J.M.W. Turner

by Anthony Bailey

  This time he got his sums right.

  Tucked in with this statement was another from his stockbroker, William Marsh, showing various transactions made for Turner in government stock for the period 3 January to 26 July 1810. Turner added to Marsh’s penned figures a pencilled record of the name of the work or patron whose purchase had enabled him to buy a certain block of stock. Neither now nor later did he have a bank account, but got Marsh to buy Funds when he had money to hand and sell some when he needed cash. ‘Dad never praised me for anything but saving a ha’penny,’9 he said once, and Dad must have been constantly delighted as the man who had looked after half-pennies as a boy now squirrelled away pound upon pound. Turner’s interest in money led him to read about counterfeiting, possibly with a view to ensuring that he did not accept any dud notes; in his library in later years was to be found a work by Thomas Carson Hansard et al., Report on the Mode of Preventing the Forgery of Bank Notes, 1819. However, the only note in his handwriting in the book, scribbled upside down inside the front cover, is about the genuineness of a different article:

  To ascertain whether what is called mushrooms is real or not – Take a little salt and sprinkle it on the spunge or spongy side. If it turns yellow it is poison; if it turns black it is the real mushroom.10

  Of course his interest in the production of banknotes, real or forged, may have come about also from his study of engraving methods.

  The same notebook records two purchases of land in 1809, at Richmond for £400 and at Lee Common in Buckinghamshire for £102. The land at Richmond – in fact across Richmond Bridge, in Twickenham – fitted in with his liking for the Thames, but the reason for his purchase of the Lee land – on the edge of the Chiltern Hundreds, west of Berkhamstead – isn’t known. (This property still belonged to him at his death: ‘A cottage or tenement situate at Lee Common in the parish of Great Missenden in the County of Bucks and an Orchard or Meadow Plot thereto belonging’.)11 Clearly he had no intention of keeping his savings under his mattress. A note in his hand on another page in this notebook says, ‘Brick earth of 6 feet deep is worth £200 per acre – 5 yard of gravel 2 feet deep. 1 load.’ Another investment of this time was the purchase of ten £5 shares in the Atlas Fire Office. Outstanding amounts owed him for pictures were £1000 by the Yorkshire landowner Walter Fawkes, £200 by John Fuller MP, and £400 by Sir John Leicester. Turner also made an inventory of a number of unsold paintings, valuing them at between £50 and £100 apiece; it was as if he didn’t feel very hopeful of getting rid of them.

  Whatever the reason for Turner’s survey of his financial standing at this point, at the age of thirty-five, it must have cheered him: he was worth between £12,000 and £13,000. He was able to put behind him the gloomy doubts of the year before, expressed in the ‘Cockermouth’ sketchbook:

  Adverse frown[s] my wayward fate

  Fast telling on my poor estate

  O Heaven avert the impending care

  O make my future prospects fair.12

  He felt buoyant enough to extend his Harley Street empire along Queen Anne Street into the mews property for his new house and gallery, and rich enough to start building a new house on his Twickenham land.

  *

  It can be said that Turner always acted like someone who had been poor when young. But it is probably truer to see him as someone who had seen both hard and good times, bread-and-dripping at home, and a thick slice off the Sunday joint at the Marshalls’ in Brentford, and this may have accounted for his own fitful nature where money was concerned: now generous, now niggardly. Sometimes he felt rich; sometimes, despite being rich, it seemed to him that he might have a desperate need for all the money he could lay his hands on in the near future – and he was, in consequence, very tight. A few of his colleagues were spendthrift. Thomas Lawrence, for instance, who also got high prices for his work, was generous to women and to needy fellow artists (like James Audubon) and was frequently in deep debt. Turner undoubtedly had his Scrooge-like moments. He hated waste. He reused lines of poetry; he painted on scraps of salvaged board; much of the paper he used for watercolours was ‘not of the highest quality’. Some of his blue paper was grocer’s sugar-loaf wrapping paper. However, as time went on Turner often splurged on relatively costly pigments, such as Indian yellow and madder. In the 1830s and 1840s, he used natural ultramarine, which cost eight guineas an ounce, when a much cheaper synthetic substitute existed.13

  Even so, his fellow artists for the most part traded examples of his economical disposition. Edridge in 1804 talked of Turner’s ‘narrowness of mind’ – meaning his parsimony. Turner had received 250 guineas from the Duke of Bridgewater for his Dutch Boats in a Gale, the Bridgewater Seapiece, but was understood to have badgered its next owner, one of the Duke’s heirs, for the cost of the frame, a further twenty guineas; Edridge thought this counter-productive. But it was Turner’s custom to charge for his frames at cost-price, and he expected the client to return the frame if he did not wish to pay for it. Others used to talk about how he often demanded his travel expenses – as on the occasion when he delivered his painting Rosehill Park, Sussex (c.1810) to John Fuller MP, and asked for his cab fare. His friend George Jones, exasperated by yet another example cited by Thornbury of this sort of behaviour, commented, ‘It is very doubtful if JMWT ever asked for his coach fare but often talked of it when joking with his friends.’14 But was he simply trying to put on a smiling face when forced to acknowledge a well-known habit? To Turner’s credit, a northern manufacturer named Henry M’Connell denied another Thornbury story that Turner had claimed an extra eighty guineas for going to Venice expressly to paint a picture for him. The picture was Venice (RA 1834), for which M’Connell paid Turner £350. He also bought Lightermen heaving in Coals (RA 1835), for £300, which M’Connell said was more than Turner had asked for it. M’Connell added, ‘No one could have behaved with less parsimony – I may almost say with greater generosity – than did Turner in his transactions with me.’15

  It is doubtful whether Lord de Tabley, formerly Sir John Leicester, would have said the same. The artist William Jerdan was at Tabley Hall once when Turner – ‘our prince of landscape painters’, Jerdan called him – was staying as a guest. Jerdan wrote:

  In the drawing room stood a landscape on an easel on which his Lordship was at work as the fancy struck him. Of course, when assembled for the tedious half hour before dinner, we all gave our opinions on its progress, its beauties and its defects. I stuck a blue wafer on to show where I thought a bit of bright colour or light would be advantageous; and Turner took the brush and gave a touch, here and there, to mark some improvements. He returned to town, and – can it be credited! – the next morning at breakfast a letter from him was delivered to his Lordship containing a regular bill of charges for ‘Instruction in Painting’. His Lordship tossed it across the table indignantly to me and asked if I could have imagined such a thing; and as indignantly, and against my remonstrances, immediately sent a cheque for the sum demanded by ‘the drawing master’.16

  Did Turner have his tongue in his cheek? If it was a joke, of the kind Jones credited him with, Lord de Tabley didn’t get it; and yet what compelled Turner to make it was obviously a mercenary streak. It is a pity we don’t know whether he cashed Lord de Tabley’s cheque.

  Turner hated to pay for anything that was not specifically delivered as contracted for. (His relations with his engravers, which will be looked at separately, were riven by disagreements on this score.) On one occasion he refused to pay the fare on an omnibus when it didn’t go to the Bank as promised. The Reverend T. J. Judkin saw him near St Paul’s, admonishing the conductor, who allowed the irate passenger to walk off without paying. His ‘repugnance to part with money’, as Alaric Watts characterized it, was demonstrated when, allegedly, ‘after volunteering to erect a monument over the remains of his early companion, Girtin … he retracted on finding that it would cost rather more than ten pounds’.17 A tablet that did finally get erected in St Paul’s, Covent Ga
rden, was that to his parents; this, as we shall see later, also showed up his parsimony. The architect T. L. Donaldson, who climbed Vesuvius with Turner on the artist’s first Italian tour in 1819, told an acquaintance who reported on it afterwards that in Rome they ‘were all invited to dine with the British Ambassador … White waistcoats were the fashion at that time; but Turner, not being provided with one, rambled about and found one at a second hand clothes dealer’s shop. The price asked was 5 shillings. Turner thought it too much: not being able to converse in Italian, he asked Donaldson to accompany him to the shop and try to obtain the waistcoat for a less sum. Donaldson and Turner went to the dealer’s and succeeded in buying the article for 3 shillings and 6 pence.’18

  A writer named Edward Dubois clearly hoped to raise a laugh when he suggested sardonically in the Observer on 22 December 1832 that Turner was not known for his ‘overweening love of filthy lucre’. But Alaric Watts noted that although Turner – ‘the astute bargain-maker’ – often sent in a bill for his expenses when working on a commission, these were generally very moderate, ‘confined to absolute necessaries’. One item in such an expense account puzzled the recipient: ‘Boxing Harry, 2s. 6d.’ Boxing Harry, he discovered, ‘was the slang phrase on “the road” for making one meal answer the purpose of two, that one being tea with meat “fixings”’.19

  Some, then and later, thought Turner’s mercenariness ran in the family. There was the time, for example, when Turner’s uncles squabbled about their mother’s small estate. But in fact that matter was amicably resolved, and it doesn’t seem very different from the disputes that many families go through. Turner’s carefulness about money did not prevent him from seeing wider implications. George Jones wrote: ‘Turner was a holder of Bank Stock at the time of the reduction of interest from 5% to 4%. I inquired of [him] what he thought of the reduction … He replied, “I like 5% for my money and the quartern loaf at a shilling [12 pence]. Ask the poor man what he likes: he would say, ‘I like the quartern loaf at eight pence and interest at 4%.’”’20 His business sense was considered valuable by several institutions. The Royal Academy put it to use; he often prompted the Academy to economies, as in October 1811 when he proposed that the Academy buy rather than hire twenty-four chairs it needed, to save money in the long run. He worked for many years as a trustee, Treasurer and Chairman of the Artists’ General Benevolent Institution. Once Turner went to solicit a subscription to the artists’ charity from the sculptor Joseph Nollekens, whose reputation for tightfistedness exceeded his own. (Nollekens was known for sending his tenants frequent reminders of rent due, for scrimping on coal and candles, and for getting his servants to pick up scraps in the street for his dog Cerberus.) But like Turner he could also surprise. On this occasion Nollekens asked Turner how much he wanted. ‘Only a guinea,’ said Turner; upon which the sculptor immediately opened a table-drawer and gave Mr Turner thirty guineas, saying, ‘There, take that.’21

  George Jones was aware that Turner had a problem about money, in terms of normal civilized behaviour, but he felt there were grounds for it. Jones wrote:

  His education had been defective … He had no one to impress upon him that disdain of mercenary feeling which ought to accompany genius. He never in early life felt the tendered hand of generous friendship: the hands extended to him sought to profit by his talents at the smallest expense possible … He became suspicious and so sensitive that he at length dreaded the motives of all by whom he was approached on business. He desired to be wealthy and took every honourable means to be so, and was indefatigable to become independent of the world.

  Jones also made a further point:

  However great Turner’s desire to accumulate money, he never betrayed the slightest envy of the wealth or success of others; he never disparaged the works of his contemporaries, nor ever sought to supersede them in obtaining employment.

  Mr [Samuel] Rogers gave him a commission to illustrate his Pleasures of Memory and his Italy. Turner was so satisfied with the elegant way the works were published that he would only receive five guineas a piece for the loan of the drawings. [Thomas] Campbell, the poet, desired Turner to make a set of drawings for an edition of his works, for which [drawings] Campbell’s circumstances did not allow him to pay, and he had the honesty to confess that it would be inconvenient for him to discharge the debt; on which, Turner with kind sympathy told the poet to return the drawings [after they had been engraved] and he should be satisfied. These drawings Turner afterwards gave a friend.22

  Others heard other sides to this. Campbell claimed that he had paid Turner 500 guineas for the drawings, which Turner bought back for 200. According to Cyrus Redding, Campbell found he couldn’t get rid of the drawings for a decent price and, running into Turner, told him jokingly that he was going to put them up for auction. Campbell told Redding: ‘Turner said, feeling annoyed, I suppose, at my remark, “Don’t do that; let me have them.” I sent them to him accordingly … and he has just paid me for them.’ Campbell seemed to think that he had put one over on Turner. But Redding decided later that Turner might well have done this out of a desire to be friendly to Campbell. ‘He was just the character to do such an act silently and bluntly.’23

  Jones believed that ‘Turner’s heart was replete with charitable feelings, though his manner was not inviting to the prosperous or the poor.’ He didn’t like appearing kind. ‘He was rough in his manner to suppliants, yet I have known him give his half-crown where another would have offered a penny.’ Moreover, although he, Jones, had never needed assistance from Turner, ‘I am certain no one would have given it to me more willingly.’24 George Lance, a still-life and history painter who had been a pupil of Haydon’s, called Turner ‘a strange compound – so much natural good-heartedness, so much bad breeding. I do believe what Boswell said of Johnson may quite as truly be applied to him, that if he was a bear, it was only in the skin.’25 Despite the retrospective strictures of Ann Dart, Turner in later life helped John Narraway’s son and daughter with a loan.26 Jones declared that ‘in one instance he returned a bond for £500, which was never again asked for or paid’. Furthermore, ‘At the Royal Academy it was so difficult to get him to attend and take the sums due to him for duties performed in that Institution, that, while I was the Keeper, the Treasurer consented to pay Turner’s earnings to me, and receive my receipt for the same, that the accounts might be made up; and I kept the money until I found an opportunity of making Turner take it.’27

  Yet Turner’s colleagues, puzzled by his bearishness, frequently debated the depth of his generosity. How real was it? Like Stephen Rigaud earlier, Charles Cope, an Academy student in the 1820s, had the impression Turner was a ‘pincher’,28 and it was generally accepted that sherry and biscuits were the only hospitality anyone ever received in his house. But on one occasion when he was part of a large group dining out at Blackwall, below Greenwich, the sculptor Chantrey at the head of the table was presented with the hefty bill and, to raise a laugh, threw it to Turner. Turner paid it and allowed no one else to contribute. Cyrus Redding said that during their jaunts in Devon in 1813 Turner paid his quota ‘cheerfully’ at the inns where they stopped for refreshment. Turner was also the host at a picnic party at Mount Edgcumbe, near Plymouth, at which ‘cold meats, shellfish, and good wines abounded’, according to Redding, who was a guest.

  In that delightful spot we spent the best part of a beautiful summer’s day. Never was there more social pleasure partaken by any party in that English Eden. Turner was exceedingly agreeable for one whose language was more epigrammatic and terse than complimentary upon most occasions. He had come two or three miles with the man who bore his store of good things, and had been at work before our arrival. He showed the ladies some of his sketches in oil, which he had brought with him … The wine circulated freely … My opinion is, that this great artist always understood the occasion and was prepared to meet it as any other individual would do.29

  The impression builds of a man whose shyness got in the way of h
is liberality and sometimes camouflaged it. George Jones again: ‘When we dined out, I always insisted on paying half the coach hire, but when we went to parties in the country, he always ordered the fly and would never say what it cost, so I used to put half a sovereign into his waistcoat pocket, which was very rarely half the expense.’30 Thomas Rose recalled the first time Turner stayed with him and his family at Cowley Hall, near Uxbridge, Middlesex: ‘On the morning after he left, one of the servants came to Mrs R. with several shillings in her hand, stating she had found the silver under the pillow where Mr Turner had slept, and asking her mistress what she should do with it. She was told it was doubtless intended for herself, but on his next visit she would soon learn if it had been left by mistake. Such, however, did not appear to be the case, for under the pillow was always a little mine of the argentum vivum, or silver that will slip through the fingers.’31

  Jones thought that Turner’s reputation for ‘love of money’ – as Rigaud put it, ‘a ruling passion which tarnished the character’32 – had come about because for much of his career he was saving with a specific object: the charity he intended to establish for the relief of impoverished artists. Clara Wells exclaimed,

  Surely the man is to be honoured who, denying himself almost the comforts of life, could steadily devote the accumulated wealth of long years of toil to so noble a purpose. And let it not be thought that Turner’s heart was closed to the many appeals to his benevolence which came before him. I know he gave ungrudgingly, but he was no boaster of his good deeds.33

  Turner’s ‘liberality’, as Clara called it, could be seen in his attitude towards other artists. Ruskin wrote that he had never heard Turner ‘say one depreciating word of living man, or man’s work; I never knew him let pass, without some sorrowful remonstrance, or endeavour at mitigation, a blameful word spoken by another’.34 Frith was once with several artists discussing the shortcomings of a picture, when Turner joined them. ‘After hearing much unpleasant remark from which he dissented, he was forced to confess that a very bad passage in the picture, to which the malcontents drew his attention, “was a poor bit”.’ Frith applauded Turner’s generosity toward younger artists, ‘his kindness in expressing his opinion of all contemporary work’, and he noted that such remarks were ‘in exact opposition to the general notion of his disposition’.35 The Reverend Trimmer, on a fishing excursion with Turner, was shown an illustration in Thomas Campbell’s The Pleasures of Hope, which Turner had brought along to read while angling. Turner thought the illustration pretty. Trimmer queried this: ‘Nothing first-rate, is it?’ Turner reiterated his judgement: ‘It is pretty, and he is a poor man with a large family.’36