Turner 250: Richmond Hill is a National Picture
Turner the Patriot:
In 1819 Turner exhibited England: Richmond Hill on the Prince Regent’s Birthday. This was an exceptionally large picture, (original size · 180 x 334.6 cm) of a size comparable with that of the Battle of Trafalgar painted for George IV in 1824, which more evidently justifies Tom Taylor’s claim in 1857 that the fate of Turner’s artistic legacy was a “matter of national importance.” The subject and its treatment seems too light hearted, and this is reinforced by the lines by James Thomson which Turner chose to be printed in the exhibition catalogue: "Which way Amanda shall we bend our course?/ The choice perplexes.../ While Radiant Summer opens all its pride,/ Thy Hill, delightful Shene? "(the old name for Richmond). Yet the title suggests otherwise. That is patently patriotic, a celebration after the triumph over Napoleon by a nation with flourishing industries, new inventions bringing gas lighting, the greatest city in the world peopled by a race particularly blessed. This despite the fact that unrest would result in the Peterloo Massacre a few months later and that some years before a banking crisis had seen the banks of Jane Austen’s brother and Turner’s cousins collapse.
The Prince Regent
The future George IV had not yet suffered the full force of unpopularity or, as Turner also was to, the censures of Victorian moralists. He is viewed in a more balanced way in the memoirs of Captain Gronow than the diatribe by Thackeray. He was a leader of fashion, glamorised in the portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and, not least from the point of view of artists, an art lover. He was also to be a pioneer of royal visits to Ireland (1821) and Scotland (1822), transferred George III’s library to the British Museum and contemplated also handing over the bulk of the royal collection of pictures.
The Event and England’s Patron Saint
In 1981 the American expert on Claude Monet, Dr Charles Stuckey, had published in Turner Society News an article which suggested that the painting celebrated not only the Regent, who in 1818 had a party on his name day, the feast of St George, 23 April. That was also Turner’s birthday and St George was Patron Saint of England (named in the title rather than Britain). However Dr Stuckey got the year wrong, though this may not invalidate his hypothesis entirely. Six years later a journalist discovered that in 1817 a celebration of the Prince’s actual birthday, August, was held by the Countess of Cardigan in the grounds of her house on Richmond Hill. This was attended by the Prince, to whom the Lord Mayor of London doffed his hat from his barge, glimpsed in Turner’s picture.
For higher resolution images please visit the Wikimedia or Tate websites.
A Pivotal Picture
In 1817 Turner made his first visit to Europe since 1802 and stopped at Antwerp, the city of Rubens, the influence of whose style was seen the following year in Turner’s magnificent depiction of Raby Castle, initially with a hunt in progress. From the 17th century onwards there was a debate between the followers of Rubens and those of Poussin, between the colourists and the classsical formalists, carried on later between Delacroix and Ingres. These years mark the beginning of Turner’s transition from the second to the first, from being the disciple of Claude to one of Watteau. The latter is now seen as an initiator of the Rococo style, but more importantly was a follower of Rubens, admired by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who said he was “a master I adore”. Now one of his Watteaus, The Enchanted Isle, of which Turner made a memorandum, was owned by the intimate friend of Turner, James Holworthy,
On the figures in it Turner based some of those in his Richmond picture. But more importantly he studied the division of tones employed by Rubens and Watteau. The Revd William Towler Kingsley, brother-in-law of Tom Taylor, told Ruskin that Turner had said to him that he had learnt more from Watteau than any other painter. In 1831 he painted a picture of Watteau in his studio illustrating the uses of the colour white, with which Rubens and Watteau had brightened their pictures (and Constable, also a Watteau enthusiast, was to do rather heavy handedly). When Turner’s picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1819 it was criticised for its “flaming colour,” now somewhat muted. In Turner’s gallery at his death the end wall was occupied by the great Richmond Hill painting flanked by the Watteau Study and a tribute to another Rubens disciple, Van Dyck.
The Complete Artist
The young Ruskin in 1843, comparing the (late) work of Turner with descriptive verses by Shelley, wrote that all one needed to appreciate Turner were a love of colour, of nature and a deep feeling for poetry. From Richmond Hill is the famous view across the curving river to Twickenham and beyond. On the Hill were the houses of Reynolds and Gainsborough, and in Twickenham those of the poets Pope, Thomson and the actor Garrick. Turner was influenced by the theory, promoted by the Revd Archibald Alison from Edinburgh, of Associationism. This held that part of the pleasure in art derived from the associations it conjured up, and Turner’s work is full of hinted or implied associations, such as the conjunction of his and the Regent’s birthdays on 23 April. For across the Thames was his villa, Sandycombe Lodge. Professor Harold Livermore, who set up the trust which now owns it, liked to remark that it was the only house of an artist built and designed by himself and who was also a poet. As Constable said, he wanted to master everything. Turner’s first ambition was to be an architect. He also tried to learn a musical instrument and was a lifelong concert- and theatre-goer, drawing on all these interests in his paintings. Other large paintings which followed in the 1820s which also commemorated anniveraries, of Raphael and of Palestrina, the latter work more completely showing how Rubens and Watteau had supplanted Claude as his main models.
Selby Whittingham 2024
Jean Golt, “Beauty and Meaning on Richmond Hill: New Light on Turner’s Masterpiece of 1819,”Turner Studies, VII, 2, Winter 1987, pp.9-20.
Charles Stuckey, “Turner’s Birthdays,” Turner Society News, 21, April 1981, pp.2-8.
David Hill, Turner on The Thames,
Selby Whittingham, “Watteau’s ‘L’Ile Enchantée’: From the French Régence to the English Regency,” Pantheon: Internationale Zeitschrift für Kunst, XLII, 4, Oktober/November/December 1984, pp.339-47 and cover.