In 1802 Turner visited the Continent for the first time. He was naturally impressed with Calais, his first French town, and on his return he painted the well-known picture of _Calais Pier_ (National Gallery), and the still magnificent but now much darkened _Vintage at Mâcon_ (the Earl of Yarborough). But it was in Switzerland, Savoy and Piedmont that he spent most of his time, and the results may be seen in the fine drawings of Bonneville, Chamounix, and the Lake of Geneva in various collections, the _Falls of the Reichenbach_, the _Glacier and Source of the Arveron_, and others at Farnley, and the superb large body-colour sketches of _The Devil’s Bridge_ and the _St. Gothard Pass_, in the portfolios of the National Gallery. Three of his Swiss drawings he sent to the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1803. From 1803 to 1812 he was continually receiving commissions, both for oil pictures and water-colours, from influential patrons, including the Earls of Egremont, Essex, Lonsdale, and Yarborough, Sir John Leicester, Sir John Soane, and other wealthy amateurs. In 1807 he started his well-known _Liber Studiorum_ in rivalry of the _Liber Veritatis_ of Claude Lorraine, which had recently been successfully reproduced in engraving by English publishers. For this he made about a hundred drawings in sepia--a colour he rarely used elsewhere--as guides for the professional engravers whom he employed on the work. Nearly all these drawings, which are mostly slight, are now in the National Gallery. During the ten years between 1803 and 1812, Turner’s style in water-colour underwent a gradual, but a very considerable change. He left the dark blues and deep golden browns which, as we have seen, marked his first departure in 1797 from the “tinted manner” of his early days, and he gradually adopted a lighter and more natural range of colour. This new style is best seen in the work of what is known as his “Yorkshire period,” which began about 1809, and continued, with various developments, up to about 1820. His subjects were at first mainly taken from the neighbourhood of the stately house in the beautiful valley of the Wharfe which has become a place of pilgrimage to Turner students from all parts of the world--I refer, of course, to Farnley Hall. Its then owner, Mr. Walter Fawkes, was up to his death a kind friend and liberal patron of the painter, who was a frequent visitor at the house, and retained the friendship of the family down to his latest years. Farnley Hall is still filled with drawings by Turner of its surroundings, the neighbouring Wharfedale, important Swiss and other foreign landscapes, illustrations to Scott’s and Byron’s Poems, studies of birds, fish, etc. It also contains some important oil pictures by him. To one series of water-colours--the “Rhine Sketches”--I shall have occasion to refer later. Ruskin admirably describes the characteristics of these ‘Yorkshire drawings’ (“Modern Painters,” Vol. I., pp. 124, 125):--