Some recent writers have contended that this great expansion of Turner’s art was due to the influence of his friend and companion Thomas Girtin, but they have adduced no evidence to support that theory. Girtin, it is needless to say, was a very great painter, and his early death in 1802 was a severe loss to English art. And no doubt he and Turner, in their constant intimacy, must have continually and considerably affected each other--indeed up to 1795 it is often exceedingly difficult to distinguish between the two men’s work. But, so far as I have been able to study Girtin’s early drawings, I cannot discover in those executed before 1797--the year which witnessed Turner’s new departure--any of the breadth and boldness which marked both men from 1797 onwards. Certainly no work of Girtin’s of 1796--the year previous--approaches in force Turner’s _Snowdon_ and _Cader Idris_, which already in design if not in colour herald his all-round expansion of 1797.
Nor does the current opinion of that day appear to support the view just alluded to--quite the contrary. The “St. James’s Chronicle” of 1797, after praising Turner’s _Transept of Ewenny Priory_ and _Choir of Salisbury Cathedral_ in the Royal Academy Exhibition of that year, goes on to remark that, “Mr. Girtin’s drawings in general _appear to be formed in the style of Turner_.” Again, “The Sun” of 1799 devotes a long paragraph to the eulogy of Turner’s _Carnarvon Castle_, concluding with the remark, “This is a drawing that Claude might be proud to own”; it then praises Girtin’s _Bethgellert_, but prefaces its notice with the observation “We do not remember to have seen the name of the artist before the present year. _The drawing is something after the style of the preceding artist_” [Turner]. Redgrave also effectually disposes of the question in “A Century of Painters,” 1866, Vol. II., page 402.
Moreover, Turner’s great drawings of 1797, 1798 and 1799 have characteristics which are not at all those of Girtin. Already there is visible something of that wonderful delicacy, that sense of mystery, of ‘infinity,’ that indefinable charm which we call ‘poetry,’ which distinguishes his work--and especially his work in water-colour--from that of every other landscape painter--work all the more remarkable in that it proceeded from a man born in a back lane off the Strand, without any education worthy of the name, and throughout his life unable to speak or write grammatically--yet withal a man of strong intellect, keenly ambitious, a reader, and a voluminous writer of poetry.