rner's work as early as
1797:--"Visited the Royal Exhibition. Particularly struck with a
sea-view by Turner ...the whole composition bold in design and masterly
in execution. I am entirely unacquainted with the artist, but if he
proceeds as he has begun, he cannot fail to become the first in his
department." And again in 1799:--"Was again struck and delighted with
Turner's landscapes.... Turner's views are not mere ordinary transcripts
of nature,--he always throws some peculiar and striking _character_ into
the scene he represents."

Brought up as a topographical draughtsman, he made no departure till
quite late in life from the conventional method of depicting scenery;
but being a supremely gifted artist, he was capable of utilising this
method as no other before or since has ever succeeded in doing. The
accepted method was good enough for him, and he laid his paint upon the
canvas as anybody else had done before him, and as many of our
present-day painters would do well to do after him--if only they had the
genius in them to "make the instrument speak." The impressions created
on our mind by Turner's earlier pictures are not conveyed by dots,
cubes, streaks, or any device save that of pigment laid upon the canvas
in such a manner as seemed to the artist to reproduce what he saw in
nature. That he did this with surprising and altogether exceptional
skill is the proof of his genius. Unflagging energy and devotion to his
art enabled him to realise, not all, but a wonderful number of the
beauties he saw in the world, with an experience that few beside him
have ever taken the trouble to acquire. When barely thirty years old--in
1805--he was already considered as the first of living landscape
painters, and was thus noticed by Edward Dayes (the teacher of
Girtin):--"Turner may be considered as a striking instance of how much
may be gained by industry, if accompanied with perseverance, even
without the assistance of a master. The way he acquired his professional
powers was by borrowing when he could a drawing or picture to copy; or
by making a sketch of any one in the exhibition early in the morning and
finishing it up at home. By such practice, and a patient perseverance,
he has overcome all the difficulties of the art." Turner himself used to
say that his best academy was "the fields and Dr Monro's parlour"--where
Girtin and other young artists met and sketched and copied the drawings
in the doctor's collection. Burnet, in