Turner: Five letters and a postscript

"Turner: Five Letters and a postscript" by Lewis Hind is a biography of Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (1775 –1851), known in his time as William Turner. He was an English Romantic painter, printmaker, and watercolorist. He is known for his expressive colorizations, imaginative landscapes, and turbulent, often violent marine paintings. He left behind more than 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolors, and 30,000 works on paper. He was championed by the leading English art critic John Ruskin from 1840 and is today regarded as having elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivaling history painting. The book consists of his 5 letters and a postscript.

Excerpt:

"LETTER I

EXPLANATORY

Yes: I remember that morning at Exeter when I surprised you by making a drawing of the west porch of the cathedral. Timidly were the unrestored figures of angels, apostles, prophets, kings and warriors—very old, very battered—taking form in your sketch-book:[Pg 12] timidly, for even then you were beginning to be troubled by the blur that rose, after an hour's work, between your eyes and the carven kings and saints.

Your sister passed into the cathedral to her devotions carrying white flowers for the altar: we stayed in the sunlight. I cannot remember how Turner became the subject of our talk; but I think it was my mention of his drawing of the west front of Salisbury Cathedral done when he was twenty-three—one of the set exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1799, which hastened his election to an Associateship of the Royal Academy."