uld hardly write a correct sentence even in prose. But
he was a poet in his outlook upon life; he seldom painted a scene exactly
as he saw it, but transfused it by an imaginative touch into what on
rare occasions, with perfect conjuncture of mist and weather, it might
possibly become. He gave extra height to church spires, or made
precipices steeper than they were, thus to render the impression of
the place more explicit than by strict copying of the facts. Yet he
could be minutely accurate in his rendering of all effects of sky,
cloud, and atmosphere when he chose.

Other landscape painters have generally succeeded best with some
particular aspect of nature, and have confined themselves to that.
Cuyp excelled in painting the golden haze of sunshine, and Constable
in effects of storm and rain. But Turner attempted all. Sunset, sunrise,
moonlight, morning, sea, storm, sunshine: the whole pageantry of the
sky. He never made a repetition of the golden hazes of Cuyp, who in
his particular field stands alone; but it was a small field compared
with that of Turner, who held the mirror up to Nature in her every
mood.

Later in life, Turner travelled in France, Germany, and Italy. In
Venice his eyes were gladdened by the gorgeous colours above her
lagoons. Henceforth he makes his pictures blaze with hues scarcely
dared by painter before. But so great was his previous mastery of the
paler shades, that a few touches of brilliant colour could set his
whole canvas aflame. Even in the 'Temeraire,' the sunset occupies less
than half the picture. The cold colours of night have already fallen
on the ship, and there remains but a touch of red from the smoke of
the tug.

As Venice enriched his vision of colour, Rome stimulated him to paint
new subjects suggested by ancient history and mythology. He knew little
of Roman history or classical literature, yet enough to kindle his
imagination; witness his 'Rise and Fall of the Carthaginian Empire'
in the National Gallery. In these the figures are of no importance.
The pictures still are landscapes, but freed from the necessity of
being like any particular place. In work such as this, Turner had but
one predecessor, the French Claude Lorraine. While the Dutchmen of
the seventeenth century were painting their own country beautifully,
Claude was living in Rome, creating imaginary landscapes. He called
his pictures by the names of Scriptural incidents, and placed figures
in the foreground as s