Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/353

 edition of Milton, in 1837 Moxon's ‘Campbell;’ in 1838 the series of ‘England and Wales’ stopped, and in 1840 appeared an edition of Tom Moore's ‘Epicurean,’ with four illustrations after Turner. After this the engravings after Turner were chiefly or entirely large single plates, which, despite their elaborate beauty, were unprofitable to the publishers.

Turner's first visit to Venice must have been about 1832, and during 1833–46 the profound impression made upon his mind and art by the ‘City of the Sea’ was very visible in his contributions to the academy. In every year except 1838 and 1839 he sent one or more Venetian pictures, in which his genius shows itself perhaps with more perfect freedom than in any others of his compositions. From the first they were brilliant in colour and of extreme subtlety in execution—visions of an enchanted city of the imagination; and if, as time went on, they became more and more dreamlike and unsubstantial, they retained to the last a magic and mystery of sunlight and air which no other artist has approached. The Venetian inspiration is but imperfectly represented by oil pictures in the National Gallery; but Mr. Vernon left to it one of Turner's earliest Venetian pictures, ‘Bridge of Sighs—Ducal Palace and Custom House—Canaletti painting’ (exhibited 1833), and Turner left it several of his later oil sketches, including ‘the Sun of Venice going to Sea’ and ‘St. Benedetto looking towards Fusina’ (both exhibited in 1843). The latter was ‘realised’ a year later in the ‘Approach to Venice,’ now belonging to Mrs. Moir, and perhaps the most beautiful of all his Venetian pictures. But the collection of Turner's watercolours in the National Gallery is rich in sketches of Venice. The Venetian inspiration, though paramount during these years, by no means exhausted his energies, which were employed over almost the whole field of his knowledge and experience, and produced some of his most beautiful work of all kinds. From 1833, the year of his first Venetian picture, to 1840, he exhibited the following pictures, all of the highest class; of poetical landscape: ‘The Golden Bough’ (1834); ‘Mercury and Argus’ (1836); ‘Modern Italy’ and ‘Ancient Italy’ (1838); of scenes on the coast of England: ‘Wreckers—Coast of Northumberland’ (1834); ‘St. Michael's Mount, Cornwall’ (1834, Sheepshanks Collection); ‘Line Fishing off Hastings’ (1835, Sheepshanks Collection); of the Rhine: ‘Ehrenbreitstein’ (1835); of Switzerland; ‘Snowstorm, Avalanche, and Inundation’ (Val d'Aoste, Piedmont), 1837. More difficult to class are two or more pictures of the burning of the houses of parliament, exhibited at the Royal Academy and British Institution in 1835 and 1836, and, what is probably the best known and most generally admired of all his works, ‘The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth’ (exhibited in 1839), the last picture (according to Mr. Ruskin) painted with his entire and perfect power.

Personal records of this time are, as usual, very scanty. In 1833 we find him at the sale of his old patron, Dr. Monro, buying up about ninety of his early drawings at a cost of about 80l. In 1834 he met Sir David Brewster at a dinner given at Edinburgh to Lord Grey, and on 16 Oct. of the same year he witnessed the fire at the houses of parliament. In 1836 Turner took a tour in France and Italy with his friend Mr. Munro of Novar. In 1838, on the discontinuance of the ‘England and Wales’ series, he bought up the whole stock with the copperplates for 3,000l., in order to prevent his plates being ‘worn to shadows;’ and it was in the August of this year that he and Stanfield saw the Téméraire being tugged up the Thames, and Stanfield suggested it to Turner as the subject of a picture. It was during this period that Turner's pictures, on account of their apparently careless handling and extravagant colour, began to excite ridicule. ‘Blackwood,’ which only a few years before had called him the greatest landscape artist since Claude, abused his Venetian pictures in 1835, stigmatised the ‘Grand Canal’ in 1837 as a bold attempt to insult the public taste, and in 1839 excepted the ‘Téméraire’ alone from a general condemnation. Nevertheless we have it on the authority of John Pye (1782–1874) [q. v.] that from 1840 to 1851 Turner's reputation and in proportion the price of the ‘Liber Studiorum’ rose. Possibly the fame of the ‘Téméraire’ may have done something towards this, but there can be no doubt that the enormous increase in Turner's reputation during the last years of his life was greatly due to Mr. Ruskin and ‘Modern Painters,’ the first volume of which appeared in 1843. In 1840 Mr. Ruskin, then just twenty-one, but already for several years an enthusiastic admirer of the artist, was introduced to Turner by Mr. Griffith. Having done with print-sellers who used to purchase all his drawings, Turner now employed Mr. Griffith as his agent for the sale of his works. The famous picture of ‘The Slave Ship,’ so eloquently described in ‘Modern Painters’ (vol. i.), and long in the possession of Mr. Ruskin, was exhibited in 1840.

Although from this time may be noted some failure of Turner in both health and