Turner's Sketches and DrawingsFinberg, A. J. (Alexander Joseph)
History
Turner's Sketches and Drawings
Finberg, A. J. (Alexander Joseph)
Turner, J. M. W. (Joseph Mallord William), 1775-1851
Such a sketch as that of the ‘Hedging and Ditching’ subject (Plate XXV.)
may serve as a connecting link between the two categories. Like the
drawings of Lincoln and Ripon Cathedrals, it is probably only a record
of a scene actually witnessed, and as a record of the objects
constituting such a scene and their relations to one another it is
considerably less complete than they are. But somehow I find it hard to
take it simply as a record of fact, perhaps simply because of its very
incompleteness. As a symbol of a determinate complex of feeling present
to the mind of the artist, it demands to be placed in a different
category from those drawings which only aim at the accumulation of the
raw material of artistic invention; and this in spite of its defects and
insufficiencies which make it, it must be admitted, quite unintelligible
as such a symbol to everybody but the artist himself. Yet here, it seems
to me, we have crossed the threshold which divides a study from a work
of art proper. The reference to reality is no longer direct. The artist
is no longer giving evidence about matters of fact. He has cut himself
free from the demonstrative of immediate perception and is groping his
way towards a definitory judgment.[36] We have here an operative
identity cut loose from its context, though in a singularly inarticulate
form. But if so, the sketch must be taken as an incipient work of art,
which possesses the capacity of growth or development.
In the sepia drawing of this subject, reproduced in Plate XXVI., we come
to a later stage of this development. Here the whole subject has become
defined, not indeed to the point of realisation that would satisfy a
modern artist, but sufficiently to evoke and control the ideas and
emotions present to the mind of the artist. We can say if we like that
such a drawing is or may be a more or less accurate realisation of an
actual scene, and though such an assertion would require qualification,
I do not think we could reject it altogether. But if we said that it was
nothing more than such a realisation we should certainly be wrong. It is
a great deal more. The connection between any fact or series of facts
and the emotional standpoint from which we regard them is at times a
matter of chance. But in Turner’s design the connection between
subjective feeling and the objects upon which our attention is focussed
is not left to the caprice of chance or to the accidents of individual
initiative; the connection is necessary, and objective and universal.
Indeed if we examine the matter carefully we find that the whole _raison
d’être_ of the drawing turns upon its power of evoking and qualifying
ideally a definite range of emotion. The objects selected and the manner
of their presentation are such that a normal mind, so far as it
understands the artist’s symbols, is bound to feel about the presented
scene in exactly the way that the artist felt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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