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IV.
TURNER

[From “The Times,” October 28, 1856.]
THE TURNER BEQUEST

To the Editor of “The Times.”

Sir: As active measures are being now⁷⁸ taken to give the public access to the pictures and drawings left by the late Mr. Turner, you will perhaps allow me space in your columns for a few words respecting them.

I was appointed by Mr. Turner one of his executors. I examined the will, and the state of the property needing administration, and, finding that the questions arising out of the obscurity of the one and the disorder of the other would be numerous and would involve a kind of business in which I had no skill or knowledge, I resigned the office; but in the course of the inquiry I catalogued the most interesting of the drawings which are now national property, and respecting these the public will, I think, be glad of more definite information than they at present possess. They are referable mainly to three classes.

1. Finished water-color drawings.

2. Studies from nature, or first thoughts for pictures; in color.

3. Sketches in pencil or pen and ink.

The drawings belonging to the two latter classes are in various stages of completion, and would contain, if rightly arranged, a perfect record of the movements of the master’s mind during his whole life. Many of them were so confused among prints and waste-paper that I could neither collect nor catalogue them all in the time I had at my disposal; some portfolios I was not able even to open. The following statement, therefore, omits mention of many, and I believe even of some large water-color drawings. There are in the first class forty-five drawings of the “Rivers of France;” fifty-seven illustrating Rogers’ Poems; twenty-three of the “River Scenery” and “Harbors of England;” four marine vignettes; five middle-sized drawings (including the beautiful “Ivy Bridge”); and a drawing, some three feet by two, finished with exquisite care, of a scene in the Val d’Aosta; total, 135.

It would occupy too much of your space if I were to specify all the various kinds of studies forming the second class. Many are far carried, and are, to my mind, more precious and lovely than any finished drawings; respecting some, there may be question whether Turner regarded them as finished or not. The larger number are light sketches, valuable only to artists, or to those interested in the processes of Turner’s mind and hand. The total number of those which I catalogued as important is 1,757.

The sketches of the third class are usually more elaborate than the colored ones. They consist of studies from nature, or for composition, in firm outline, usually on gray paper, heightened with white. They include, among other subjects, more or less complete, fifty of the original drawings for the Liber Studiorum, and many of the others are of large folio size. The total of those I consider important is 1,322. Now the value of these sketches to the public consists greatly, first, in the preservation of each, as far as possible, in the state in which Turner left it; secondly, in their careful arrangement and explanation; thirdly, in convenience of general access to them. Permit me a word on each of these heads.

Turner was in the habit of using unusual vehicles, and in the colored studies many hues are wrought out by singular means and with singular delicacy—nearly always in textures which the slightest damp (to which the drawings would necessarily be subjected in the process of mounting) would assuredly alter. I have made many experiments in mounting, putting colored drawings, of which I had previously examined the tones, into the hands of the best mounters, and I have never yet had a drawing returned to me without alteration. The vast mass of these sketches, and the comparative slightness of many, would but too probably induce a carelessness and generalization in the treatment they might have to undergo still more fatally detrimental to them.

Secondly, a large number are without names, and so slight that it requires careful examination and somewhat extended acquaintance with Turner’s works to ascertain their intention. The sketches of this class are nearly valueless, till their meaning is deciphered, but of great interest when seen in their proper connection. Thus there are three progressive studies for one vignette in Rogers’ Italy⁷⁹ (Hannibal passing the Alps), which I extricated from three several heaps of other mountain sketches with which they had no connection. Thirdly, a large number of the drawings are executed with body color, the bloom of which any friction or handling would in a short period destroy. Their delicate tones of color would be equally destroyed by continuous exposure to the light or to smoke and dust.

Drawings of a valuable character, when thus destructible, are in European museums hardly accessible to the general public. But there is no need for this seclusion. They should be inclosed each in a light wooden frame, under a glass the surface of which a raised mount should prevent them from touching. These frames should slide into cases, containing about twelve drawings each, which would be portable to any part of the room where they were to be seen. I have long kept my own smaller Turner drawings in this manner; fifteen frames going into the depth of about a foot. Men are usually accused of “bad taste,” if they express any conviction of their own ability to execute any given work. But it would perhaps be better if in people’s sayings in general, whether concerning others or themselves, there were less taste, and more truth; and I think it, under the circumstances, my duty to state that I believe none would treat these drawings with more scrupulous care, or arrange them with greater patience, than I should myself; that I am ready to undertake the task, and enter upon it instantly; that I will furnish, in order to prove the working of the system proposed, a hundred of the frames, with their cases, at my own cost; and that within six weeks of the day on which I am permitted to begin work (illness or accident not interfering), I will have the hundred drawings arranged, framed, accompanied by a printed explanatory catalogue, and ready for public inspection. It would then be in the power of the commissioners intrusted with the administration of this portion of the national property to decide if any, or how many more of the sketches, should be exhibited in the same manner, as a large mass of the less interesting ones might be kept as the drawings are at the British Museum, and shown only on special inquiry.

I will only undertake this task on condition of the entire management of the drawings, in every particular, being intrusted to me; but I should ask the advice of Mr. Carpenter, of the British Museum,⁸⁰ on all doubtful points, and intrust any necessary operations only to the person who mounts the drawings for the British Museum.

I make this offer⁸¹ in your columns rather than privately, first, because I wish it to be clearly known to the public; and also because I have no time to make representations in official ways, the very hours which I could give to the work needing to be redeemed by allowing none to be wasted in formalities.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

J. Ruskin

Denmark Hill, Oct. 27.

[From “The Times,” July 9, 1857.]
THE TURNER BEQUEST AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY

To the Editor of “The Times.”

Sir: I am sorry that accident has prevented my seeing the debate of Friday last⁸² on the vote for the National Gallery until to-day. Will you permit me, thus late, to correct the statement made by Lord Elcho, that I offered to arrange Turner’s pictures, or could have done so as well as Mr. Wornum⁸³ I only offered to arrange the sketches, and that I am doing; but I never would have undertaken the pictures, which were in such a state of decay that I had given up many for lost; while, also, most of them belonged to periods of Turner’s work with which I was little acquainted. Mr. Wornum’s patience and carefulness of research in discovering their subjects, dates of exhibition, and other points of interest connected with them, have been of the greatest service; and it will be long before the labor and judgment which he has shown in compiling, not only this, but all the various catalogues now used by the public at our galleries, will be at all justly appreciated. I find more real, serviceable, and trustworthy facts in one of these catalogues, than in half a dozen of the common collections of lives of painters.

Permit me to add further, that during long residence in Venice, I have carefully examined the Paul Veronese lately purchased by the Government.⁸⁴ When I last saw it, it was simply the best Veronese in Italy, if not in Europe (the “Marriage in Cana” of the Louvre is larger and more magnificent, but not so perfect in finish); and, for my own part, I should think no price too large for it; but putting my own deep reverence for the painter wholly out of the question, and considering the matter as it will appear to most persons at all acquainted with the real character and range of Venetian work, I believe the market value of the picture ought to be estimated at perhaps one-third more than the Government have paid for it. Without doubt the price of the Murillo lately purchased at Paris was much enhanced by accidental competition; under ordinary circumstances, and putting both the pictures to a fair trial of market value, I believe the Veronese to be worth at least double the Murillo; in an artistical point of view, the latter picture could not be put in any kind of comparison whatever with the Veronese.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

J. Ruskin.

Oxford, July 7.

[From “The Literary Gazette,” November 13, 1858—partly reprinted in “The Two Paths,” Appendix iv.]
THE TURNER SKETCHES AND DRAWINGS ⁸⁵

To the Editor of “The Literary Gazette.”

Sir: I do not think it generally necessary to answer criticism; yet as yours is the first sufficient notice which has been taken of the important collection of sketches at Marlborough House, and as your strictures on the arrangement proposed for the body of the collection, as well as on some statements in my catalogue, are made with such candor and good feeling, will you allow me to offer one or two observations in reply to them? The mode of arrangement to which you refer as determined on by the trustees has been adopted, not to discourage the study of the drawings by the public, but to put all more completely at their service. Drawings so small in size and so delicate in execution cannot be seen, far less copied, when hung on walls. As now arranged, they can be put into the hands of each visitor, or student, as a book is into those of a reader; he may examine them in any light, or in any position, and copy them at his ease. The students who work from drawings exhibited on walls will, I am sure, bear willing witness to the greater convenience of the new system. Four hundred drawings are already thus arranged for public use; framed, and disposed in eighty portable boxes, each containing five sketches, so that eighty students might at once be supplied with five drawings apiece. The oil paintings at Marlborough House, comprising as they do the most splendid works which Turner ever produced, and the 339 drawings exhibited beside them, are surely enough for the amusement of loungers—for do you consider as anything better than loungers those persons who do not care enough for the Turner drawings to be at the trouble of applying for a ticket of admission, and entering their names in a book—that is to say, who will not, to obtain the privilege of quiet study of perfect art, take, once for all, as much trouble as would be necessary to register a letter, or book, or parcel?

I entirely waive for the moment the question of exposure to light. I put the whole issue on the ground of greatest public convenience. I believe it to be better for the public to have two collections of Turner’s drawings than one; nay, it seems to me just the perfection of all privilege to have one gallery for quiet, another for disquiet; one into which the curious, idle, or speculative may crowd on wet or weary days, and another in which people desirous of either thinking or working seriously may always find peace, light, and elbow-room. I believe, therefore, that the present disposition of these drawings will be at once the most convenient and the most just, even supposing that the finest works of Turner would not be injured by constant exposure. But that they would be so admits of no debate. It is not on my judgment nor on any other unsupported opinion, that the trustees have acted, but in consideration of facts now universally admitted by persons who have charge of drawings. You will find that the officers both of the Louvre and of the British Museum refuse to expose their best drawings or missal-pages to light, in consequence of ascertained damage received by such drawings as have been already exposed; and among the works of Turner I am prepared to name an example in which, the frame having protected a portion while the rest was exposed, the covered portion is still rich and lovely in colors, while the exposed spaces are reduced in some parts nearly to white paper, and the color in general to a dull brown.

You allude to the contrary chance that some hues may be injured by darkness. I believe that some colors are indeed liable to darken in perpetual shade, but not while occasionally exposed to moderate light, as these drawings will be in daily use; nor is any liability to injury, even by perpetual shade, as yet demonstrable with respect to the Turner drawings; on the contrary, those which now form the great body of the national collection were never out of Turner’s house until his death, and were all kept by him in tight bundles or in clasped books; and all the drawings so kept are in magnificent preservation, appearing as if they had just been executed, while every one of those which have been in the possession of purchasers and exposed in frames are now faded in proportion to the time and degree of their exposure; the lighter hues disappearing, especially from the skies, so as sometimes to leave hardly a trace of the cloud-forms. For instance, the great Yorkshire series is, generally speaking, merely the wreck of what it once was.⁸⁶ That water-colors are not injured by darkness is also sufficiently proved by the exquisite preservation of missal paintings, when the books containing them have been little used. Observe, then, you have simply this question to put to the public: “Will you have your Turner drawings to look at when you are at leisure, in a comfortable room, under such limitations as will preserve them to you forever, or will you make an amusing exhibition of them (if amusing, which I doubt) for children and nursery-maids; dry your wet coats by them, and shake off the dust from your feet upon them, for a score or two of years, and then send them to the waste-paper merchant?” That is the simple question; answer it, for the public, as you think best.

Permit me to observe farther, that the small interest manifested in the existing Turner collection at Marlborough House does not seem to justify any further effort at exhibition. There are already more paintings and drawings placed in those rooms than could be examined properly in years of labor. But how placed? Thrust into dark corners, nailed on spare spaces of shutters, backs of doors, and tottering elongations of screens; hung with their faces to the light, or with their backs to the light, or with their sides to the light so that it “rakes” them (I use an excellent expression of Sir Charles Eastlake’s), throwing every irregularity of surface into view as if they were maps in relief of hill countries; hung, in fine, in every conceivable mode that can exhibit their faults, or conceal their meaning, or degrade their beauty. Neither Mr. Wornum nor I are answerable for this; we have both done the best we could under the circumstances; the public are answerable for it, who suffer such things without care and without remonstrance. If they want to derive real advantage from the treasures they possess, let them show some regard for them, and build, or at least express some desire to get built, a proper gallery for them. I see no way at present out of the embarrassments which exist respecting the disposition of the entire national collection; but the Turner gallery was intended by Turner himself to be a distinct one, and there is no reason why a noble building should not be at once provided for it. Place the oil pictures now at Marlborough House in beautiful rooms, each in a light fit and sufficient for it, and all on a level with the eye; range them in chronological order; place the sketches at present exhibited, also in chronological order, in a lateral gallery; let illustrative engravings and explanations be put in cases near them; furnish the room richly and gracefully, as the Louvre is furnished, and I do not think the public would any longer complain of not having enough to amuse them on rainy days.

That we ought to do as much for our whole national collection is as certain as that we shall not do it for many a year to come, nor until we have wasted twice as much money as would do it nobly in vain experiments on a mean scale. I have no immediate hope in this matter, else I might perhaps ask you to let me occupy your columns with some repetition, in other words (such repetition being apparently always needed in these talking days), of what I have already stated in the Appendix to my Notes on the oil-pictures⁸⁷ at Marlborough House. But I will only, being as I say hopeless in the matter, ask you for room for a single sentence.

“If ever we come to understand that the function of a picture, after all, with respect to mankind, is not merely to be bought, but to be seen, it will follow that a picture which deserves a price deserves a place; and that all paintings which are worth keeping, are worth, also, the rent of so much wall as shall be necessary to show them to the best advantage, and in the least fatiguing way for the spectator.

“It would be interesting if we could obtain a return of the sum which the English nation pays annually for park walls to inclose game, stable walls to separate horses, and garden walls to ripen peaches; and if we could compare this ascertained sum with what it pays for walls to show its art upon.”

I ask you to reprint this, because the fact is that if either Mr. Wornum at the National Gallery, or Mr. Carpenter at the British Museum, had as much well-lighted wall at their disposal as most gentlemen’s gardeners have, they could each furnish the public with art enough to keep them gazing from one year’s end to another’s. Mr. Carpenter has already made a gallant effort with some screens in a dark room; but in the National Gallery, whatever mode of exhibition may be determined upon for the four hundred framed drawings, the great mass of the Turner sketches (about fifteen thousand, without counting mere color memoranda) must lie packed in parcels in tin cases, simply for want of room to show them. It is true that many of these are quite slight, and would be interesting to none but artists. There are, however, upwards of five thousand sketches in pencil outline,⁸⁸ which are just as interesting as those now exhibited at Marlborough House; and which might be constantly exhibited, like those, without any harm, if there were only walls to put them on.

I have already occupied much of your space. I do not say too much, considering the importance of the subject, but⁸⁹ I must [with more diffidence] ask you to allow me yet leave to reply to the objections you make to two statements [and to one omission] in my Catalogue, as those objections would otherwise diminish its usefulness. I have asserted that in a given drawing (named as one of the chief in the series), Turner’s pencil did not move over the thousandth of an inch without meaning; and you charge this expression with extravagant hyperbole. On the contrary, it is much within the truth, being merely a mathematically accurate description of fairly good execution in either drawing or engraving. It is only necessary to measure a piece of any ordinarily good work to ascertain this. Take, for instance, Finden’s engraving at the 180th page of Rogers’ poems,⁹⁰ in which the face of the figure, from the chin to the top of the brow, occupies just a quarter of an inch, and the space between the upper lip and chin as nearly as possible one-seventeenth of an inch. The whole mouth occupies one-third of this space, say, one-fiftieth of an inch; and within that space both the lips and the much more difficult inner corner of the mouth are perfectly drawn and rounded, with quite successful and sufficiently subtle expression. Any artist will assure you, that in order to draw a mouth as well as this, there must be more than twenty gradations of shade in the touches; that is to say, in this case, gradations changing, with meaning, within less than the thousandth of an inch.

But this is mere child’s play compared to the refinement of any first-rate mechanical work, much more of brush or pencil drawing by a master’s hand. In order at once to furnish you with authoritative evidence on this point, I wrote to Mr. Kingsley, tutor of Sidney-Sussex College, a friend to whom I always have recourse when I want to be precisely right in any matter; for his great knowledge both of mathematics and of natural science is joined, not only with singular powers of delicate experimental manipulation, but with a keen sensitiveness to beauty in art. His answer, in its final statement respecting Turner’s work, is amazing even to me; and will, I should think, be more so to your readers. Observe the successions of measured and tested refinement; here is No. 1:

“The finest mechanical work that I know of is that done by Nobert in the way of ruling lines. I have a series of lines ruled by him on glass, giving actual scales from .000024 and .000016 of an inch, perfectly correct to these places of decimals;⁹¹ and he has executed others as fine as .000012, though I do not know how far he could repeat these last with accuracy.”

This is No. 1, of precision. Mr. Kingsley proceeds to No. 2:

“But this is rude work compared to the accuracy necessary for the construction of the object-glass of a microscope such as Rosse turns out.”

I am sorry to omit the explanation which follows of the ten lenses composing such a glass, “each of which must be exact in radius and in surface, and all have their axes coincident;” but it would not be intelligible without the figure by which it is illustrated, so I pass to Mr. Kingsley’s No. 3:

“I am tolerably familiar,” he proceeds, “with the actual grinding and polishing of lenses and specula, and have produced by my own hands some by no means bad optical work; and I have copied no small amount of Turner’s work, and I still look with awe at the combined delicacy and precision of his hand; it beats optical work out of sight.⁹² In optical work, as in refined drawing, the hand goes beyond the eye,⁹³ and one has to depend upon the feel; and when one has once learned what a delicate affair touch is, one gets a horror of all coarse work, and is ready to forgive any amount of feebleness, sooner than the boldness which is akin to impudence. In optics the distinction is easily seen when the work is put to trial; but here too, as in drawing, it requires an educated eye to tell the difference when the work is only moderately bad; but with ‘bold’ work nothing can be seen but distortion and fog, and I heartily wish the same result would follow the same kind of handling in drawing; but here, the boldness cheats the unlearned by looking like the precision of the true man. It is very strange how much better our ears are than our eyes in this country: if an ignorant man were to be ‘bold’ with a violin, he would not get many admirers, though his boldness was far below that of ninety-nine out of a hundred drawings one sees.”

The words which I have italicized⁹⁴ in the above extract are those which were surprising to me. I knew that Turner’s was as refined as any optical work, but had no idea of its going beyond it. Mr. Kingsley’s word “awe,” occurring just before, is, however, as I have often felt, precisely the right one. When once we begin at all to understand the work of any truly great executor, such as that of any of the three great Venetians [(Tintoret, Titian, and Veronese)], Correggio, or Turner, the awe of it is something greater than can be felt from the most stupendous natural scenery. For the creation of such a system as a high human intelligence, endowed with its ineffably perfect instruments of eye and hand, is a far more appalling manifestation of Infinite Power than the making either of seas or mountains. After this testimony to the completion of Turner’s work, I need not at length defend myself from the charge of hyperbole in the statement that, “as far as I know, the galleries of Europe may be challenged to produce one sketch⁹⁵ that shall equal the chalk study No. 45, or the feeblest of the memoranda in the 71st and following frames;”⁹⁶ which memoranda, however, it should have been observed, are stated at the forty-fourth page to be in some respects “the grandest work in gray that he did in his life.”

For I believe that, as manipulators, none but the four men whom I have just named (the three Venetians and Correggio) were equal to Turner; and, as far as I know, none of these four men put their full strength into sketches. But whether they did or not, my statement in the Catalogue is limited by my own knowledge, and as far as I can trust that knowledge: it is not an enthusiastic statement, but an entirely calm and considered one. It may be a mistake, but it is not an hyperbole.

Lastly, you object that the drawings for the “Liber Studiorum” are not included in my catalogue. They are not so, because I did not consider them as, in a true sense, drawings at all; they are merely washes of color laid roughly to guide the mezzotint engraver in his first process; the drawing, properly so called, was all put in by Turner when he etched the plates, or superadded by repeated touchings on the proofs. These brown “guides,” for they are nothing more, are entirely unlike the painter’s usual work, and in every way inferior to it; so that students wishing to understand the composition of the “Liber” must always work from the plates, and not from these first indications of purpose.⁹⁷ I have put good impressions of two of the plates in the same room, in order to show their superiority; and for the rest, thought it useless to increase the bulk of the Catalogue by naming subjects which have been published and well known these thirty years.⁹⁸

Permit me, in conclusion, to thank you for drawing attention to the subject of this great national collection; and, again asking your indulgence for trespassing so far upon your space, to subscribe myself,

Very respectfully yours,

J. Ruskin.