International studio (18.1902/1903)

he loved for their own sake, and he thought it
worth his while to hoodwink his companions even
in matters so ordinary as his age and the year and
place of his birth. The hrst impressions which he
received frotn Nature were simple and beautifu],
but they took possession of his intricacy weaving
mind, remaining there sometimes for years ; and
it happened frequentiy that their growth in trans-
fornration became a thing which Turner himseh
either cou]d not, or wouid not, fully govern in his
art. That his pictures often suffered in this way
is certain; none can doubt that the greatness in
his work is often so profuse, so complex, and so
scattered that the eye is bewitdered. A wonderful
fertihty of resource in imaginative composition is
evident everywhere, but it often !acks a com-
pleted unity of appeak It is this weakness, prob-

abty, that has kept Turner so !ong frorn winning
for himself a just appreciation in France; and
one is tempted also to believe that his recog-
nition in England would be ]ess wide-spread
than it is to-day if it rested solely on the ftrst-
hand effects made by his pictures, unsupported by
such friendly commentating as helps a wihing
student to reach Turner through a medium
of literary descriptions and memories. But,
in any case, one thing is certain, namely, that
Girtin's exampie counted for much in Turner's
hfe, being the one strong inftuence that some-
times prevented him from dwarfrng the vast-
ness of his work by making his design too
intricate and too profuse Thus he owed much to
Girtin : and his debt, one thinks, was simitar in
kind, though far from equa] in persistence of effect,
to that which Sbakespeare
owed to the necessity of
pleasing the general pub-
iic: a discipline, this,
that ran counter to an
overplus of swift-coming
thought, which might have
shown itself in Shake-
speare's work in a settled
obscurity of expression.
Turner himsetf said, or
is reported to have said,
that he could never quite
get the resuits achieved
by Girtin, and whether
he said that or not the
criticism is true—true of
Turner's water-colours.
One has no wish to pit
these two painters one
against the other, as the
shortdived SchiHer was
pitted against the veteran
Goethe; but one must
needs point out that Tur-
ner in his water-colours
was never Girtin's su-
perior in ah the essentiaE
of great art. What unity
of impression did he ever
produce as nobly austere
and powerful as the one
achieved by Girtin in that
great dawn-picture the
majestic ? Or,
again, when did he paint
in water-colour a sunset

"PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL" FROM THE WATER-COLOUR BY THOMAS GIRTtN
f/?a p/ r/M /EZ//-K.W/A /?M/Z/M/<?,

82