PICTURES AND ARTISTS.
TURNER has entered upon a task which will determine the quality and degree of his imaginative faculty. He has, to adopt the courtly phrase Of the prospectus, "consented to bestow the powers of his poetical mind" upon the illustration of Mt I-TON. Assuming the "poetical mind," here is ample scope for its exercise. We confess we are ap- prehensive for the result. TURNER has no more ardent admirers of his genius, as a painter of landscape and scenic effects, than ourselves ; but something more is required of the illustrator of MILTON, which we think he does not possess. TURNER can invest natural scenes with the charm of a poetic fancy, which gleans its materials from the ordinary appearances and phenomeva of nature. No artist of the present day has so quick and comprehensive a perception of the beauties and splen- dours of colours and atmospheric effects ; and he imitates them wonderfully well. Hence the variety and truth, as well as the extra- ordinary character of his landscape,—he paints the elements. Where be does not succeed entirely, the felicitous boldness of the attempt makes his failures finer than the success of others. In painting effects that he has not himself beheld, TURNER makes skilful use of such phenomena as he has witnessed ; no painter takes a hint from nature sooner, or turns it to better account. Therefore, as we form our ideas of supernatural scenes from the analogy of natural pheno- mena, it is probable, that in so far as mere effects go, TURNER may give us more lively ideas of the unutterable light of Heaven, and the fiery gloom of Hell, than have yet been pictured. More we do not expect. Figures, in costume, he never took the pains to draw well, if he could, and the nude form must sorely puzzle him. No one scatters groups in a landscape with more pictorial effect than TURNER. In flinging them through the air he has not been successful,—judging from the only plate we have seen, the Fall of the Rebel Angels ; which rather resembles a cart-load of dead bodies shot into the sea, than the back- ward flight of spirits into an abyss of flame : but the effect of light and dark in the print is very striking. On the whole, we very much fear that TURNER'S imagination has not strength of wing to soar to the heights and depths of his mighty theme. Of the editorial capacity of Sir EGERTON BRYDGES we shall be better able to judge when the first monthly volume of this new edition of Nikon's Poetical Works appears.
Previous page
