The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-23 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

lite Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A. By Walter
Thornhury. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett.
The life of a great man, by a writer of undeniable
ability, can scarcely fail to attract attention. The
controversy respecting Turner's rank as a painter
has been sharp in the artistic world. Some, like
our eminent art critic, ranking him by the side of
the few great creative minds that humanity has pro-
duced throughout long ages; others condemning
his style, censuring his mysticism, and unable to
appreciate his genius. But little doubt now remains
in any unprejudiced mind that Turner's name and
fame will live in the very highest rank ofart,when the
mistakes of prejudice are forgotten, and the malig-
nity of envious mediocrity is remembered only with
contempt. Like many another great man, Turner
was soured by not meeting, in the earlier part of
his career, that acknowledgment of his powers which
he felt was his due. He lived to see a marvellous
change, to decline £2,500 for a painting for which
he had been refused £100; to be offered, it is said,
by a wealthy merchant, £lOO,OOO for his stock of
paintings, drawings, and engravings, and to return
the quiet answer that he had refused a similar pro-
posal before. A painting that one of his patrons paid
£lOO forfeit rather than take, was afterwards
valued at £l,OOO. An early Venetian picture, sold to
Chantrey for £250, was, after his death, resold,
much damaged, for £1,500. But the change came
too late to soften the soured temper, or lighten the
melancholy of an embittered and unhappy man. If
the splendid success which attended his later career,
and the reputation he has left behind him may
serve as wholesome stimulants to desponding genius,
the record of his life may teaoh another lesson—the
emptiness of fame and the hollowness of riches to fill
the void of human affection or to supply the absence
of a supporting faith. The life of this great artist,
with its successes and failures, its aspirations and
disappointments remained to be written. Brief
and fragmentary memoirs, sometimes inaccurate,
sometimes malignant, were all that we possessed of
England's landscape painter. Mr. Thornhury, well
fitted for the task, both by literary talent and
artistic taste, has stepped forward, and we have the
result in these able volumes, to which the artist
and the connoisseur will long turn with interest to
trace the steps by which the barber's son mounted
the steps to fortune. When Mr. Thornbury first
contemplated writing the life of Turner, he resolved,
he tells us, to ascertain, in the first place, whether
Mr. Ruskin had himself a similar purpose. Mr.
Ruskin disclaimed any such intention, but volun-
teered what help he could give. The following
quaint note expresses the art critic's opinion of his
idol:—

RUSKIN ON TURNER.

My dear Sir,—Fix at the beginning the following main
characteristio of Turner in your mind as the key to the
secret of all he said and did :

Uprightness,
Generosity,
Tenderness of heart,
Extreme
Sensuality,
Obstinacy,
Extreme
irritability,
infidelity,
and be sure that he knew his own power, and felt himself
utterly alone in the world, from its not being understood.
Don't try to mask the dark side. J. Itrsanr.

Encouraged by the certainty that the field was
clear Mr. Thornbury set to work, " letting no day
pass without some search for materials, some noting
of traditions, and some visit to Turner's old friends,"
until he had compiled the immense mass of material
upon which his work is founded. The industry
with which he has collected and arranged so much
is worthy of high praise, and the skill with which
fidelity to truth is combined with generous ap-
preciation of the man, no less than the
artist, is equally so. It would not be fair
to expect such an undertaking to be fault-
less ; but there are some trivial errors which
would have been avoided by a more careful revision.
We have several small repetitions, and once we
meet with extraordinary inconsistency. In one
place the author says, after enumerating some of
Turner's deficiencies, " I do firmly believe that
though often utterly defective in a sense of form,
Turner was, taking altogether his quantity, imagina-
tion, variety, quality, and originality, the greatest
landscape painter, not only England but the world
ever has, and perhaps ever will, produce." The
italics are Mr. Thornbury's own, who would
seem to take his stand by this opinion. But in his
final summing up of Turner's character, he says,
"I would not encourage rising genius to copy
Turner, but to go and study nature with Turner's
truth, industry, and love. Nor am I at all per-
suaded, by all Mr. Ruskin's eloquence, that Eng-
land has yet seen the greatest of her landscape
painters." How comes Mr. Thornbury to pass
over such a self-contradiction as this? We are
sorry, too, to observe occasionally an absence of that
magnanimity towards rivals which ho is the first to
applaud in a kindred act. IIV e remember having
noticed in a former work something approaching to
spitefulness in the way in which he spoke of living
authors who had displeased him, and in the
present preface we find him mentioning a
painstaking writer of the day with un-
called for acerbity. Mr. Thornbury should
be above such betrayals of temper, and can afford
to be generous to his rivals. The work before us
will probably be one of his greatest successes,
and has evidently been the result of much time,
thought, and labour. In fact his sense of the
greatness of his task has been, in some degree, a
drawback to him, for, at the outset, his style is
inflated and extravagant. As the work proceeds
it tones down, and passages of real eloquence
and pathos supersede strainings after effect, which
remind us of Gilfillan's " Conflagration of Genius."
Before the next edition, which will probably be
soon forthcoming, we should advise Mr. Thorn-
bury to read over carefully the earlier
pages, and reduce them to plainer Ent:-
lish. There is no occasion for him to mount
on stilts, as his style is always clear and
forcible when he allows it to be natural and
easy. The arrangement of the earlier chapters,
too, is not without fault. He goes back to describe
the state of the country at Turner's birth after he
has given us the narrative of his childhood. This
defect might be very easily remedied by a little
transposition. But, notwithstanding any slight
errors of this kind, the work is a success, which
biographies of great men are not always. Mr.
Thornbury has kept himself in the back-ground,
and centred the interest upon his principal figure.
He has shown us how the sordid temper of his

father and the insanity of his mother had evil
influence on Turner's life; how the sense of being
misunderstood and unfairly depreciated both as
man and artist, embittered the naturally hard and
somewhat narrow nature ; how quickly scandal
propagated tales to his disadvantage, and
how injustice was done him in many respects
by reports of his want of kindness and charity.
lie cannot, however, deny that Turner was often
rough, uncouth, and uncivil—always close, reserved,
and unsocial. His heart was not warm enough to
remain unsoured by his early disappointment, his
nature not sufficiently expansive to receive un-
scathed the miserly instructions of his parent ; above
all, his mind was not sufficiently elevated " to look
through Nature up to Nature's God"—to reconcile
the inconsistencies of life by the one great solution
—to trace in the mazes of his chequered career the
hand of a guiding Father. We can give credit to
Mr. Thornbury's assertion that, apart from his
the
cnft of betteraeulty,Tu earlyrner 'swatsrnaing
otinagraenatdmuinnhda,papnyd
circumstances increased his natural defects. Still
that much that was really great eutlived all evil
influences the following anecdotes of Turner's
generosity will prove :
TURNER S KINDNESS.
"When Bird, the son of a Wolverhampton clothier,
about 1811, first sent a picture to the Royal Academy—it
might have been Good News,' or Choristers Rehears-
ing,' or some other of those early anticipations of Wilkie
and Webster—Turner was one of the ' Hanging Commit-
tee,' as it was opprobriously called. Every ono said the
picture of the new man had great merit, but there was no
place fit for it left unoccupied. Here was a desirable guest,
but the inn was full. The R. A's joke and talk. The
days of chivalry are past. Turner growls, and is disturbed ;
he says, that come what may, the young man's picture
must have a place.' All the others cry 'impossible,'' and
go on talking about other things. All this time he is exa-
mining the picture, right, left, surface, clear-obscure,
touch, colour, character, carefully; he sees it is good, he
cries out again and hushes the buzz of voices—' We must
find a good place for this young man's picture.' Impos-
sible—impossible,' says the gold spectacles again, and more
oracularly this time than before. Turner said no more, but
quietly removed one of his pictures and hung up Bird's.