liv INTRODUCTION

genius, and a constant purchaser of his works. Turner repeatedly visited him between 1803 and 1820, and after his death in 1825 “could not speak of the shore of Wharfe,” on which Farnley Hall looks down, “but his voice faltered.” At Farnley were preserved, and in large part are preserved still, numerous studies of the Hall and its grounds by the painter, a splendid series of drawings and a few oil-pictures. Ruskin had become acquainted with Mr. Francis Hawksworth Fawkes, the son of Turner’s friend, and in April 1851, he and his wife went to Farnley on a visit, that he might study there its art treasures. On the occasion of a later visit in 1884 Ruskin spoke the following words, which were entered by his hostess in the Visitors’ Book:-

“Farnley is a perfectly unique place. There is nothing like it anywhere; a place where a great genius had been loved and appreciated, who did all his best work for that place, where it is treasured up like a monument in a shrine.”¹

To Ruskin at the time of his earlier visit the shrine was still instinct with the spirit of the great genius. The master of the house, the eldest son of Turner’s old friend, knew the painter well, and had many reminiscences of him; it is to Mr. Hawksworth Fawkes that some of the not very numerous extant letters of Turner are addressed, and it was he who made from life the well-known caricature-sketch of the little great man. He was able to show Ruskin where Turner had painted this effect or that; to take him on Turner’s favourite walks; and to tell him many an anecdote of the drawings and pictures on the walls. Ruskin stayed for several days, and every night he used to take one of Turner’s water-colours up to his bedroom, to look at it the first thing in the morning.² Ruskin wrote as usual to his father, giving his first impressions of the Hall and his host:-

“MY DEAREST FATHER,-I have your line of yesterday. I am not doing much, but just because I give a great deal of time to do very little, I appear in a hurry. I am quite resting, and more enjoying the pictures than working at them-making notes of dates, etc. Mr. Fawkes is exactly like one of the Aclands, without their Puseyism, but a Whig and a free trader-only perfectly honest in both, and antagonist to all railroads. I wish you could have heard him

¹ The Nineteenth Century, April 1900, p. 622. The words are also printed (with some slight variations) in an article on “Farnley Hall,” by S. A. Byles, in The Magazine of Art, July 1887, p. 295.

² See the article by Mrs. Ayscough Fawkes, on “Mr. Ruskin at Farnley,” in The Nineteenth Century, April 1900, p. 617.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]