You will find these tolerations and affections guiding or sustaining
him to the last hour of his life; the notablest of all such endurances
being that of dirt. No Venetian ever draws anything foul; but Turner
devoted picture after picture to the illustration of effects of
dinginess, smoke, soot, dust, and dusty texture; old sides of boats,
weedy roadside vegetation, dunghills, straw-yards, and all the soilings
and stains of every common labour.
And more than this, he not only could endure, but enjoyed and looked
for _litter_, like Covent Garden wreck after the market. His pictures
are often full of it, from side to side; their foregrounds differ from
all others in the natural way that things have of lying about in them.
Even his richest vegetation, in ideal work, is confused; and he
delights in shingle, debris, and heaps of fallen stones. The last words
he ever spoke to me about a picture were in gentle exultation about his
St. Gothard: "that _litter_ of stones which I endeavoured to
represent."
The second great result of this Covent Garden training was understanding
of and regard for the poor, whom the Venetians, we saw, despised; whom,
contrarily, Turner loved, and more than loved--understood. He got no
romantic sight of them, but an infallible one, as he prowled about the
end of his lane, watching night effects in the wintry streets; nor
sight of the poor alone, but of the poor in direct relations with the
rich.
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