Bark clasped his throat and silenced his rough tongue,
And now the oleasters ..

In bitter berries and rough saps retain

The rudeness of Apulia's shepherd swain.

Visitors should now retrace their steps through Rooms XXI. and XX. Leaving Room XX. by the door in the righthand corner, facing them, they will find themselves in the second Turner room.

458.

ROOM XIX

PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF WHEN YOUNG.

Said to have been painted about 1802, when Turner would have been twenty-seven, but the portrait surely shows a younger man than that. Indeed he looks decidedly younger here than in the portrait by Dance, which was taken in 1800. It is clear from both portraits that in his youth he was not so entirely unprepossessing in person, or negligent and dirty in dress, as he afterwards became. Notice the intelligent blue eyes, which all observers remarked in him; the prominent nose, very conspicuous in the silhouette farther on in this room (p. 640), but here concealed by being taken full-face; the strong chin, and the somewhat sensual mouth. He wears the fashionable double waistcoat of the period, with full white neckerchief.

535. THE "SUN OF VENICE" GOING TO SEA.

A picture which Mr. Ruskin described, when it was exhibited in 1843, as "faultless," and to which he afterwards referred as "best representing" the painter's "entire power.' It does so because it represents just what is most characteristic of, and peculiar to, Turner. Thus, observe, in his painting of the boat, his unerring instinct in seizing upon the essential character of a thing. The "Sun of Venice" (Sol di Venezia), it should first be explained, is supposed to be the name of the fishing boat. "I have actually seen," says Mr.

Ruskin, "this name on a boat's stern. The nomenclature is emphasised by a painting of Venice, with the sun rising, on the main sail of the boat, which is itself a little vignette. The compliment to the Venetian fisher as an artist is, however, a little overstrained. I have never seen any elaborate landscape on the sails, but often the sun, moon, and stars, with crosses and chequer patterns—sometimes a saint or madonna, rather more hard-featured than mainland saints. But in all the innumerable paintings of Venice, old and modern, no notice whatever had been taken of these sails, though they are exactly the most striking feature of the marine scenery around the city,1 until Turner fastened upon them, painting one important picture, the Sun of Venice,' entirely in their illustration. And he paints both them and the boat perfectly. The sails are true in form and set, and exquisitely wrought in curve. Nothing could be more faithful than the boat in the exact height of the boom above the deck, the quartering of it with colour, the hanging of the fish-baskets about the bows, and the blaze of colour which the artist elicits from the right use of these circumstances. For the Venetian boat, when its painted sails are at full swell in sunshine, is as beautiful as a butterfly with its wings halfclosed." Then notice another characteristic, the painting of the water. "No man ever painted the surface of calm water but Turner." "The peculiar power of the picture is the painting of the sea surface, where there are no reflections to assist it. A stream of splendid colour falls from the boat, but that occupies the centre only; in the distance the city and crowded boats throw down some playing lines, but these still leave on each side of the boat a large space of water reflecting nothing but the morning sky. This is divided by an eddying swell, on whose continuous sides the local colour of the water is seen, pure aqua-marine (a beautiful occurrence of closely observed truth). But still there remained a large blank space of pale water to be treated; the sky above had no distinct details, and was pure faint gray, with broken white vestiges of cloud; it gave no help therefore, But there the water lay, no dead gray flat paint, but downright clear, playing, palpable surface, full of indefinite hue, and retiring as regularly and visibly back and

1 Since Turner's time they have been a favourite motive in Venetian pictures. And they are still a prominent object at Venice-a faded likeness "in lowly lustre" of the old Venetian galleys painted with divers colours, and far seen in pleasant splendour."

far away, as if there had been objects all over to tell the story by perspective."1 Then notice, thirdly, "the marvellous brilliancy of the arrangement of colour, rendering it," says Mr. Ruskin, “one of Turner's leading works in oil." And lastly, it is characteristic of the prevailing melancholy of his mind. "There seemed through all his life to be one main sorrow and fear haunting him-a sense of the passing away, or else the destructive and temporary character, of beauty. The choice of subject for a clue to all his compositions, the 'Fallacies of Hope,' marked this strongly; and he would constantly express an extreme beauty where he meant that there was most threatening and ultimate sorrow." This sentiment was marked in the present picture by the quotation adapted from Gray's "Bard" which Turner affixed to it

Fair shines the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
Venezia's Fisher spreads his painted canvas gay
Nor heeds the Demon who in grim repose
Expects his evening prey.2

(Put together from Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii, § 46, sec. v. ch. iii. § 11; Stones of Venice, vol. i. App. 2; St. Mark's Rest, p. 5; Harbours of England, p. 5; and Notes on the Turner Gallery, pp. 71-73.)

An unimportant early work, painted about 1800. 370.

VENICE.

There is a glorious city in the sea,

The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets,
Ebbing and flowing; and the salt sea-weed
Clings to the marble of her palaces.

ROGERS'S Italy.

Turner's first Venetian picture, exhibited in 1833, and bought by Mr. Vernon for 200 guineas-a price which

1 The sea was once exquisitely beautiful; it is not very severely injured, but has lost much of its transparency in the green ripples. The sky was little more than white flake laid with the pallet-knife: it has got darker, and spotted, destroying the relief of the sails" (Notes on the Turner Gallery, p. 72).

2 Turner seems to have revised his own additions to Gray, in the Catalogues, as he did his pictures on the wall, with much discomfiture to the printer and the public." The lines, as printed, were as follows, both of two alternative readings being included in some of the catalogues—

Fair shines the morn and soft the zephyrs blow a gale
Venicia's fisher spreads his painted sail, etc.

Turner seems to have thought a large one: "if they will have scraps," he said, "they must pay for them." In the foreground, to the left, is "Canaletto painting" (such was Turner's "sub-title" to the picture). This choice of incident is characteristic of Turner's respect for his predecessors in art (cf. “Port Ruysdael," XXII. 536, p. 612). He respected them and imitated them, but finally challenged them all in turn; and having now come to Venice, he challenges Canaletto in his turn. It is very instructive to compare the two painters' versions of Venice, and to note the different kinds of truth they convey. "The effect of a fine Canaletto (see, for instance, XIII. 941, p. 326), is, in its first impression, dioramic. . . . Every house has its proper relief against the sky-every brick and stone its proper hue of sunlight and shade-and every degree of distance its proper tone of retiring air. Presently, however, we begin to feel that it is lurid and gloomy, and that the painter, compelled by the lowness of the utmost light at his disposal to deepen the shadows, in order to get the right relation, has lost the flashing, dazzling, exulting light which was one of our chief sources of Venetian happiness. But what more there is in Venice than brick and stone-what there is of mystery and death, and memory and beauty-what there is to be learned or lamented, to be loved or wept-we look for to Canaletto in vain.” Next look at Clarkson Stanfield's Venice (XX. 407, p. 499). In that picture "we are further still from anything like Venetian tone; all is cold and comfortless, but there is air and good daylight, and we will not complain. And now let us look into the buildings, and all is perfection and fidelity; every shade and line full of feeling and truth, rich and solid and substantial stone; every leaf and arabesque marked to its minutest curve and angle, the marble crumbling, the wood mouldering, and the waves splashing and lapping before our eyes. But it is all drawn hard and sharp, there is nothing to hope for or to find out, nothing to dream of or discover; we can measure and see it from base to battlement, there is nothing too fine for us to follow, nothing too full for us to fathom. This cannot be nature, for it is not infinity." Finally, look at Turner, "and thank heaven we are in sunshine againand what sunshine! not the lurid, gloomy, plague-like oppression of Canaletto, but white flushing fulness of dazzling light, which the waters drink and the clouds breathe, bounding and burning in intensity of joy. That sky-it is a very visible in