New-York tribune., 1902-12-07


. sensuaiist- and that passage which comes
zt the close Of his biography the passage relat-
ing to ais life at Cremorne with Mrs Booth"
is not the only one unedifying il significance
with which we have to reckon What then
was il which turned this painter into a kind Of
magician? Sir Walter Armstrong declares that
L was his habit Of noting down nature as
color" Did he love Nature the painters Of
BarbiZon loved her, for her own sake? Had he
al instructive delight in the stateliness and
grandeur OF that sort OF inmobile drama, if we
may hazard what looks like a contradiction in
terms. which like a passion to Claude?
Was he. at bottom the poet that he tried to be
In words, and that he indubitably is-whether
consciously or unconsciously is open cues
ton-in so many Of his painted works7 One
hesitates 10 reply in the affirmative. But, in
any case, il hardly matters for he had,
colorist, apocalyptic touch that, in waking
visions Of chromatic splendor upon the cenvas
seems to transmogrify such substance ana such
thought as have gone to the making of the
whole, raising them to g. higher power than
Turner perhaps dreamed of when he looked
upon the scene he was to celebrate. This is not
10 say that he was irresponsible Tor the iunda-
mental truths he put into his work His
-Iiber Studior1m'- is there, with a thousand
sketches, TO show the profundity of his knowl-
edge OF landscape structure, Of mountain tree
and cloud forms. But while this learning of
his contributed enormously To his success II
vas his supreme gift for the evocation of color
whelmed in light and air. saturated in Amos
phere, that made him the Turner that the world
once delighted to honor in unmeasured terms
and that the world still values though not with
the same enthusiasm.
That the enthusiasm has faded that the artfs
dc value Of Turner's work is still contested Sir
Walter Armstrong cannot ignore. To do him
Justice, he does not try TO do anything of the
sort, but poses, with perfect candor the follow
ing critical question: Why do SO many of
those whose souls moved by beauty whose
emotions are really touched by q fine piece of
Rankin, by Caff1eri mount, by Pisano medal
lion, By a Durer drawing, by a Rembrandt etch-
ing, by a picture Of Titan, Velasquez or Gains
borough-why are people OF various races who
really love- oEd understand such things as these
80 often unmoved by Turner In the first place
the author thinks that it is beca use Turner was
decorator" but his development of the idea
find rather obscure The decorative quality
in a picture he says, is the property which
brings il into line and touch with more infinite
and less ambitious things, which asserts the
power to satisfy that instinct for self-adumbra-
tion- for modifying everything in obedience to
ones Own prediction, which is at the root of
all aesthetic activity This is not incompre-
hensible, but, somehow, We do not feel that we
getting any forrarder, far Turner is
concerned, when reading It The author
Is more helpful when he returns. in his last
chapter, TO the motive from which he started,
and says Of his subject that ne was "a medi-
ator, rather than maker that his instinct was
toward explanation. Illustration and insistence
rather than toward creation, that his pictures
exist for what they tell Us. rather than for what
they are, and, consequently, that his achieve
rnents must be measured more than that Of any
other famous painter by collation. with free and
pre-existing beauty
This offers serviceable sidelight the prob
lem yet even this needs to be amplifed by the
statement Of a point more important than any
brought forward by Sir Walter Armstrong In
bis endeavor TO explain the declension Of Tur-
ner's fame It his greatest gift that be-
trayed him That glorious color pals after a
while To stay long in the company Of the
famous pictures IN the National Gallery Is to
feel steadily rising, conviction that a great
deal Of the color IN them is saccharine that
great deal Of IL IS, despite Sir Walter Arm
strongs protest that Turner was no vrtuoso,
nothing but sheer virtuosity. Il is a virtuosity
of very special sort, not in the least like that
of such painters painter Halls. which is,
fancy, what Sir Walter Armstrong has in
mind Whatever name give to it, have
TO reckon with il a definite influence in Tur-
ner's work, one which tnvalidated many Of his
works as transcripts from nature. and led him
-as11lts in themselves nredeStiDed IN vaary