Still, now that he could draw really well, his father, who painted in water-colours himself, complied with the demand for better teaching than Runciman's, went straight to the President of the Old Water-Colour Society, and engaged him for the usual course of half a dozen lessons at a guinea a piece.

Copley Fielding could draw mountains as nobody else but Turner could, in water-colour; he had enough mystery and poetry to interest the younger Ruskin, and enough resemblance to ordinary views of Nature to please the elder.

So they both went to Newman Street to his painting-room, and John worked through the course, and a few extra lessons, but, after all, found Fielding's art was not what he wanted.

Some sketches exist, showing the influence of the spongy style; but his characteristic way of work remained for him to devise for himself.
At the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1836 Turner showed the first striking examples of his later style in "Juliet and her Nurse," "Mercury and Argus," and "Rome from Mount Aventine." The strange idealism, the unusualness, the mystery, of these pictures, united with evidence of intense significance and subtle observation, appealed to young Ruskin as it appealed to few other spectators.

Public opinion regretted this change in its old favourite, the draughtsman of Oxford colleges, the painter of shipwrecks and castles.