purple gleam 369. Like islands on a dark blue sea; Then has thy fancy soared above the earth, Within the Fairy's fane. Yet not the golden islands That gleam amid yon flood of purple light, Paving that gorgeous dome, So fair, so wonderful a sight As Mab's etherial palace could afford. THE PRINCE OF ORANGE, AFTERWARDS Exhibited in 1832, and bought by Mr. Vernon, when the following note was given in the Catalogue, showing once more Turner's interest in ships: "The yacht in which His Majesty sailed was, after many changes and services, finally wrecked on Hamburgh sands, while employed in the Hull trade." "A soft breeze sprang up from the south, the mist dispersed, the sun shone forth, and under the mild light of an autumnal noon the fleet turned back, passed round the lofty cape of Berry Head, and rode safe in the harbour of Torbay. The disembarkation instantly commenced. Sixty boats conveyed the troops to the coast. The Prince soon followed. He landed where the quay of Brixham now stands a fragment of the rock on which the deliverer stepped from his boat has been carefully preserved, and is set up as an object of public veneration in the centre of that busy wharf" (MACAULAY'S History of England, ch. ix.) 1180. CLIVEDEN ON THE THAMES. A view looking across the river, on the famous Cliveden reach, above Maidenhead. Painted probably about 1815, when Turner was living at Twickenham, and was fond both of sketching and fishing on the Thames. 534. APPROACH TO VENICE, LOOKING TOWARDS FUSINA.1 The scene is on the Giudecca Canal, by which in old days the traveller approached Venice from Fusina, seen here on the horizon The path lies o'er the sea, invisible; And from the land we went As to a floating city, steering in, And gliding up her streets as in a dream, So smoothly, silently. ROGERS's Italy. The point of view is nearly the same as in Clarkson Stanfield's picture (XX. 407, p. 499), and it is very instructive to compare the two versions of the same scene. Topographically Stanfield's is accurate, whereas Turner's is imaginary. There is in reality no church which could be included in Turner's 1 This title (as given in the Official Catalogue), though correctly descriptive of the scene, is incorrectly applied to this picture, which was exhibited in 1843 as "St. Benedetto, looking towards Fusina." Another picture, called "Approach to Venice," was exhibited, in 1844, and does not belong to the nation. Turner's title "St. Benedetto" is inaccurate, the church of that name being in a different part of Venice (Notes on the Turner Gallery, p. 73). view. "The buildings on the right are also, for the most part, imaginary in their details, especially in the pretty bridge which connects two of their masses." Yet essentially Turner's version of Venice is the liker of the two. He has seized on the characteristic forms and colours, and thus realised completely the spirit of the scene. "Without one single accurate detail," says Mr. Ruskin, "the picture is the likest thing to what it is meant for the looking out of the Giudecca landwards, at sunset-of all that I have ever seen. The buildings have, in reality, that proportion and character of mass, as one glides up the centre of the tide stream: they float exactly in that strange, mirage-ful, wistful way in the sea mist-rosy ghosts of houses without foundations; the blue line of poplars and copse about the Fusina marshes shows itself just in that way on the horizon; the flowing gold of the water, and quiet gold of the air, face and reflect each other just so; the boats rest so, with their black prows poised in the midst of the amber flame, or glide by so, the boatman stretched far aslope upon his deeplaid oar. One of the strongest points in Turner's Venice painting is his understanding of the way a gondola is rowed, owing to his affectionate studies of boats when he was a boy, and throughout his life. No other painters ever give the thrust of the gondoliers rightly; they make them bend affectedlyvery often impossibly-flourishing with the oar as if they stood up merely to show their figures. Many of our painters even put the oar on the wrong side of the boat. The gondolier on the right side of this picture, rowing the long barge, is exactly right, at the moment of the main thrust. Nevertheless, considered as a boatman, Turner is seriously to be blamed for allowing the fouling of those two gondolas in the middle of the picture, one of which must certainly have gone clear through the other before they could get into their present position." "Take it all in all," adds Mr. Ruskin, "this is the best Venetian picture of Turner's which is left to us. . . . The upper clouds were always dark purple, edged with scarlet; but they have got chilled and opaque. The blue of the distance has altered slightly, making the sun too visible a spot; but the water is little injured, and I think it the best piece of surface-painting which Turner has left in oil-colours" (Notes on the Turner Gallery, pp. 73-75. For the last point cf. under 535, p. 630; and for some remarks on the truth and beauty of the "purple dashes of cloud-spray," see Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. vii. ch. ii. § 16). 482. THE GARRETEER'S PETITION. Exhibited at the Academy in 1809, with the following lines affixed in the Catalogue Aid me, ye powers! O bid my thoughts to roll In quick succession, animate my soul; Descend my Muse, and every thought refine, And finish well my long, my long-sought line. Notice A poet in his attic consuming "the midnight oil." the Hogarthian touch in the plan of Parnassus and a table of fasts pasted on the garret wall: the poet cultivates the Muses without breaking his fast. For the Muses seldom come "when sorest bidden"; Turner himself was to petition them all his life, but his long-sought line was never finished well, and the ambition to become a poet-except in colour—remained a Fallacy of Hope" to the end. 528. PEACE: BURIAL AT SEA OF THE BODY OF SIR DAVID WILKIE. The midnight torch gleam'd o'er the steamer's side, "Fallacies of Hope." A picture of great interest, as showing Turner's depth of feeling for an old comrade. Shortly after Wilkie's death (see p. 492), Turner said to his friend Jones, "I suppose no one will do anything to commemorate Wilkie?" "I shall pay a humble tribute," replied Jones, "by making a drawing representing his funeral." "How will you do it?"—"On the deck of the vessel, as it has been described to me by persons present, and at the time that Wilkie's body was lowered into the sea." Well," said Turner, "I will do it as it must have appeared off the coast." And he did it at once, this picture being exhibited at the Academy in the following year (1842), under the title and with the motto given above. Notice the touch of false sentiment in the "funereal and unnatural blackness" of the sails. Stanfield objected to this at the time, and Turner with characteristic obstinacy replied, "I only wish I had any colour to make them blacker." "It is very like Turner," says Jones, who tells the story, "to have indicated mourning by this means, probably retaining some confused notions of the death of Ægeus and the black sails of the returning Theseus." |