the main support of the system of 'Free Imports' in the minds of those who have thought much upon the subject.

But there remains an argument far more potent with those who have not thought much upon the subject—and they are the majority. I mean the argument derived from the great increase in trade and commerce which this country has experienced since the system of Free Imports' was adopted.

I believe the reasoning which refers this prosperity to that system to be unsound and misleading, and will endeavour to show where it fails on another occasion.

(To be concluded.)

PENZANCE.

TURNER'S DRAWINGS AT THE

ROYAL ACADEMY.

THE collection of drawings now on view at Burlington House, though not extensive, is undoubtedly the most important display of Turner's work in water-colour which has yet been seen by the public.' The number placed at the disposal of the Royal Academy was so large that it was determined to divide them into successive Exhibitions, and it was arranged that this, the first, should contain only examples of the highest excellence, and mainly of the central period of Turner's art, ranging chiefly from 1815 to 1835, although not wholly excluding earlier and later works. In subsequent years his career will be treated more from the chronological point of view. The whole range of his art will be shown, beginning with the simple washed' or tinted' drawings of his boyhood, passing onward through the stages of sober browns and greys, emerging gradually, but surely, into strength and colour, and ending finally in the poetical, if impossible, rainbow visions of his old age.

Concurrently with the Royal Academy's Exhibition of Turner's Drawings, there are to be seen at the Burlington Fine Arts Club engravings of those of them which have been translated into black and white; and, the number being considerable, the opportunity of studying his art from the two sides is especially valuable.

The work of Turner, like that of many other great painters, may, as is well known, be broadly and conveniently divided into an early, a middle, and a late manner; and although these distinctions are necessarily arbitrary, yet they answer their purpose, and it is not often that the style of one time is found overlapping that of another. The first period, excluding his boyhood, may be placed from about 1795 to 1815, the second from 1815 to 1835, and the third from 1835 to his death in 1851.

In the Exhibition at the Royal Academy there are comparatively few drawings of the early period, but those few are fine and characteris

Its excellence is owing almost entirely to the untiring zeal and industry of Mr. Horsley, R.A.

tic. Most of them are large in size as well as in treatment, and a study of English water-colour art, of the origin and development of which I shall say more hereafter, leads me to the conviction that the same relation of strength to size has very generally held good. The art, I believe, has lost much by the continued tendency to smallness of scale, and no man's more than Turner's.

The earliest drawing, Llangollen (No. 43), executed before 1800, though painted almost entirely in the sombre browns and greys which tradition still imposed on all landscape art, has nevertheless a breadth and force new to Water Colour. Of the same broad yet sober style is the Snowdon (No. 25) of a few years later, about 1805. This grand and solemn work, the impressiveness of which would be more readily perceived were it differently mounted and framed, is remarkable for the singular unity in time, thought, and effect which it conveys. The moment at which the moon appears above the hills has been seized by the painter, and this is the keynote of the whole composition. For a long time the technical means to which was due the peculiar glow of the halo round the moon here was a puzzle to artists. A few years ago the drawing had to be remounted, and the mystery was solved. Turner had soaked away the paper behind at this part to an extremely thin film, and had affixed at the back a cake of orange-vermilion, which, showing through the wash of colour he had given to the front, produced the effect he desired.

Drawings such as these, and as the Kirkstall Abbey now in the Soane Museum, the Warkworth at South Kensington, the Ewenny Priory, Salisbury and Ely Cathedrals, and Caernarvon, Norham, and Harlech Castles-all painted about this time—were to exert a powerful effect on the development of English water-colour art, just then (1800) rising into notice. Turner was intimately connected with this, which appears to me the only original, if not indeed the only School of painting, strictly speaking, which England has produced, and which deserves I think, more attention than it has yet received. For, original as were our three great painters, Hogarth, Reynolds, and Gainsborough, it was inevitable that they should have been influenced, and to a considerable extent even inspired, by the masters of Italy, France, and the Netherlands who had preceded them. And, although their influence in turn was felt by English artists immediately succeeding them, yet I fail to see that to either of the three can be ascribed the formation of a distinct school in painting, or anything approaching such a new development of art as that of which I am now speaking. Bonington and Constable also, who may be said to have been the founders of modern French and Dutch landscape, had few followers in England; and the influence of Crome, the only other great landscape painter of the time, was confined to a

small, though highly interesting group of men, all more or less centred round Norwich.

It is often supposed that because colours soluble in water were used by the medieval missal-painters, and after them by the artists of Italy, Germany, France, and Holland, in the studies for their pictures, that English water-colour art was merely an expansion or outgrowth of this practice. Mr. Redgrave, however, has conclusively shown that it had an entirely different and an entirely national origin. It arose at the end of the last century, out of the development in England of a taste for antiquarian and therefore for architectural and topographical studies. The first English watercolourists were not so much painters as architectural draughtsmen, who, commissioned by the publishers, travelled over the country, making sketches of castles, abbeys, country seats, and places of historical interest. These sketches, usually carefully outlined with the pen and then lightly tinted' in monochrome, were to be issued as engravings in the numerous illustrated books, chiefly of a serial character, then coming into vogue.

From mere architectural detail to attractive backgrounds of parks, trees and hills was only a step, and the more artistic among the draughtsmen, such as Paul Sandby, Hearne, Rooker, Dayes (Turner's master), and others, soon distinguished themselves by the charm of their treatment of the landscape features of the composition. Turner himself gained his first introduction to Art through this portal, and it was his drawings of London and of the surrounding counties, executed as commissions for Walker and other publishers, and exhibited on the walls of the Royal Academy, that first brought him into notice. The extraordinary breadth and force of his work were quickly recognised as a new departure in English Art.

As early as 1797 the St. James's Chronicle says of Turner's Ewenny Priory in the Royal Academy Exhibition of that year: In point of colour and effect this is one of the grandest drawings we have ever seen, and equal to the best picture of Rembrandt.' It also praises for its true sublimity and grandeur of effect' his Choir of Salisbury Cathedral of the same year. In 1798 the same newspaper describes his Norham Castle on the Tweed as having the force and harmony of an oil-painting,' and characterises it as, in short, the best landscape in the present Exhibition.' In 1799 the True Briton, speaking of Harlech Castle says: This landscape, though it combines the style of Claude and of our excellent Wilson, yet wears an aspect of originality that shows the painter looks at Nature with his own eyes; we expect Mr. Turner to gain the highest distinction in his province.' Other newspapers and reviews

2

Descriptive Catalogue of the Historical Collection of English Water-Colour Paintings in the South Kensington Museum, 1877.

concur in the general praise of Turner's work; one of them concluding a eulogistic article with the odd remark: The drawings are, on the whole, among the best productions, and, allowing for the peculiar circumstances of the country, are very respectable.' 3

This ready and universal admiration of Turner's genius was shared by the Royal Academicians, and in 1799 they elected him an Associate member of their body, mainly on the strength of his works in water-colour, the majority of which had appeared on their walls. At that time they freely admitted to their highest honours the best water-colour painters.

The influence of Turner and of his close friend and fellow-student, Girtin (the latter soon to be cut off by an early death), made itself speedily felt on the other water-colourists of the time, who a little later, 1804, formed themselves into a Society, the parent of the two well-known institutions of our own day. A breadth, force, and naturalness of treatment unknown before was introduced into their work, and a number of gifted artists rose quickly into notice, whose taste and skill carried English water-colour painting to a point which had never before been touched or attempted in any other country or century. Cozens, Edridge, Girtin, Glover, John Varley, Barrett, Robson, De Wint, Cotman, Copley Fielding, and David Cox, have left a record in art of which any country might be proud.

If I am asked to describe the main feature which, with all their differences of manner, marks the work of these distinguished men, and to which, it appears to me, is mainly owing its unrivalled excellence, I should, speaking on matters of technique as an amateur only, ascribe it to their nearly invariable use of transparent colours. By no other vehicle-oil, fresco, pastel, or body-colours-have the passing phases of nature, light and shade, sunshine and storm, wind and weather -all of the very essence of the landscape painter's art-ever been so effectually rendered.

But unfortunately it is now difficult to obtain for the early English water-colourists the appreciation due to the originality and excellence of their work. For time has dealt hardly with the majority of their pictures, and few of even the important drawings that now come into the market but have faded more or less. I do not hesitate to say that only those who have the good fortune to know collections such as that of Dr. Percy and the one in the Print Room of the British Museum (which are habitually guarded from light and kept in portfolios) can form an adequate idea of the delicacy, force, and beauty of colour which were attained by the artists

3 An examination of the art criticisms of the newspapers and reviews from 1800 and onwards is sufficient to refute the notion-if it still survives-that Turner was not appreciated in his own day.