Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/416

 394 THE BUILDING NEWS. | May 17, 1872. See eeeeeeeeeeeeFs—“Msa— 10.00 S———a>anq_q_a_——4 his last year’s work ; the King is well conx- ceived, and his silly laughing face is very characteristic, while the figure of Gaveston is graceful and well drawn ; it strikes us that the other figures are somewhat small in size. No. 915, “‘'The Harvest of Spring,” by F. C. Prinsep, two young ladies gathering rhodo- dendrons, isa capital bit of colour, and the girl in the green dress is well painted. This is Mr. Prinsep’s best work here. Space fails us to give our readers amore detailed account of the pictures at this time; we will only mention some few of great excellence, and leave them after these to find out the other meritorious works for themselves. Amongst others, Mr. G. D. Leslie’s poetical and graceful bit of ‘Thames scenery, called « An Elopement, A.D. 1790” (183) ; the same painter’s “ Lavinia” (95); Mr. Leighton’s «Summer Moon” (202); (497) ‘* The Arrest of Anne Boleyn,” by D. W. Wynfield; (498) “The Lament of Ariadne,” by W. B. Rich- mond ; (247) ** God’s Acre,” by T. Faed; Mr. Elmore’s portrait of his daughter (367); (309) «‘ Remorse,” by Mr. Poole; and ‘‘'The Cradle of the Sea-bird,” by P. Graham, will all repay careful study. There are also some excellent examples of French and foreign artists’ works, which we will notice on a subsequent occasion. ——_»——_- J. M. W. TURNER, AND WHAT HE CAN TEACH. ee the very many discouraging in- fluences which are now-a-days pressing so heavily upon art, and out of, or awa: from which the world does not as yet see its way, there is one thing, or principle, which is slowly, very slowly, growing into notice— the value andimportance of the individuality and personal power of the executive artist. It is absolutely impossible to conceive a greater principle in art action than this, for it ina measure includes all others, or rather, no others can well be of much importance without it. If we pass in review for a moment the history of art, whatis it but the catalogue of a list of the successive men whose minds and hands have left us examples and proofs of that individual power of mind and hand which makes the artist? Indeed, does not a eertain charm lie in the very names of great artists, and are they not the musical expres- sions of the individualities of those who were known in life by them? But, if the names work so great a mental influence, what is to be said of the works of such men, for inthem itis that an artist always lives? Such thoughts must occur, we are sure, to every one who has been lucky or wise enough to visit and study the wonderful series of drawings by Turner, got together and exhibited by the Burlington Fine Arts Club. Inasmall room may Turner there be seen at work, almost as vividly as though he were aliveand we couldsee himat his work. A good deal has already been said in various ways about these drawings and etch- ings, but still, as it seems to us, there are a few lessons to be got out of them further than have been indicated, for the fact of the existence of the same subject in various phases of workinanship exhibits to us, perhaps for the first time, how very much lies in mere subtlety of work and in minute differences. Take, for example, the drawing numbered in the useful catalogue No. 44, ‘*Calm,” the whole of it drawn, etched, and engraved by the painter himself. ‘There are seven drawings in all, in different states of progress and what is called “ finish,” beginning with the first etching, or outline, and ending with the completed plate as finally published. To those who seek lessons in drawing and painting, and in light and shade, here they are. Nothing can possibly be finer than these several plates or impressions of artistic power; nothing simpler, or more easily understood. There is no ‘ imaginative faculty’ at work on which Mr. Ruskin lays so much stress, and without which he says It is a simple scene of smooth water, quiet sky, and a few fishing and hay boats, such as any one who will look for them may see any day, and all day long, on the river Thames, from Billingsgate or the Custom House Quay. Wait an hour or two, so that the light may change, and you may see the realities from which these seven plates were copies one after the other. ‘To our minds, the plate C is the finest of the series, being just in that state wherein over-jinish has not done a little mis- chief. It is a perfect reflection of nature itself. We would ask attention to this draw- ing especially, as it seems to us to give a fairer idea of taking a subject ‘ straight from nature,” with no modification from pictorial influence, than does the ‘ Peat Bog, Scotland,” cited specially by Mr. Ruskin as exemplitying this. We would here ask attention to this simple Peat Bog scene, as showing how mag- nificent a landscape is to be got out of a mere barren waste, cloud covered. The darkest olate is the most striking. What a pity it is that we have no adequate life of Turner, so as to be able to see a little into his way of life, and how he divided his time, and where he went, and what it was that made him stand still to look at a passing effect, and then to copy it. Mr. Thornbury’s ‘“ Life of Turner” gives nothing of this; it is a useful book, better than absolutely nothing, perhaps, but still the incidents in it might do for almost any man of the ordinary type. Turner must have been something more than this ; and, indeed, there are one or two things in Mr. Thorn- bury’s book which hint at it. No one by mere simple everyday existence, and by common travelling, could do such work. To see com- and fishing-smacks, from the shores of the Thames, as Turner so constantly did, with the eye of an artist, you must go there over and over again, must be content to wait for the magic to be found in common things, and for the coming storm. Why, to see it requires some- times no end of patience. ‘Turner, in these two drawings—and they are close together in the room—has shown the two extremes—calm and storm; and it seems wonderful that, while capable of such selection, he should haye spent time over some of the poor and‘unin- teresting ‘‘ views” he did. His mind certainly took in all things, great and small, simple and complicated, imaginative and commonplace. Turner in the rooms of the Royal Academy, and Turner on the muddy shores of the Thames, where he did some of his best work, and where certainly he was first inspired, must have been two different men. We can well imagine him to have found what he wanted in the very mud of the Thames, before the grand Embankment narrowed the river, or in spots et to be found and seen down narrow courts, and among broken-down buildings ‘ below bridge.” Ruskin says that the ‘feeling of decay and humiliation ” gives solemnity to all these simple subjects. Even Turner’s view of common daily labour was tinged with melan- choly. He had almost a fondness for disorder, and the rotting away of things ; for neglected, haggard, and broken things, even for childish- ness; and when feyer-struck and decrepit, for lameness, stagnation, age, and rags. Be it so, but it was not, depend upon it, for mere > sake, or for the sake of ‘“nensiveness,”’ or for the “conquering of human pride,” that all this was done, but for this far more tremendous reason—that real art power and certain strength are not to be found in what is termed the orderly and ‘‘respectable,” nor in mere neatness and method, nor in the quiet ways of life, norin the midst of the well-ordered fashion of the time, but in the rough and broken things he saw on the shores of the wr-improved Thames, and in neglected and rubbish-encumbered places! Turner was a man of business as well as an artist, and he knew well where real strength was to be found. There is, indeed, no more curious subject than this to be found in the records of the mon boats, coal-barges, hay-barges, ‘“melancholy’s ’ ’ you can do nothing, or next to nothing, in art. | highest art power. It is really surprising, in the studying of these drawings, to see how entirely ‘fact”—plain, natural fact—ruled Turner, and to see how he comparatively failed when he got beyond it, or attempted to add to it, or alter it. And then to consider, again, how impossible it is even for the very highest powers to entirely realise any great fact of nature—to wit, the snow on the highest peak of a mountain. Turner has. tried at it in one of these etchings. It isa curious thing to look at, for it is evident enough that he tried to do nothing more than to plainly, and in a matter-of-fact way, realise the look of it. There is the form, the colour, the air, and the feeling of distance to be got at, and the light and shade too: he has tried at all of them ; his own work, beit under- stood, after the plate was mezzotinted. It is maryellously done with the point of a pen- knife, apparently so that the roughened paper itself represents the snow; but still, somehow or other, even when you stand at a good distance, and so lose the manipulative detail, it does not realise the wonderful fact. Per- haps the engraver was at fault; if so, it shows how impossible it is to be helped in art. Turner tried no less than eleven engravers, all able men, doubtless, but they could not personate Turner himself. What a marvellous thing it would have been had this great master of landscape painted, or even drawn, but one large picture of the size of a Raphael cartoon—the scene, directly from Nature, of a sea storm ora mountain top. Would it have been greater or less than the highest of historical work ? Were we inclined to grow imaginative at all, or to attribute to Turner any very special mental faculty or proclivity which would place him in the highest circle of artistie power, it would be to attribute to himthe somewhat strange and unaccountable one of that propensity orlonging” for what we will call, in place of a better word, ‘‘sombreness.” It would seem to be one of the special prerogatives of the highest art genius known among men to delight in a. certain gloom, in deep shadows and darkness, to see things in an uncertain light, and to leave more to be thought out than it is possible to make visible. Witness, for in- stance, the all-prevailing gloom and mystery of shadows which cloud the Sistine ceiling. All the tremendous forms seem to be only just visible, they all of them appear to have come fromsome gloomy vault, to have issued out of darkness, and to have only so far come into the foreground as to be just visible, and no more. Neyer was such work. Itis only in the lowest depths of society that you can see such forms under such light, and with such a background of uncertain gloom and visible darkness. We have seen it, but only in holes and corners of human existence. Such beingsare afraid of daylight. Another giant of shadows was Rembrandt, and all know what he loved, and in what palpable gloom and mystery of light and shade he revelled. Titian, again, never saw daylight, and what may be termed daylight cheerfulness ; nothing can be more sombre than the light he loved, only to be compared to that which is to be seen in the gloom of forests. Nature truly demands a tremendous price for all she does or allows her children to do. As civilisation advances, and order obtains everywhere, and the earth becomes cultivated, and rivers be- come purified, and cities thoroughly cleam and sanitary, and everybody gets to be edu- cated, all, or a good deal of this, must dis- appear. If Turner is ever weak it is: when he sets to work on a “villa” and formal garden, or gentleman’s mansion and “ grounds.” It was in ruin and darkness and in tumultuous sea-way that he really revelled. The last may be seen magnificently rendered in No. 84, ‘‘ Storm over the Lizard,” in short, in things uncertainly and dimly visible. No- ‘‘jmagination” was needful for such scenes, for in themselves are they not complete and perfect? Whatmore is there or can there be ? Nature has done her utmost, and no inventive power,of man, even if he had it, can add any-