property was offered to the publisher of the present volume (Mr. Bohn) for 3,000l., and he offered within 2007. of the amount; which being declined, it was placed in the hands of Messrs. Southgate and Co. for sale by auction. After extensive advertising, the day and hour of sale had arrived, when, just at the moment the auctioneer was about to mount his rostrum, Mr. Turner stepped in, and bought it privately, at the reserved price of three thousand pounds, much to the vexation of many who had come prepared to buy portions of it. Immediately after the purchase, Mr. Turner walked up to Mr. Bohn, with whom he was very well acquainted, and said to him, 'So, Sir, you were going to buy my England and Wales, to sell cheap I suppose ;-make umbrella prints of them, eh ?—but I have taken care of that. No more of my plates shall be worn to shadows.' Upon Mr. Bohn's replying, that his object was the printed stock (which was very large) rather than the copper-plates, he said, 'O! very well, I don't want the stock, I only want to keep the coppers out of your clutches. So, if you like to buy the stock, come and breakfast with me to-morrow, and we will see if we can deal.' At nine the next morning Mr. Bohn presented himself, according to appointment, and after a few minutes Mr. Turner made his appearance, and forgetting all about the breakfast, said, 'Well, sir, what have you to say?' 'I come to treat with you for the stock of your England and Wales,' was the reply.—'Well! what will you give?'-Mr. Bohn told him, ' that in the course of the negotiation, the coppers and copyright had been estimated by the proprietors at 500l., and therefore he would deduct that sum, and the balance, 2,500l., should be handed to him immediately.'-' Pooh! I must have 3,000l., and keep my coppers; else good morning to you.' As this was not very likely after having refused both stock and coppers at 3,000l., Good morning,' was the reply; and so they parted. The stock, or the greater portion of it, is still lying in QueenAnne Street, of course not improved by keeping, and having, in the course of the fourteen years which have since elapsed, swallowed up another 3,000l., reckoning compound interest at five per cent. per annum."

TURNER BIDDING FOR HIS OWN PICTURES.

Turner never allowed a picture from his pencil to be sold by public auction, without sending some person to bid for it; and his wishes on this subject were so generally known, that

auctioneers made a point of calling his attention to the catalogue, whenever they had any of his pictures for sale. If time pressed, and he was unable to attend in person, he would sometimes, but rarely, intrust his commission to the auctioneer; his ordinary practice was to send some agent, with written instructions, to bid in his behalf, and he was not always very fastidious in his selection. At the sale of the pictures of Mr. Green, the well-known amateur, of Blackheath, two pictures by Turner were among the most attractive lots, though neither important in size nor of his best time. In those days, their market value might have been about eighty guineas each. They would, however, have been knocked down for considerably less, but for the impetus given to the biddings by one of Turner's agents, whose personal appearance did not warrant the belief that he was in search of pictures of a very high order. He was, in fact, a clean, ruddy-cheeked, butcher's boy, in the usual costume of his vocation, and had made several advances, in five guinea strides, before anything belonging to him, excepting his voice, had attracted Mr. Christie's notice. No sooner, however, did the veteran auctioneer discover what kind of customer he had to deal with, than he beckoned him forward, with a view, no doubt, of reproving him for his impertinence. The boy, however, nothing daunted, put a small piece of greasy paper into his hand; a credential, in fact, from the painter himself. The auctioneer smiled, and the biddings proceeded.

There must, however, be in circulation, or in collections, many a work by Turner, which was less nicely cared for and watched over.

"The father of the late hall-porter of Mr. Walter Fawkes, of Farnley Hall, Yorkshire, who kept the village ale-house, received from him a drawing of great value in liquidation of a trifling score of some four or five pounds. The manner in which this transaction was discovered is curious enough. On retiring from Mr. Fawkes's service to replace his father as host of the village house of entertainment, the man was desirous of purchasing the old hall-chair, in which he had been accustomed to sit for so many years; and having been allowed to appraise it himself at four pounds, offered, instead of hard cash, a capital drawing by Turner, which had been given to his father in acquittance of his bill. One of his best sea-pieces is said to have been transferred to a Margate boatman under nearly similar circumstances."

"VAN TROMP'S BARGE."

The freshest and most life-like piece of daylight that Turner had yet produced, was Admiral Van Tromp's Barge at the entrance of the Texel; and in the year after, a somewhat eccentric picture, entitled Watteau, a study by Fresnoy's rules, which caused a great deal of merriment among the artist's detractors. This little picture was, perhaps, the extremest type of the white school that Turner ever painted, and was intended to show artistically that white in its purity can be used either to make an object retire or to bring it near. The point was illustrated by presenting a distant white building through an open window in contact, so to speak, with an equally white object in the room. As an experiment, it was a happy idea. In other respects, the picture was meant as a laugh at the public. This ridicule was, however, held in check by the exhibition at the same time of more than one picture in the manner of Van Tromp's Barge. In the following year, Turner exhibited Van Tromp returning after the Battle of the Dogger Bank, with his sails in tatters, the whole wildly and picturesquely treated; and with it appeared two works commencing that brilliant series of Venetian views in which he afterwards, at frequent intervals, seemed to revel. Affording, as they did, so much of what his art at that time demanded in bright skies, in glancing waters, and varicoloured architecture, no wonder that he loved them; but in the facilities they afforded for introducing those infinite varieties of brilliant tints in which he gloried, if only to show his mastery over the world of atmospheric effects, we believe he was led in some measure into a looseness of drawing in detail, which has been felt by his warmest admirers, in his later examples of this class.

TURNER AND HIS EULOGISTS.

One element in Turner's success was his indifference to praise. Though proud of his works, he was not a vain man. His reputation never suffered from the disappointments arising out of a premature desire for fame. He was not pleased with Mr. Ruskin's superlative eulogies. Had the author of Modern Painters written with less violent enthusiasm, his opinions would have had more weight. "He knows a great deal more about my pictures than I do," said Turner; "he puts things into my head, and points out meanings in them that I never intended." It was not easy to draw his

attention to the admiration of his own pictures. A wellknown collector, with whom the artist had long been intimate, once invited him to be present at the opening of a new gallery, in which the principal pictures were from his pencil. To the disappointment of the connoisseur, Turner scarcely noticed them, but kept his eye fixed upon the ceiling. It was panelled and neatly grained in oak. "What are you looking at so intently?" said the host. "At those boards," was the reply; "the fellow that did that must have known how to paint." And nothing would induce him to turn to the magnificent pictures that sparkled on the walls. never talked about his own pictures, but would occasionally give hints to other artists; and when these were adopted, they were always certain improvements. We never heard of his saying anything, however, that would give pain, and he felt keenly the ignorant criticisms and ridicule with which his own pictures were often treated.

TURNER'S WATER-COLOUR DRAWINGS.-SECRET OF

HIS SUCCESS.

He

Turner's water-colour drawings did more for extending his reputation than his oil pictures, for contemporary with these his style in oil began to change. He indulged more freely in the use of primitive tints, and consummate as was the skill with which he used them, exciting the admiration of many to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, they were yet as caviare to the multitude. There can be no doubt that a still greater elaboration of the same principle, founded as it is in Nature, might have refined them into a neutrality of effect that would have been pleasing to the ordinary beholder, while they retained for the artist and connoisseur all that has made his name so great among them as a colourist. Mr. Thackeray, upon a certain occasion, made light of Turner's style in the columns of Punch, by drawing some obscure outline, signifying nothing, as an example of the master. Shortly afterwards he was introduced to the gallery of a well-known connoisseur, especially rich in his pictures, both oil and water-colour. "Astounding!" said the author of Vanity Fair; "I will never abuse Turner again."

The great secret of Turner's fame was his constant recourse to Nature, and his wonderful activity and power of memory, coupled with great natural genius, and indifference to praise. His religious study of Nature was such, that he would walk

through portions of England, twenty to twenty-five miles a day, with his little modicum of baggage at the end of a stick, sketching rapidly on his way all good pieces of composition, and marking effects with a power that daguerreotyped them in his mind with unerring truth at the happiest moment. There were few moving phenomena in clouds or shadows which he did not fix indelibly in his memory, though he might not call them into requisition for years afterwards.

Turner's faculty of observation was prodigious, and his mind was always intent upon the work of his profession. He could not walk London streets without seeing effects of light and shade and composition, whether in the smoke issuing from a chimney-pot, or in the shadows upon a brickwall, without storing them in his memory for use at any time when needed. Frequently on looking at another artist's landscape, all the details of the scene would rise to his recollection, and he would good-humouredly criticise any exaggeration for effect. "Now those trees," he would say, are not in that corner- -they are there." He saw beauties in things and groups of things, that nobody else could see,-and painted pictures of them. He frequently started off to the Continent, nobody knew when and nobody knew where, until the result of his labours came forth to illustrate some costly book-now to France, now to Venice, and not unfrequently painted his views in oil on the spot. His pencil was always in requisition. An intimate friend, while travelling in the Jura, came to an inn where Turner had only just before entered his name in the visiting book. Anxious to be sure of his identity and to be in pursuit of him, he inquired of the host what sort of man his last visitor was. "A rough clumsy man," was the reply; "and you may know him by his always having a pencil in his hand." Nature was his inspiration in the fullest sense of the word.

Few were intimate with him, and few even knew him. Once, upon being told that an eminent publisher had boasted of having obtained admission to his studio, "How could you be such a fool as to believe it?" replied Turner, in his usual abrupt manner. And his reserve in this respect was responded to by a most faithful servant who had lived forty-two years with him, to the day of his death.-Abridged from the Literary Gazette, 1852.

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