CONSTABLE-TURNER engraved after
their author's death, indeed, not until
But the latter's under his own eye.
Turner's day. issued
finished productions were
Turner's rule of conduct, in fact, was nullus."
Having own
established his
"
aut Csesar aut
supremacy over
rivals,
satisfaction, he set himself to conquer a universe of his own. During a period of twelve years,
at least to his
beginning with this picture of Ulysses and ending with that of a tug-boat towing to a wrecker's yard a ship of the line. The Fighting Temeraire, and The Burial of Wilkie at Sea, he did his greatest work. For then his
imagination was at
its
ripest
and
richest; displayed
particularly in the majesty of moving depths of water, in skies of vast grandeur, and in the splendor of his
color-schemes; moreover, the workmanship of his picwas solid, and he still based his imagination on
tures
the facts of nature.
But, as time went on, the need of
—
—
which every genius feels continual experimenting seemed to take undue possession of him,* so that the study
of nature became constantly less and the independent invention more and more. It was no longer the forms of nature that interested him, but her impalpable qualities of light and atmosphere, and perhaps even more the intoxication of the actual skill in using paint, until one may suspect that he was more enamoured of the magic
brush and paints than of the qualities of nature which he was supposed to be representing. So daring, almost to the point of recklessness, were his experiments,
of
his
that his later pictures have deteriorated,
until their
original appearance can only be guessed. On the other hand, in his fondness for atmospheric effects, and par[ 299 ]