Plymouth (1856)

Ruskin, John. The Harbours of England. London: Day & Son, c1830. p. 33. III. PLYMOUTH.THE drawing for this plate is one of Turner's most remarkable, though not most meritorious, works: it contains the brightest rainbow he ever painted, to my knowledge; not the best, but the most dazzling. It has been much modified in the plate. It is very like one of Turner's pieces of caprice to introduce a rainbow at all as a principal feature in such a scene; for it is not through the colours of the iris that we generally expect to be shown eighteen-pounder batteries and ninety-gun ships. Whether he meant the dark cloud (intensely dark blue in the original drawing), with the sunshine pursuing it back into distance; and the rainbow, with its base set on a ship of battle, to be together types of war and peace, and of the one as the foundation of the other, I leave it to the reader to decide. My own impression is, that although Turner might have some askance symbolism in his mind, the present design is, like the former one, in many points a simple reminiscence of a seen fact.* However, whether reminiscent or symbolic, the design is, to my mind, an exceedingly unsatisfactory one, owing to its total want of principal subject. The fort ceases to be of importance because of the bank and tower in front of it; the ships, necessarily for the effect, but fatally for themselves, are confused, and incompletely drawn, except the little sloop, which looks paltry and like a toy; and the foreground objects are, for work of Turner, curiously ungraceful and uninteresting. It is possible, however, that to some minds the fresh and dewy space of darkness, so animated with latent human power, may give a sensation of great pleasure, and at all events the design is worth study on account of its very strangeness. * I have discovered, since this was written, that the design was made from a vigorous and interesting sketch by Mr. S. Cousins, in which the rainbow and most of the ships are already in their places. Tamer was, therefore, in this case, as I have found him in several other instances, realizing, not a fact seen by himself, but a fact as he supposed it to have been seen by another.[Text may be taken from a different source or edition than that listed as the source by Somers Cocks.]

Mezz

160x245mm

Reissue of SC1994