Finally, he painted many pictures in the manner

§ 30. Finally, he painted many pictures in the manner of Vandevelde (who was the accepted authority of his time in sea painting), and received much injury from him. To the close of his life, Turner always painted the sea too grey, and too opaque, in consequence of his early study of Vandevelde. He never seemed to perceive color so truly in the sea as he saw it elsewhere. But he soon discovered the poorness of Vandevelde's forms of waves, and raised their meanly divided surfaces into massive surge, effecting rapidly other changes, of which more in another place. art oil paintings
Such was the art to which Turner, in early years, devoted his most earnest thoughts. More or less respectful contemplation of Reynolds, Loutherbourg, Wilson, Gainsborough, Morland, and Wilkie, was incidentally mingled with his graver study; and he maintained a questioning watchfulness of even the smallest successes of his brother artists of the modern landscape school. It remains for us only to note the position of that living school when Turner, helped or misled, as the case may be, by the study of the older artists, began to consider what remained for him to do, or design. abstract oil paintings for sale
§ 31. The dead schools of landscape, composed of the works we have just been examining, were broadly divisible into northern and southern: the Dutch schools, more or less natural, but vulgar; the Italian, more or less elevated, but absurd. There was a certain foolish elegance in Claude, and a dull dignity in Gaspar; but then their work resembled nothing that ever existed in the world. On the contrary, a canal or cattle piece of Cuyp's had many veracities about it; but they were, at best, truths of the ditch and dairy. The grace of nature, or her gloom, her tender and sacred seclusions, or her reach of power and wrath, had never been painted; nor had anything been painted yet in true love of it; for both Dutch and Italians agreed in this, that they always painted for the picture's sake, to show how well they could imitate sunshine, arrange masses, or articu late straws,—never because they loved the scene, or wanted to carry away some memory of it. oil painting reproductions for sale
And thus, all that landscape of the old masters is to be considered merely as a struggle of expiring skill to discover some new direction in which to display itself. There was no love of nature in the age; only a desire for something new. Therefore those schools expired at last, leaving the chasm of nearly utter emptiness between them and the true moderns, out of which chasm the new school rises, not engrafted on that old one, but, from the very base of all things, beginning with mere washes of Indian ink, touched upon with yellow and brown; and gradually feeling its way to color. oil painted portraits
But this infant school differed inherently from that ancienter one, in that its motive was love. However feeble its efforts might be, they were for the sake of the nature, not of the picture, and therefore, having this germ of true life, it grew and throve. Robson did not paint purple hills because he wanted to show how he could lay on purple; but because he truly loved their dark peaks. Fielding did not paint downs to show how dexterously he could sponge out mists; but because he loved downs. dafen oil painting village

This modern school, therefore, became the only true school of landscape which had yet existed; the artificial Claude and Gaspar work may be cast aside out of our way,—as I have said in my Edinburgh lectures, under the general title of "pastoralism,"—and from the last landscape of Tintoret, if we look for life, we must pass at once to the first of Turner. landscape paintings for sale
§ 32. What help Turner received from this or that companion of his youth is of no importance to any one now. Of course every great man is always being helped by everybody,for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons; and also there were two men associated with him in early study, who showed high promise in the same field, Cousen and Girtin (especially the former), and there is no saying what these men might have done had they lived; there might, perhaps, have been a struggle between one or other of them and Turner, as between Giorgione and Titian. But they lived not; and Turner is the only great man whom the school has yet produced,—quite great enough, as we shall see, for all that needed to be done. To him, therefore, we now finally turn, as the sole object of our inquiry. I shall first reinforce, with such additions as they need, those statements of his general principles which I made in the first volume, but could not then demonstrate fully, for want of time to prepare pictorial illustration; and then proceed to examine, piece by piece, his representations of the facts of nature, comparing them, as it may seem expedient, with what had been accomplished by others. wholesale oil paintings