THE ULTIMATE MEANING OF THE TURNER BEQUEST : A MESSAGE TO THE NATION

Introduction

In 1848, in a codicil to his will of 1831, Turner bequeathed his finished pictures to the curators of the National Gallery, on condition that a room or rooms be added to the present National Gallery, and that once built, it or they be called “Turner's Gallery"

Various explanations have been put forward for this bequest.

1. A room of his works at the National Gallery, like the similar Rubens room at Munich, or rooms, would be a substantiel monument to his fame, with which, we are told by his contemporarles, he was much concerned. A scattering of pictures would not be the same.

2. This would allow him to show off his mastery of all styles and subjects.

The examination of the hang of Turner's gallery in Queen Ann street at the moment of his death shows both that it contained most of his own favorites and also a wide variety of sizes, subjects and treatments. A picture like Harvest Dinner, Kingston Bank had the vital function of illustrating Turner's range from the humble to the exalted.

We would like to suggest another, which is not exclusive of the others ?

Ruskin reported in MP 5, Part IX, ch. X, that “Turner appears never to have desired, from any one, care in favour of his separate works. The only thing he would say sometimes was, “Keep them together.” He seemed not to mind how much they were injured, if only the record of the thought were left in them, and they were kept in the series which would give the key to their meaning.”

This may constitute one of the reasons Turner had felt it necessary to make his bequest.

The following essay is an attempt to put forward a hypothesis concerning a possible overall meaning of the paintings in the Bequest, or at the least, of a significant part of them.

It seems to us that a clue to these other meanings may be found in the first and simpler bequest of 1829.

I. THE MEANING OF THE 1829 BEQUEST

In 1829, in the first draft of his will, Turner bequeathed two of his works to the National Gallery : Dido Building Carthage, or the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire and The Decline of Carthage, provided they were deemed worthy to be and were placed by the side of two pictures by Claude.

Turner seems to have had this bequest in mind for a considerable time, as he repeatedly refused to sell “Dido Building Carthage”, despite continuous offers.

Turner added the following explanation to the title of the second of these pictures :"Rome being determined on the overthrow of her hated Rival, demanded of her such terms as might either force her into war, or ruin her by compliance : the Enervated Carthaginians, in their anxiety for peace, consented to give up their Arms and their Children.”

The following verses by Turner also appeared in the catalogue

“At Hope's delusive smile,

The chieftain's safety and the mother's pride

Were to th' insidious Warrior's grasp resign'd;

While over the western wave th'ensanguin'd sun,

In gathering haze a stormy signal spread,

And set portentous.”

These two pictures were obviously conceived as companions.

Such comparisons of the rise and fall of Empires and their application to the contemporary situation were a commonplace in the eighteenth and early ninteenth centuries, as in Oliver Goldsmith's Roman History and Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

This theme is also to be found in James Thomson's long poem Liberty, published in 1734-1736, Thomson being a poet often referred to by Turner.

The then well known guide to Italy, J.C. -Eustace's Classical Tour through Italy of 1813 draws a parallel between Carthage and England.

Turner seems to have identified, if only momentarily, Carthage with England, in the particular case of this painting of the Decline of Carthage, according to the various drafts of the poem, in terms of the situation after the defeat of Napoleon and the falsities of the imposed peace. Rome taking over the treacheries of Punic faith, "Held forth the peaceful but round the stem insidious twined the asp"-"Revengeful twined the asp" ... (CXL 3, 4, 7a, 8, 11, Ila, in pencil, quoted by J. Lindsay).

The bequest of these two particular pictures, to a gallery called the National Gallery, being such, seems to justify the hypothesis that Turner meant his gift to be a possible constant incitement to the Nation to meditate on the lessons of History, to self-examination and reflection on the theme of possible decline or décadence.

In the 1831 version of his will, Turner substituted Sun rising through Mist for The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire.

In a codicil of 1832, Turner asked that a special gallery be built to contain the totality of his work, next to a charitable institution for artists at Twickenham.

If this turned out to be impossible, the Gallery in Queen Ann street was to serve the purpose, and to be called 'Turner's Gallery".

Finally, in the third codicil of 1848, as already mentioned, Turner bequeathed his finished pictures to the National Gallery, with the attendant conditions.

No provision was made for the other works.

We believe that the same fundamental meaning, in an expanded and more complex form, can be found in the final Bequest as in the original Bequest of the two paintings of 1829.

II. THE MEANING OF THE THIRD CODICIL OF 1848

As we saw above, in 1848, in a codicil to his will of 1831, Turner bequeathed his finished pictures to the curators of the National Gallery, on condition that a room or rooms be added to the present National Gallery, and that once built, it or they be called “Turner's Gallery"

Let us start this overall examination of Turner’s in the Bequest with a examination of a series of late works, which constitute a sort of enigma in Turner’s production and which have given rise to some controversy.

a. The late “unfinished” pictures

This series of late works consists of two contrasting series : the Liber Studiorum series of an elevated pastoral character, and the wild seascape series.

The first sub-group involves 16 pictures with a peaceful pastoral character, many of them being connected more or less closely with engravings published in the Liber Studiorum many years earlier.

Eight are in the Turner Bequest in the “Clore Gallery”.

These are :

Norham Castle, sunrise, B&J, cat. 512, pl. 498,

Sunrise, a Castle on a Bay : “Solitude”, cat. 515, pl. 501,

Sunrise with a Boat between Headlands, pl. 502, cat.

The Ponte delle Torre, Spoleto, cat. 518, pl. 504,

Mountain scene with Lake and Hut,cat. 521, pl. 506,

Mountain Landscape, cat. 522, pl. 507,

A river seen from a Hill, cat 532, plate 512,

Landscape with Water, pl.519, cat 531

To these may be legitimately added the following 8 stylistically and thematically related pictures, which disappeared from Turner's Gallery, and the Bequest :

Landscape with a River and Bay in the Distance, pl.495, cat. 509, now in the Louvre, Paris,

The Fall of the Clyde, pl. 496, cat. 510, now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight,

Landscape with Walton Bridges, pl. 497, cat 511, now private coll., (H.S. Morgan), New York,

Landscape : Woman with Tambourine, pl. 499, cat 513, now in private coll., (Fergusson).

Europa and the Bull, pl.500, cat. 514, Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio,

Landscape with River and Distant Mountains, pl 503, cat. 517, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool,

Monte Rosa, pl. 505, cat 519, Yale centre for British art, Paul Mellon collection.

The Val d’Aosta, pl. 508, cat. 520, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

How the pictures left Turner's Gallery is an unsolved mystery.

According to Effie Ruskin, they may have been stolen during the controversy over Turner’s will.

In a letter written by Effie Ruskin to her mother in August 1852, she tells her that Ruskin had

renounced the executorship of Turner’s Will as he was sickened by the dispute over it, and includes the declaration that “certain it is that Turner’s lawyer has stolen a bag of drawings”.

Two of the series, (cat. no. 511 an 513), were sold at Christie's in 1865 from the collection of John Pound, the son by her first marriage of Mrs. Sophie Caroline Booth, Turner's house keeper in Margate and Chelsea. They may have been given either to Mrs Booth or to her son by Turner but there is no evidence of this.

All the others turned up at sales years after Turner’ death and the settlement in 1856 of his will.

Cat no. 509 and 520 were by 1890 in Camille Groult’s collection; no. 510 and 514 first reappeared in a sale at Christie’s in 1871; no. 517 first reappeared in a private collection ‘not long after 1876’; no. 519 appeared in a private collection by 1894.

All these pictures seem to us to obviously possess a distinct stylistic character,

and they cannot therefore, be described or classified simply as "unfinished" works.

Rodin used the distinction between “inachevé” and “nonfini”, taking the last in a stylistic sense. It is unfortunately not possible to make the same distinction in the english language.

Moreover, thematically, they constitute a coherent sub-series, opposed to the sub-series of wild seascapes, which fits in logically into our hypothetical overall scheme of the Bequest, taken as a whole, and which, it seems to us, forms the only coherent overall scheme that can be suggested.

This overall scheme is the only one that accounts for their very large number.

These informal wild seascapes include, from the Bequest, as it survives, the 11 following paintings :

Rough sea with wreckage, cat. 455, pl. 438, dated 1830-35,

Breakers on a flat Beach, cat. 456, pl. 454,

Waves breaking against the wind, car. 457, pl. 440,

Waves breaking on a Lea Shore, cat. 458, pl. 441,

Waves breaking on a Shore, cat.459, pl. 455,

Fire at Sea, cat. 460, pl.439, pl. 449,

Stormy Sea with Blazing Wreck, cat. 462, pl. 449, rep. below,

Stormy Sea with Dolphins, cat. 463, pl. 442

Margate(?) from the Sea, cat. 464, pl. 443,

Seascape, cat.465, pl. 456

Seascape with Storm coming on, cat. 466, pl. 444

To these may be added the following 5 paintings outside the Bequest, for the reasons given above.

The Beacon Light, cat. 474, pl. 460, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff

Off the Nore: Wind and Water, cat. 476, pl. 462, present whereabouts unknown.

Waves breaking on the Shore, cat. 482, pl. 464, Yale Centre for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

Off Deal, cat. 483, pl. 465, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm,

Cat. no. 474 and 476 appeared in public for the first time at the John Pound sale at Christie’s in March 1865.

Cat. no. 482 appeared for the first time in 1889, in England, when it was bought by an american collectors, Mr. and Mrs. Franklin MacVeagh of Chicago.

Cat. no. 483 appeared in 1909 at a sale at Christie’s.

To these may, with less certainty, be added the following :

The Storm, cat.480, pl. 463, now in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff

A label on the back of this picture states that this and the companion picture, (cat. 481, “the Day after the Storm”,) were given by the artist to Mrs. Pounds (sic) (i.e. Mrs. Booth).

Which may or may not be the case.

The point ought to be further examined.

If the inscription is not in Turner’s handwriting, there might be some legitimate doubt.

There is a passage from Ruskin’s Stones of Venice which, it seems to us, aptly applies to these two series.

The passage is from volume 3 of Stones of Venice, chapter III, §41-43

It comes from Ruskin’s famous development on the “Nature of Gothic”

In this passage, Ruskin opposes what he considers the genuine gothic grotesque, with the grotesque of the Renaissance.

The gothic grotesque contains elements of fear or terror as against the Renaissance grotesque. Ruskin analyses this element of fear in the general divine economy of the human mind.

Though the context is different, the same concepts seem to apply perfectly well.

He argues that the Deity has appointed two principal passions to rule the life of man which he describes at first, as : the love of God and the fear of sin, and of its companion-Death and that it is the purpose of God that we should often be affected by fear. He goes on about the “array of scenic magnificence by which the imagination is appalled in myriads of instances” and expatiates on “the effect of a thunder-storm…the preparation for the judgment, by all that mighty gathering of the clouds; by the questioning of the forest leaves, in their terrified stillness, which way the winds shall go forth; by the murmuring to each other, deep in the distance, of the destroying angels before they draw forth their swords of fire; by the march of the funeral darkness in the midst of the noon-day, and the rattling of the dome of heaven beneath the chariot wheels of death,”which so impresses the spectator, and in which “the expressions of the threatening elements are so strangely fitted to the apprehension of the human soul!” And so on about many other phenomena of nature, “ the blasted trunk, the barren rock, the moaning of the bleak winds, the roar of the black, perilous, merciless whirlpools of the mountain streams, the solemn solitudes of moors and seas. ”

These, argues Ruskin, proclaim the existence of Hell by a thousand spiritual utterances, as clearly as that of Heaven is proclaimed by beneficent phenomena of Nature, such as “the unfolding of the flower, …the falling of the dew, and the sleep of the green fields in the sunshine.”

Ruskin further argues that since “the thoughts of the choice we have to make between these two ought to rule us continually, not so much in our own actions (for these should, for the most part, be governed by settled habit and principle) as in our manner of regarding the lives of other men, and our own responsibilities with respect to them; therefore, it seems to me that the healthiest state into which the human mind can be brought is that which is capable of the greatest love and the greatest awe”, explaining thus the existence of these innumerable awe-inspiring phenomena in the world as well as the benevolent ones.

It seems to us that Turner’s series of wild seascapes can be understood as a further example of these negative, destructive type phenomena of Nature, meant to strike terror in the heart of the spectator, and remind him of the existence of Hell, as sharing with Heaven his futurity, and giving him continuous thought and being continuously with him in his manner of regarding the lives of other men.

In the case of these two series of paintings by Turner, the destructive element is represented by the stormy sea.

The positive element are not ““the unfolding of the flower, …the falling of the dew, and the sleep of the green fields in the sunshine,” but a dream-like evocation of misty, paradisical like scenery.

The connection of this scenery with the idea of Paradise has been made before, by the painter Carel Weight in his picture dating from the year 1989, called “Turner goes to Heaven”, in which we see a figure representing Turner ascending to Heaven, with one of these late paintings, Norham Castle, tucked under his arm.

This seems to us to be the final, but most original embodiment or

representation by Turner of an idea or complex of ideas which are present throughout the rest of Turner’s work.

The key picture in this hypothesis is : “The Angel standing in the Sun”.

II b THE ANGEL STANDING IN THE SUN, cat. 425, B&J pl. 405

Exh. 1846.

This painting was accompanied in the R.A. catalogue by the following passage from the Book of Revelations :

“And I saw an angel standing in the sun ; and he cried

with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly

in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves

unto the supper of the great God;

That ye may eat of the flesh of king’s, and the flesh of

captains and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of

horses, and of them that sit on them, both free and

bond, both small and great.’-Revelation,xix, 17, 18.

and also a quotation from Samuel Roger’s Voyage of Columbus :

“The morning march that flashes to the sun;

The feast of the vultures when the day is done’

In the centre of the picture is the Angel ‘standing in the sun’, placed vertically above the chained serpent, presumably the serpent of Revelation xx, 1-2, and symbol of evil.

On the left are the figures of Adam and Eve. They seem to be represented both as figures cast out of Paradise and as lamenting over the body of Abel. Cain flees to the left.

In the foreground, on the left, Adam and Eve lament over over the dead body of Abel and, on the right, Judith stands over the decapitated body of Holophernes, perhaps one of the captains mentionned in the quotation from The Book of Revelation.

It is natural that , once he had decided to involve the Apocalypse, that Turner should choose an episode from the Apocalypse involving the Sun in vue of the importance of the Sun in Turner’s work.

Turner could count on his public having a good knowledge of the Bible.

They would have automatically had in mind that the Apocalypse is mainly concerned with the idea of the last judgement, (the ultimate consequences of choosing between good and evil, )

In earlier verses of chapter xix, the chapter which contains the passage quoted by Turner, “the fowls that fly in the midst of the heaven” are invited to feast “on the flesh of (those) of the nations who have been smitten with the sword of the angel called Faithful and True, (who) in righteousness doth judge and make war…, (verse 11), whose “eyes were as a flame of fire”, (v. 12), who is “clothed with a vesture dipped in blood”, (v. 13), “out of whose mouth goeth a sword, that with it he should smite the nations,” the horseman who treadeth the winepress of the fearceness and the wrath of the Almighty God”, (v. 15).

This is sufficient to involve the main idea of the The Apocalypse, that is the Last Judgment.

The angel is sent by Christ to remind humanity of his coming, which will result in the punishment or destruction of evil-doers or sinners.

If our interpretation of these last works is correct, Turner as artist and overall designer, through his bequest, sees himself as an interpretor of Nature, and shaper of his Nation’s conscience or mind, much as Ruskin describes him in a passage in the first edtion, of 1843, of the first volume of Modern Painters , which Ruskin was led to omit from later editions, as it was criticised as being blasphemous. The passage, from Modern Painters I, is the following :

“And Turner—glorious in conception—unfathomable in knowledge—solitary in power—with the elements waiting upon his will, and the night and the morning obedient to his call, sent as a prophet of God to reveal to men the mysteries of His universe, standing, like the great angel of the Apocalypse, clothed with a cloud, and with a rainbow upon his head, and with the sun and stars given into his hand.^”,LE iii, 254

(This reference was omitted from subsequent editions of Modern Painters I, as it was considered blasphemous.)

II c The Aeneas and Dido pictures.

Backing up this hypothsis is a narrative sequence of four pictures about Dido and Aeneas, taken from Vergil’s Aeneid, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850, the year before urner’s death, and which may constitute Turner’s definitive “testamentary” work.

Turner had allready treated themes from the Aeneid 6 times.

The 1850 series confirm the hypotheses concerning the question of violence or excess of power and the role of nature. The first of these pictures is :

“Aeneas relating his tale to Dido”, cat. 430, destroyed, formerly TB, Online 297 ? ,

accompanied with the verses

‘Fallacious Hope beneath the moon’s pale crescent shone,

Dido listened to Troy being lost and won.’

-MS., Fallacies of Hope.

the second is :

“The visit to the Tomb”, cat. 431, pl. 417, Online 298 ?

accompanied with the line :

‘The sun went down in wrath at such deceit.’

-MS., Fallacies of Hope.

the third

“Mercury sent to Admonish Aeneas”, cat 429, pl. 416, online 299 ? accompanied with the line :

“Beneath the morning mist,

Mercury waited to tell him of his neglected fleet.”

-MS., Fallacies of Hope,

the fourth is

“The Departure of the Fleet”, cat. 432, pl. 418, online 300 ?

accompanied with the lines :

“The orient moon shone on the departing fleet,

Nemesis invoked, the priest held the poisoned cup.”

-Ms., Fallacies of Hope.

From our point of view, the most important one is the 2^nd, “The visit to the Tomb”, with the caption

“The sun went down in wrath at such deceit.”

The deceit is dual : that practised by Dido on her husband and that of the “pious Aeneas”, loyal to the destiny of Rome, on Dido.

Dido reacts. A curse on you, she cries, (“Nemesis invoked”).

With this she is in harmony with the setting sun, (“The sun set down in wrath at such deceit”).

It might be well to recall that the Aeneid is based on the legend that Aeneas, after the fall of Troy and long wanderings, founded a settlement in Latium, that was to become the source of the Roman race. The poem was designed to celebrate the divine origin and growth of the Roman Empire.

It glorifies the roman people, and their chief families, by representing their ancestors in the heroic age, and recounts, by the device of prophecy, the historical triumphs of Rome and Augustus.

It is said that Vergil, on his deathbed, ordered it to be destroyed.

It was nevertheless published, and became the great classic we know.

In classical antiquity Aeneas’s behaviour, his abandoning Dido in the interest o fulfill his higher mission of founding Rome was felt to be fully justified.

With the coming of Christiany, another interpretation of the story became current.

The fate of Dido was felt to be unjust. Aeneas had behaved like a cad. This was taken to be not a good omen for the later fate and development of the “Empire”.

( It may be interesting to recall a later modern interpretation of the Aeneid, which develops this theme

This is to be found in Cyril Connolly’s “The Unquiet Grave”, dating from 1944.

The title of the book refers to the grave of Palinurus, Aeneas’s pilot , who fell into the sea as Aeneas’s fleet was reaching Sicily, in mysterious circumstances.

According to an interpretation of the Aeneid referred to by Connolly, that of W.F.J.Knight, in Cumean Gates, (representing the ultimate form of this Christian interpretation of Vergil), Palinurus’ death was a suicide. Palinurus had been particularly struck and ultimately horrified by Aeneas’ callous treatment of Dido. He concluded that that Aeneas could not be the “Messiah” or the saviour he pretended to be. In loathing and disgust he casts himself into the sea.

(But even apart from this somewhat extreme interpretation,)) the incident can be clearly seen as a case of abuse of power, which is to be found amongst those mentioned by Thomson.

Aeneas turns out to be another of those captains referred to in the quotation from the “Apocalypse” accompanying “The angel in the Sun”.

We are back to this picture, which, we said, is the central work in this hypothesis.

This hypothsis cannot be absoluteley proved. It seems to us nevertheless that it is sufficiently plausible that it ought to be taken into account, in legal terms,

no matter what one may think of it sur le fonds, in religious terms.

It indicates that if Turner requested, in the terms of his Bequest, that his Gallery was to be part of the National Gallery, this could have been partly in view of what the ultimate meaning of the Bequest was, as exposed herein. It was natural, that if there was this message to the Nation, as exposed herein, that the works should exhibited in the National Gallery. In this respect, the present state of affairs is unsatisfactory and is yet another point in which Turner’s wishes and conditions have been ignored.

Somerset House could have arguably been an acceptable compromise, in view of its architectural and national importance. But this was not to be, for what appear to have been unfounded reasons.

Yet another deception and disapointment.

Robert Walmsley

LIST OF WORKS REFERRED TO

Harvest Dinner, Kingston Bank
Dido Building Carthage, or the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire (own slide ?
The Decline of Carthage,
Sun rising through Mist
Norham Castle, sunrise, B&J, cat. 512, pl. 498,
Sunrise, a Castle on a Bay : “Solitude”, cat. 515, pl. 501,

7. Sunrise with a Boat between Headlands, pl. 502, cat.

8. The Ponte delle Torre, Spoleto, cat. 518, pl. 504,

9. Mountain scene with Lake and Hut,cat. 521, pl. 506,

10. Mountain Landscape, cat. 522, pl. 507,

11.A river seen from a Hill, cat 532, plate 512,

12. Landscape with Water, pl.519, cat 531

OUTSIDE BEQUEST

13. Landscape with a River and Bay in the Distance, pl.495, cat. 509, now in the Louvre, Paris,

14.The Fall of the Clyde, pl. 496, cat. 510, now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight,

15. Landscape with Walton Bridges, pl. 497, cat 511, now private coll., (H.S. Morgan), New York,

16. Landscape : Woman with Tambourine, pl. 499, cat 513, now in private coll., (Fergusson).

17. Europa and the Bull, pl.500, cat. 514, Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio,

18. Landscape with River and Distant Mountains, pl 503, cat. 517, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool,

19. Monte Rosa, pl. 505, cat 519, Yale centre for British art, Paul Mellon collection.

20. The Val d’Aosta, pl. 508, cat. 520, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

STORMY SEASCAPES

IN THE BEQUEST