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
For these reasons the drawing must have been very generally
admired when it was first exhibited, but Turner could not have been
satisfied at all with his own work, for he promptly abandoned the style.
This is the most ‘mappy’ of all Turner’s drawings, and we know that for
the rest of his life he had the greatest horror of this quality.
When we examine the pencil drawings made from nature on this tour we
find them all severely governed by the ends they were intended to serve.
The sketches for the publishers’ work
[Illustration: _PLATE V_
LINCOLN CATHEDRAL
WATER COLOUR EXHIBITED AT ROYAL ACADEMY, 1795
(_Print Room, British Museum_)]
[Illustration: _PLATE VI_
LINCOLN CATHEDRAL, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST
PENCIL. 1794]
are generally made in a small note-book (about 4½ × 6¾ inches in size).
They are invariably in pure outline, without the slightest suggestion of
light and shade--nothing but the scaffolding of the more important
shapes upon which the final designs were to be elaborated. On such a
small scale the ease and grace of Turner’s touch are not much in
evidence. The sketches are severely business-like, and done as quickly
and with as little effort as possible. There is more effort and feeling
in the casual studies with which the leaves of this sketch-book are
interspersed. The accompanying sketch (Plate VII.) of a pony standing
ready saddled gives a good idea of the mature wisdom of Turner’s style
of sketching at this period, its determination to grasp the larger
truths of form and structure, as well as the quickness, readiness, and
versatility of his powers of perception.
The drawings for the more ambitious subjects are generally made on
larger and separate pieces of paper about 8 × 10½ inches in size. On
this scale the delicate play of the artist’s wrist becomes appreciable.
The dominant impression left by a glance through these drawings is one
of excessive orderliness and methodical neatness. There is no hurry, no
scamped or perfunctory work, still less are there any signs of
dilatoriness or even slowness. The artist’s respect for relevant fact is
equalled by his appreciation of the value of time. His calm objective
outlook, his steady, unwavering grasp of general principles enable him
at every point to economise his labours, to store up the record of the
greatest possible amount of material facts (i.e. of facts material to
his purpose) with the utmost celerity, clearness, and the least possible
expenditure of manual effort. This is particularly noticeable in the
treatment of the towers in the Lincoln Cathedral drawing (Plate VI.),
where every advantage has been taken of the repetition of forms. A
possible, though not a very satisfactory, way of doing justice to the
predominance of conceptual over purely visual elements in this work,
would be to say that the artist has here drawn with his head rather than
his eye, that he puts down not so much what he sees as what he
understands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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