If it exist only for
connoisseurs, it is a very suspicious matter. I looked at all Turner's
pictures, and at many of his drawings; and must again confess myself
wholly unable to understand more than a very few of them. Even those few
are tantalizing. At a certain distance you discern what appears to be a
grand and beautiful picture, which you shall admire and enjoy infinitely
if you can get within the range of distinct vision. You come nearer, and
find only blotches of color and dabs of the brush, meaning nothing when
you look closely, and meaning a mystery at the point where the painter
intended to station you. Some landscapes there were, indeed, full of
imaginative beauty, and of the better truth etherealized out of the
prosaic truth of Nature; only it was still impossible actually to see it.
There was a mist over it; or it was like a tract of beautiful dreamland,
seen dimly through sleep, and glimmering out of sight, if looked upon
with wide-open eyes. These were the more satisfactory specimens. There
were many others which I could not comprehend in the remotest degree; not
even so far as to conjecture whether they purported to represent earth,
sea, or sky. In fact, I should not have known them to be pictures at
all, but might have supposed that the artist had been trying his brush on
the canvas, mixing up all sorts of hues, but principally white paint, and
now and then producing an agreeable harmony of color without particularly
intending it.
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