It was
impossible for him to be the beholder of such a scene as the
_Temeraire's_ approach to her last moorings, save as a poet-painter;
and stirred to the putting forth of all his powers, this _Fighting
Temeraire_ is his surpassing poem.
It was in 1775, while Reynolds was at the height of his fame, that
Turner saw the light, born of obscure parents in an obscure house,
but with a gift of vision that compelled him to the palette and the
pencil his whole life long. Yet, when he was apprenticed to an architect
to learn architectural drawing, he had to be dismissed after two
periods of probation because of his absolute inability to learn the
theory of perspective or even the elements of geometry. But the time
was not far off when he was to become in his turn Professor of
Perspective at the Royal Academy.
The popular distaste, or unborn taste, for landscape, which had
prevented Gainsborough from following his natural bent, was changing
at last. The end of the eighteenth century saw the beginning of a return
to nature in art as well as in poetry. Some artists in the eastern
counties, older than Turner, were already spending their lives in the
not too lucrative painting of landscape.
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