130 ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING

expressions of exultation at one of his victories over the Academy, he draws back suddenly with these words:-“But Turner behaved well, and did me justice.”¹

103. I will give you however besides two plain facts illustrative of Turner’s “jealousy.”

You have, perhaps not many of you, heard of a painter of the name of Bird:² I do not myself know his works, but turner saw some merit in them: and when Bird first sent a picture to the Academy, for exhibition, Turner was on the hanging committee. Bird’s picture had great merit; but no place for it could be found. Turner pleaded hard for it. No, the thing was imossible. Turner sat down and looked at Bird’s picture a long time; then insisted that a place must be found for it. He was still met by the assertion of immpracticability. He said no more, but took down one of his own pictures, sent it out of the Academy, and hung Bird’s in its palce.

Match that, if you can among the annals of hanging committees. But he could do nobler things than this.

104. When Turner’s picture of Cologne was exhibited in the year 1826,³ it was hung between two portraits, by

¹ [Hydon had attended the Academy schools, and first picture, “Joseph and Mary,” was well hung in 1806. His quarrel began in 1809, when he was offended by the position of “Dentatus.” He attacked the Academy in the newspapers, started rival schools, and published a book on the pernicious eeffect of Academies on Art. The book referred to by Ruskin is Haydon’s Autobiography, edited and completed by Tom Taylor, in three volumes, 1853. Ruskin seems to have relied on his memory, which was here at fault. It is not to Turner, but to Lawrence, that Haydon refers: “Lawrence did me justice like a man of spirit and honour” (vol. i. p. 179). In another passage, however, Haydon, in referring to one of his attacks on the Academy (when he likened various Academicians to “vinegar cruets,” “vipers,” magpies,” etc.), adds: “Wilkie and Mulready were spared, and so was Turner” (vol. i. p. 357). In describing his efforts at a later date to be reconciled, and his visits to various Academicians with that object, Haydon does not mention Turner, but again praises Lawrence (vol. ii. pp. 138-149). It is possible, however, that Ruskin may have heard the saying given in the text from some friend of Haydon (e.g., Prout, see below, p. 307), and have confused it in his recollection with the passage in the Autobiography. Turner, if generous in recognition of Haydon’s talent, could never forget his disloyalty to his “alma mater.” When Maclise called on him to tell him of Haydon’s suicide (1846), his only words were “He stabbed his mother,” repeated several times.]

² [Edward Bird (1762-1819), teacher of drawing at Bristol, and an exhibitor of genre pictures of homely subjects, was elected A.R.A. in 1812, and R.A. in 1815. A picture by him in the National Gallery collection (No.323) is now n the newport Gallery. The story was used by Thornbury in his /Life of Turner, ed. 1877, p. 272.]

³ [The full title of the picture was “Colotgne: The Arrival of a Packet Boat.

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