Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/350

 was intended to illustrate all classes of landscape composition by very careful engravings in imitation of drawings in complete chiaroscuro. The idea was suggested by W. F. Wells, with its divisions into ‘Pastoral,’ ‘Marine,’ ‘Historical,’ &c. It was published at very irregular intervals from 1807 to 1819. The first plate executed, ‘Goats on a Bridge,’ was in aquatint; all the rest were a combination of etching and mezzotint. In consequence of a quarrel with Frederick Christian Lewis [q. v.], the engraver, it was not published till the ninth number.

Charles Turner [q. v.] engraved the first twenty published plates (there were five plates in each number) and published numbers 2, 3, and 4. Then Turner quarrelled with him, and published the work himself, employing many of the best mezzotint engravers, with several of whom he had differences. These were W. Say, R. Dunkarton, J. C. Easling, T. Hodgetts, W. Annis, G. Clint, H. Dawe, T. Lupton, and S. W. Reynolds. He supervised the execution of every plate himself with the greatest care, and laid the etched lines of most of them. Some of the plates (about twelve) he engraved entirely himself. Fourteen numbers containing seventy-one plates (including the frontispiece) were published. Twenty remained unpublished. The work has quite recently been completed with admirable skill by Mr. Frank Short. Drawings for most of the plates are in the National Gallery, one is in the British Museum, and a few others are in private hands. The series shows, though not exhaustively, the great range of Turner's power, and wants little to make it a complete epitome of landscape design and effect in black and white. His method of publication was bad, and disfigured by practices the honesty of which it is hard to defend. The original price was 15s. a number for prints and 1l. 5s. for proofs, and this was raised in 1810 to one guinea and two guineas respectively. But though he charged a higher price for a proof edition, he issued no number which consisted entirely of proofs. When the plates got worn, as they very soon did (the process of ‘steeling’ the copper not being then known), he would work upon them, sometimes completely changing the effect, without informing the buyers or altering his price. The best excuse is that sometimes he made a ‘new thing’ of the plate, and that a few of the later ‘states’ are considered finer than the first. His whole procedure shows his contempt of the public as ‘a pack of geese’ (see, A Description and a Catalogue of Turner's Liber Studiorum; and and , Notes on Turner's Liber Studiorum).

In 1808 Turner was elected professor of perspective of the Royal Academy. He lectured very badly, but he tried to make up for his deficiencies in utterance by elaborate illustrations. In 1810, besides his exhibited pictures, he painted the ‘Wreck of the Minotaur’ for Lord Yarborough. In 1811 according to Cyrus Redding, in 1813 or 1814 according to Sir Charles Eastlake, he paid his first and only recorded visit to Devonshire. While with Redding he made many excursions and proved a good companion, and even hospitable, giving a picnic ‘in excellent taste.’ It was near Plymouth that he found the subject for the famous ‘Crossing the Brook,’ exhibited in 1815. He also visited relations at Barnstaple and Exeter. During this tour he made many designs for Cooke's ‘Southern Coast’ [see, (1781–1834)], which was commenced in 1814 and continued to 1826 (forty plates by Turner), when it ceased after a quarrel with Cooke about money, little to the credit of the artist.

Among the most important works of these years not already mentioned were the ‘Apollo and Python’ (1811) and ‘Snowstorm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps’ (1812), the effect of which was suggested by a storm at Farnley. The subject was the same as that of a painting by John Robert Cozens, from which Turner said he had learnt more than from any other. It was to the title of this picture in the catalogue he appended the first of many quotations from a supposed manuscript poem of his own called ‘Fallacies of Hope.’ They are perhaps the best lines he ever wrote: Craft, treachery, and fraud—Salassian force, Hung on the fainting rear! Then Plunder seiz'd   The victor and the captive—Saguntum's spoil Alike became their prey; still the chief advanc'd,   Look'd on the sun with hope;—low, broad, and wan, While the fierce archer of the downward year Stains Italy's blanch'd barrier with storms. In vain each pass, ensanguin'd deep with dead, Or rocky fragments, wide destruction roll'd.   Still on Campania's fertile plains—he thought, But the loud breeze sob'd, ‘Capua's joys beware.’

In 1815, besides the ‘Crossing the Brook’ and several other fine works, he exhibited ‘Dido building Carthage, or the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire,’ the best of the Carthage series. This picture was a great favourite with Turner, and he once said he would be