ship buoyant, bending, and full of motion; its
tones as true as they are wonderful; and the whole picture dedicated to
the most sublime of subjects and impressions (completing thus the perfect
system of all truth which we have shown to be formed by Turner's works),
the power, majesty, and deathfulness of the open, deep, illimitable sea."

[Illustration: FIG. 76.--THE SLAVE SHIP. _By Turner._]

No painter of modern times, or perhaps of any time, has ever provoked the
discussion of his merits which Turner did. When he was at his best his
great merits and his originality procured for him the strongest defenders,
and finally brought his pictures into favor with the wealthy middle class
of England, so that he obtained high prices, and since his death these
prices have doubled, and even quadrupled. At a sale of Mr. Bicknell's
collection in 1836, ten of Turner's pictures, which had been bought for
three thousand seven hundred and forty-nine pounds, were sold for
seventeen thousand and ninety-four pounds. As Turner grew older and his
manner deteriorated he was assailed by the wits, the art critics, and the
amateurs with cruel badinage, and to these censures Turner was morbidly
sensitive. But even Ruskin admits that the pictures of his last five years
are of "wholly inferior value," with unsatisfactory foliage, chalky faces,
and general indications of feebleness of hand.

Wornum, in his _Epochs of Painting_, said: "In the last ten years of his
career, and occasionally before, Turner was extravagant to an extreme
degree; he played equally with nature and with his colors. Light, with all
its prismatic varieties, seems to have been the chief object of his
studies; individuality of form or color he was wholly indifferent to. The
looseness of execution in his latest works has not even the apology of
having been attempted on scientific principles; he did not work upon a
particular point of a picture as a focus and leave the rest obscure, as a
foil to enhance it, on a principle of unity; on the contrary, all is
equally obscure and wild alike. These last productions are a calamity to
his reputation; yet we may, perhaps, safely assert that since Rembrandt
there has been no painter of such originality and power as Turner." Dr.
Waagen says in his _Treasury of Art in Great Britain_: "No landscape
painter has yet appeared with such versatility of talent. His historical
landscapes exhibit the most exquisite feeling for beauty of hues and
eff