ess was not worthy of one, but from
now on Joseph M.W. Turner was an artist, and other hands had to sweep the
barber-shop.

But he sold few pictures--they were not popular. Other artists scorned
him, possibly intuitively fearing him, for mediocrity always fears when
the ghost of genius does not down at its bidding.

Then Turner was accounted unsociable; besides, he was ragged, uncouth,
independent, and did not conform to the ways of society; so the select
circle cast him out--more properly speaking, did not let him in.

Still he worked on, and exhibited at every Academy Exhibition, yet he was
often hungry, and the London fog crept cold and damp through his
threadbare clothes. But he toiled on, for Claude Lorraine was ever before
him.

In Eighteen Hundred Two, when twenty-seven years of age, he visited
France and made a tour through Switzerland, tramping over many long miles
with his painting-kit on his back, and he brought back rich treasures in
way of sketches and quickened imagination.

In the years following he took many such trips, and came to know Venice,
Rome, Florence and Paris as perfectly as his own London.

When thirty-three years of age he was still worshiping at the shrine of
Claude Lorraine. His pictures painted at this time are evidence of his
ideal, and his book, "Liber Studiorum," issued in Eighteen Hundred Eight,
is modeled after the "Liber Veritatis." But the book surpasses Claude's,
and Turner knew it, and this may have led him to burst his shackles and
cast loose from his idol. For, in Eighteen Hundred Fifteen, we find him
working according to his own ideas, showing an originality and audacity
in conception and execution that made him the butt of the critics, and
caused consternation to rage through the studios of competitors.

Gradually, it dawned upon a few scattered collectors that things so
strongly condemned must have merit, for why should the pack bay so loudly
if there were no quarry! So to have a Turner was at least something for
your friends to discuss.

Then carriages began to stop before the dingy building at Forty-seven
Queen Anne Street, and broadcloth and satin mounted the creaking stairs
to the studio. It happened about this time that Turner's prices began to
increase. Like the sibyl of old, if a customer said, "I do not want it,"
the painter put an extra ten pounds on the price. For "Dido Building
Carthage," Turner's original price was five hundred pounds. People came
to see