JMW Turner Correspondence and Letters
| Correspondence Turner letter JMW Turner letters John Gage Collected Correspondence of JMW Turner the source The following letters are recent discoveries and are not found in John Gage’s Collected Correspondence of J.M.W. Turner, (Clarendon Press ’ " Oxford, 1980) excerpt from Rescuing Turner: a New Age of Art Discovery
r malcolm setters / graham setters “Turner’s journeys at home and abroad were frequent and extensive. Unfortunately few itineraries survive. The best records of course are his sketches en-route and the limited number of his letters that survive. The following are newly discovered examples showing the artist’s exuberant writing style. They somewhat contradict Philip Hamerton, who in his Life of J.M.W. Turner R.A. 1879 contends that Turner was lacking social graces, and that he was remiss when it came to answering dinner invitations.
Previously unrecorded letter from J.M.W. Turner to (possibly) Sir Francis Graham Moon,
a leading print-seller and publisher who became Lord Mayor of
London in 1854.
To Samuel Rogers Hanover Terrace To Clara Wheeler
Turner’s first two biographers, Thornbury and Hamerton both confirm the
dearth of Turner correspondence. Thornbury writes, “I append here a batch of
letters, trifling enough, but valuable, because Turner’s letters are scarce,”[i]
and Hamerton; “Of Turner’s correspondence very little is in existence.” In turn
Hamerton condescendingly mocks Turner’s literacy: “Like most uneducated men, he
disliked letter-writing, and he carried this dislike to a degree involving
positive discourtesy to others.”[ii]
How can Hamerton so confidently declare Turner discourteous? There may have
been the odd recorded faux pas made by the preoccupied and possibly
forgetful artist, but many such letters, as the ones included here may have been
lost or destroyed. We know from Thornbury that the son of Rev. Trimmer, Turner’s
close friend and one with whom he often corresponded, burned many of the
artist’s letters. There is also the odd twist to Turner’s attitude toward the
letters he received; “It is said that letters used to remain unopened on
Turner’s table for months., ‘’’: They only want my autograph,’ he used to say.’”[iii]
To challenge Hamerton on this point: although Turner was not Oxford or
Cambridge educated, he was educated, and had a curiosity of mind that
took him beyond language’ " into the theater of poetry. Alas, here again, Hamerton
has only criticism. Turner’s father was pleased with the “edycation” he was able
to afford for his son in those times that few but the elite were formally
educated. In 1885 Rev. S.A. Swaine wrote, “considering the number and kinds of
schools the boy was put to, no doubt, according to barber Turner’s notions, he
had received a good education, especially when it is remembered what the
condition of education was in those days. It is true that to the end of his life
the great artist could neither spell correctly, nor write grammatical English;
but then many others who presumably and professedly have received a good
education, have to these two things been woefully weak’ Let the dull boys and the
dull girls, as they may be pronounced, take heart of grace. Their dullness in
one direction may be but the reverse side of genius in another.”[iv]
In keeping with this sentiment there seems to be no argument that Turner had
genius. The son of Rev. Trimmer, Turner’s eldest executor, had a special
fondness for the normally taciturn artist. He probably knew him very well, for
Turner at times played the surrogate father, taking him on sketching trips. Many
years later Trimmer wrote: “Though not polished, he was not vulgar. In common
with many men of genius, he had not a good flow of words, and when heated in
argument got confused.”[v]
And as Turner was, eventually, a “great theatre-goer,” one might imagine a
confused state similar to that of Shakespeare, over whom he “was very
indistinctly voluble.”[vi]
Perhaps the secretive and aloof Turner gained catharsis through puzzling
prose. We are often reminded that his Cockney accent was unacceptable to the
average nineteenth century aesthete’ “such animosity might make the hardiest of
souls dumb, including Turner, but what about his ability to release his
innermost sensibilities?
“I trembled wak’d, and for a season after
Could not believe, but that I was in hell.
Such terrible impression made my dream.
Or;
“Summer will shed her many blossoms fair
and Shield the trembling strings in noon tide ray
While ever and anon the dulcet air
Will rapturous thrill then sighing sweets decay.
Now, these could either be the confused Turner on a bad day or the
lucid Shakespeare on a good one; here it is left to the Shakespeare, or Turner
scholar to differentiate. Could these excerpts be leading up to the Fallacies
of Hope by Turner, or are they poetic dialogue from Shakespeare? In fact one
quote is from Turner’s verse book and one is from Shakespeare’s King Richard
the Third. “At times it was difficult to know what Turner meant, but the
indistinctness of his thoughts, like the indistictness of his pictures, always
indicated either greatness or beauty.”[vii]
According to Ruskin: “To put plain text into rhyme and metre is easy; not so
to write a passage which every time it is remembered shall suggest a new train
of thought, a new subject of delighted dream. It is this mystic secrecy of
beauty which is the seal of the highest art, which only opens itself to close
observation and long study. I have been ten years learning to understand
Turner’ “[viii]
This continuum of thought seems to implicate Turner’s poetry as an extention of
great art. His poetry is seldom constrained by “ease of rhyme and metre,” but
certainly availes itself to “mystic secrecy,” as, apparently, it did to Ruskin’s
own need for enchantment.
With opportunity and encouragement, if the
pages of Virgil were splayed before a curious youth, it matters not if the
receptive mind is installed at day school New Brentford as was Turner, or Eton
in the shadow of Windsor Castle. Although it is impossible to ascertain at this
point, but Turner might even have been dyslexic; he was certainly a visual
learner, which is often an indicator of this state. Regardless of his outward
manifestations and innermost riddles, according to Rev. S.A Swaine, one must
nevertheless appreciate Turner for his humanity. And this of course can be
instilled anywhere:
‘Turner was as merciful an angler as even the pious and humane father of the
craft could have desired. He would impale the devoted worm, ‘’’: as tenderly as he
loved him’”’ and according to a regular fishing companion, “his success as an
angler was great, although with the worst of tackle in the world. Every fish he
caught he showed to me, and appealed to me to decide whether the size justified
him to keep it for the table, or return it to the river; his hesitation was
often most touching, and he always gave the prisoner at the bar the benefit of
the doubt.
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The way in which a man treats his inferior
fellow-creatures is an index to his heart.
‘A
righteous man regardeth the life of his beast,” say the Scriptures, and
certainly the way in which a man treats his inferior fellow-creatures is an
index to his heart.’[ix]
Turner was not entirely oblivious to his own shortcomings. In an 1845 letter to Charles Robert Cockerell, he begs pardon from his wife: “I beg her pardon for being so disorderly and deserve expulsion.” Again, in Turner’s own hand:
J.M.W. Turner: a letter to Charles Robert Cockerell
from the summer of 1845 (previously unrecorded).
Turner bibliography new JMW Turner self-portrait
HOME [i] Walter Thornbury, The Life of J.M.W. Turner, (Hurst and Blackett, Publishers, London, 1862), vol. 2, 228. [ii] Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Life of J.M.W. Turner R.A., (University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge, 1879), 144. [iii] Walter Thornbury, Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A., (Hurst and Blackett, Publishers, London, 1862), vol. 2, 152. [iv] Rev. S.A. Swaine, Turner the Artist, (Cassell & Company, Limited: London, Paris, New York, Melbourne, 1885), 9-10. [v] Walter Thornbury, Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A., (Hurst and Blackett, Publishers, London, 1862), vol. 1, 178. [vi] Ibid. vol. 2, 265. [vii] George Jones; John Gage, ed., Collected Correspondence of J.M.W. Turner, (Clarendon Press ’ " Oxford, 1980), 7. [viii] John Ruskin, Letters to a College Friend, (MacMillan & Co., New York; and George Allen, London, 1894), 89. [ix] Rev. S.A. Swaine, Turner the Artist, (Cassell & Company, Limited: London, Paris, New York, Melbourne, 1885), 48. | | | | | | An introduction: JMW Turner Rescue off site: Turner Society Tate Gallery National Gallery London Courtauld Institute of Art IFAR International Foundation for Art Research NGC National Gallery Canada Frick Collection Yale Center for British Art The Getty Biro Forensic Studies CCI Canadian Conservation Institute
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(c) setters 2003, Rescuing Turner: The Art Project & [/)