A. J. Finberg

“ Of these three phases of Turner’s dazzling and complex genius I regard the middle one as the most important. The works produced in those years founded a genuinely national school of homely realism, and show Turner as the leader and inspirer of the Norwich School, and the master of David Cox, De Wint and all that is best in English water-colour painting. The spirit which animated this period is the spirit which informs nearly all the oil paintings and water-colours in the Farnley Hall Collection. ”

“ The starkness and bigness of drawing in the group of pine trees in the foreground of the Glacier and Source of the Arveiron strike the imagination with Miltonic power and certainty. The blues in the Lake of Brienz have slightly faded, but the rich sombre harmony of the drawing is in no way impaired. ”

“ An altogether different note is struck in the graceful and charming subject of Bonneville. Here all is peace and serenity. The foreground is filled with the amenities of untroubled rural life, the distant blue and white peaks of the mountains making an excellent foil to the graceful foliage, white walls and bridge of the little town which nestles at their feet. The foreground, indeed, is only redeemed from insipidity by the sharp, firm drawing of the ripples and stones.
THE RHINE DRAWINGS.
25. ”

“ His oil paintings produced during these years are as solidly and carefully worked as those of the old Flemish and Dutch masters. They are built to defy the centuries. A picture like the so-called Pilot Boat (Shoeburyness Fisherman hailing a Whitstable Hoy) —painted more than a hundred years ago—is a model of perfect craftsmanship. It has no cracks, and Time has only mellowed the exquisite pearly harmonies of its colour and the indescribable charm of its wonderful surface. ”

“ Gothard, for instance—the calm, unhurried elaboration of rock forms gives them a certain cold and prosaic air. Such drawings lack the gloomy majesty and lyrical intensity of feeling of paintings like The Trossachs, Conway Castle and Kilgarran Castle. For work of this kind a certain vagueness and generalisation of execution are necessary, and Turner was, after 1804, already beginning to feel his way towards a greater clarity and lucidity of expression than Wilson had attempted. The Farnley drawings represent, therefore, what I may call the aftermath of Turner’s early romantic mood. ”

“ From the deer park on the Otley Chevin we look down on the houses and church of Otley, the “metropolis of Wharfedale,” as its inhabitants call it. Beyond, the Wharfe winds away towards Ilkley and Bolton, and on the left may be seen the Cow and Calf Rocks at Ben Rhydding.
This is one of the most poetical and exquisitely finished drawings of the Wharfedale series. ”

“ Such drawings as Johannesberg, Sonneck and Baccharach, Mayence and Cassel, and the rest, are not hurried sketches from nature, but carefully pondered and{10} perfectly elaborated works of art. In some few cases parts of the sky or distance may have been painted from nature, but they all owe much of their charm and beauty to the consummately skilful labour which the artist lavished upon them in the intervals of travel, during the two months which elapsed between his departure from Cologne and his arrival at Farnley Hall near the beginning of November. ”

“ The Bay of Baiæ, the first important oil painting which he produced after this visit, is overloaded with detail, and the design possesses no organic unity. The best artistic results of the journey were a few water-colours painted for Mr. Fawkes. The Rialto, Venice, a brilliant drawing, though overcrowded with facts, is interesting as Turner’s first Venetian picture done from his own sketches—the drawing of the same subject engraved in Hakewill’s “Italy” having been made from camera-obscura tracings furnished by Hakewill. ”

“ We have tormented the poor animals very much lately and now we must give them a holiday.
“Remember the Wharfdales—everybody is delighted with your Mill. I sit for a long time before it every day.
“Ever very truly yrs.,
W. Fawkes.”
The “Wharfdales” are evidently the series of drawings of Wharfedale scenery which Turner had in hand for Mr. Fawkes. The allusions to the drawing of the Mill give us a clue to the real bond of union between the two men, viz., the patron’s sincere and unaffected delight in the artist’s work. ”

“ The object of Thornbury’s statements about Turner being away only for a fortnight, and going straight to Farnley after landing at Hull, is evidently to corroborate his assertion that the fifty drawings were done “at the prodigious rate of three a day.” No one who has studied these beautiful drawings at all carefully could believe such a statement. But the evidence of Turner’s own memoranda proves that he only spent twelve days visiting the places on the Rhine which he has represented. He occupied from the 18th of August to the 30th sketching between Cologne and Mayence. ”

“ The poem was to be illustrated by a series of engravings to be made from water-colours specially painted by the artist for the work. The poem was never completed, but Turner seems to have spent the greater part of the summer of 1811 wandering along the coast from Christchurch, in Hampshire, to Land’s End, in Cornwall, diligently making hundreds of wonderfully delicate and accurate sketches, and with equal diligence, and perhaps just as much enjoyment to himself, grinding out even a greater number of lame and halting lines of the most indifferent verse. ”

“ The deadly sureness of touch and almost incredible dexterity in the manipulation of washes of colour, remind one more of the calligraphic art of the Chinese and Japanese than of the work of an English landscape painter. ”

“ Smith’s drawings are nearly all in monochrome, and, though they are not without merit, they look very dull and old-fashioned when compared with {2}the Turners. It seems to me, therefore, extremely probable that Mr. Fawkes was first attracted to Turner as the rising young artist of his day, who was doing the same kind of work as Warwick Smith had done, but who was doing it with much more imagination, vigour, and artistic skill. If this surmise be correct, Turner made his first appearance at Farnley Hall as the successor and transplanter of Warwick Smith. ”

“ Details of the circumstances under which these fifty-one drawings were produced have been already given. No man, not even Turner, could possibly have sketched and worked up these subjects in the short space of a fortnight. But to have made even the sketches for this series of drawings in the short space of time Turner had at his disposal proves the marvellous rapidity with which he worked.{25}
The drawings themselves are full of picturesque detail and accurate observation, but they are, perhaps, more remarkable for their technical skill than for their subject-matter. ”

“ No doubt these rivers are broader and deeper than the Thames, fairer to the eye of the tourist, and richer in historical associations; but these advantages are no compensation for that affectionate intimacy which guides and inspires the artist when he is dealing with scenes familiar to him since his boyhood. I will not hesitate to assert that Turner’s paintings and drawings of his native land and its rivers and ports stir my imagination and emotions far more powerfully and harmoniously than those of foreign parts. In spite of the tranquil splendour of the Farnley Dort, the magnificence of Mr. ”

“ I may also remark that the great painter’s exuberant imagination has led him{7} to overstate the total of his expenditure by the sum of one shilling.
Taking leave of his friends at Gordale, Turner set off by himself on a sketching tour to collect material for the illustrations to Dr. Whitaker’s projected “History of Richmondshire.” His sketch-book shows that he struck over the hills to Kilnsey Crag and then crossed the wild road from Wharfedale over the Stake Pass to Semmer Water. From Askrigg he made his way to Richmond. ”

“ Fawkes bought the lot for some £500, doubtless to Turner’s delight, for he could not bear that any series of his should be broken.” But a kind of rough diary of Turner’s movements in the “Itinerary Rhine Tour Sketch-Book” (CLIX, Turner Bequest) says that the artist “left London” on Sunday, 10th August, was “off Margate” on Monday, 11th, and reached Brussels Thursday evening, on the 14th. He spent Saturday, visiting the Field of Waterloo, and, taking the diligence on Sunday, passed through Liège and Aix-la-Chapelle, reaching Cologne on the 18th. ”

“ Fawkes’s account of the unfavourable nature of the weather.
At the end of the book Turner has carefully made a list of the numbers and dates of the banknotes he carried with him to meet the expenses of his tour. He took two twenty-pound notes, four of ten pounds, five of five, and four smaller ones, making £110 in all. There is also, on the next page, a note of the expenses incurred on the journey from London to Leeds:—
These items rather contradict Thornbury’s statements about the extreme meanness and parsimony of the artist’s habits of travel. ”

“ It is every whit as rapturous and enthusiastic as any of the purple patches penned by “A Graduate of Oxford” some fourteen or fifteen years later, but it has nothing of Ruskin’s eloquence or felicity of literary expression. Still the following remarks, from Carey’s useful book, are, I think, worth quoting: “Turner the enchanter, whose magic pencil had created the chief wonders of this temple, was frequently there. Nature, in endowing his mind, appears to have been indifferent to his person ”

“ With a view to educating the taste of the public, some of the artists made the suggestion that the nobility and gentry, who owned collections of works by the old masters, should admit the public to their galleries or houses on a certain day in each week during the fashionable season. ”

“ This drawing is executed in body-colour on brown paper. It shows a bend of the Washburne about a mile from Farnley Hall. Leathley Church stands a little to the left, just out of the picture. In the distance is seen the rocky crest of the Otley Chevin, with Caley Park on the slopes below. The banks are now covered with a dense growth of trees, entirely obliterating the view of the river. This drawing is based on a small pencil-sketch in the “Hastings” sketch-book (CXXXIX, pp. 35a & 36) . ”

“ To understand properly the importance of this exhibition to Turner’s reputation as a water-colour painter, we must bear in mind that since his election as a member of the Royal Academy he had been known to the public primarily as an oil painter; and he had held aloof from the newly-established Water-Colour Society, and had, therefore, no regular opportunities for submitting his water-colour drawings to the public. Mr. ”

“ The oil paintings, (2) The early Swiss drawings, (3) The Rhine drawings, (4) Yorkshire, marine and other subjects, (5) The Wharfedale Series, (6) Birds, (7) Vignettes, (8) Italian and later Swiss drawings. Where the works have passed from the possession of Mr. F. H. Fawkes, the present owner of the collection, I have indicated in brackets the collection into which they have passed, or the latest appearance in the sale-room or exhibition of which I have a record. Where there is no entry in brackets after the title the work is still at Farnley Hall.
THE OIL PAINTINGS.
1. ”

“ Holworthy, saying that his “journey is extended, rather than shortened, by an excursion into Lancashire.” The weather was still bad, as we learn from a characteristic postscript to this letter, which runs:—“Weather miserably wet. I shall be web-foot like a drake—excepting the curled feather—but I must proceed northward. ”

“ One of the Rhine drawings. The dark cloud in the centre is an instance of Turner’s wonderful technical daring and resource, the effect being obtained by the use of wet, running colour. Turner was at Mayence on 24th and 25th August, 1817. ”

“ View of Otley Mills, with the River Wharfe and Mill Weir. (Christie’s, 1890.)
134. The Pheasant’s Nest, Farnley Park. 12” × 161⁄4". (Ruskin Collection.)
135. The Wood Walk, Farnley. 11” × 163⁄4". (F. Stevenson, Esq.)
136. Arthington Mill, near Farnley Hall. 103⁄4” x 151⁄4". (Taylor Sale, July 1912.) {27}
137. Drawing-Room in 45, Grosvenor Place.
138. Frontispiece for Catalogue of Water-Colour Drawings in 45, Grosvenor Place.
139. London, from the windows of 45, Grosvenor Place, when in the possession of Walter Fawkes, Esq. 93⁄4” × 151⁄4". (Christie’s, 1890; Agnew.)
BIRDS.
140. ”

“ Lausanne and Lake of Geneva. 111⁄4” × 151⁄2". Signed and dated “J. M. W. Turner, R.A., 1807.” (Christie’s, 1890; A. J. Forbes-Leith, Esq.)
22. Source of the Arveiron. 11” × 151⁄2". (Christie’s, 1890; Turner House, Penarth, Pyke-Thompson Bequest.)
23. Lake of Lucerne, from Flüelen. 261⁄2” × 391⁄2". (Christie’s, 1890; Sir Donald Currie.)
24. MontBlanc, from the Vald’Aosta. 26” × 391⁄2". (Christie’s, 1810; Sir Donald Currie.)
All these drawings were based on sketches made during Turner’s first tour in Savoy and Switzerland, in 1802. ”