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

TURNER AND LAWRENCE.

rence's."

"When Turner's picture of ' Cologne' was exhibited, in
the year 1826, it was hung between two portraits by Sir
Thomas Lawrence, of Lady Wailscourt and Lady Robert
Manners. The sky of Turner's picture was exceedingly
bright, and it had a most injurious Effect on the colour of
the two portraits. Lawrence naturally felt mortified, and
complained openly at the position of his pictures. Artists

were at that time permitted to retouch their pictures on the
walls of the Academy. On the morning of the opening of
the Exhibition, at the pi ivate view, a friend of Turner's
who had seen the 'Cologne' in all its splendour, led a group
of expectant critics up to the picture. Ho started back
from it in consternation. The golden sky had changed to
a dun colour. He ran up to Turner, who was in another
part of the room—' Turner, Turner, what have you been
doing to your picture ?" Oh I' muttered Turner, in a low
voice, poor Lawrence was so unhappy I It's only lamp-
black. It'll all wash off after the Exhibition I' He had

actually passed a wash of lampblack in water-colour over
the sky, and utterly spoiled his picture for the time, and so
left it through the Exhibition, lest it should hurt Law-

The injustice done to the great artist by many of
his contemporaries is spoken of with gcnerous in-

dignation in the following eloquent passage :

TURNER MISUNDERSTOOD.
No man had ever more to turn his heart to iron or to

than Turner. In early life by a crue 1 deception robbed

of her he was about to make his Wife ; in middle life he was
without patronage, toiling for and wrangling with engravers,
when he knew, as certainly as if an angel had told it him,
that he had outshone Cuyp, distanced Vandervelde, beaten
Ruysdale, rivalled Canaletti, and transcended even Claude ;
that he had founded English landscape, that he had carried
art further than it had gone before. Then came old ago to
him, and found him rich, bnt without hope. with no faith,
_ .

no solace but his art. He bad no wife, no children to nu:-

bend his heart to, to mourn with silently, to turn his
thoughts from their worn channels, to wear him from self,
or to carry his thoughts on to a better future—he felt no
youth in the youth of his sons—he had no one to lead him
away with soothing kisses and comfortings from carking
recollections And did all this turn his heart from flesh to
stone ? No ; his one great unchanging thought was how
he could best concentrate all the hard earnings of a painful
life to charity. He had met with little love in the world,
yet ho loved his kind deeply and silently. He might be
proud to think that the poor barber's son should be en-
tombed among the true kings of men in St. Paul's. He
might be proud to feel that a national collection of pictures
bearing his name would delight the English people for
generations to come. His sedate and sarcastic love of
mystification was mistaken for wilful deception—his self-
denying and sparing habits for proofs of greedy avarice.
Every story raked up from the penny lives of Elwes or Guy
(his real prototype) was believed, because Turner was not
present to contradict them ; but the moment he died, and
it was found that he had left by will an enormous fortune
for the benefit of his poor comrades in art, the great edifice
of his fell to dust, like the house built on sand.
Here was the cold, sullen, misanthropic miser,
who had spent his miserable lonely years higgling like a
Jew pedlar about the odd penny that was to be paid for
his pictures, dying and leaving the whole earnings of his
life to found a charity that would last while England
lasted, How many hours those black tongues had spent,
and all in ♦ain 1 Turner's main undeviating thought was
to benefit art, and to found almshouses near where he had
once lived for the poor foot-sore soldiers in the great army
of art. No paltry vanity hung round the neck of this
great-hearted, yet, I fear, unhappy man. For
this he had 1 ved like the half-starved steward
of a miser's property. For this he had let his house
grow into a den, and had worked like a miser amid a
sordid gloom. For poor, broken-down, old men of no
talents, the world's failures he had ground down insolent
publishers. For weeping widows and orphans he had
wrangled about additional shillings for picture frames and
cab hire to pay for poor artist's funerals he had toiled and
travelled; to chase the wolf from other men's doors, he
had consented to men calling him " Miser, Jew, and Dog,"
How melancholy it is to reflect that this artist's
noble intention was frustrated by the disputing of
the will, and the great charity which would have
been a worthier memorial of him than the Turner
medal, or the Turner Gallery. A noble instance of
his magnanimity was shown with regard to the
" Rise of Carthage," left unaccomplished.