And I would that my tongue could utter …

Barrie Sheppard continues his exploration of the life and times of Turner. Barrie writes: In December 1807 JMW Turner, Royal Academician since 1802, was elected Professor of Perspective. He was just 32 years of age. As an Academy professor he was required to give an annual series of lectures benefitting Academicians, Associates and students, and demonstrating his authority in the specialist field.

Turner’s early training and practice had made him a suitable candidate for the position. As a teenager he had studied perspective at the school of Thomas Malton, teacher and painter of topographical and architectural views. And his early drawings and watercolours of ecclesiastical buildings, such as his Archbishop’s Palace of 1790 and his Erasmus and Bishop Islip’s Chapels of 1796, were accomplishments that demonstrated a grasp of linear perspective that fitted him for the position.

Uneasy about the theory and its teaching, Turner embarked on a course of wide reading, beginning with the ancients, such as Pliny the Elder, then Renaissance scholars, and finally modern writers on the subject: the 18^th Century painter, draughtsman and architect Joshua Kirby  (Perspective Made Easy); the Scottish mathematician Dr Brook Taylor, who wrote on linear perspective; and his former teacher, Thomas Malton.

Still uneasy, Turner requested, and was given, a 12 month extension, and whilst he pursued his normal career and social life during that year, the lectures were never far from his mind. In his Derbyshire sketchbook, for example, he had written substantial notes about style and sentence structure: “in discourses that are to be spoken regard must be had to easiness of pronunciation; and, on sentence structure a note on the value of the periodic sentence – the holding back of the main clause to the end of a complex sentence. From his reading of Hugh Blaire’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres he noted that such writing required “perspicuity”; that is, the clarity that “frees the audience from the fatigue of researching for its meaning.”

Turner, no orator, and not helped by his cockney accent, had the example of his Yorkshire friend, the brilliant orator Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall, a former MP. But Fawkes’ example could only be intimidating.  And, he was ever mindful of the complexities of his subject: its complicated and sometimes contradictory rules, which beset it historically; and its often its trite and arduous complexities.

His lectures included the importance of perspective and its geometry, and its elements and forms – parallel, angular, and aerial perspective. There was also general encouragement for his students, as well as an acknowledgement of the difficulties they would face.

To illustrate the lectures he showed numerous drawings, diagrams and paintings, some pinned to the walls of the room, and others displayed when required by a porter, who, unfortunately, sometimes fumbled the displays because of Turner’s imprecise instructions,

His delivery received mixed reviews. The Sun newspaper commented that the first lecture was “written throughout in a nervous and elegant style”, and delivered with “unaffected modesty”. Others thought he read too fast, and another said of the second lecture that he spoke with “much hesitation and difficulty”. One listener thought he had a stammer, others said he repeated phrases, and often paused with much “umming” and “erring”.  The only completely satisfied member of his audience was the Academy Librarian, but he was stone deaf. He explained that he didn’t miss a lecture because of the illustrative material, which he thought outstanding. One student wrote of the perspective drawings:

    ‘Many were truly beautiful, speaking intelligently enough to the eye, if his  language did not to the ear As illustrations of aerial  perspective and the     perspective of colour, many of his rarest drawings were at these lectures placed before the students in all the glory of their first unfaded freshness. A rare treat to the eye they were.‘

Turner’s delivery in subsequent lectures showed no improvement. His 1812 lectures were openly laughed at. His first lecture of 1814 began with the announcement that the audience should go home immediately as he had left his notes in a Hackney carriage. However, they were soon returned following a public announcement with the offer of a reward, albeit a niggardly one. The lecture was delivered the following week.

For his 1819 lectures Turner revised his notes and added new illustrations, but still they were let down by his delivery. Henry Cole, who was to found the South Kensington Museum (later renamed the Victoria and Albert), said of his delivery: “he is almost perfection in mumbling and unintelligibility”.

Turner resigned from his position as Professor of Perspective in 1837. During his 30 years in the position he gave only 12 courses of lectures. He was clearly not a man of the spoken word, but, with his “pencil”, and his colours, he “spoke” as the genius that he was.

Thank you Barrie – I suspect Turner would have envied your eloquence!

PS: The title of this blog comes from Tennyson’s poem, ‘Break, break, break’ (1835)