Portrait of the artist as a businessman: the annual Turner exhibition at the National Gallery puts a new complexion on his work, writes Aidan Dunne
This year, the annual Turner watercolours exhibition at the National Gallery has been given a modest thematic spin. As ever, the show, in the subdued light of the print gallery, marshals the 31 watercolours from the Vaughan Bequest, with five additional watercolours and a selection of prints from Turner's Liber Studiorum series. The most recent acquisition is a misty watercolour of the Rhine, made with engraving in mind and given to the gallery by Lady Beit three years ago.
The element of spin emerges in the show's title: The Business of Being Turner. And it is an appropriate title. We can now look at the artist's watercolours and engravings as objects of primarily aesthetic interest, but, when Turner was a young man, topographical watercolours were a business, and a thriving one. More than that, though, Turner was, throughout his life, a hard-headed businessman when it came to the sale and marketing of his work.
The son of a hard-working barber with a large, prosperous clientele in the heart of London, Turner was, you could say, brought up less an aesthete and more a tradesman. The source of his income was his artistic work - there was no inheritance or other financial buffer. In a way, Turner's financial dealings were as unorthodox as other areas of his life. He didn't have a bank account, although a great deal of money passed through his hands. A great deal of his wealth was held in government bonds. And wealth is the right word. By the time of his death in 1851 he was, in today's terms, a multi-millionaire.
In the exhibition brochure, Ann Hodge quotes his reply to someone who asked him the secret of his success: "The only secret I have got is damned hard work." Hard work was not the only secret, but any account of his life makes it clear he worked incredibly, even obsessively, hard. Early on, his father exhibited and sold some of his watercolours in his barber shop and, in time, became his son's full-time employee.
During Turner's lifetime the technology of mechanical reproduction was developing rapidly. Engraving and printing formed part of a huge industry, and he made a great deal of money from producing drawings and watercolours to be handed over to expert engravers. When he became better known, engravings of his own paintings proved lucrative. But hard work was part and parcel of this. On a piecemeal basis, Turner's contributions were not particularly well paid; the real advantage came from contracts for large numbers of works.
Which is where Turner's massive Liber Studiorum came in. It was conceived as a huge, didactic project, inspired by Claude Lorraine's Liber Veritatis, a book of about 200 engravings based on the artist's drawings from his own paintings. Turner set out to attract subscribers for his own magnum opus, a set of engravings that offered a systematic account of the art of landscape painting. While it was designed partly as a means of protecting his artistic legacy, rather than working from existing paintings, he embarked on the production of new subjects for engraving.
In retrospect there is something close to the self-defeating in his extraordinarily labour-intensive approach. In any case, there were problems from the start. It was difficult to win enough subscribers to make the enterprise profitable, and it never generated much money. After 71 plates had been published, Turner gave up and went to Italy. The gallery holds a full set of the 71 engravings, though only a cross-section is on view with the watercolours.
Even though it has all the trappings of method and order, there is something arbitrary and almost haphazard about his categorisation of landscape in the Liber. Nevertheless, with support from John Ruskin, the great critical champion of his work, this didn't stop it becoming the subject of a great deal of interest and attention. It was regarded as a cornerstone of Turner's artistic achievements. However, that it is no longer held in such high esteem is partly to do with artistic fashion and taht engraving was overtaken as a technology.
The collector, Henry Vaughan, originally, and rightly, stipulated that the watercolours he gave to various institutions should be on display to the public only for a limited period in winter, when light levels were at their lowest and least likely to affect the delicate pigments. It is good to see that the National Gallery has adhered so meticulously to the spirit as well as the letter of the terms of his bequest. At first, the illumination may seem a bit dim, but in fact it is more than adequate to appreciate every aspect of the watercolours.
The Business of Being Turner runs at the National Gallery of Ireland until next Friday. Tel: 01-6615133