J. M. W. Turner by Peter Ackroyd

Author:Peter Ackroyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307423658
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

Turner’s Gallery: the artist showing his work, drawn from memory by his friend George Jones in 1852. Turner could not bear to part with his favourite paintings, and still hanging on the far wall is Dido building Carthage (see colour section).

In this year Turner was as usual engaged in the routine business of the Royal Academy, attending meetings and partaking in dinners, supervising elections and awarding premiums to promising students. But he had also been appointed as “Visitor” or supervisor of students in the Life class. He was never the most articulate of teachers but his instruction seems to have been of some benefit. One of his erstwhile pupils recalled that he specialised in a few indistinct words, a wave of the hand, a poke in the side, pointing at the same time to some part of the student’s drawing, but saying nothing more than a “humph!” or “what’s that for?” Yet the fault hinted at, the thing to be altered was there, if you could but find it out; and if, after a deep puzzle, you did succeed in comprehending his meaning, he would congratulate you when he came round again, and would give you some further hint; if not, he would leave you with another disdainful growl, or perhaps seize your porte-crayon, or with his broad thumb, make you at once sensible of your fault.

This suggests very well his practical approach to teaching. It was not a matter of principles but of demonstration. He left it to the student. He said at the end of one of his lectures on perspective that “After all I have been saying to you, gentlemen—the theories I have explained and the rules I have laid down—you will find no better teachers than your own eyes, if used aright to see things as they are.” When a pupil asked him, “How?” he characteristically replied, “Suppose you look.”

He also introduced a novel procedure in the Life class which suggests his practicality. He would pose a live model beside an antique cast, placing him or her in the same action and attitude as the sculpture itself. The student could then observe the difference between nature and art in the most intimate and overt manner. As one student put it, “It showed at once how much the antique sculptors had refined nature; which, if in parts it looked more beautiful than the selected form which is called ideal, as a whole looked common and vulgar by its side.” It was an enterprising approach, and demonstrates the originality of Turner’s mind. His instruction does in fact seem to have been popular as well as effective. One pupil recalled that “the schools were usually better attended during his visitorships than during those of most other members.”

One younger contemporary also recalls him saying: “First of all, respect your paper! Keep your corners quiet. Centre your interest. And always remember that as you can never reach the brilliancy of nature, you need never be afraid to put your brightest light next to your deepest shadow in the centre, but not in the corners of your picture.

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