Young Mr Turner by Eric Shanes: sample pages

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YOUNG MR TURNER THE FIRST FORTY YEARS

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E R I C S HA NE S

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1775–1815

YOUNG MR TURNER A complex figure, and divisive during his lifetime, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) has long been considered Britain’s greatest painter. An artist of phenomenal invention, complexity and industry, Turner is now one of the world’s most popular painters. This comprehensive new account of his early life draws together recent scholarship, corrects errors in the existing literature and presents a wealth of new findings. In doing so, it furnishes a more detailed understanding than ever before of the connections between Turner’s life and art.

Taking a strictly chronological approach, Eric Shanes addresses Turner’s intellectual complexity and depth, his technical virtuosity, his personal contradictions and his intricate social and cultural relations. Shanes draws on decades of familiarity with his subject, as well as newly discovered source material, such as the artist’s principal bank records, which shed significant light on his patronage and sales.The result, written in a warm, engaging style, is a comprehensive and magnificently illustrated volume which will fundamentally shape the future of Turner studies.

Eric Shanes is a professional painter, independent art historian and lecturer. He is a leading expert on Turner, a vice president of the Turner Society and the author of many books on the artist, including Turner’s England (1990) and Turner’s Watercolour Explorations (1997).

Cover Illustrations Front: The wreck of a transport ship, 1810, oil on canvas, The Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon.

Back: Interior of Ely Cathedral, looking towards the north transept and chancel, 1796–7, watercolour on paper, Aberdeen Art Gallery.

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YOUNG MR TURNER THE FIRST FORTY YEARS

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1775–1815

ERIC SHANES

P U B L I S H E D F O R T H E PAU L M E L L O N C E N T R E F O R S T U D I E S I N B R I T I S H A RT B Y Y A L E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S • N E W H AV E N A N D L O N D O N

8 Grandeur 1796 to 1798

siobury Park, near Watford in Hertfordshire. He did so in order to hand over the five views of Hampton Court, Herefordshire, that had been commissioned the previous summer.3 The stay must have been enjoyable, for the house contained pictures by Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), Canaletto, Reynolds, Gainsborough and Morland, among other celebrated artists. Turner also made a number of watercolours of Cassiobury house, as well as studies of beech trees in its park (fig. 159).

In the spring of 1796 Turner began renting additional space in the lane at the end of Hand-court. There he supposedly found life ‘quieter, more secret, and freer from interruption from visitors coming to the shop’.1 The rooms he took reputedly had two front windows but remained ‘rather dark’.2 A possible reason for the move is clear: it is likely that the 36 × 48 inch Fishermen at sea was painted in the topfloor bedroom cum studio at 26 Maiden Lane. As a consequence, getting it down the stairs could have necessitated the complete removal of the canvas from its stretching frame and restretching it on the ground floor of the building, or even within Somerset House. That would have proved an irksome business, for a perfect restretch of any picture can never be guaranteed. If Turner was contemplating the creation of further canvases on the same scale by 1796, as seems likely, then obtaining a new, ground-level studio may have been partially undertaken with the prevention of restretching problems in mind.

It was probably also by the spring of 1796 that Turner purchased Robert Anderson’s thirteen-volume compendium entitled A Complete Edition of the Poets of Great Britain, issued in 1795 and hereafter known simply as Anderson’s Complete Poets. The forty poets represented within its covers ranged from Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343–1400) to Oliver Goldsmith (1730–1774), and many of their works would inspire images or imagery by Turner.

During the late spring or early summer of 1796 Turner visited Viscount Malden at his family residence and principal home, CasDetail of fig. 162.

159 Beech Trees at Cassiobury Park, Hertfordshire, 1796, pencil and grey wash on paper, 9¼ × 14¾ (23.5 × 37.4), private collection.

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160 Brighton from the west, 1796, pencil and watercolour on paper, 15¼ × 201⁄8 (38.7 × 51.1), The Timothy Clode Collection, not in Wilton.

Apart from the Cassiobury visit, the summer of 1796 constitutes one of the most mysterious periods in Turner’s life. Thornbury filled it with a love affair in Margate that supposedly ‘affected [the painter’s] mind for ever’.4 However, we need waste no space on the tale here, for it contains many flaws, and in any case it far too strongly resembles Victorian melodrama to be credible.5 Yet the summer of 1796 is curious, for Turner undertook no major tour and only occasionally appears to have used a single sketchbook. Although it has

been argued that he was seriously ill this year, there is no evidence of that either.6 One possibility is that he simply went on holiday to Margate, Brighton and Chichester, for after all he had been working extremely hard. Alternatively, he may have enjoyed a break in order to take stock of where he was going artistically. And then there was his growing involvement with poetry, as manifested in the acquisition of Anderson’s Complete Poets. Perhaps he spent the summer reading 6

and musing on history, mythology and new ways of investing landscape and marine painting with ‘poetic’ meaning. Yet there could have been a further reason for his limited output this summer.

As we have seen, in the spring of 1796 Turner had exhibited his first major seascape in oils, and undoubtedly he wanted to excel as a marine painter. However, in order to do so he needed to intensify his insight into the nature of nautical behaviour and ship-handling.

Because Britain had been at war since 1793, no military or large merchant vessel would ever have given space to a ‘landlubber’ who wanted to learn the ropes, for events were too pressing to be wasted on such elementary training. But small fishing vessels were a different matter. Perhaps Turner spent several weeks at Brighton this summer working in a lowly paid or unpaid capacity upon a fishing boat. Heavy manual labour by day and night could easily have exhausted someone unused to a life spent at sea, and consequently robbed him of the energy to pick up his brushes very often. Only on Sundays might he possibly have known a day’s rest. Admittedly, this is completely speculative but Turner did acquire a great deal of knowledge about nautical behaviour and he had to have gained it from somewhere.

Yet even if Turner was ill that summer, he certainly produced some good works at the time. Quite a few of the drawings and watercolours contained in a sketchbook in use then are anything but ‘slight and timid’, as has been claimed.7 At least four of them were studies for an extremely fine watercolour of the view looking eastwards from Hove towards Brighton (fig. 160). That Turner was systematic enough to make preliminary studies for a finished watercolour somewhat undermines the claim that he was suffering from weakness of mind in the summer of 1796. And no less pictorially strong is an unfinished watercolour of the same date showing the view looking eastwards from Brighton towards Rottingdean (fig. 161). At least nine more watercolours of boats and light effects were created at Brighton during this year, and all of them are of a relatively high standard.8 The claim that Turner was visually feeble in the summer of 1796 simply does not pass muster.

If Turner was not highly productive that summer, he certainly made up for it during the following autumn and winter with the creation of many new oils and watercolours. One of the most impressive of the latter is a variant version (fig. 162) of the large view of the interior of Ely Cathedral that had been exhibited at the Royal Academy the previous spring (see fig. 155).9 The new work was commissioned by the Bishop of Ely, Dr James Yorke (1730–1808), obviously because he had been greatly impressed by the earlier watercolour. In that previous version, late afternoon sunlight falls from the left, whereas in the new design morning sunlight descends from the right. As in the earlier image, the figures within the crossing and up in the lantern help establish the immense scale of the building. An understanding of the underlying dynamics of architecture is

161 Brighthelmstone, 1796, watercolour on paper, 16¼ × 21½ (41.3 × 54.6), Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

again apparent, as is a sense of radiant light, with the distant reaches of the chancel almost receding to infinity in their luminosity. By now Turner’s ability to create the most extraordinary delicacies of tone was paying glorious dividends.

The 1797 Royal Academy Exhibition f r i day 2 8 a p r i l t o s at u r day 1 7 j u n e

Turner had six works on show this year, two of them oils. The watercolours all hung in the Council Room.

It has long been recognised that Trancept of Ewenny Priory, Glamorganshire (fig. 163) was heavily influenced by the Rembrandt night scene and various Piranesi prints that Turner had viewed at Stourhead in 1795. The impact of Piranesi is evident in the architectural massing and light coming from opposite directions, while the input of Rembrandt is apparent in the juxtaposed extremes of light and dark, as well as in the cool and warm colour oppositions on the left and right respectively. Part of the grandeur of the image emanates from the liberties Turner took with scale, for he greatly enlarged both the presbytery beyond the screen on the left, and the south transept to the right of centre beyond the crossing. And Turner the moralist was also at work here, for by making pigs, poultry and farm implements so prominent, he stressed the low use to which the priory had fallen because of the Reformation.

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163 Trancept of Ewenny Priory, Glamorganshire, R.A. 1797 (427), watercolour on paper, 15¾ × 22 (40 × 55.9), National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.

In the centre, the tomb-effigy of Sir Paganus de Turbeville of Coity (fl.1070) that Turner had drawn in pencil at Ewenny Priory in 1795 has been rotated through 180 degrees,10 quite evidently to project the complete turnabout of the building’s fortunes effected by the Reformation, as well as the reversed hopes of the ancient knight that he might rest in eternal peace (for now he is surrounded by farmyard noises). The Trancept of Ewenny Priory is yet another work

in which we can discern Turner’s increasing involvement with the moral, associative and historical ramifications of a theory connecting painting and poetry that was widely disseminated in his era. We shall explore that body of ideas shortly.

Turner placed one of the most conspicuously inventive allusions in his entire output within Choir of Salisbury Cathedral (fig. 164). Here we look eastwards across the cathedral Choir towards the Trinity Chapel, where a stained glass triptych of the Resurrection based upon a design by Sir Joshua Reynolds is so brilliantly lit that we might be excused for thinking the sun is shining through it.11 However, the mid-afternoon sunlight falling from the right demonstrates that the sun must be high in the sky to the south, and that the triptych could therefore not be illuminated in that way. The intensity of its colour is greatly heightened by the almost mono-

Facing page 162 Interior of Ely Cathedral, looking towards the north transept and chancel, 1796–7, watercolour on paper, 24¾ × 19¼ (62.9 × 48.9), Aberdeen Art Gallery.

This work has often been confused with the Ely Cathedral, South Trancept exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1797.

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165 Possibly the Ely Cathedral, South Trancept exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1797 (464), pencil and watercolour on paper, 13 × 19½ (24 × 33), private collection.

chromatic, subdued hues present everywhere else in the image, including those of further stained glass windows that in reality may well have matched the triptych in their intensity of colouring.

Clearly we are beholding the radiance of the risen Christ in this drawing. Naturally, the trope generates further associations, for of course to believers the Christian Church ultimately arose from the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.12 Additionally, Turner was necessarily paying Reynolds a huge compliment by suggesting that the latter’s

powers of representation had been so great that he had been able to depict both Christ and the light He generated. Although Turner had hinted at God’s light in the Elgin Cathedral view of 1795 (see fig. 138), in Choir of Salisbury Cathedral he depicted the shining of divine light itself, and did so for the very first time. Moreover, his representation of the Reynolds triptych proves that he had perceived a connection between stained glass, art, earthly light and divine light.

Possibly the work exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1797 under the title of Ely Cathedral, South Trancept was an image that includes two south transepts (fig. 165), with the one specified by the title of the exhibit dominating its entire right half, while the south-west transept juts out from the distant west tower on the left. But in this watercolour Turner undoubtedly indulged his penchant for associa-

Facing page 164 Choir of Salisbury Cathedral, signed and dated 1797, R.A. 1797 (450), watercolour on paper, 25½ × 20 (64.8 × 50.8), Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum.

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166 North Porch of Salisbury Cathedral, R.A. 1797, watercolour on paper, 195⁄8 × 255⁄8 (50 × 65) Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum.

tionism once again, for as in his Llandaff Cathedral depiction (see fig. 133), clearly he included children at play because Christ had held little ones to be particularly blessed instruments of God, while play is what usually makes them happy.

On the left of North Porch of Salisbury Cathedral (fig. 166) workmen labour on the east side of the porch, possibly as part of the restoration work undertaken around the mid-1790s by the architect James Wyatt RA (1746–1813). If Wyatt was not already known to Turner by the spring of 1797, he soon would be. With great elan, some

tree shadows are distributed across the near-side of the porch, and possibly Turner put them there with Michael Angelo Rooker in mind. Within the porch two beggars ply their trade, while some well-off persons enter or approach the doorway. Nearby, a woman holds a baby, obviously to introduce associations of traditional representations of the Virgin and Child. The other people are no less appropriate to a depiction of a Christian building. Further away, figures crowd the greensward in front of the cathedral as they watch a passing show.

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167 Giovanni Vendramini after Sir William Beechey, Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois, stipple engraving, 1811, National Portrait Gallery, London.

168 Moonlight, a study at Millbank, R.A. 1797 (136), oil on panel, 123⁄8 × 157⁄8 (31.5 × 40.5), Tate Britain, London.

With both of his 1797 exhibited oil paintings, Turner had at last made it into the Great Room, at least to start with. But just prior to the Royal Academy dinner, when the hanging of the entire show had been completed and the first edition of the catalogue had already been printed, Turner was forced to swap one of his entries with a portrait by Sir Francis Bourgeois RA (1756–1811, fig. 167) that had been placed in the Anti-Room.13 This left a small oil entitled Moonlight, a study at Millbank (fig. 168) as his sole representative within the Great Room. The work owes much to the Rembrandt night scene at Stourhead. Now pushed into the Anti-Room was Fishermen coming ashore at sun set, previous to a gale, which is also known as The Mildmay Sea-Piece after its first owner, Sir Henry St John-Mildmay (1746–1808), who may have commissioned it. Sadly, it disappeared long ago,14 and it is therefore represented here by its mezzotint reproduction (fig. 169). This would be drawn and etched

by Turner in 1812 as Plate 40 of his set of prints entitled Liber Studiorum, to which we will come below.15 The critics were kind about Turner’s exhibits, with the 20–23 May edition of the St James’s Chronicle not only citing Trancept of Ewenny Priory as being ‘in point of colour and effect . . . one of the grandest Drawings’ ever seen in Somerset House, but stating that it was ‘equal to the best Picture of rembrandt’. Furthermore, the same critic recognised Turner’s metaphor in Choir of Salisbury Cathedral, for after praising the work’s ‘numerous beauties’ he declared: ‘The light and

169 The Mildmay Sea-Piece, mezzotint engraving drawn and etched by J. M. W. Turner as Plate 40 of Liber Studiorum (after the Fishermen coming ashore at sun set, previous to a gale exhibited at the R.A. in 1797), the first state of which bears the inscription ‘Picture in the possession of Sir John Mildmay Bart . . . 3 Feet by 4 Feet’, 1812, image size 71⁄8 × 103⁄8 (18 × 26.3), British Museum, London.

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173 Claude le Lorrain, Landscape with a Rural Dance, c.1637, oil on canvas, 28 × 39½ (71 × 100.5), private collection.

When Turner had painted Moonlight, a study at Millbank (see fig. 168) on panel, it appears likely that he had simultaneously been working upon another night-piece on wood that is virtually equal to it in size. This is Colebrook Dale (fig. 170), which also owes a great deal to Rembrandt’s Holy Family Resting on the Flight into Egypt (see fig.

137). Here the overriding gloom is invested with a wondrous sense of ‘freshness’, for there are no dead areas of darkness anywhere in sight. The slopes of the bank on the left, the water and leaves across the foreground, the landscape stretching off to the right, the slightly illumined trees in the centre-distance, and the night sky are all clearly defined, no matter how shadowy they might be. Perhaps more than any other work Turner had created to date, this modest and some-

colour through the painted window are charmingly described; and the effect is true sublimity and grandeur.’ He would hardly have used the last two terms with respect to such a comparatively small detail had he not perceived the significance of the light shining through the Resurrection triptych. And ‘Anthony Pasquin’ in the Morning Post of 5 May (and again in the critical guide to the exhibition that appeared just a little later) commended Fishermen coming ashore at sun set for its originality and ‘undeniable proof of the possession of genius and judgement’. The Times critic of 3 May 1797 declared of the same work that he had ‘never beheld a picture of the kind possessing more imagination, or exciting more awe and sympathy in the spectator’.

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174 Louth, Lincolnshire: St James’s Church and Upgate from the junction with Mercer Row, 1797, pencil on paper, 8¼ × 105⁄8 (21 × 27.2), fol. 80 of the North of England sketchbook, Turner Bequest XXXIV, Tate Britain, London.

175 A Cannon Foundry, 1797, pencil and watercolour on paper, 9¾ × 13½ (24.7 × 34.7), Turner Bequest XXIII-B, Tate Britain, London.

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J .

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T U R N E R

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YOUNG MR TURNER THE FIRST FORTY YEARS

ya l e u n i v e r s i ty p r e s s

•

n e w hav e n an d lo n d o n

E R I C S HA NE S

✦

1775–1815