A J Finberg – författare

Excerpt: "The object of the following pages is to re-study the character of Turner’s art in the light of his sketch-books and drawings from nature. During Turner’s lifetime his rooted objection to part with any of his sketches, studies, or notes often formed the subject of ill-natured comment. Yet we owe it to this peculiarity that the drawings and sketches included in the Turner Bequest at the National Gallery comprise practically the whole of the great landscape painter’s work done direct from nature. The collection is, therefore, of very great psychological interest. It shows clearly upon what basis of immediately presentative elements the airy splendour of Turner’s richly imaginative art was built: and amongst the twenty odd thousand sheets of drawings in all stages of elaboration, the embryonic forms of most of the painter’s masterpieces can be easily traced."

Excerpt: "The greatest artists have expressed themselves so completely in their works, that the story of their lives adds little or nothing to our knowledge of their personality. We know very little about the life of Turner—almost as little, indeed, as we know of Shakespeare’s—but in neither case do we seem to have missed anything that would add to our comprehension or enjoyment of their work. With Turner, as with Shakespeare, his art was the perfect organ of his spirit. His pictures enshrine more of the real personality of the artist than even a biographer of genius with unlimited opportunities could tell us. But though this is almost invariably true of the greatest artists, it is not true of all artists. It is hardly the case with David Cox. His hampered, thwarted art is indeed replete with glimpses and hints of the personality behind it; but without a commentary it is not very eloquent or very likely to arrest attention. The artist’s life furnishes the needed commentary. The beautiful simplicity and naïveté of the man’s character, the mean circumstances in which his life was cast, the fortitude, industry, and manliness with which he triumphed over his difficulties—these things explain much that seems at first sight futile in his art and colour even his worst failures with a glow of purely human sympathy. And the works of his old age—his most eloquent and self-subsistent productions, i.e., the works of Cox that stand least in need of a commentary—these lose nothing of their compelling power from the spectator’s consciousness of the difficulties through which the artist’s spirit had to struggle towards self-realisation and expression."

Excerpt: “It is not known for certain exactly when or how Turner became acquainted with Mr. Walter Ramsden Hawksworth Fawkes of Farnley Hall. Several biographers say that Turner first met Mr. Fawkes about 1802, when the artist was in Yorkshire making drawings for one of the series of topographical works dealing with parts of Yorkshire which Dr. Whitaker, the vicar of Whalley, prepared and published. But Whitaker’s “History of the Parish of Whalley,” which was published about this date, contains no reference to Farnley, and deals with a part of Yorkshire and Lancashire at some distance from Farnley. The only book of Dr. Whitaker which contains any illustrations connected with Farnley Hall is the “Loidis and Elmete,” published in 1816, and we know that Turner had become intimate with Mr. Fawkes some years before this date."