In 1828 Turner paid a second visit to Italy, this time of con siderable duration, on the way visiting Nimes, Avignon, Mar seilles, Genoa, Spezzia and Siena, and in the following year he exhibited the "Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus," now in the National Gallery. It marks the beginning of the central and best period of Turner's power. The picture is of great power and splendour. The painting throughout is magnificent, especially in the sky. From this period till 184o Turner was entirely absorbed in his art, and so isolated. Between 1829 and 1839 he sent fifty-five pictures to the Royal Academy, painted many others on private commission, made over four hundred drawings for engravers, besides thou sands of studies and sketches from nature.
"The Fighting Terneraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up" was exhibited in the Academy of 1839. Turner had all his life been half a sailor at heart : many of his best pictures are sea pieces. Hence the pathetic feeling he throws around the old three-decker, looking ghostly and wan in the evening light. "The Slave Ship," another important sea picture, was exhibited in the following year, and in 1842 "Peace: Burial at Sea," commemo rative of Wilkie. His faculty for colour remained unimpaired almost to the end. He paid his last visit to the Continent in 1843, avoiding his own countrymen, an old and solitary man.
In 185o he exhibited for the last time. He had given up attending the meetings of the Academicians; none of his friends had seen him for months; and even his old housekeeper had no idea of his whereabouts. Turner's mind had evidently given way, and with that love of secrecy which in later years had grown into a passion he had gone to hide himself in a corner of London. He had settled as a lodger in a small house in Chelsea, overlooking the river, kept by his old Margate landlady, Mrs. Booth. To the children in the neighbourhood he was known as "Admiral Booth." His short, sailor-like figure may account for the idea that he was an impoverished old naval officer. He had been ill for some
weeks, and when his Queen Anne Street housekeeper at last dis covered his hiding-place she found him sinking, and on the following day, Dec. 19, 1851, he died. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, in deference to his wish. He left a large fortune (about LI40,000) to found a charity for the "maintenance and support of male decayed artists, being born in England, and of English parents only; and of lawful issue." His pictures he be queathed to the nation, on condition that they were exhibited in rooms of their own, and that these rooms were to be called "Turner's Gallery." The will and its codicils were so confused that after years of litigation, during which a large part of the money was wasted in legal expenses, it was found impossible to decide what Turner really wanted. A compromise was effected, his next-of-kin inheriting the bulk of his property. The Royal Academy got L20,000 and the nation got all the pictures and drawings (now housed in the National Gallery and in the Tate gallery in rooms erected by the generosity of Sir Joseph Duveen. Of the 282 pictures and studies, 199 are now framed and exhibited. Of the collection of drawings numbering over 19,000 only a part are on exhibition).
In 1843 a champion, in the person of John Ruskin, arose to defend Turner against the unjust and ignorant attacks of the press, and what at first was intended as a "short pamphlet, reprobating the manner and style of these critics," grew into the five volumes of Modern Painters. Ruskin employed all his elo quence and his great critical faculty to prove how immeasurably superior Turner was to all who had ever gone before, hardly restricting his supremacy to landscape art, and placing him among the "seven supreme 'colourists of the world." BIBLIOGRAPHY.—See: Ruskin, Modern Painters (1843-60) ; Harbours of England and Notes on the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House (1856) ; Wornum, The Turner Gallery (1859) ; Burnet, Cunningham and Murray, Turner and his Works (1859) ; Notes on his drawings by Turner (1878) ; Thornbury, Life (1862 and 1877) ; P. G. Hamerton, Life (1879) ; C. Monkhouse, Turner (1879) ; F. Wedmore, Turner and Ruskin (1900) ; Sir W. Armstrong, Turner (1902) with list of works by E. Dillon ; W. L. Wyllie, Turner (19o5) ; W. G. Rawlinson, Turner's Liber Studiorum, 2nd ed. (1906) ; The Engraved Work of Turner (1908) ; C. Mallord Turner, The Family History of the late J. M. Turner (1902) ; Catalogue of the Turner Collection (Tate Gallery, 1920), A complete inventory of the drawings of the Turner Bequest, with which are included the 23 drawings bequeathed by M. H. Vaughan, arranged chronologically by A. J. Finberg (19o9) ; D. S. MacColl, Turner's Lectures at the Academy, Burlington Magazine