Leslie tells the best of the “counter stories.”
“In 1832, when Constable exhibited his _Opening of Waterloo Bridge_,[39] it was placed in the School of Painting--one of the small rooms at Somerset House. A sea piece,[40] by Turner, was next to it--a grey picture, beautiful and true, but with no positive colour in any part of it--Constable’s _Waterloo_ seemed as if painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times into the room while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the decorations and flags of the City barges. Turner stood behind him, looking from the _Waterloo_ to his own picture, and at last brought his palette from the great room, where he was touching another picture, and putting a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his grey sea, went away without saying a word. The intensity of the red lead, made more vivid by the coolness of the picture, caused even the vermilion and lake of Constable to look weak. I came into the room just as Turner left it. ‘He has been here,’ said Constable, ‘and fired a gun.’”
On the opposite wall was a picture, by Jones, of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace.[41] “A coal,” said Cooper, “has bounced across the room from Jones’s picture, and set fire to Turner’s sea.” The great man did not come into the room for a day and a half; and then in the last moments that were allowed for painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his picture, and shaped it into a buoy.”[42]
This daub of red lead was rather defensive than offensive, and there is no story of Turner which shows any malice in his nature. To his brother artists he was always friendly and just; he never spoke in their disparagement, and often helped young artists with a kind word or a practical suggestion. Even Constable--between whom and Turner not much love was lost, according to Thornbury--he helped on one occasion by striking in a ripple in the foreground of his picture--the “something” just wanted to make the composition satisfactory. We think, then, that we may enjoy the beautiful story of self-sacrifice for Lawrence’s sake, without any disagreeable reflection that it is spoilt by others showing a contrary spirit towards his brother artists.