the rain-clouds of gravings. In passing to the works of our greatest modern master, it must be premised that the qualities which constitute a most essential part of the truth of the rain-cloud, are in no degree to be rendered by engraving. Its indefiniteness of torn § 11. Impossibility of reasoning on and transparent form is far beyond the power of Turner from en- even our best engravers: I do not say beyond their possible power, if they would make themselves artists as well as workmen, but far beyond the power they actually possess; while the depth and delicacy of the grays which Turner employs or produces, as well as the refinement of his execution, are, in the nature of things, utterly beyond all imitation by the opaque and lifeless darkness of the steel. What we say of his works, therefore, must be understood as referring only to the original drawings; though we may name one or two instances in which the engraver has, to a certain degree, succeeded in distantly following the intention of the master. $12. His render particular mo Jumieges. Jumieges, in the Rivers of France, ought perhaps, after what we have said of Fielding, to be our first object of attention, because it is a rendering by Turner of Fielding's particular moment, and the only one existing, for Turner never Ing of Fielding's repeats himself. One picture is allotted to one meut in the truth; the statement is perfectly and gloriously made, and he passes on to speak of a fresh portion of God's revelation.* The haze of sunlit rain of this most magnificent picture, the gradual retirement of the dark wood into its depth, and the sparkling and evanescent light which sends its variable flashes on the abbey, figures, foliage, and foam, require no comment-they speak home at once. But there is added to this noble composition an incident which may 13. Illustration of the nature of serve us at once for a farther illustration of the naclouds in the opposed forms of ture and forms of cloud, and for a final proof how deeply and philosophically Turner has studied them. We have on the right of the picture, the steam and the smoke of a passing steamboat. Now steam is nothing but an artificial cloud in the process of dissipation; it is as much a cloud as those of the sky itself, that is, a quantity of moisture rendered visible in the air by imperfect solution. Accordingly, observe smoke and steam. * Compare Sect. I. Chap. IV. § 5. how exquisitely irregular and broken are its forms, how sharp and spray-like; but with all the facts observed which were pointed out in Chap. II. of this Section, the convex side to the wind, the sharp edge on that side, the other soft and lost. Smoke, on the contrary, is an actual substance existing independently in the air, a solid opaque body, subject to no absorption nor dissipation but that of tenuity. Observe its volumes; there is no breaking up nor disappearing here; the wind carries its elastic globes before it, but does not dissolve nor break them.* Equally convex and void of angles on all sides, they are the exact representatives of the clouds of the old masters, and serve at once to show the ignorance and falsehood of these latter, and the accuracy of study which has guided Turner to the truth. From this picture we should pass to the Llanthony, which is the rendering of the moment immediately following that given in the Jumieges. The shower is here half exhausted, half passed by, the last drops are rattling faintly through the glimmering hazel boughs, the white torrent, swelled by the sudden storm, flings up its hasty jets of springing spray to meet the returning light; and these, as if the heaven regretted what it had given, and were taking it back, pass, as they leap, into vapor, and fall not again, but vanish in the shafts of the sunlight -hurrying, fitful, windwoven sunlight-which glides through the thick leaves, and §14. Moment of retiring rain in the Llanthony. * It does not do so until the volumes lose their density by inequality of motion, and by the expansion of the warm air which conveys them. They are then, of course, broken into forms resembling those of clouds. No conception can be formed of this picture from the engraving. It is perhaps the most marvellous piece of execution and of gray color existing, except perhaps the drawing presently to be noticed, Land's End. Nothing else can be set beside it, even of Turner's own works-much less of any other man's. I know no effect more strikingly characteristic of the departure of a storm than the smoking of the mountain torrents. The exhausted air is so thirsty of moisture, that every jet of spray is seized upon by it, and converted into vapor as it springs; and this vapor rises so densely from the surface of the stream as to give it the exact appearance of boiling water. I have seen the whole course of the Arve at Chamonix one line of dense cloud, dissipating as soon as it had risen ten or twelve feet from the surface, but entirely concealing the water from an observer placed above it. paces along the pale rocks like rain; half conquering, half quenched by the very mists which it summons itself from the lighted pastures as it passes, and gathers out of the drooping herbage and from the streaming crags; sending them with messages of peace to the far summits of the yet unveiled mountains whose silence is still broken by the sound of the rushing rain. 15. And of com Coriskin. With this noble work we should compare one of which we can better judge by the engraving-the Loch Coriskin, in the illustrations to Scott, because it introduces us to another and a most remarkable instance of the artist's vast and varied mencing, chosen knowledge. When rain falls on a mountain with peculiar meaning for Loch composed chiefly of barren rocks, their surfaces, being violently heated by the sun, whose most intense warmth always precedes rain, occasion sudden and violent evaporation, actually converting the first shower into steam. Consequently, upon all such hills, on the commencement of rain, white volumes of vapor are instantaneously and universally formed, which rise, are absorbed by the atmosphere, and again descend in rain, to rise in fresh volumes until the surfaces of the hills are cooled. Where there is grass or vegetation, this effect is diminished; where there is foliage it scarcely takes place at all. Now this effect has evidently been especially chosen by Turner for Loch Coriskin, not only because it enabled him to relieve its jagged forms with veiling vapor, but to tell the tale which no pencilling could, the story of its utter absolute barrenness of unlichened, dead, desolated rock : "The wildest glen, but this, can show But here, above, around, below, On mountain, or in glen, Nor tree, nor plant, nor shrub, nor flower, Nor aught of vegetative power, The wearied eye may ken; But all its rocks at random thrown, Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone." LORD OF THE ISLES, Canto III Here, again, we see the absolute necessity of scientific and entire acquaintance with nature, before this great artist can be understood. That which, to the ignorant, is little more than an unnatural and meaningless confusion of steam-like vapor, is to the experienced such a full and perfect expression of the character of the spot, as no means of art could have otherwise given. por in the Land's End. In the Long Ships Lighthouse, Land's End, we have clouds without rain-at twilight-enveloping the cliffs of the coast, but concealing nothing, every outline being visible through their $16. The drawing gloom; and not only the outline-for it is easy to of transparent va do this-but the surface. The bank of rocky coast approaches the spectator inch by inch, felt clearer and clearer as it withdraws from the garment of cloud-not by edges more and more defined, but by a surface more and more unveiled. We have thus the painting, not of a mere transparent veil, but of a solid body of cloud, every inch of whose increasing distance is marked and felt. But the great wonder of the picture is the intensity of gloom which is attained in pure warm gray, without either blackness or blueness. It is a gloom, dependent rather on the enormous space and depth indicated, than on actual pitch of color, distant by real drawing, without a grain of blue, dark by real substance, without a stroke of blackness; and with all this, it is not formless, but full of indications of character, wild, irregular, shattered, and indefinitefull of the energy of storm, fiery in haste, and yet flinging back out of its motion the fitful swirls of bounding drift, of tortured vapor tossed up like men's hands, as in defiance of the tempest, the jets of resulting whirlwind, hurled back from the rocks into the face of the coming darkness; which, beyond all other characters, mark the raised passion of the elements. It is this untraceable, unconnected, yet perpetual form-this §17. The individual character of fulness of character absorbed in the universal enits parts. ergy-which distinguish nature and Turner from all their imitators. To roll a volume of smoke before the wind, to indicate motion or violence by monotonous similarity of line and direction, is for the multitude; but to mark the independent passion, the tumultuous separate existence of every wreath of writhing vapor, yet swept away and overpowered by one omnipotence of storm, and thus to bid us "Be as a Presence or a motion-one Among the many there--while the mists And phantoms from the crags and solid earth, Out of an instrument,' this belongs only to nature and to him. form of swift Coventry. The drawing of Coventry may be particularized as a farther example of this fine suggestion of irregularity and fitfulness, through very constant parallelism of direction, both in rain and 18. Deep studied clouds. The great mass of cloud, which traverses rain-cloud in the the whole picture, is characterized throughout by severe right lines, nearly parallel with each other, into which every one of its wreaths has a tendency to range itself; but no one of these right lines is actually and entirely par allel to any other, though all have a certain tendency, more or less defined in each, which impresses the mind with the most distinct idea of parallelism. Neither are any of the lines actually straight and unbroken; on the contrary, they are all made up of the most exquisite and varied curves, and it is the imagined line which joins the apices of these-a tangent to them all, which is in reality straight.* They are suggested, not represented, right lines; but the whole volume of cloud is visibly and totally bounded by them; and, in consequence, its whole body is felt to be dragged out and elongated by the force of the tempest which it carries with it, and every one of its wreaths to be (as was before explained) not so much something borne before or by the wind, as the visible form and presence of the wind itWe could not possibly point out a more magnificent piece of drawing as a contrast to such works of Salvator with forms given as that before alluded to (159 Dulwich Gallery). by Salvator. Both are rolling masses of connected cloud; but in Turner's, there is not one curve that repeats another, nor one curve in itself monotonous, nor without character, and yet every part and portion of the cloud is rigidly subjected to the same forward, fierce, inevitable influence of storm. In Salvator's, every curve repeats its neighbor, every curve is monotonous in itself, and yet the whole cloud is curling about hither and $ 19. Compared *Note especially the dark uppermost outline of the mass. |