It is interesting to learn also from Mr. Redding, that “early in the morning before the rest were up, Turner and myself walked to Dodbrooke, hard by the town, to see the house that had belonged to Dr. Walcot (_sic_), Peter Pindar, and where he was born. Walcot sold it, and there had been a house erected there since; of this the artist took a sketch.” Turner probably appreciated Peter’s “Advice to Landscape Painters.”
One piece of Turner’s conversation is also worthy of record, if only on account of its rarity.
“He was looking at a seventy-four gun ship, which lay in the shadow under Saltash. The ship seemed one dark mass.
“‘I told you that would be the effect,’ said Turner, referring to some previous conversation. ‘Now, as you observe, it is all shade.’
“‘Yes, I perceive it; and yet the ports are there.’
“‘We can only take what is visible--no matter what may be there. There are people in the ship; we don’t see them through the planks.’”
We have another account of this same visit to Devonshire from Sir Charles Eastlake, which bears testimony to the hospitality which he received. Miss Pearce, an aunt of Sir Charles, appears to have been his hostess, and her cottage at Calstock the centre of his excursions. A landscape painter, Mr. Ambrose Johns, of great merit, according to Sir Charles, fitted up a small portable painting box, which was of much use to Turner in affording him ready appliances for sketching in oil.
“Turner seemed pleased when the rapidity with which these sketches were done was talked of; for departing from his habitual reserve in the instance of his pencil sketches, he made no difficulty in showing them. On one occasion, when, on his return after a sketching ramble to a country residence belonging to my father, near Plympton, the day’s work was shown, he himself remarked that one of the sketches (and perhaps the best) was done in less than half an hour.... On my inquiring what had become of these sketches, Turner replied that they were worthless, in consequence, as he supposed, of some defects in the preparation of the paper; all the grey tints, he observed, had nearly disappeared. Although I did not implicitly rely on that statement, I do not remember to have seen any of them afterwards.”[34]
