Part 16 (1/2)
”Ehrenbreitstein,” ”Venice fros” In 1836 he exhibited a ”View of Ro of the House of Lords and Commons,” which last was almost entirely painted on the walls of the exhibition At this ti days” at the exhibition, during which time artists retouched, and finished up their pictures They were periods of fun and practical jokes, and Turner always enjoyed, and made the most of them He frequently sent his canvas to the Acade in as early as four in thedays, he would put his nose to the sketch and work steadily with thousands of ihtfall, while his picture would begin to glow as by ic About this time he exhibited many pictures founded on classical subjects, or with the scenes laid in Italy or Greece, as ”Apollo and Daphne in the Vale of Tee,” the ”Parting of Hero and Leander,”
”Phryne Going to the Public Baths as Venus,” the ”Banishe and Castle of St Angelo” A year later he exhibited pictures of ”Ancient Rome,” a vast dreamy pile of palaces, and ”Modern Rome,” with a view of the ”Forum in Ruins”
One of the most celebrated of Turner's pictures was that of the ”Old Temeraire,” an old and faar ran in between and captured the French frigates Redoubtable and Fougueux Turner saw the Temeraire in the Thames after she had become old, and was condemned to be dis, red light is vividly reflected on the river, and contrasts with the quiet, gray and pearly tints about the low-hung h these changing lights, bathed in splendor The artist refused a large price for this picture by Mr Lennox, of New York, and finally bequeathed it to the nation In 1840 Turner exhibited the ”Bacchus and Ariadne,” two marine scenes, and two views in Venice; also the well-known ”Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, a Typhoon Co 76), which is now in the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston Of this picture Thackeray says: ”I don't knohether it is sublime or ridiculous” But Ruskin, in ”Modern Painters,” says: ”I believe if I were reduced to test Turner's ile work, I should choose the 'Slave shi+p' Its daring conception, ideal in the highest sense of the word, is based on the purest truth, and wrought out with the concentrated knowledge of a life Its color is absolutely perfect, not one false or morbid hue in any part or line, and so modulated that every square inch of canvas is a perfect co as accurate as fearless; the shi+p buoyant, bending, and full of motion; its tones as true as they are wonderful; and the whole picture dedicated to thethus the perfect system of all truth which we have shown to be formed by Turner's works), the power, majesty, and deathfulness of the open, deep, illimitable sea”
[Illustration: FIG 76--THE SLAVE shi+P _By Turner_]
No painter of modern times, or perhaps of any time, has ever provoked the discussion of his reat est defenders, and finally brought his pictures into favor with the wealthy h prices, and since his death these prices have doubled, and even quadrupled At a sale of Mr Bicknell's collection in 1836, ten of Turner's pictures, which had been bought for three thousand seven hundred and forty-nine pounds, were sold for seventeen thousand and ninety-four pounds As Turner grew older and his manner deteriorated he was assailed by the wits, the art critics, and the ae, and to these censures Turner was morbidly sensitive But even Ruskin admits that the pictures of his last five years are of ”wholly inferior value,” with unsatisfactory foliage, chalky faces, and general indications of feebleness of hand
Wornu_, said: ”In the last ten years of his career, and occasionally before, Turner was extravagant to an extreree; he played equally with nature and with his colors Light, with all its prismatic varieties, seems to have been the chief object of his studies; individuality of form or color he holly indifferent to The looseness of execution in his latest works has not even the apology of having been attempted on scientific principles; he did not work upon a particular point of a picture as a focus and leave the rest obscure, as a foil to enhance it, on a principle of unity; on the contrary, all is equally obscure and wild alike These last productions are a calamity to his reputation; yet we may, perhaps, safely assert that since Reinality and power as Turner” Dr
Waagen says in his _Treasury of Art in Great Britain_: ”No landscape painter has yet appeared with such versatility of talent His historical landscapes exhibit the hting, at the sa them express the most varied moods of nature”
Toward the last part of his life Turner's peculiarities increased; he beca to have even his most intimate friends visit his studio, but he finally withdrew from his own house and home Of late years he had frequently left his house for months at a ti care that he should not be followed or known When the great Exhibition of 1851 opened, Turner left orders with his housekeeper that no one should be admitted to see his pictures For twenty years the rain had been streah the leaky roof, and many were hopelessly ruined He sent no pictures to the exhibition of that year, and he was hardly to be recognized when he appeared in the gallery Finally his prolonged absence fros alarmed his friends; but no one dared seek him out His housekeeper alone, of all that had known hi a hint from a letter in one of his coats, she went to Chelsea, and, after careful search, found his hiding-place, with but onethe need of purer air than that of Queen Anne Street, he went out to Chelsea and found an eligible, little cottage by the side of the river, with a railed-in roof whence he could observe the sky The landlady demanded references froood woht” She then deentleman should call, you know” ”Name?” said he, ”what's your name?” ”My name is Mrs Booth” ”Then I a the river-side calling hiy Booth,” and the trades that he was an old admiral in reduced circumstances In a low studded, attic rooreat artist was found in his ate, who frankly told him that death was at hand ”Go down stairs,” exclaiain” But no stie the verdict of the physician An hour before he died he heeled to thefor a last look at the Thames, bathed in sunshi+ne and dotted with sails Up to the last sickness the lonely, old e, the sun rise and the purple flush of the co day
The funeral, fro line of carriages, and conducted with the ritual of the English Church in St Paul's Cathedral Dean Milman read the service, and at its conclusion the coffin was borne to the catacombs, and placed between the tombs of James Barry and Sir Joshua Reynolds Turner's will, with its codicils, was so confused and vague that the lawyers fought it in the courts for four years, and it was finally settled by compromise The real estate went to the heir-at-law, the pictures and drawings to the National Gallery, one thousand pounds for a monument in St Paul's Cathedral, and twenty thousand pounds to the Royal Acadeift to the British nation included ninety-eight finished paintings and two hundred and seventy pictures in various stages of progress Ruskin, while arranging and classifying Turner's drawings, found ments by the master's hand, some covered with the dust of thirty years
Sir DAVID WILKIE (1785-1841) has been called the ”prince of British _genre_ painters” His father was a minister, and David was placed in the Trustees' Acadeh in 1799 In 1805 he entered the Royal Acadee Politicians,” exhibited the next year From this time his fame and popularity were established, and each neas simply a new triue Festival,” and others were rapidly painted and exhibited
In 1825 Wilkie went to the Continent, and remained three years He visited France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and after his return he painted a new class of subjects in a new manner He made many portraits, and his other works were historical subjects His most celebrated works in this second ,” ”Napoleon and the Pope at Fontainebleau,” and ”Peep-o'-Day Boy's Cabin” The portrait of the landscape painter Williaood picture
In 1830 Wilkie succeeded Sir Tho, as he had been lihted until 1836 In 1840 he visited Constantinople, and made a portrait of the sultan; he went then to the Holy Land and Egypt While at Alexandria, on his way home, Wilkie complained of illness, and on shi+pboard, off Gibraltar, he died, and was buried at sea This burial is the subject of one of Turner's pictures, and is now in the National Gallery
The name of Landseer is an important one in British art JOHN LANDSEER (1761-1852) was an eraver; his son THOMAS (1795-1880) followed the profession of his father and arrived at great celebrity in it
CHARLES, born in 1799, another son of John Landseer, becaenre line of subjects, such as ”Cromwell at the House of Sir Walter Stewart in 1651,” ”Surrender of Arundel Castle in 1643,” and various others of a like nature Charles Landseer travelled in Portugal and Brazil when a young man; he was made a member of the Royal Academy in 1845; from 1851 to 1871 he was keeper of the Academy, and has been an industrious and respected artist But the great genius of the faest son of John Landseer, the engraver He received his first drawing lessons froreat talent for sketching and that love for the brute creation which have been his chief characteristics as an artist He had the power to understand his duether, and then he had the ability to fix theof all they had told hiave the precise for shades which put in the expression If his aniood fortune with hearty pleasure; if they were suffering, sad, or bereaved, he painted their ith a syive
When Edwin and Thoht other instruction than his own should be given them, he placed them with Haydon, and in these early days the master predicted that Edwin Landseer would be the Snyders of England Edwin sent his first picture to the Royal Acade the following fifty-eight years there were but six exhibitions to which he did not contribute When he began his studies at the Royal Academy he was fourteen years old, and already faht, curly-headed, rew to be very fond of hi-boy?”
Edwin Landseer noorked on diligently and quietly; his works were constantly praised, and he received all the patronage that he desired
Through the advice of hisani their anatomy with all the exactness hich other artists study that of huerie, and Edwin Landseer secured the body for dissection He then painted three large pictures of lions, and during the year in which he becahteen years old, he exhibited these pictures and others of horses, dogs, donkeys, deer, goats, wolves, and vultures
When nineteen, in 1821, he painted ”Pointers, To-ho!” a hunting scene, which was sold in 1872, the year before his death, for two thousand and sixteen pounds In 1822 Landseer gained the prize of the British Institution, one hundred and fifty pounds, by his picture of ”The Larder Invaded” He made the first sketch for this on a child's slate, which is still preserved as a treasure But the most famous of this master's early works is the ”Cat's Paw,” in which a monkey uses a cat's paw to draw chestnuts from a hot stove Landseer was paid one hundred pounds; its present value is three thousand pounds, and it is kept at the seat of the Earl of Essex, Cashi+obury
This picture of the ”Cat's Paw” had an i artist, as it happened that it was exhibited when Sir Walter Scott was in London, and he was so much pleased with it that he made Landseer's acquaintance, and invited hily, in 1824, Landseer visited Sir Walter in coreat novelist, which now belongs to the Ticknor family of Boston It was at this tis were the , and grinning all over the canvas” Out of this visit ca Maida, so loved by Scott, was the pro died