The works of this period an important yet generally neglected aspect of Turner’s art--Turner’s classification of ‘Pastoral’ as opposed to ‘Elegant Pastoral’--The Arcadian idyll of the mid-eighteenth century--The first ‘Pastoral’ subjects in ‘Liber’--‘Windmill and Lock’--The capture of the Danish Fleet in 1807--Turner’s visit to Portsmouth--His return journey--‘Hedging and Ditching’--An attempt to define the mood of pictures like ‘The Frosty Morning,’ ‘Windsor,’ etc.--Distinction between mood and character. The phase of Turner’s work which we are now to consider seems to me one to which the critics have hardly done justice. The supreme beauty of two of the pictures of this group has certainly been recognised--I allude to the ‘Trout Stream’ and Lady Wantage’s ‘Walton Bridges,’ but these works have been treated mainly on their individual merits, instead of in their connection with a clearly-marked and most significant aspect of the artist’s genius. Chronologically, this period ranges from about the year 1808 to 1813, and it includes, in addition to the two works just mentioned, the ‘Windsor,’ ‘Abingdon,’ ‘Kingston Bank,’ ‘Frosty Morning,’ ‘Union of the Thames and Isis’ and ‘Sandbank with Gipsies,’ all in the National Gallery, as well as Sir Frederick Cook’s ‘Windmill and Lock’ and Mr. Orrock’s ‘Walton Bridges.’ These works all strike me as characterised by a certain mood or standpoint which possesses the profoundest significance for modern art,--a mood, moreover, which has not yet, to my knowledge, been satisfactorily analysed, and which Turner could never afterwards recall in all its essential beauty, though he frequently made the attempt. I must confess that in spite of all my efforts I am quite unable to find a term that will adequately characterise this phase of Turner’s art. Turner’s own classification of such subjects as those mentioned above is ‘Pastoral,’ as distinguished from the ‘Elegant Pastoral.’ But this description is inadequate, because it seems to refer simply to the objects contained in the works, while it is exactly the mood or emotional standpoint from which the subject-matter is treated that seems to me all-important. The contemporary term for this kind of work, and one which Turner sometimes used himself, was ‘Simple Nature,’ and this description, though inadequate enough, is perhaps as good as any other we might hit upon. It indicated, at least, an antagonism to any artificial way of treating natural scenes, and suggested a certain unsophisticated plainness and directness of approach, and these qualities are certainly contained in the complex and subtle conception we are in search of. It is, then, as a painter of ‘Simple Nature’ that we have now to consider our subject.