Arrows of the Chace, vol. 1/2

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Title: Arrows of the Chace, vol. 1/2

Author: John Ruskin

Release date: July 22, 2015 [eBook #49508]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARROWS OF THE CHACE, VOL. 1/2 ***

THE COMPLETE WORKS

JOHN RUSKIN

VOLUME XXIII

ARROWS OF THE CHACE

VOLUMES I-II

[Illustration: ROOM AT BRANTWOOD

SHOWING PICTURES OF THE BOY RUSKIN AND HIS PARENTS

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH]

ARROWS OF THE CHACE

BEING

A COLLECTION OF
SCATTERED LETTERS

PUBLISHED CHIEFLY IN THE DAILY NEWSPAPERS

1840-1880

VOLUME I.

LETTERS ON ART AND SCIENCE

“I NEVER WROTE A LETTER IN MY LIFE WHICH ALL THE WORLD ARE NOT WELCOME
TO READ IF THEY WILL.”

_Fors Clavigera_, Letter 59, 1875.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

PAGE

AUTHOR’S PREFACE ix

EDITOR’S PREFACE xiii

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS IN VOLUME I xviii

LETTERS ON ART:

I. ART CRITICISM AND ART EDUCATION.

“Modern Painters;” a Reply. 1843 3

Art Criticism. 1843 10

The Arts as a Branch of Education. 1857 24

Art-Teaching by Correspondence. 1860 32

II. PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY.

Danger to the National Gallery. 1847 37

The National Gallery. 1852 45

The British Museum. 1866 52

On the Purchase of Pictures. 1880 55

III. PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren. 1851 (May 13) 59

The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren. 1851 (May 30) 63

“The Light of the World,” Holman Hunt. 1854 67

“The Awakening Conscience,” Holman Hunt. 1854 71

Pre-Raphaelitism in Liverpool. 1858 73

Generalization and the Scotch Pre-Raphaelites. 1858 74

IV. TURNER.

The Turner Bequest. 1856 81

[Turner’s Sketch Book. 1858 86, note]

The Turner Bequest and the National Gallery. 1857 86

The Turner Sketches and Drawings. 1858 88

[The Liber Studiorum. 1858 97, note]

The Turner Gallery at Kensington. 1859 98

Turner’s Drawings. 1876 (July 5) 100

Turner’s Drawings. 1876 (July 19) 104

Copies of Turner’s Drawings. 1876 105

[Copies of Turner’s Drawings--Extract. 1857 105, note]

[Copy of Turner’s Fluelen _ibid._]

“Turners,” False and True. 1871. 106

The Character of Turner. 1857. 107

[Thornbury’s Life of Turner. 1861. 108]

V. PICTURES AND ARTISTS.

John Leech’s Outlines. 1872. 111

Ernest George’s Etchings. 1873. 113

The Frederick Walker Exhibition. 1876. 116

VI. ARCHITECTURE AND RESTORATION.

Gothic Architecture and the Oxford Museum. 1858. 125

Gothic Architecture and the Oxford Museum. 1859. 131

The Castle Rock (Edinburgh). 1857 (Sept. 14) 145

Edinburgh Castle. 1857 (Sept. 27) 147

Castles and Kennels. 1871 (Dec. 22) 151

Verona _v._ Warwick. 1871 (Dec. 24) 152

Notre Dame de Paris. 1871 153

Mr. Ruskin’s Influence--A Defence. 1872 (March 15) 154

Mr. Ruskin’s Influence--A Rejoinder. 1872 (March 21) 156

Modern Restorations. 1877 157

Ribbesford Church. 1877 158

Circular relating to St. Mark’s, Venice. 1879. 159

[Letters relating to St. Mark’s, Venice. 1879. 169, note.]

LETTERS ON SCIENCE:

I. GEOLOGICAL.

The Conformation of the Alps, 1864 173

Concerning Glaciers. 1864. 175

English _versus_ Alpine Geology. 1864 181

Concerning Hydrostatics. 1864 185

James David Forbes: His Real Greatness. 1874. 187

II. MISCELLANEOUS.

On Reflections in Water. 1844 191

On the Reflection of Rainbows. 1861 201

A Landslip Near Giagnano. 1841 202

On the Gentian. 1857 204

On the Study of Natural History (undated) 204

AUTHOR’S PREFACE.

My good Editor insists that this book must have an Author’s Preface; and
insists further that it shall not contain compliments to him on the
editorship. I must leave, therefore, any readers who care for the book,
and comprehend the trouble that has been spent on it, to pay him their
own compliments, as the successive service of his notes may call for
them: but my obedience to his order, not in itself easy to me, doubles
the difficulty I have in doing what, nevertheless, I am resolved to
do--pay, that is to say, several extremely fine compliments to myself,
upon the quality of the text.

For of course I have read none of these letters since they were first
printed: of half of them I had forgotten the contents, of some, the
existence; all come fresh to me; and here in Rouen, where I thought
nothing could possibly have kept me from drawing all I could of the
remnants of the old town, I find myself, instead, lying in bed in the
morning, reading these remnants of my old self--and that with much
contentment and thankful applause.

For here are a series of letters ranging over a period of, broadly,
forty years of my life; most of them written hastily, and all in hours
snatched from heavier work: and in the entire mass of them there is not
a word I wish to change, not a statement I have to retract, and, I
believe, few pieces of advice, which the reader will not find it for his
good to act upon.

With which brief preface I am, for my own part, content; but as it is
one of an unusual tenor, and may be thought by some of my friends, and
all my foes, more candid than graceful, I permit myself the apologetic
egotism of enforcing one or two of the points in which I find these
letters so well worth--their author’s--reading.

In the building of a large book, there are always places where an
indulged diffuseness weakens the fancy, and prolonged strain subdues the
energy: when we have time to say all we wish, we usually wish to say
more than enough; and there are few subjects we can have the pride of
exhausting, without wearying the listener. But all these letters were
written with fully provoked zeal, under strict allowance of space and
time: they contain the choicest and most needful things I could within
narrow limits say, out of many contending to be said; expressed with
deliberate precision; and recommended by the best art I had in
illustration or emphasis. At the time of my life in which most of them
were composed, I was fonder of metaphor, and more fertile in simile,
than I am now; and I employed both with franker trust in the reader’s
intelligence. Carefully chosen, they are always a powerful means of
concentration; and I could then dismiss in six words, “thistledown
without seeds, and bubbles without color,” forms of art on which I
should now perhaps spend half a page of analytic vituperation; and
represent, with a pleasant accuracy which my best methods of outline and
exposition could now no more achieve, the entire system of modern
plutocratic policy, under the luckily remembered image of the Arabian
bridegroom, bewitched with his heels uppermost.

It is to be remembered also that many of the subjects handled can be
more conveniently treated controversially than directly; the answer to a
single question may be made clearer than a statement which endeavors to
anticipate many; and the crystalline vigor of a truth is often best seen
in the course of its serene collision with a trembling and dissolving
fallacy. But there is a deeper reason than any such accidental ones for
the quality of this book. Since the letters cost me, as aforesaid, much
trouble; since they interrupted me in pleasant work which was usually
liable to take harm by interruption; and since they were likely almost,
in the degree of their force, to be refused by the editors of the
adverse journals, I never was tempted into writing a word for the public
press, unless concerning matters which I had much at heart. And the
issue is, therefore, that the two following volumes contain very nearly
the indices of everything I have deeply cared for during the last forty
years; while not a few of their political notices relate to events of
more profound historical importance than any others that have occurred
during the period they cover; and it has not been an uneventful one.

Nor have the events been without gravity; the greater, because they have
all been inconclusive. Their true conclusions are perhaps nearer than
any of us apprehend; and the part I may be forced to take in them,
though I am old,--perhaps I should rather say, _because_ I am
old,--will, as far as I can either judge or resolve, be not merely
literary.

Whether I am spared to put into act anything here designed for my
country’s help, or am shielded by death from the sight of her remediless
sorrow, I have already done for her as much service as she has will to
receive, by laying before her facts vital to her existence, and
unalterable by her power, in words of which not one has been warped by
interest nor weakened by fear; and which are as pure from selfish
passion as if they were spoken already out of another world.

J. RUSKIN.

ROUEN, _St. Firmin’s Day, 1880_.

EDITOR’S PREFACE.

Some words are needed by way of a general note to the present volumes in
explanation of the principles upon which they have been edited. It is,
however, first due to the compiler of the Bibliography of Mr. Ruskin’s
writings,[1] to state in what measure this book has been prompted and
assisted by his previous labors. Already acquainted with some few of the
letters which Mr. Ruskin had addressed at various times to the different
organs of the daily press, or which had indirectly found their way
there, it was not until I came across the Bibliography that I was
encouraged to complete and arrange a collection of these scattered
portions of his thought. When I had done this, I ventured to submit the
whole number of the letters to their author, and to ask him if, after
taking two or three of them as examples of the rest, he would not
consider the advisability of himself republishing, if not all, at least
a selected few. In reply, he was good enough to put me in communication
with his publisher, and to request me to edit any or all of the letters
without further reference to him.

I have, therefore, to point out that except for that request, or rather
sanction; for the preface which he has promised to add after my work
upon the volumes is finished; and for the title which it bears, Mr.
Ruskin is in no way responsible for this edition of his letters. I knew,
indeed, from the words of “Fors Clavigera” which are printed as a motto
to the book, that I ran little risk of his disapproval in determining to
print, not a selection, but the whole number of letters in question; and
I felt certain that the completeness of the collection would be
considered a first essential by most of its readers, who are thus
assured that the present volumes contain, with but two exceptions, every
letter mentioned in the last edition of the bibliography, and some few
more beside, which have been either printed or discovered since its
publication.

The two exceptions are, first, the series of letters on the Lord’s
Prayer which appeared in the pages of the _Contemporary Review_ last
December; and, secondly, some half-dozen upon “A Museum or Picture
Gallery,” printed in the _Art Journal_ of last June and August. It
seemed that both these sets of letters were really more akin to review
articles cast in an epistolary form, and would thus find fitter place in
a collection of such papers than in the present volumes; and for the
omission of the second set there was a still further reason in the fact
that the series is not yet completed.[2] On the other hand, the recent
circular on the proposed interference with St. Mark’s, Venice, is
included in the first, and one or two other extraneous matters in the
second volume, for reasons which their connection with the letters
amongst which they are placed will make sufficiently clear.

The letters are reprinted word for word, and almost stop for stop, from
the newspapers and other pages in which they first appeared. To ensure
this accuracy was not an easy matter, and to it there are a few
intentional exceptions. A few misprints have been corrected, such as
that of “Fat Bard” for “Fort Bard” (vol. i. p. 147): and now and then
the punctuation has been changed, as on the 256th page of the same
volume, where a comma, placed in the original print of the letter
between the words “visibly” and “owing,” quite confused the sentence. To
these slight alterations may be added others still less important, such
as the commencement of a fresh paragraph, or the closing up of an
existing one, to suit the composition of the type, which the number of
notes rendered unusually tiresome. The title of a letter, too, is not
always that provided it by the newspaper; in some cases it seemed well
to rechristen, in others it was necessary to christen a letter, though
the former has never been done where it was at all possible that the
existing title (for which reference can always be made to the
bibliography) was one given to it by Mr. Ruskin himself.

The classification of the letters is well enough shown by the tables of
contents. The advantages of a topical over a chronological arrangement
appeared beyond all doubt; whilst the addition to each volume of a
chronological list of the letters contained in it, and the further
addition to the second volume of a similar list of all the letters
contained in the book, and of a full index, will, it is hoped, increase
the usefulness of the work.

The beautiful engraving which forms the frontispiece of the first
volume originally formed that of “The Oxford Museum.” The plate was but
little used in the apparently small edition of that book, and was thus
found to be in excellent state for further use here. The woodcut of the
chestnut spandril (vol. i. p. 144) is copied from one which may also be
found in “The Oxford Museum.” The facsimile of part of one of the
letters is not quite satisfactory, the lines being somewhat thicker than
they should be, but it answers its present purpose.

Lastly, the chief difficulty of editing these letters has been in regard
to the notes, and has lain not so much in obtaining the necessary
information as in deciding what use to make of it when obtained. The
first point was, of course, to put the reader of the present volumes in
possession of every fact which would have been common knowledge at the
time when such and such a letter was written; but beyond this there were
various allusions, which might be thought to need explanation;
quotations, the exact reference to which might be convenient; and so
forth. Some notes, therefore, of this character have been also added;
whilst some few which were omitted, either intentionally or by accident,
from the body of the work, may be found on reference to the index.[3]

The effort to make the book complete has induced the notice of slight
variations of text in one or two cases, especially in the reprint of the
St. Mark’s Circular. The space occupied by such notes is small, the
interest which a few students take in the facts they notice really
great, and the appearance of pedantry to some readers is thus risked in
order to meet the special wish of others. The same effort will account
for the reappearance of one or two really unimportant letters in the
Appendix to the second volume, which contains also some few letters the
nature of which is rather personal than public.

I have asked Mr. Ruskin to state in his preface to the book the value he
may set upon it in relation to his other and more connected work; and
for the rest, I have only to add that the editing of it has been the
pleasant labor of my leisure for more than two years past, and to
express my hope that these scattered arrows, some from the bow of “An
Oxford Graduate,” some from that of an Oxford Professor, may not have
been vainly winged anew by

AN OXFORD PUPIL.

_October, 1880._

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS CONTAINED IN THE FIRST VOLUME.

NOTE.--_In the second and third columns the bracketed words and
figures are dating of more or less certainly conjectured; whilst those
unbracketed give the actual the letter._

LETTERS ON ART.

ART CRITICISM AND ART EDUCATION.

“MODERN PAINTERS”; A REPLY. 1843.
ART CRITICISM. 1843.
THE ARTS AS A BRANCH OF EDUCATION. 1857.
ART TEACHING BY CORRESPONDENCE. 1860.

ARROWS OF THE CHACE.

ART CRITICISM AND ART EDUCATION.

[From “The Weekly Chronicle,” September 23, 1843.]

_“MODERN PAINTERS;” A REPLY._

_To the Editor of “The Weekly Chronicle.”_

SIR: I was much gratified by reading in your columns of the 15th[4]
instant a piece of close, candid, and artistical criticism on my work
entitled “Modern Painters.” Serious and well-based criticism is at the
present day so rare, and our periodicals are filled so universally with
the splenetic jargon or meaningless praise of ignorance, that it is no
small pleasure to an author to meet either with praise which he can view
with patience, or censure which he can regard with respect. I seldom,
therefore, read, and have never for an instant thought of noticing, the
ordinary animadversions of the press; but the critique on “Modern
Painters” in your pages is evidently the work of a man both of knowledge
and feeling; and is at once so candid and so keen, so honest and so
subtle, that I am desirous of offering a few remarks on the points on
which it principally touches--they are of importance to art; and I feel
convinced that the writer is desirous only of elucidating truth, not of
upholding a favorite error. With respect first to Gaspar’s painting of
the “Sacrifice of Isaac.” It is not on the faith of any _single_ shadow
that I have pronounced the time intended to be near noon[5]--though the
shadow of the two figures being very short, and cast _from_ the
spectator, is in itself conclusive. The whole system of chiaroscuro of
the picture is lateral; and the light is expressly shown not to come
from the distance by its breaking brightly on the bit of rock and
waterfall on the left, from which the high copse wood altogether
intercepts the rays proceeding from the horizon. There are multitudes of
pictures by Gaspar with this same effect--leaving no doubt whatever on
my mind that they are all manufactured by the same approved recipe,
probably given him by Nicholas, but worked out by Gaspar with the
clumsiness and vulgarity which are invariably attendant on the efforts
of an inferior mind to realize the ideas of a greater. The Italian
masters universally make the horizon the chief light of their picture,
whether the effect intended be of noon or evening. Gaspar, to save
himself the trouble of graduation, washes his sky half blue and half
yellow, and separates the two colors by a line of cloud. In order to get
his light conspicuous and clear, he washes the rest of his sky of a dark
deep blue, without any thoughts about time of day or elevation of sun,
or any such minutiæ; finally, having frequently found the convenience of
a black foreground, with a bit of light coming in round the corner, and
probably having no conception of the possibility of painting a
foreground on any other principle, he naturally falls into the usual
method--blackens it all over, touches in a few rays of lateral light,
and turns out a very respectable article; for in such language only
should we express the completion of a picture painted throughout on
conventional principles, without one reference to nature, and without
one idea of the painter’s own. With respect to Salvator’s “Mercury and
the Woodman,”[6] your critic has not allowed for the effect of time on
its blues. They are now, indeed, sobered and brought down, as is every
other color in the picture, until it is scarcely possible to distinguish
any of the details in its darker parts; but they _have been_ pure and
clean, and the mountain is absolutely the same color as the open part of
the sky. When I say it is “in full light,” I do not mean that it is the
highest light of the picture (for no distant mountain _can_ be so, when
compared with bright earth or white clouds), but that no accidental
shadow is cast upon it; that it is under open sky, and so illumined that
there must necessarily be a difference in hue between its light and dark
sides, at which Salvator has not even hinted.

Again, with respect to the question of focal distances,[7] your critic,
in common with many very clever people to whom I have spoken on the
subject, has confused the obscurity of objects which are _laterally_ out
of the focal _range_, with that of objects which are _directly_ out of
the focal _distance_. If all objects in a landscape were in the same
plane, they should be represented on the plane of the canvas with equal
distinctness, because the eye has no greater lateral range on the canvas
than in the landscape, and can only command a point in each. But this
point in the landscape may present an intersection of lines belonging to
different distances--as when a branch of a tree, or tuft of grass, cuts
against the horizon: and yet these different distances cannot be
discerned together: we lose one if we look at the other, so that no
painful intersection of lines is ever felt. But on the canvas, as the
lines of foreground and of distance are on the _same_ plane, they _will_
be seen together whenever they intersect, painfully and distinctly; and,
therefore, unless we make one series, whether near or distant, obscure
and indefinite, we shall always represent as visible at once that which
the eye can only perceive by two separate acts of seeing. Hold up your
finger before this page, six inches from it. If you look at the edge of
your finger, you cannot see the letters; if you look at the letters, you
cannot see the edge of your finger, but as a confused, double, misty
line. Hence in painting, you must either take for your subject the
finger or the letters; you cannot paint both distinctly without
violation of truth. It is of no consequence how quick the change of the
eye may be; it is not one whit quicker than its change from one part of
the horizon to another, nor are the two intersecting distances more
visible at the same time than two opposite portions of a landscape to
which it passes in succession. Whenever, therefore, in a landscape, we
look from the foreground to the distance, the foreground is subjected to
_two_ degrees of indistinctness: the first, that of an object
_laterally_ out of the focus of the eye; and the _second_, that of an
object _directly_ out of the focus of the eye; being too near to be seen
with the focus adapted to the distance. In the picture, when we look
from the foreground to the distance, the foreground is subjected only to
_one_ degree of indistinctness, that of being out of the lateral range;
for as both the painting of the distance and of the foreground are on
the same plane, they are seen together with the same focus. Hence we
must supply the _second_ degree of indistinctness by slurring with the
brush, or we shall have a severe and painful intersection of near and
distant lines, impossible in nature. Finally, a very false principle is
implied by part of what is advanced by your critic--which has led to
infinite error in art, and should therefore be instantly combated
whenever it were hinted--that the ideal is different from the true. It
is, on the contrary, only the perfection of truth. The Apollo is not a
_false_ representation of man, but the most perfect representation of
all that is constant and essential in man--free from the accidents and
evils which corrupt the truth of his nature.[8] Supposing we are
describing to a naturalist some animal he does not know, and we tell him
we saw one with a hump on its back, and another with strange bends in
its legs, and another with a long tail, and another with no tail, he
will ask us directly, But what is its _true_ form, what is its _real_
form? This truth, this reality, which he requires of us, is the _ideal_
form, that which is hinted at by all the individuals--aimed at, but not
arrived at. But never let it be said that, when a painter is defying the
principles of nature at every roll of his brush, as I have shown that
Gaspar does, when, instead of working out the essential characters of
specific form, and raising those to their highest degree of nobility and
beauty, he is casting all character aside, and carrying out imperfection
and accident; never let it be said, in excuse for such degradation of
nature, that it is done in pursuit of the ideal. As well might this be
said in defence of the promising sketch of the human form pasted on the
wainscot behind the hope of the family--artist and musician of equal
power--in the “Blind Fiddler.”[9] Ideal beauty is the generalization of
consummate knowledge, the concentration of perfect truth--not the
abortive vision of ignorance in its study. Nor was there ever yet one
conception of the human mind beautiful, but as it was based on truth.
Whenever we leave nature, we fall immeasurably beneath her. So, again,
I find fault with the “ropy wreath” of Gaspar,[10] not because he chose
massy cloud instead of light cloud; but because he has drawn his massy
cloud _falsely_, making it look tough and powerless, like a chain of
Bologna sausages, instead of gifting it with the frangible and elastic
vastness of nature’s mountain vapor.

Finally, Sir, why must it be only “when he is gone from us”[11] that the
power of our greatest English landscape painter is to be acknowledged?
It cannot, indeed, be fully understood until the current of years has
swept away the minor lights which stand around it, and left it burning
alone; but at least the scoff and the sneer might be lashed into
silence, if those only did their duty by whom it is already perceived.
And let us not think that our unworthiness has no effect on the work of
the master. I could be patient if I thought that _no_ effect was wrought
on his noble mind by the cry of the populace; but, scorn it as he may,
and does, it is yet impossible for any human mind to hold on its course,
with the same energy and life, through the oppression of a perpetual
hissing, as when it is cheered on by the quick sympathy of its
fellow-men. It is not in art as in matters of political duty, where the
path is clear and the end visible. The springs of feeling may be
oppressed or sealed by the want of an answer in other bosoms, though the
sense of principle cannot be blunted except by the individual’s _own_
error; and though the knowledge of what is right, and the love of what
is beautiful, may still support our great painter through the languor of
age--and Heaven grant it may for years to come--yet we cannot hope that
he will ever cast his spirit upon the canvas with the same freedom and
fire as if he felt that the voice of its inspiration was waited for
among men, and dwelt upon with devotion. Once, in ruder times, the work
of a great painter[12] was waited for through days at his door, and
attended to its place of deposition by the enthusiasm of a hundred
cities; and painting rose from that time, a rainbow upon the Seven
Hills, and on the cypressed heights of Fiésole, guiding them and
lighting them forever, even in the stillness of their decay. How can we
hope that England will ever win for herself such a crown, while the
works of her highest intellects are set for the pointing of the finger
and the sarcasm of the tongue, and the sole reward for the deep,
earnest, holy labor of a devoted life, is the weight of stone upon the
trampled grave, where the vain and idle crowd will come to wonder how
the brushes are mimicked in the marble above the dust of him who wielded
them in vain?

I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your most obedient servant,
THE AUTHOR OF “MODERN PAINTERS.”

[From the “Artist and Amateur’s Magazine” (edited by E. V. Rippingille), January,
1843, pp. 280-287.]

_ART CRITICISM._

_To the Editor of the “Artist and Amateur’s Magazine.”_

SIR--Anticipating, with much interest, your reply to the candid and
earnest inquiries of your unknown correspondent, Matilda Y.,[13] I am
led to hope that you will allow me to have some share with you in the
pleasant task of confirming an honest mind in the truth. Subject always
to your animadversion and correction, so far as I may seem to you to be
led astray by my peculiar love for the works of the artist to whom her
letter refers, I yet trust that in most of the remarks I have to make on
the points which have perplexed her, I shall be expressing not only your
own opinions, but those of every other accomplished artist who is really
acquainted--and which of our English masters is not?--with the noble
system of poetry and philosophy which has been put forth on canvas,
during the last forty years, by the great painter who has presented us
with the almost unparalleled example of a man winning for himself the
unanimous plaudits of his generation and time, and then casting them
away like dust, that he may build his monument--ære perennius.

Your correspondent herself, in saying that mere knowledge of _pictures_
cannot qualify a man for the office of a critic, has touched the first
source of the schisms of the present, and of all time, in questions of
pictorial merit. We are overwhelmed with a tribe of critics who are
fully imbued with every kind of knowledge which is useful to the
picture-dealer, but with none that is important to the artist. They know
where a picture _has_ been retouched, but not where it _ought_ to have
been; they know if it has been injured, but not if the injury is to be
regretted. They are unquestionable authorities in all matters relating
to the panel or the canvas, to the varnish or the vehicle, while they
remain in entire ignorance of that which the vehicle conveys. They are
well acquainted with the technical qualities of every master’s touch;
and when their discrimination fails, plume themselves on indisputable
tradition, and point triumphantly to the documents of pictorial
genealogy. But they never go _quite_ far enough back; they stop _one_
step short of the real original; they reach the human one, but never the
Divine. Whatever, under the present system of study, the connoisseur of
the gallery may learn or know, there is one thing he does _not_
know--and that is nature. It is a pitiable thing to hear a man like Dr.
Waagen,[14] about to set the seal of his approbation, or the brand of
his reprobation, on all the pictures in our island, expressing his
insipid astonishment on his first acquaintance with the sea. “For the
_first_ time I understood the truth of their pictures (Backhuysen’s and
Van de Velde’s), and the refined art with which, by intervening dashes
of sunshine, near or at a distance, and _ships to animate the scene_,
they produce such a charming variety on the surface of the sea.” For the
first time!--and yet this gallery-bred judge, this discriminator of
colored shreds and canvas patches, who has no idea how ships animate the
sea, until--charged with the fates of the Royal Academy--he ventures his
invaluable person from Rotterdam to Greenwich, will walk up to the work
of a man whose brow is hard with the spray of a hundred storms, and
characterize it as “wanting in truth of clouds and waves”! Alas for Art,
while such judges sit enthroned on their apathy to the beautiful, and
their ignorance of the true, and with a canopy of canvas between them
and the sky, and a wall of tradition, which may not be broken through,
concealing from them the horizon, hurl their darkened verdicts against
the works of men, whose night and noon have been wet with the dew of
heaven--dwelling on the deep sea, or wandering among the solitary places
of the earth, until they have “made the mountains, waves, and skies a
part of them and of their souls.”

When information so narrow is yet the whole stock in trade of the
highest authorities of the day, what are we to expect from the lowest?
Dr. Waagen is a most favorable specimen of the tribe of critics; a man,
we may suppose, impartial, above all national or party prejudice, and
intimately acquainted with that half of his subject (the technical half)
which is all we can reasonably expect to be known by one who has been
trained in the painting-room instead of in the fields. No authority is
more incontrovertible in all questions of the genuineness of old
pictures. He has at least the merit--not common among those who talk
most of the old masters--of knowing what he _does_ admire, and will not
fall into the same raptures before an execrable copy as before the
original. If, then, we find a man of this real judgment in those matters
to which his attention has been directed, entirely incapable, owing to
his ignorance of nature, of estimating a modern picture, what can we
hope from those lower critics who are unacquainted even with those
technical characters which they have opportunities of learning? What,
for instance, are we to anticipate from the sapient lucubrations of the
critic--for some years back the disgrace of the pages of
“Blackwood”--who in one breath displays his knowledge of nature, by
styling a painting of a furze bush in the bed of a mountain torrent a
specimen of the “high pastoral,” and in the next his knowledge of Art,
by informing us that Mr. Lee “reminds him of Gainsborough’s best manner,
but is inferior to him in composition”![15] We do not mean to say
anything against Mr. Lee; but can we forbear to smile at the hopeless
innocence of the man’s novitiate, who could be reminded by them of
landscapes powerful enough in color to take their place beside those of
Rembrandt or Rubens? A little attention will soon convince your
correspondent of the utter futility or falsehood of the ordinary
critiques of the press; and there could, I believe, even at present, be
little doubt in her mind as to the fitting answer to the question,
whether we are to take the opinion of the accomplished artist or of the
common newsmonger, were it not for a misgiving which, be she conscious
of it or not, is probably floating in her mind--whether that can really
be _great_ Art which has no influence whatsoever on the multitude, and
is appreciable only by the initiated few. And this is the real question
of difficulty. It is easy to prove that such and such a critic is wrong;
but not so, to prove that what everybody dislikes is right. It is
fitting to pay respect to Sir Augustus Callcott, but is it so to take
his word against all the world?

This inquiry requires to be followed with peculiar caution; for by
setting at defiance the judgment of the public, we in some sort may
appear to justify that host of petty scribblers, and contemptible
painters, who in all time have used the same plea in defence of their
rejected works, and have received in consequence merciless chastisement
from contemporary and powerful authors or painters, whose reputation was
as universal as it was just. “Mes ouvrages,” said Rubens to his
challenger, Abraham Janssens, “ont été exposés en Italie, et en Espagne,
sans que j’aie reçu la nouvelle de leur condamnation. Vous n’avez qu’à
soumettre les votres à la même épreuve.”[16] “Je défie,” says Boileau,
“tous les amateurs les plus mécontents du public, de me citer un bon
livre que le public ait jamais rebuté, à moins qu’ils ne mettent en ce
rang leur écrits, de la bonté desquels eux seuls sont persuadés.”

Now the fact is, that the whole difficulty of the question is caused by
the ambiguity of this word--the “public.” Whom does it include? People
continually forget that there is a _separate_ public for every picture,
and for every book. Appealed to with reference to any particular work,
the public is that class of persons who possess the knowledge which it
presupposes, and the faculties to which it is addressed. With reference
to a new edition of Newton’s Principia, the “public” means little more
than the Royal Society. With reference to one of Wordsworth’s poems, it
means all who have hearts. With reference to one of Moore’s, all who
have passions. With reference to the works of Hogarth, it means those
who have worldly knowledge to the works of Giotto, those who have
religious faith. Each work must be tested exclusively by the fiat of
the _particular_ public to whom it is addressed. We will listen to no
comments on Newton from people who have no mathematical knowledge; to
none on Wordsworth from those who have no hearts; to none on Giotto from
those who have no religion. Therefore, when we have to form a judgment
of any new work, the question “What do the public say to it?” is indeed
of vital importance; but we must always inquire, first, who are _its_
public? We must not submit a treatise on moral philosophy to a conclave
of horse-jockeys, nor a work of deep artistical research to the writers
for the Art Union.

The public, then, we repeat, when referred to with respect to a
particular work, consist only of those who have knowledge of its
subject, and are possessed of the faculties to which it is addressed.

If it fail of touching _these_, the work is a bad one; but it in no
degree militates against it that it is rejected by those to whom it does
not appeal. To whom, then, let us ask, and to _what_ public do the works
of Turner appeal? To those only, we reply, who have profound and
disciplined acquaintance with nature, ardent poetical feeling, and keen
eye for color (a faculty far more rare than an ear for music). They are
deeply-toned poems, intended for all who love poetry, but not for those
who delight in mimickries of wine-glasses and nutshells. They are deep
treatises on natural phenomena, intended for all who are acquainted with
such phenomena, but not for those who, like the painter Barry, are
amazed at finding the realities of the Alps grander than the
imaginations of Salvator, and assert that they saw the moon from the
Mont Cenis four times as big as usual, “from being so much nearer to
it”![17] And they are studied melodies of exquisite color, intended for
those who have perception of color; not for those who fancy that all
trees are Prussian green. Then comes the question, Were the works of
Turner _ever_ rejected by any person possessing even partially these
qualifications? We answer boldly, never. On the contrary, they are
universally hailed by _this_ public with an enthusiasm not undeserving
in appearance--at least to those who are debarred from sharing in it, of
its usual soubriquet--the Turner mania.

Is, then, the number of those who are acquainted with the truth of
nature so limited? So it has been asserted by one who knew much both of
Art and Nature, and both were glorious in his country.[19]

"ΙΙΙ. Οὐ μέντοι εἰώθασιν ἄνθρωποι ὀνομάζειν οὔτως
ΣΩ. Πότερον, ὦ Ἱππία, οἱ εἰδότες ἢ οἱ μὴ εἰδότες;
ΙΠ. Οἱ πολλοί.
ΣΩ. Εἰσὶ δ᾿ οὗτοι οἱ εἰδότες τἀληθές, οἱ πολλοί;
ΙΠ. Οὐ δῆτα.
HIPPIAS MAJOR.

Now, we are not inclined to go quite so far as this. There are many
subjects with respect to which the multitude _are_ cognizant of truth,
or at least of _some_ truth; and those subjects may be generally
characterized as everything which materially concerns themselves or
their interests. The public are acquainted with the nature of their own
passions, and the point of their own calamities--can laugh at the
weakness they feel, and weep at the miseries they have experienced; but
all the sagacity they possess, be it how great soever, will not enable
them to judge of likeness to that which they have never seen, nor to
acknowledge principles on which they have never reflected. Of a comedy
or a drama, an epigram or a ballad, they are judges from whom there is
no appeal; but not of the representation of facts which they have never
examined, of beauties which they have never loved. It is not sufficient
that the facts or the features of nature be around us, while they are
not within us. We may walk day by day through grove and meadow, and
scarcely know more concerning them than is known by bird and beast, that
the one has shade for the head, and the other softness for the foot. It
is not true that “the eye, it cannot choose but see,” unless we obey the
following condition, and go forth “in a wise passiveness,”[21] free from
that plague of our own hearts which brings the shadow of ourselves, and
the tumult of our petty interests and impatient passions, across the
light and calm of Nature. We do not sit at the feet of our mistress to
listen to her teaching; but we seek her only to drag from her that which
may suit our purpose, to see in her the confirmation of a theory, or
find in her fuel for our pride. Nay, do we often go to her even thus?
Have we not rather cause to take to ourselves the full weight of
Wordsworth’s noble appeal--

“Vain pleasures of luxurious life!
Forever with yourselves at strife,
Through town and country, both deranged
By affections interchanged,
And all the perishable gauds
That heaven-deserted man applauds.
When will your hapless patrons learn
To watch and ponder, to discern
The freshness, the eternal youth
Of admiration, sprung from truth,
From beauty infinitely growing
Upon a mind with love overflowing:
To sound the depths of every art
That seeks its wisdom through the heart?”[22]

When _will_ they learn it? Hardly, we fear, in this age of steam and
iron, luxury and selfishness. We grow more and more artificial day by
day, and see less and less worthiness in those pleasures which bring
with them no morbid excitement, in that knowledge which affords us no
opportunity of display. Your correspondent may rest assured that those
who do not _care_ for nature, who do not love her, _cannot_ see her. A
few of her phenomena lie on the surface; the nobler number lie deep, and
are the reward of watching and of thought. The artist may choose _which_
he will render: no human art can render both. If he paint the surface,
he will catch the crowd; if he paint the depth, he will be admired
only--but with how deep and fervent admiration, none but they who feel
it can tell--by the thoughtful and observant few.

There are some admirable observations on this subject in your December
number (“An Evening’s Gossip with a Painter”[23]); but there is one
circumstance with respect to the works of Turner which yet further
limits the number of their admirers. They are not prosaic statements of
the phenomena of nature--they are statements of them under the influence
of ardent feeling; they are, in a word, the most fervent and real poetry
which the English nation is at present producing. Now not only is this
proverbially an age in which poetry is little cared for; but even with
those who have most love of it, and most need of it, it requires,
especially if high and philosophical, an attuned, quiet, and exalted
frame of mind for its enjoyment; and if dragged into the midst of the
noisy interests of every-day life, may easily be made ridiculous or
offensive. Wordsworth recited, by Mr. Wakley, in the House of Commons,
in the middle of a financial debate, would sound, in all probability,
very like Mr. Wakley’s[24] own verses. Wordsworth, read in the stillness
of a mountain hollow, has the force of the mountain waters. What would
be the effect of a passage of Milton recited in the middle of a
pantomime, or of a dreamy stanza of Shelley upon the Stock Exchange? Are
we to judge of the nightingale by hearing it sing in broad daylight in
Cheapside? For just such a judgment do we form of Turner by standing
before his pictures in the Royal Academy. It is a strange thing that the
public never seem to suspect that there may be a poetry in painting, to
meet which, some preparation of sympathy, some harmony of circumstance,
is required; and that it is just as impossible to see half a dozen great
pictures as to read half a dozen great poems at the same time, if their
tendencies or their tones of feeling be contrary or discordant. Let us
imagine what would be the effect on the mind of any man of feeling, to
whom an eager friend, desirous of impressing upon him the merit of
different poets, should read successively, and without a pause, the
following passages, in which lie something of the prevailing character
of the works of six of our greatest modern artists:

LANDSEER.

“His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs,
Show’d he was nane o’ Scotland’s dougs,
But whalpit some place far abroad
Whar sailors gang to fish for cod.”[25]

MARTIN.

“Far in the horizon to the north appear’d,
From skirt to skirt, a fiery region, stretched
In battailous aspéct, and nearer view
Bristled with upright beams innumerable
Of rigid spears, and helmets throng’d, and shields
Various, with boastful argument portray’d.”

WILKIE.

“The risin’ moon began to glowr
The distant Cumnock hills out owre;
To count her horns, wi’ a’ my pow’r,
I set mysel’;
But whether she had three or fowr,
I couldna tell.”

EASTLAKE.

“And thou, who tell’st me to forget,
Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet.”

STANFIELD.

“Ye mariners of England,
Who guard our native seas,
Whose flag has braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze.”

TURNER.

“The point of one white star is quivering still,
Deep in the orange light of widening dawn,
Beyond the purple mountains. Through a chasm
Of wind-divided mist the darker lake
Reflects it, now it fades: it gleams again,
As the waves fall, and as the burning threads
Of woven cloud unravel in pale air,
’Tis lost! and through yon peaks of cloudlike snow
The roseate sunlight quivers.”

Precisely to such advantage as the above passages, so placed,[26]
appear, are the works of any painter of mind seen in the Academy. None
suffer more than Turner’s, which are not only interfered with by the
prosaic pictures around them, but neutralize each other. Two works of
his, side by side, destroy each other to a dead certainty, for each is
so vast, so complete, so demandant of every power, so sufficient for
every desire of the mind, that it is utterly impossible for two to be
comprehended together. Each must have the undivided intellect, and each
is destroyed by the attraction of the other; and it is the chief power
and might of these pictures, that they are works for the closet and the
heart--works to be dwelt upon separately and devotedly, and then chiefly
when the mind is in its highest tone, and desirous of a beauty which may
be food for its immortality. It is the very stamp and essence of the
purest poetry, that it can only be so met and understood; and that the
clash of common interests, and the roar of the selfish world, must be
hushed about the heart, before it can hear the still, small voice,
wherein rests the power communicated from the Holiest.[27]

Can, then, will be, if I mistake not, the final inquiry of your
correspondent,--can, then, we ordinary mortals,--can I, who am not Sir
Augustus Callcott, nor Sir Francis Chantrey, ever derive any pleasure
from works of this lofty character? Heaven forbid, we reply, that it
should be otherwise. _Nothing_ more is necessary for the appreciation of
them, than that which is necessary for the appreciation of any great
writer--the quiet study of him with an humble heart. There are, indeed,
technical qualities, difficulties overcome and principles developed,
which are reserved for the enjoyment of the artist; but these do not add
to the influence of the picture. On the contrary, we must break through
its charm, before we can comprehend its means, and “murder to dissect.”
The picture is intended, not for artists alone, but for all who love
what it portrays; and so little doubt have we of the capacity of all to
understand the works in question, that we have the most confident
expectation, within the next fifty years, of seeing the name of Turner
placed on the same impregnable height with that of Shakespeare.[29] Both
have committed errors of taste and judgment. In both it is, or will be,
heresy even to feel those errors, so entirely are they overbalanced by
the gigantic powers of whose impetuosity they are the result. So soon as
the public are convinced, by the maintained testimony of high authority,
that Turner is worth understanding, they will try to understand him; and
if they try, they can. Nor are they, now, as is commonly thought,
despised or defied by him. He has too much respect for them to endeavor
to please them by falsehood. He will not win for himself a hearing by
the betrayal of his message.

Finally, then, we would recommend your correspondent, first, to divest
herself of every atom of lingering respect or regard for the common
criticism of the press, and to hold fast by the authority of Callcott,
Chantrey, Landseer, and Stanfield; and this, not because we would have
her _slavishly_ subject to any authority but that of her own eyes and
reason, but because we would not have her blown about with every wind of
doctrine, before she has convinced her reason or learned to use her
eyes. And if she can draw at all, let her make careful studies of any
natural objects that may happen to come in her way,--sticks, leaves, or
stones,--and of distant atmospheric effects on groups of objects; not
for the sake of the drawing itself, but for the sake of the powers of
attention and accurate observation which thus only can be cultivated.
And let her make the study, not thinking of this artist or of that; not
conjecturing what Harding would have done, or Stanfield, or Callcott,
with her subject; not trying to draw in a bold style, or a free style,
or any other style; but drawing _all_ she _sees_, as far as may be in
her power, earnestly, faithfully, unselectingly; and, which is perhaps
the more difficult task of the two, _not_ drawing what she does _not_
see. Oh, if people did but know how many lines nature _suggests_ without
_showing_, what different art should we have! And let her never be
discouraged by ill success. She will seldom have gained more knowledge
than when she most feels her failure. Let her use every opportunity of
examining the works of Turner; let her try to copy them, then try to
copy some one else’s, and observe which presents most of that kind of
difficulty which she found in copying nature. Let her, if possible,
extend her acquaintance with wild natural scenery of every kind and
character, endeavoring in each species of scenery to distinguish those
features which are expressive and harmonious from those which are
unaffecting or incongruous; and after a year or two of such discipline
as this, let her judge for herself. No authority need then, or can then,
be very influential with her. Her own pleasure in works of true
greatness[30] will be too real, too instinctive, to be persuaded or
laughed out of her. We bid her, therefore, heartily good-speed, with
this final warning: Let her beware, in going to nature, of taking with
her the commonplace dogmas or dicta of art. Let her not look for what is
like Titian or like Claude, for composed form or arranged chiaroscuro;
but believe that everything which God has made is beautiful, and that
everything which nature teaches is true. Let her beware, above
everything, of that wicked pride which makes man think he can dignify
God’s glorious creations, or exalt the majesty of his universe. Let her
be humble, we repeat, and earnest Truth was never sealed, if so sought.
And once more we bid her good-speed in the words of our poet-moralist:

“Enough of Science and of Art:
Seal up these barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches, and receives.”[31]

I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your obedient humble servant,
THE AUTHOR OF “MODERN PAINTERS.”

[From “Some Account of the Origin and Objects of the New Oxford
Examinations for the Title of Associate in Arts and Certificates,”
by T. D. Acland, late Fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford,[32]
1858, pp. 54-60.]

_THE ARTS AS A BRANCH OF EDUCATION._

PENRITH, Sept. 25, 1857.

MY DEAR SIR: I have just received your most interesting letter, and will
try to answer as shortly as I can, saying nothing of what I feel, and
what you must well know I should feel, respecting the difficulty of the
questions and their importance; except only this, that I should not have
had the boldness to answer your letter by return of post, unless, in
consequence of conversations on this subject with Mr. Acland and Dr.
Acland, two months ago, I had been lately thinking of it more than of
any other.[33]

Your questions fall under two heads: (1) The range which an art
examination can take; (2) The connection in which it should be placed
with other examinations.

I think the art examination should have three objects:

(1) To put the happiness and knowledge which the study of art conveys
within the conception of the youth, so that he may in after-life pursue
them, if he has the gift.

(2) To enforce, as far as possible, such knowledge of art among those
who are likely to become its patrons, or the guardian of its works, as
may enable them, usefully to fulfil those duties.

(3) To distinguish pre-eminent gift for the production of works of art,
so as to get hold of all the good artistical faculty born in the
country, and leave no Giotto lost among hill-shepherds.[34]

In order to accomplish the first object, I think that, according to Mr.
Acland’s proposal, preliminary knowledge of drawing and music should be
asked for, in connection with writing and arithmetic; but not, in the
preliminary examination, made to count towards distinction in other
schools. I think drawing is a necessary means of the expression of
certain facts of form and means of acquaintance with them, as arithmetic
is the means of acquaintance with facts of number. I think the facts
which an elementary knowledge of drawing enables a man to observe and
note are often of as much importance to him as those which he can
describe in words or calculate in numbers. And I think the cases in
which mental deficiency would prevent the acquirement of a serviceable
power of drawing would be found as rare as those in which no progress
could be made in arithmetic. I would not desire this elementary
knowledge to extend far, but the limits which I would propose are not
here in question. While I feel the force of all the admirable
observations of Mr. Hullah on the use of the study of music, I imagine
that the cases of physical incapacity of distinguishing sounds would be
too frequent to admit of musical knowledge being made a _requirement_; I
would _ask_ for it, in Mr. Acland’s sense; but the drawing might, I
think, be required, as arithmetic would be.

2. To accomplish the second object is the main difficulty. Touching
which I venture positively to state:

First. That sound criticism of art is impossible to young men, for it
consists principally, and in a far more exclusive sense than has yet
been felt, in the recognition of the facts represented by the art. A
great artist represents many and abstruse facts; it is necessary, in
order to judge of his works, that all those facts should be
experimentally (not by hearsay) known to the observer; whose recognition
of them constitutes his approving judgment. A young man _cannot_ know
them.

Criticism of art by young men must, therefore, consist either in the
more or less apt retailing and application of received opinions, or in a
more or less immediate and dextrous use of the knowledge they already
possess, so as to be able to assert of given works of art that they are
true up to a certain point; the probability being then that they are
true farther than the young man sees.

The first kind of criticism is, in general, useless, if not harmful; the
second is that which the youths will employ who are capable of becoming
critics in after years.

Secondly. All criticism of art, at whatever period of life, must be
partial; warped more or less by the feelings of the person endeavoring
to judge. Certain merits of art (as energy, for instance) are pleasant
only to certain temperaments; and certain tendencies of art (as, for
instance, to religious sentiment) can only be sympathized with by one
order of minds. It is almost impossible to conceive of any mode of
examination which would set the students on anything like equitable
footing in such respects; but their sensibility to art may be generally
tested.

Thirdly. The history of art, or the study, in your accurate words,
“_about_ the subject,” is in no wise directly connected with the studies
which promote or detect art-capacity or art-judgment. It is quite
possible to acquire the most extensive and useful knowledge of the forms
of art existing in different ages, and among different nations, without
thereby acquiring any power whatsoever of determining respecting any of
them (much less respecting a modern work of art) whether it is good or
bad.

These three facts being so, we had perhaps best consider, first, what
direction the art studies of the youth should take, as that will at once
regulate the mode of examination.

First. He should be encouraged to carry forward the practical power of
drawing he has acquired in the elementary school. This should be done
chiefly by using that power as a help in other work: precision of touch
should be cultivated by map-drawing in his geography class; taste in
form by flower-drawing in the botanical schools; and bone and limb
drawing in the physiological schools. His art, kept thus to practical
service, will always be right as far as it goes; there will be no
affectation or shallowness in it. The work of the drawing-master would
be at first little more than the exhibition of the best means and
enforcement of the most perfect results in the collateral studies of
form.

Secondly. His critical power should be developed by the presence around
him of the best models, _into the excellence of which his knowledge
permits him to enter_. He should be encouraged, above all things, to
form and express judgment of his own; not as if his judgment were of any
importance as related to the excellence of the thing, but that both his
master and he may know precisely in what state his mind is. He should be
told of an Albert Dürer engraving, “That _is_ good, whether you like it
or not; but be sure to determine _whether_ you do or do not, and why.”
All formal expressions of reasons for opinion, such as a boy could catch
up and repeat, should be withheld like poison; and all models which are
too good for him should be kept out of his way. Contemplation of works
of art without understanding them jades the faculties and enslaves the
intelligence. A Rembrandt etching is a better example to a boy than a
finished Titian, and a cast from a leaf than one of the Elgin marbles.

Thirdly. I would no more involve the art-schools in the study of the
history of art than surgical schools in that of the history of surgery.
But a general idea of the influence of art on the human mind ought to be
given by the study of history in the historical schools; the effect of a
picture, and power of a painter, being examined just as carefully (in
relation to its extent) as the effect of a battle and the power of a
general. History, in its full sense, involves subordinate knowledge of
all that influences the acts of mankind; it has hardly yet been written
at all, owing to the want of such subordinate knowledge in the
historians; it has been confined either to the relation of events by
eye-witnesses (the only valuable form of it), or the more or less
ingenious collation of such-relations. And it is especially desirable
to give history a more archæological range at this period, so that the
class of manufactures produced by a city at a given date should be made
of more importance in the student’s mind than the humors of the factions
that governed, or details of the accidents that preserved it, because
every day renders the destruction of historical memorials more complete
in Europe owing to the total want of interest in them felt by its upper
and middle classes.

Fourthly. Where the faculty for art was special, it ought to be carried
forward to the study of design, first in practical application to
manufacture, then in higher branches of composition. The general
principles of the application of art to manufacture should be explained
in all cases, whether of special or limited faculty. Under this head we
may at once get rid of the third question stated in the first page--how
to detect special gift. The power of drawing from a given form
accurately would not be enough to prove this: the additional power of
design, with that of eye for color, which could be tested in the class
concerned with manufacture, would justify the master in advising and
encouraging the youth to undertake special pursuit of art as an object
of life.

It seems easy, on the supposition of such a course of study, to conceive
a mode of examination which would test relative excellence. I cannot
suggest the kind of questions which ought to be put to the class
occupied with sculpture; but in my own business of painting, I should
put, in general, such tasks and questions as these:

(1) “Sketch such and such an object” (given a difficult one, as a bird,
complicated piece of drapery, or foliage) “as completely as you can in
light and shade in half an hour.”

(2) “Finish such and such a portion of it” (given a very small portion)
“as perfectly as you can, irrespective of time.”

(3) “Sketch it in color in half an hour.”

(4) “Design an ornament for a given place and purpose.”

(5) “Sketch a picture of a given historical event in pen and ink.”

(6) “Sketch it in colors.”

(7) “Name the picture you were most interested in in the Royal Academy
Exhibition of this year. State in writing what you suppose to be its
principal merits--faults--the reasons of the _interest_ you took in it.”

I think it is only the fourth of these questions which would admit of
much change; and the seventh, in the name of the exhibition; the
question being asked, without previous knowledge by the students,
respecting some _one_ of four or five given exhibitions which should be
visited before the Examination.

This being my general notion of what an Art-Examination should be, the
second great question remains of the division of schools and connection
of studies.

Now I have not yet considered--I have not, indeed, knowledge enough to
enable me to consider--what the practical convenience or results of
given arrangements would be. But the logical and harmonious arrangement
is surely a simple one; and it seems to me as if it would not be
inconvenient, namely (requiring elementary drawing with arithmetic in
the preliminary Examination), that there should then be three advanced
schools:

A. The School of Literature (occupied chiefly in the study of human
emotion and history).

B. The School of Science (occupied chiefly in the study of external
facts and existences of constant kind).

C. The School of Art (occupied in the development of active and
productive human faculties).

In the school A, I would include Composition in all languages, Poetry,
History, Archæology, Ethics.

In the school B, Mathematics, Political Economy, the Physical Sciences
(including Geography and Medicine).

In the school C, Painting, Sculpture, including Architecture,
Agriculture, Manufacture, War, Music, Bodily Exercises (Navigation in
seaport schools), including laws of health.

I should require, for a first class, proficiency in two schools; not, of
course, in all the subjects of each chosen school, but in a well-chosen
and combined group of them. Thus, I should call a very good first-class
man one who had got some such range of subjects, and such proficiency in
each, as this:

English, Greek, and Mediæval-Italian Literature High.
English and French History, and Archæology Average.
Conic Sections Thorough, as far as learnt.
Political Economy Thorough, as far as learnt.
Botany, _or_ Chemistry, _or_ Physiology High.
Painting Average.
Music Average.
Bodily Exercises High.

I have written you a sadly long letter, but I could not manage to get it
shorter.

Believe me, my dear Sir,
Very faithfully and respectfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.

REV. F. TEMPLE.

Perhaps I had better add what to you, but not to every one who considers
such a scheme of education, would be palpable--that the main value of it
would be brought out by judicious involution of its studies. This, for
instance, would be the kind of Examination Paper I should hope for in
the Botanical Class:

1. State the habit of such and such a plant.

2. Sketch its leaf, and a portion of its ramifications (memory).

3. Explain the mathematical laws of its growth and structure.

4. Give the composition of its juices in different seasons.

5. Its uses? Its relations to other families of plants, and conceivable
uses beyond those known?

6. Its commercial value in London? Mode of cultivation?

7. Its mythological meaning? The commonest or most beautiful fables
respecting it?

8. Quote any important references to it by great poets.

9. Time of its introduction.

10. Describe its consequent influence on civilization.

Of all these ten questions, there is not one which does not test the
student in other studies than botany. Thus, 1, Geography; 2, Drawing; 3,
Mathematics; 4, 5, Chemistry; 6, Political Economy; 7, 8, 9, 10,
Literature.

Of course the plants required to be thus studied could be but few, and
would rationally be chosen from the most useful of foreign plants, and
those common and indigenous in England. All sciences should, I think, be
taught more for the sake of their facts, and less for that of their
system, than heretofore. Comprehensive and connected views are
impossible to most men; the systems they learn are nothing but skeletons
to them; but nearly all men can understand the relations of a few facts
bearing on daily business, and to be exemplified in common substances.
And science will soon be so vast that the most comprehensive men will
still be narrow, and we shall see the fitness of rather teaching our
youth to concentrate their general intelligence highly on given points
than scatter it towards an infinite horizon from which they can fetch
nothing, and to which they can carry nothing.

[From “Nature and Art,” December 1, 1866.]

_ART-TEACHING BY CORRESPONDENCE._

DEAR MR. WILLIAMS:[35] I like your plan of teaching by letter
exceedingly: and not only so, but have myself adopted it largely, with
the help of an intelligent under-master, whose operations, however, so
far from interfering with, you will much facilitate, if you can bring
this literary way of teaching into more accepted practice. I wish we had
more drawing-masters who were able to give instruction definite enough
to be expressed in writing: many can teach nothing but a few tricks of
the brush, and have nothing to write, because nothing to tell.

With every wish for your success,--a wish which I make quite as much in
your pupils’ interest as in your own,--

Believe me, always faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, _November, 1860_.

LETTERS ON ART.

II.

PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY.

DANGER TO THE NATIONAL GALLERY. 1847.
THE NATIONAL GALLERY. 1852.
THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 1866.
ON THE PURCHASE OF PICTURES. 1880.

II.

PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY.

[From “The Times,” January 7, 1847.]

_DANGER TO THE NATIONAL GALLERY._[36]

_To the Editor of “The Times.”_

SIR: As I am sincerely desirous that a stop may be put to the dangerous
process of cleaning lately begun in our National Gallery, and as I
believe that what is right is most effectively when most kindly
advocated, and what is true most convincingly when least passionately
asserted, I was grieved to see the violent attack upon Mr. Eastlake in
your columns of Friday last; yet not less surprised at the attempted
defence which appeared in them yesterday.[37] The outcry which has
arisen upon this subject has been just, but it has been too loud; the
injury done is neither so great nor so wilful as has been asserted, and
I fear that the respect which might have been paid to remonstrance may
be refused to clamor.

I was inclined at first to join as loudly as any in the hue and cry.
Accustomed, as I have been, to look to England as the refuge of the
pictorial as of all other distress, and to hope that, having no high art
of her own, she would at least protect what she could not produce, and
respect what she could not restore, I could not but look upon the attack
which has been made upon the pictures in question as on the violation of
a sanctuary. I had seen in Venice the noblest works of Veronese painted
over with flake-white with a brush fit for tarring ships; I had seen in
Florence Angelico’s highest inspiration rotted and seared into fragments
of old wood, burnt into blisters, or blotted into glutinous maps of
mildew;[38] I had seen in Paris Raphael restored by David and Vernet;
and I returned to England in the one last trust that, though her
National Gallery was an European jest, her art a shadow, and her
connoisseurship an hypocrisy, though she neither knew how to cherish nor
how to choose, and lay exposed to the cheats of every vender of old
canvas--yet that such good pictures as through chance or oversight might
find their way beneath that preposterous portico, and into those
melancholy and miserable rooms, were at least to be vindicated
thenceforward from the mercy of republican, priest, or painter, safe
alike from musketry, monkery, and manipulation.

But whatever pain I may feel at the dissipation of this dream, I am not
disposed altogether to deny the necessity of some illuminatory process
with respect to pictures exposed to a London atmosphere and populace.
Dust an inch thick, accumulated upon the panes in the course of the day,
and darkness closing over the canvas like a curtain, attest too forcibly
the influence on floor and air of the “mutable, rank-scented, many.” It
is of little use to be over-anxious for the preservation of pictures
which we cannot see; the only question is, whether in the present
instance the process may not have been carried perilously far, and
whether in future simpler and safer means may not be adopted to remove
the coat of dust and smoke, without affecting either the glazing of the
picture, or, what is almost as precious, the mellow tone left by time.

As regards the “Peace and War,”[39] I have no hesitation in asserting
that for the present it is utterly and forever partially destroyed. I am
not disposed lightly to impugn the judgment of Mr. Eastlake, but this
was indisputably of all the pictures in the Gallery that which least
required, and least could endure, the process of cleaning. It was in the
most advantageous condition under which a work of Rubens can be seen;
mellowed by time into more perfect harmony than when it left the easel,
enriched and warmed, without losing any of its freshness or energy. The
execution of the master is always so bold and frank as to be completely,
perhaps even most agreeably, seen under circumstances of obscurity,
which would be injurious to pictures of greater refinement; and, though
this was, indeed, one of his most highly finished and careful works (to
my mind, before it suffered this recent injury, far superior to
everything at Antwerp, Malines, or Cologne), this was a more weighty
reason for caution than for interference. Some portions of color have
been exhibited which were formerly untraceable; but even these have lost
in power what they have gained in definiteness--the majesty and
preciousness of all the tones are departed, the balance of distances
lost. Time may perhaps restore something of the glow, but never the
subordination; and the more delicate portions of flesh tint, especially
the back of the female figure on the left, and of the boy in the centre,
are destroyed forever.

The large Cuyp[40] is, I think, nearly uninjured. Many portions of the
foreground painting have been revealed, which were before only to be
traced painfully, if at all. The distance has indeed lost the appearance
of sunny haze, which was its chief charm, but this I have little doubt
it originally did not possess, and in process of time may recover.

The “Bacchus and Ariadne”[41] of Titian has escaped so scot free that,
not knowing it had been cleaned, I passed it without noticing any
change. I observed only that the blue of the distance was more intense
than I had previously thought it, though, four years ago, I said of that
distance that it was “difficult to imagine anything more magnificently
impossible, not from its vividness, but because it is _not faint and
aërial enough_ to account for its purity of color. There is so total a
want of atmosphere in it, that but for the difference of form it would
be impossible to distinguish the mountains from the robe of
Ariadne.”[42]

Your correspondent is alike unacquainted with the previous condition of
this picture, and with the character of Titian distances in general,
when he complains of a loss of aërial quality resulting in the present
case from cleaning.

I unfortunately did not see the new Velasquez[43] until it had undergone
its discipline; but I have seldom met with an example of the master
which gave me more delight, or which I believe to be in more genuine or
perfect condition. I saw no traces of the retouching which is hinted at
by your correspondent “Verax,” nor are the touches on that canvas such
as to admit of very easy or untraceable interpolation of meaner
handling. His complaint of loss of substance in the figures of the
foreground is, I have no doubt, altogether groundless. He has seen
little southern scenery if he supposes that the brilliancy and apparent
nearness of the silver clouds is in the slightest degree overcharged;
and shows little appreciation of Velasquez in supposing him to have
sacrificed the solemnity and might of such a distance to the inferior
interest of the figures in the foreground. Had he studied the picture
attentively, he might have observed that the position of the horizon
suggests, and the _lateral_ extent of the foreground _proves_, such a
distance between the spectator and even its nearest figures as may well
justify the slightness of their execution.

Even granting that some of the upper glazings of the figures had been
removed, the tone of the whole picture is so light, gray, and
glittering, and the dependence on the power of its whites so absolute,
that I think the process hardly to be regretted which has left these in
lustre so precious, and restored to a brilliancy which a comparison with
any modern work of similar aim would render apparently supernatural, the
sparkling motion of its figures and the serene snow of its sky.

I believe I have stated to its fullest extent all the harm that has yet
been done, yet I earnestly protest against any continuance of the
treatment to which these pictures have been subjected. It is useless to
allege that nothing but discolored varnish has been withdrawn, for it is
perfectly possible to alter the structure and continuity, and so destroy
the aërial relations of colors of which no part has been removed. I have
seen the dark blue of a water-color drawing made opaque and pale merely
by mounting it; and even supposing no other injury were done, every time
a picture is cleaned it loses, like a restored building, part of its
authority; and is thenceforward liable to dispute and suspicion, every
one of its beauties open to question, while its faults are screened from
accusation. It cannot be any more reasoned from with security; for,
though allowance may be made for the effect of time, no one can
calculate the arbitrary and accidental changes occasioned by violent
cleaning. None of the varnishes should be attacked; whatever the medium
used, nothing but soot and dust should be taken away, and that chiefly
by delicate and patient friction; and, in order to protract as long as
possible the necessity even for this all the important pictures in the
gallery should at once be put under glass,[44] and closed, not merely
by hinged doors, like the Correggio, but permanently and securely. I
should be glad to see this done in all rich galleries, but it is
peculiarly necessary in the case of pictures exposed in London, and to a
crowd freely admitted four days in the week; it would do good also by
necessitating the enlargement of the rooms, and the bringing down of all
the pictures to the level of the eye. Every picture that is worth buying
or retaining is worth exhibiting in its proper place, and if its scale
be large, and its handling rough, there is the more instruction to be
gained by close study of the various means adopted by the master to
secure his distant effect. We can certainly spare both the ground and
the funds which would enable us to exhibit pictures for which no price
is thought too large, and for all purposes of study and for most of
enjoyment pictures are useless when they are even a little above the
line. The fatigue complained of by most persons in examining a picture
gallery is attributable, not only to the number of works, but to their
confused order of succession, and to the straining of the sight in
endeavoring to penetrate the details of those above the eye. Every
gallery should be long enough to admit of its whole collection being
hung in one line, side by side, and wide enough to allow of the
spectators retiring to the distance at which the largest picture was
intended to be seen. The works of every master should be brought
together and arranged in chronological order; and such drawings or
engravings as may exist in the collection, either of, or for, its
pictures, or in any way illustrative of them, should be placed in frames
opposite each, in the middle of the room.

But, Sir, the subjects of regret connected with the present management
of our national collection are not to be limited either to its treatment
or its arrangement. The principles of selection which have been acted
upon in the course of the last five or six years have been as
extraordinary as unjustifiable. Whatever may be the intrinsic power,
interest, or artistical ability of the earlier essays of any school of
art, it cannot be disputed that characteristic examples of every one of
its most important phases should form part of a national collection:
granting them of little value individually, their collective teaching is
of irrefragable authority; and the exhibition of perfected results
alone, while the course of national progress through which these were
reached is altogether concealed, is more likely to discourage than to
assist the efforts of an undeveloped school. Granting even what the
shallowest materialism of modern artists would assume, that the works of
Perugino were of no value, but as they taught Raphael; that John Bellini
is altogether absorbed and overmastered by Titian; that Nino Pisano was
utterly superseded by Bandinelli or Cellini, and Ghirlandajo sunk in the
shadow of Buonaroti: granting Van Eyck to be a mere mechanist, and
Giotto a mere child, and Angelico a superstitious monk, and whatever you
choose to grant that ever blindness deemed or insolence affirmed, still
it is to be maintained and proved, that if we wish to have a Buonaroti
or a Titian of our own, we shall with more wisdom learn of those of whom
Buonaroti and Titian learned, and at whose knees they were brought up,
and whom to their day of death they ever revered and worshipped, than of
those wretched pupils and partisans who sank every high function of art
into a form and a faction, betrayed her trusts, darkened her traditions,
overthrew her throne, and left us where we are now, stumbling among its
fragments. Sir, if the canvases of Guido, lately introduced into the
gallery,[45] had been works of the best of those pupils, which they are
not; if they had been good works of even that bad master, which they
are not; if they had been genuine and untouched works, even though
feeble, which they are not; if, though false and retouched remnants of a
feeble and fallen school, they had been endurably decent or elementarily
instructive--some conceivable excuse might perhaps have been by
ingenuity forged, and by impudence uttered, for their introduction into
a gallery where we previously possessed two good Guidos,[46] and no
Perugino (for the attribution to him of the wretched panel which now
bears his name is a mere insult), no Angelico, no Fra Bartolomeo, no
Albertinelli, no Ghirlandajo, no Verrochio, no Lorenzo di Credi--(what
shall I more say, for the time would fail me?) But now, Sir, what
vestige of apology remains for the cumbering our walls with pictures
that have no single virtue, no color, no drawing, no character, no
history, no thought? Yet 2,000 guineas were, I believe, given for one of
those encumbrances, and 5,000 for the coarse and unnecessary Rubens,[47]
added to a room half filled with Rubens before, while a mighty and
perfect work of Angelico was sold from Cardinal Fesch’s collection for
1,500.[48] I do not speak of the spurious Holbein,[49] for though the
veriest tyro might well be ashamed of such a purchase, it would have
been a judicious addition had it been genuine; so was the John Bellini,
so was the Van Eyck; but the mighty Venetian master, who alone of all
the painters of Italy united purity of religious aim with perfection of
artistical power, is poorly represented by a single head;[50] and I ask,
in the name of the earnest students of England, that the funds set apart
for her gallery may no longer be played with like pebbles in London
auction-rooms. Let agents be sent to all the cities of Italy; let the
noble pictures which are perishing there be rescued from the
invisibility and ill-treatment which their position too commonly
implies, and let us have a national collection which, however imperfect,
shall be orderly and continuous, and shall exhibit with something like
relative candor and justice the claims to our reverence of those great
and ancient builders, whose mighty foundation has been for two centuries
concealed by wood, and hay, and stubble, the distorted growing, and thin
gleaning of vain men in blasted fields.

I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
THE AUTHOR OF “MODERN PAINTERS.”

_January 6._

[From “The Times,” December 29, 1852.]

_THE NATIONAL GALLERY._

_To the Editor of “The Times.”_

SIR: I trust that the excitement which has been caused by the alleged
destruction of some of the most important pictures in the National
Gallery will not be without results, whatever may be the facts of the
case with respect to the works in question. Under the name of
“restoration,” the ruin of the noblest architecture and painting is
constant throughout Europe. We shall show ourselves wiser than our
neighbors if the loss of two Claudes and the injury of a Paul
Veronese[51] induce us to pay so much attention to the preservation of
ancient art as may prevent it from becoming a disputed question in
future whether they are indeed pictures which we possess or their
skeletons.

As to the facts in the present instance, I can give no opinion. Sir
Charles Eastlake and Mr. Uwins[52] know more than I of oil paintings in
general, and have far more profound respect for those of Claude in
particular. I do not suppose they would have taken from him his golden
armor that Turner might bear away a dishonorable victory in the noble
passage of arms to which he has challenged his rival from the grave.[53]
Nor can the public suppose that the Curators of the National Gallery
have any interest in destroying the works with which they are intrusted.
If, acting to the best of their judgment, they have done harm, to whom
are we to look for greater prudence or better success? Are the public
prepared to withdraw their confidence from Sir C. Eastlake and the
members of the Royal Academy, and entrust the national property to Mr.
Morris Moore, or to any of the artists and amateurs who have inflamed
the sheets of _The Times_ with their indignation? Is it not evident that
the only security which the nation can possess for its pictures must be
found in taking such measures as may in future prevent the necessity of
their being touched at all? For this is very certain, that all question
respecting the effects of cleaning is merely one of the amount of
injury. Every picture which has undergone more friction than is
necessary at intervals for the removal of dust or dirt, has suffered
injury to some extent. The last touches of the master leave the surface
of the color with a certain substantial texture, the bloom of which, if
once reached under the varnish, must inevitably be more or less removed
by friction of any kind--how much more by friction aided by solvents? I
am well assured that every possessor of pictures who truly loves them,
would keep--if it might be--their surfaces from being so much as
breathed upon, which may, indeed, be done, and done easily.

Every stranger who enters our National Gallery, if he be a thoughtful
person, must assuredly put to himself a curious question. Perceiving
that certain pictures--namely, three Correggios, two Raphaels and a John
Bellini--are put under glass,[54] and that all the others are left
exposed, as oil pictures are in general, he must ask himself, “Is it an
ascertained fact that glass preserves pictures; and are none of the
pictures here thought worth a pane of glass but these five?[55] Or is it
unascertained whether glass is beneficial or injurious, and have the
Raphaels and Correggios been selected for the trial--‘_Fiat experimentum
in corpore vili?_’” Some years ago it might have been difficult to
answer him; now the answer is easy, though it be strange. The experiment
has been made. The Raphaels and Correggios have been under glass for
many years: they are as fresh and lovely as when they were first
enclosed; they need no cleaning, and will need none for half a century
to come; and it must be, therefore, that the rest of the pictures are
left exposed to the London atmosphere, and to the operations which its
influence renders necessary, simply because they are not thought worth a
pane of plate glass. No: there is yet one other possible answer--that
many of them are hung so high, or in such lights, that they could not be
seen if they were glazed. Is it then absolutely necessary that they
should be hung so high? We are about to build a new National Gallery;
may it not be so arranged as that the pictures we place therein may at
once be safe and visible?

I know that this has never yet been done in any gallery in Europe, for
the European public have never yet reflected that a picture which was
worth buying was also worth seeing. Some time or other they will
assuredly awake to the perception of this wonderful truth, and it would
be some credit to our English common-sense if we were the first to act
upon it.

I say that a picture which is worth buying is also worth seeing; that
is, worth so much room of ground and wall as shall enable us to see it
to the best advantage. It is not commonly so understood. Nations, like
individuals, buy their pictures in mere ostentation; and are content, so
that their possessions are acknowledged, that they should be hung in any
dark or out-of-the-way corners which their frames will fit. Or, at best,
the popular idea of a national gallery is that of a magnificent palace,
whose walls must be decorated with colored panels, every one of which
shall cost £1,000, and be discernible, through a telescope, for the work
of a mighty hand.

I have no doubt that in a few years more there will be a change of
feeling in this matter, and that men will begin to perceive, what is
indeed the truth--that every noble picture is a manuscript book, of
which only one copy exists, or ever can exist; that a national gallery
is a great library,[56] of which the books must be read upon their
shelves; but every manuscript ought, therefore, to be placed where it
can be read most easily; and that the style of the architecture and the
effect of the saloons are matters of no importance whatsoever, but that
our solicitude ought to begin and end in the two imperative
requirements--that every picture in the gallery should be perfectly seen
and perfectly safe; that none should be thrust up, or down, or aside, to
make room for more important ones; that all should be in a good light,
all on a level with the eye, and all secure from damp, cold, impurity of
atmosphere, and every other avoidable cause of deterioration.

These are the things to be accomplished; and if we set ourselves to do
these in our new National Gallery,[57] we shall have made a greater step
in art-teaching than if we had built a new Parthenon. I know that it
will be a strange idea to most of us that Titians and Tintorets ought,
indeed, all to have places upon “the line,” as well as the annual
productions of our Royal Academicians; and I know that the _coup
d’œil_ of the Gallery must be entirely destroyed by such an
arrangement. But great pictures ought not to be subjects of “_coups
d’œil_.” In the last arrangement of the Louvre, under the Republic,
all the noble pictures in the gallery were brought into one room, with a
Napoleon-like resolution to produce effect by concentration of force;
and, indeed, I would not part willingly with the memory of that saloon,
whose obscurest shadows were full of Correggio; in whose out-of-the-way
angles one forgot, here and there, a Raphæl; and in which the best
Tintoret on this side of the Alps was hung sixty feet from the
ground![58] But Cleopatra dissolving the pearl was nothing to this; and
I trust that, in our own Gallery, our poverty, if not our will, may
consent to a more modest and less lavish manner of displaying such
treasures as are intrusted to us; and that the very limitation of our
possessions may induce us to make that the object of our care which can
hardly be a ground of ostentation. It might, indeed, be a matter of some
difficulty to conceive an arrangement of the collections in the Louvre
or the Florence Gallery which should admit of every picture being hung
upon the line. But the works in our own, including the Vernon and Turner
bequests,[59] present no obstacle in their number to our making the
building which shall receive them a perfect model of what a National
Gallery ought to be. And the conditions of this perfection are so simple
that if we only turn our attention to these main points it will need no
great architectural ingenuity to attain all that is required.

It is evident, in the first place, that the building ought to consist of
a series of chambers or galleries lighted from above, and built with
such reference to the pictures they are to contain, as that opposite a
large picture room enough should be allowed for the spectator to retire
to the utmost distance at which it can ever be desirable that its effect
should be seen; but, as economy of space would become a most important
object when every picture was to be hung on a level with the eye,
smaller apartments might open from the larger ones for the reception of
smaller pictures, one condition being, however, made imperative,
whatever space was sacrificed to it--namely, that the works of every
master should be collected together, either in the same apartment or in
contiguous ones. Nothing has so much retarded the advance of art as our
miserable habit of mixing the works of every master and of every
century. More would be learned by an ordinarily intelligent observer in
simply passing from a room in which there were only Titians, to another
in which there were only Caraccis, than by reading a volume of lectures
on color. Few minds are strong enough first to abstract and then to
generalize the characters of paintings hung at random. Few minds are so
dull as not at once to perceive the points of difference, were the works
of each painter set by themselves. The fatigue of which most persons
complain in passing through a picture gallery, as at present arranged,
is indeed partly caused by the straining effort to see what is out of
sight, but not less by the continual change of temper and of tone of
thought, demanded in passing from the work of one master to that of
another.

The works of each being, therefore, set by themselves,[60] and the whole
collection arranged in chronological and ethnological order, let
apartments be designed for each group large enough to admit of the
increase of the existing collection to any probable amount. The whole
gallery would thus become of great length, but might be adapted to any
form of ground-plan by disposing the whole in a labyrinthine chain,
returning upon itself. Its chronological arrangement would necessitate
its being continuous, rather than divided into many branches or
sections. Being lighted from above, it must be all on the same floor,
but ought at least to be raised one story above the ground, and might
admit any number of keepers’ apartments, or of schools, beneath; though
it would be better to make it quite independent of these, in order to
diminish the risk of fire. Its walls ought on every side to be
surrounded by corridors, so that the interior temperature might be kept
equal, and no outer surface of wall on which pictures were hung exposed
to the weather. Every picture should be glazed, and the horizon which
the painter had given to it placed on a level with the eye.

Lastly, opposite each picture should be a table, containing, under
glass, every engraving that had ever been made from it, and any studies
for it, by the master’s own hand, that remained, or were obtainable. The
values of the study and of the picture are reciprocally increased--of
the former more than doubled--by their being seen together; and if this
system were once adopted, the keepers of the various galleries of Europe
would doubtless consent to such exchanges of the sketches in their
possession as would render all their collections more interesting.

I trust, Sir, that the importance of this subject will excuse the extent
of my trespass upon your columns, and that the simplicity and
self-evident desirableness of the arrangement I have described may
vindicate my proposal of it from the charge of presumption.

I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
THE AUTHOR OF “MODERN PAINTERS.”

HERNE HILL, DULWICH, _Dec. 27._

[From “The Times,” January 27, 1866.]

_THE BRITISH MUSEUM._

_To the Editor of “The Times.”_

SIR: As I see in your impression of yesterday that my name was
introduced in support of some remarks made, at the meeting of the
Society of Arts, on the management of the British Museum,[61] and as the
tendency of the remarks I refer to was depreciatory of the efforts and
aims of several officers of the Museum--more especially of the work done
on the collection of minerals by my friend Mr. Nevil S.
Maskelyne[62]--you will, I hope, permit me, not having been present at
the meeting, to express my feeling on the subject briefly in your
columns.

There is a confused notion in the existing public mind that the British
Museum was partly a parish school, partly a circulating library, and
partly a place for Christmas entertainments.

It is none of the three, and, I hope, will never be made any of the
three. But especially and most distinctly it is not a “preparatory
school,” nor even an “academy for young gentlemen,” nor even a
“working-men’s college.” A national museum is one thing, a national
place of education another; and the more sternly and unequivocally they
are separated, the better will each perform its office--the one of
treasuring and the other of teaching. I heartily wish that there were
already, as one day there must be, large educational museums in every
district of London, freely open every day, and well lighted and warmed
at night, with all furniture of comfort, and full aids for the use of
their contents by all classes. But you might just as rationally send the
British public to the Tower to study mineralogy upon the Crown jewels as
make the unique pieces of a worthy national collection (such as, owing
mainly to the exertions of its maligned officers, that of our British
Museum has recently become) the means of elementary public instruction.
After men have learnt their science or their art, at least so far as to
know a common and a rare example in either, a national museum is useful,
and ought to be easily accessible to them; but until then, unique or
selected specimens in natural history are without interest to them, and
the best art is as useless as a blank wall. For all those who can use
the existing national collection to any purpose, the Catalogue as it now
stands is amply sufficient: it would be difficult to conceive a more
serviceable one. But the rapidly progressive state of (especially
mineralogical) science, renders it impossible for the Curators to make
their arrangements in all points satisfactory, or for long periods
permanent. It is just because Mr. Maskelyne is doing more active,
continual, and careful work than, as far as I know, is at present done
in any national museum in Europe--because he is completing gaps in the
present series by the intercalation of carefully sought specimens, and
accurately reforming its classification by recently corrected
analyses--that the collection cannot yet fall into the formal and placid
order in which an indolent Curator would speedily arrange and willingly
leave it.

I am glad that Lord H. Lennox referred to the passage in my report on
the Turner Collection in which I recommended that certain portions of
that great series should be distributed, for permanence, among our
leading provincial towns.[63] But I had rather see the whole Turner
Collection buried, not merely in the cellars of the National Gallery,
but with Prospero’s staff fathoms in the earth, than that it should be
the means of inaugurating the fatal custom of carrying great works of
art about the roads for a show. If you _must_ make them educational to
the public, hang Titian’s Bacchus up for a vintner’s sign, and give
Henry VI.’s Psalter[64] for a spelling-book to the Bluecoat School;
but, at least, hang the one from a permanent post, and chain the other
to the boys’ desks, and do not send them about in caravans to every
annual Bartholomew Fair.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, _Jan. 26._

[From “The Leicester Chronicle and Mercury,” January 31, and reprinted in “The
Times,” February 2, 1880.]

_ON THE PURCHASE OF PICTURES._

DEAR SIR: Your letter is deeply interesting to me, but what use is there
in my telling you what to do? The mob won’t let you do it. It is fatally
true that no one nowadays can appreciate pictures by the Old Masters!
and that every one can understand Frith’s “Derby Day”--that is to say,
everybody is interested in jockeys, harlots, mountebanks, and men about
town; but nobody in saints, heroes, kings, or wise men--either from the
east or west. What can you do? If your Committee is strong enough to
carry such a resolution as the appointment of any _singly_ responsible
person, any well-informed gentleman of taste in your neighborhood, to
buy for the Leicester public just what he would buy for himself--that is
to say, himself _and his family_--children being the really most
important of the untaught public--and to answer simply to all
accusation--that is, a good and worthy piece of art (past or present, no
matter which)--make the most and best you can of it. That method so long
as tenable will be useful. I know of no other.

Faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.[65]

LETTERS ON ART.

III.

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BRETHREN. 1851 (May 9).
THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BRETHREN. 1851 (May 26).
“THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD,” HOLMAN HUNT. 1854.
“THE AWAKENING CONSCIENCE,” HOLMAN HUNT. 1854.
PRE-RAPHAELITISM IN LIVERPOOL. 1858.
GENERALIZATION AND THE SCOTCH PRE-RAPHAELITES. 1858.

III.

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

[From “The Times,” May 13, 1851.]

_THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BRETHREN._

_To the Editor of “The Times.”_

SIR: Your usual liberality will, I trust, give a place in your columns
to this expression of my regret that the tone of the critique which
appeared in _The Times_ of Wednesday last on the works of Mr. Millais
and Mr. Hunt, now in the Royal Academy, should have been scornful as
well as severe.[66]

I regret it, first, because the mere labor bestowed on those works, and
their fidelity to a certain order of truth (labor and fidelity which are
altogether indisputable), ought at once to have placed them above the
level of mere contempt; and, secondly, because I believe these young
artists to be at a most critical period of their career--at a
turning-point, from which they may either sink into nothingness or rise
to very real greatness; and I believe also, that whether they choose the
upward or the downward path, may in no small degree depend upon the
character of the criticism which their works have to sustain. I do not
wish in any way to dispute or invalidate the general truth of your
critique on the Royal Academy; nor am I surprised at the estimate which
the writer formed of the pictures in question when rapidly compared with
works of totally different style and aim; nay, when I first saw the
chief picture by Millais in the Exhibition of last year,[67] I had
nearly come to the same conclusion myself. But I ask your permission, in
justice to artists who have at least given much time and toil to their
pictures, to institute some more serious inquiry into their merits and
faults than your general notice of the Academy could possibly have
admitted.

Let me state, in the first place, that I have no acquaintance with any
of these artists, and very imperfect sympathy with them. No one who has
met with any of my writings will suspect me of desiring to encourage
them in their Romanist and Tractarian tendencies.[68] I am glad to see
that Mr. Millais’ lady in blue[69] is heartily tired of her painted
window and idolatrous toilet table; and I have no particular respect
for Mr. Collins’ lady in white, because her sympathies are limited by a
dead wall, or divided between some gold fish and a tadpole--(the latter
Mr. Collins may, perhaps, permit me to suggest _en passant_, as he is
already half a frog, is rather too small for his age). But I happen to
have a special acquaintance with the water plant, _Alisma Plantago_,
among which the said gold fish are swimming; and as I never saw it so
thoroughly or so well drawn, I must take leave to remonstrate with you,
when you say sweepingly that these men “sacrifice _truth_ as well as
feeling to eccentricity.” For as a mere botanical study of the
water-lily and _Alisma_, as well as of the common lily and several other
garden flowers, this picture would be invaluable to me, and I heartily
wish it were mine.

But, before entering into such particulars, let me correct an impression
which your article is likely to induce in most minds, and which is
altogether false. These pre-Raphaelites (I cannot compliment them on
common-sense in choice of a _nom de guerre_) do _not_ desire nor pretend
in any way to imitate antique painting as such. They know very little of
ancient paintings who suppose the works of these young artists to
resemble them.[70] As far as I can judge of their aim--for, as I said,
I do not know the men themselves--the pre-Raphaelites intend to
surrender no advantage which the knowledge or inventions of the present
time can afford to their art. They intend to return to early days in
this one point only--that, as far as in them lies, they will draw either
what they see, or what they suppose might have been the actual facts of
the scene they desire to represent, irrespective of any conventional
rules of picture-making; and they have chosen their unfortunate though
not inaccurate name because all artists did this before Raphael’s time,
and after Raphael’s time did _not_ this, but sought to paint fair
pictures, rather than represent stern facts; of which the consequence
has been that, from Raphael’s time to this day, historical art has been
in acknowledged decadence.

Now, sir, presupposing that the intention of these men was to return to
archaic _art_ instead of to archaic _honesty_, your critic borrows
Fuseli’s expression respecting ancient draperies “snapped instead of
folded,” and asserts that in these pictures there is a “_servile_
imitation of _false_ perspective.” To which I have just this to answer:

That there is not one single error in perspective in four out of the
five pictures in question; and that in Millais’ “Mariana” there is but
this one--that the top of the green curtain in the distant window has
too low a vanishing-point; and that I will undertake, if need be, to
point out and prove a dozen worse errors in perspective in any twelve
pictures, containing architecture, taken at random from among the works
of the popular painters of the day.

Secondly: that, putting aside the small Mulready, and the works of
Thorburn and Sir W. Ross, and perhaps some others of those in the
miniature room which I have not examined, there is not a single study of
drapery in the whole Academy, be it in large works or small, which for
perfect truth, power, and finish could be compared for an instant with
the black sleeve of the Julia, or with the velvet on the breast and the
chain mail of the Valentine, of Mr. Hunt’s picture; or with the white
draperies on the table of Mr. Millais’ “Mariana,” and of the right-hand
figure in the same painter’s “Dove returning to the Ark.”

And further: that as studies both of drapery and of every minor detail,
there has been nothing in art so earnest or so complete as these
pictures since the days of Albert Dürer. This I assert generally and
fearlessly. On the other hand, I am perfectly ready to admit that Mr.
Hunt’s “Silvia” is not a person whom Proteus or any one else would have
been likely to fall in love with at first sight; and that one cannot
feel very sincere delight that Mr. Millais’ “Wives of the Sons of Noah”
should have escaped the Deluge; with many other faults besides, on which
I will not enlarge at present, because I have already occupied too much
of your valuable space, and I hope to enter into more special criticism
in a future letter.

I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
THE AUTHOR OF “MODERN PAINTERS.”

DENMARK HILL, _May_ 9.

[From “The Times,” May 30, 1851.]

_THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BRETHREN._

_To the Editor of “The Times.”_

SIR: Your obliging insertion of my former letter encourages me to
trouble you with one or two further notes respecting the pre-Raphaelite
pictures. I had intended, in continuation of my first letter, to
institute as close an inquiry as I could into the character of the
morbid tendencies which prevent these works from favorably arresting the
attention of the public; but I believe there are so few pictures in the
Academy whose reputation would not be grievously diminished by a
deliberate inventory of their errors, that I am disinclined to undertake
so ungracious a task with respect to this or that particular work. These
points, however, may be noted, partly for the consideration of the
painters themselves, partly that forgiveness of them may be asked from
the public in consideration of high merits in other respects.

The most painful of these defects is unhappily also the most
prominent--the commonness of feature in many of the principal figures.
In Mr. Hunt’s “Valentine defending Sylvia,” this is, indeed, almost the
only fault. Further examination of this picture has even raised the
estimate I had previously formed of its marvellous truth in detail and
splendor in color; nor is its general conception less deserving of
praise: the action of Valentine, his arm thrown round Sylvia, and his
hand clasping hers at the same instant as she falls at his feet, is most
faithful and beautiful, nor less so the contending of doubt and distress
with awakening hope in the half-shadowed, half-sunlit countenance of
Julia. Nay, even the momentary struggle of Proteus with Sylvia just
past, is indicated by the trodden grass and broken fungi of the
foreground. But all this thoughtful conception, and absolutely
inimitable execution, fail in making immediate appeal to the feelings,
owing to the unfortunate type chosen for the face of Sylvia. Certainly
this cannot be she whose lover was

“As rich in having such a jewel,
As twenty seas, if all their sands were pearl.”[71]

Nor is it, perhaps, less to be regretted that, while in Shakspeare’s
play there are nominally “Two Gentlemen,” in Mr. Hunt’s picture there
should only be one--at least, the kneeling figure on the right has by no
means the look of a gentleman. But this may be on purpose, for any one
who remembers the conduct of Proteus throughout the previous scenes
will, I think, be disposed to consider that the error lies more in
Shakspeare’s nomenclature than in Mr. Hunt’s ideal.

No defence can, however, be offered for the choice of features in the
left-hand figure of Mr. Millais’ “Dove returning to the Ark.” I cannot
understand how a painter so sensible of the utmost refinement of beauty
in other objects should deliberately choose for his model a type far
inferior to that of average humanity, and unredeemed by any expression
save that of dull self-complacency. Yet, let the spectator who desires
to be just turn away from this head, and contemplate rather the tender
and beautiful expression of the stooping figure, and the intense harmony
of color in the exquisitely finished draperies; let him note also the
ruffling of the plumage of the wearied dove, one of its feathers falling
on the arm of the figure which holds it, and another to the ground,
where, by the bye, the hay is painted not only elaborately, but with the
most perfect ease of touch and mastery of effect, especially to be
observed because this freedom of execution is a modern excellence, which
it has been inaccurately stated that these painters despise, but which,
in reality, is one of the remarkable distinctions between their painting
and that of Van Eyck or Hemling, which caused me to say in my first
letter that “those knew little of ancient painting who supposed the
works of these men to resemble it.”

Next to this false choice of feature, and in connection with it, is to
be noted the defect in the coloring of the flesh. The hands, at least in
the pictures in Millais, are almost always ill painted, and the flesh
tint in general is wrought out of crude purples and dusky yellows. It
appears just possible that much of this evil may arise from the attempt
to obtain too much transparency--an attempt which has injured also not a
few of the best works of Mulready. I believe it will be generally found
that close study of minor details is unfavorable to flesh painting; it
was noticed of the drawing by John Lewis, in the old water-color
exhibition of 1850[72] (a work which, as regards its treatment of
detail, may be ranged in the same class with the pre-Raphaelite
pictures), that the faces were the worst painted portions of the whole.

The apparent want of shade is, however, perhaps the fault which most
hurts the general eye. The fact is, nevertheless, that the fault is far
more in the other pictures of the Academy than in the pre-Raphaelite
ones. It is the former that are false, not the latter, except so far as
every picture must be false which endeavors to represent living sunlight
with dead pigments. I think Mr. Hunt has a slight tendency to exaggerate
reflected lights; and if Mr. Millais has ever been near a piece of good
painted glass, he ought to have known that its tone is more dusky and
sober than that of his Mariana’s window. But for the most part these
pictures are rashly condemned because the only light which we are
accustomed to see represented is that which falls on the artist’s model
in his dim painting room, not that of sunshine in the fields.

I do not think I can go much further in fault-finding. I had, indeed,
something to urge respecting what I supposed to be the Romanizing
tendencies of the painters; but I have received a letter assuring me
that I was wrong in attributing to them anything of the kind; whereupon,
all that I can say is that, instead of the “pilgrimage” of Mr. Collins’
maiden over a plank and round a fish-pond, that old pilgrimage of
Christiana and her children towards the place where they should “look
the Fountain of Mercy in the face,” would have been more to the purpose
in these times. And so I wish them all heartily good-speed, believing in
sincerity that if they temper the courage and energy which they have
shown in the adoption of their systems with patience and discretion in
framing it, and if they do not suffer themselves to be driven by harsh
or careless criticism into rejection of the ordinary means of obtaining
influence over the minds of others, they may, as they gain experience,
lay in our England the foundations of a school of art nobler than the
world has seen for three hundred years.[73]

I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
THE AUTHOR OF “MODERN PAINTERS.”

DENMARK HILL, May 26.

[From “The Times,” May 5, 1854.]

_“THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD.”_

BY HOLMAN HUNT.

_To the Editor of “The Times.”_

SIR: I trust that, with your usual kindness and liberality, you will
give me room in your columns for a few words respecting the principal
pre-Raphaelite picture in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy this year.
Its painter is travelling in the Holy Land, and can neither suffer nor
benefit by criticism. But I am solicitous that justice should be done to
his work, not for his sake, but for that of the large number of persons
who, during the year, will have an opportunity of seeing it, and on
whom, if rightly understood, it may make an impression for which they
will ever afterwards be grateful.[74]

I speak of the picture called “the Light of the World,” by Mr. Holman
Hunt. Standing by it yesterday for upwards of an hour, I watched the
effect it produced upon the passers-by. Few stopped to look at it, and
those who did almost invariably with some contemptuous expression,
founded on what appeared to them the absurdity of representing the
Saviour with a lantern in his hand. Now, it ought to be remembered that,
whatever may be the faults of a præ-Raphaelite picture, it must at least
have taken much time; and therefore it may not unwarrantably be presumed
that conceptions which are to be laboriously realized are not adopted in
the first instance without some reflection. So that the spectator may
surely question with himself whether the objections which now strike
every one in a moment might not possibly have occurred to the painter
himself, either during the time devoted to the design of the picture, or
the months of labor required for its execution; and whether, therefore,
there may not be some reason for his persistence in such an idea, not
discoverable at the first glance.

Mr. Hunt has never explained his work to me. I give what appears to me
its palpable interpretation.

The legend beneath it is the beautiful verse, “Behold, I stand at the
door and knock. If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come
in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”--Rev. iii. 20. On the
left-hand side of the picture is seen this door of the human soul. It is
fast barred: its bars and nails are rusty; it is knitted and bound to
its stanchions by creeping tendrils of ivy, showing that it has never
been opened. A bat hovers about it; its threshold is overgrown with
brambles, nettles, and fruitless corn--the wild grass “whereof the mower
filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth the sheaves his bosom.” Christ
approaches it in the night-time--Christ, in his everlasting offices of
prophet, priest, and king. He wears the white robe, representing the
power of the Spirit upon him; the jewelled robe and breast-plate,
representing the sacerdotal investiture; the rayed crown of gold,
inwoven with the crown of thorns; not dead thorns, but now bearing soft
leaves, for the healing of the nations.

Now, when Christ enters any human heart, he bears with him a twofold
light: first, the light of conscience, which displays past sin, and
afterwards the light of peace, the hope of salvation. The lantern,
carried in Christ’s left hand, is this light of conscience. Its fire is
red and fierce; it falls only on the closed door, on the weeds which
encumber it, and on an apple shaken from one of the trees of the
orchard, thus marking that the entire awakening of the conscience is not
merely to committed, but to hereditary guilt.

The light is suspended by a chain, wrapt about the wrist of the figure,
showing that the light which reveals sin appears to the sinner also to
chain the hand of Christ.

The light which proceeds from the head of the figure, on the contrary,
is that of the hope of salvation; it springs from the crown of thorns,
and, though itself sad, subdued, and full of softness, is yet so
powerful that it entirely melts into the glow of it the forms of the
leaves and boughs, which it crosses, showing that every earthly object
must be hidden by this light, where its sphere extends.

I believe there are very few persons on whom the picture, thus justly
understood, will not produce a deep impression. For my own part, I think
it one of the very noblest works of sacred art ever produced in this or
any other age.

It may, perhaps, be answered, that works of art ought not to stand in
need of interpretation of this kind. Indeed, we have been so long
accustomed to see pictures painted without any purpose or intention
whatsoever, that the unexpected existence of meaning in a work of art
may very naturally at first appear to us an unkind demand on the
spectator’s understanding. But in a few years more I hope the English
public may be convinced of the simple truth, that neither a great fact,
nor a great man, nor a great poem, nor a great picture, nor any other
great thing, can be fathomed to the very bottom in a moment of time; and
that no high enjoyment, either in picture-seeing or any other
occupation, is consistent with a total lethargy of the powers of the
understanding.

As far as regards the technical qualities of Mr. Hunt’s painting, I
would only ask the spectator to observe this difference between true
præ-Raphaelite work and its imitations. The true work represents all
objects exactly as they would appear in nature in the position and at
the distances which the arrangement of the picture supposes. The false
work represents them with all their details, as if seen through a
microscope. Examine closely the ivy on the door in Mr. Hunt’s picture,
and there will not be found in it a single clear outline. All is the
most exquisite mystery of color; becoming reality at its due distance.
In like manner examine the small gems on the robe of the figure. Not one
will be made out in form, and yet there is not one of all those minute
points of green color, but it has two or three distinctly varied shades
of green in it, giving it mysterious value and lustre.

The spurious imitations of præ-Raphaelite work represent the most minute
leaves and other objects with sharp outlines, but with no variety of
color, and with none of the concealment, none of the infinity of nature.
With this spurious work the walls of the Academy are half covered; of
the true school one very small example may be pointed out, being hung so
low that it might otherwise escape attention. It is not by any means
perfect, but still very lovely--the study of a calm pool in a mountain
brook, by Mr. J. Dearle, No. 191, “Evening, on the Marchno, North
Wales.”[75]

I have the honor to be, Sir.
Your obedient servant,
THE AUTHOR OF “MODERN PAINTERS.”

DENMARK HILL, _May_ 4.

[From “The Times,” May 25, 1854.]

_“THE AWAKENING CONSCIENCE.”_

BY HOLMAN HUNT.

_To the Editor of “The Times.”_

SIR: Your kind insertion of my notes on Mr. Hunt’s principal picture
encourages me to hope that you may yet allow me room in your columns for
a few words respecting his second work in the Royal Academy, the
“Awakening Conscience.” Not that this picture is obscure, or its story
feebly told. I am at a loss to know how its meaning could be rendered
more distinctly, but assuredly it is not understood. People gaze at it
in a blank wonder, and leave it hopelessly; so that, though it is almost
an insult to the painter to explain his thoughts in this instance, I
cannot persuade myself to leave it thus misunderstood. The poor girl has
been sitting singing with her seducer; some chance words of the song,
“Oft in the stilly night,” have struck upon the numbed places of her
heart; she has started up in agony; he, not seeing her face, goes on
singing, striking the keys carelessly with his gloved hand.

I suppose that no one professing the slightest knowledge of expression
could remain untouched by the countenance of the lost girl, rent from
its beauty into sudden horror; the lips half open, indistinct in their
purple quivering; the teeth set hard; the eyes filled with the fearful
light of futurity, and with tears of ancient days. But I can easily
understand that to many persons the careful rendering of the inferior
details in this picture cannot but be at first offensive, as calling
their attention away from the principal subject. It is true that detail
of this kind has long been so carelessly rendered, that the perfect
finishing of it becomes a matter of curiosity, and therefore an
interruption to serious thought. But, without entering into the question
of the general propriety of such treatment, I would only observe that,
at least in this instance, it is based on a truer principle of the
pathetic than any of the common artistical expedients of the schools.
Nothing is more notable than the way in which even the most trivial
objects force themselves upon the attention of a mind which has been
fevered by violent and distressful excitement. They thrust themselves
forward with a ghastly and unendurable distinctness, as if they would
compel the sufferer to count, or measure, or learn them by heart. Even
to the mere spectator a strange interest exalts the accessories of a
scene in which he bears witness to human sorrow. There is not a single
object in all that room--common, modern, vulgar (in the vulgar sense, as
it may be), but it becomes tragical, if rightly read. That furniture so
carefully painted, even to the last vein of the rosewood--is there
nothing to be learnt from that terrible lustre of it, from its fatal
newness; nothing there that has the old thoughts of home upon it, or
that is ever to become a part of home? Those embossed books, vain and
useless,--they also new,--marked with no happy wearing of beloved
leaves; the torn and dying bird upon the floor; the gilded tapestry,
with the fowls of the air feeding on the ripened corn; the picture above
the fireplace, with its single drooping figure--the woman taken in
adultery; nay, the very hem of the poor girl’s dress, at which the
painter has labored so closely, thread by thread, has story in it, if we
think how soon its pure whiteness may be soiled with dust and rain, her
outcast feet failing in the street; and the fair garden flowers, seen in
that reflected sunshine of the mirror--these also have their language--

“Hope not to find delight in us, they say,
For we are spotless, Jessy--we are pure.”[76]

I surely need not go on. Examine the whole range of the walls of the
Academy,--nay, examine those of all our public and private
galleries,--and while pictures will be met with by the thousand which
literally tempt to evil, by the thousand which are directed to the
meanest trivialities of incident or emotion, by the thousand to the
delicate fancies of inactive religion, there will not be found one
powerful as this to meet full in the front the moral evil of the age in
which it is painted; to waken into mercy the cruel thoughtlessness of
youth, and subdue the severities of judgment into the sanctity of
compassion.

I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
THE AUTHOR OF “MODERN PAINTERS.”

DENMARK HILL.

[From “The Liverpool Albion,” January 11, 1858.]

_PRE-RAPHAELITISM IN LIVERPOOL._

I believe the Liverpool Academy has, in its decisions of late years,
given almost the first instance on record of the entirely just and
beneficial working of academical system. Usually such systems have
degenerated into the application of formal rules, or the giving partial
votes, or the distribution of a partial patronage; but the Liverpool
awards have indicated at once the keen perception of new forms of
excellence, and the frank honesty by which alone such new forms can be
confessed and accepted. I do not, however, wonder at the outcry. People
who suppose the pre-Raphaelite work to be only a condition of
meritorious eccentricity, naturally suppose, also, that the consistent
preference of it can only be owing to clique. Most people look upon
paintings as they do on plants or minerals, and think they ought to have
in their collections specimens of everybody’s work, as they have
specimens of all earths or flowers. They have no conception that there
is such a thing as a real right and wrong, a real bad and good, in the
question. However, you need not, I think, much mind. Let the Academy be
broken up on the quarrels; let the Liverpool people buy whatever rubbish
they have a mind to; and when they see, as in time they will, that it
_is_ rubbish, and find, as find they will, every pre-Raphaelite picture
gradually advance in influence and in value, you will be acknowledged to
have borne a witness all the more noble and useful, because it seemed to
end in discomfiture; though it will _not_ end in discomfiture. I suppose
I need hardly say anything of my own estimate of the two pictures on
which the arbitrament has arisen, I have surely said often enough, in
good black type already, what I thought of pre-Raphaelite works, and of
other modern ones. Since Turner’s death I consider that any average work
from the hand of any of the four leaders of pre-Raphaelitism (Rosetti,
Millais, Hunt, John Lewis) is, singly, worth at least _three_ of any
other pictures whatever by living artists.

JOHN RUSKIN.

[From “The Witness” (Edinburgh), March 27, 1858.]

_GENERALIZATION AND THE SCOTCH PRE-RAPHAELITES._

_To the Editor of “The Witness.”_

I was very glad to see that good and firm defence of the pre-Raphaelite
Brothers in the _Witness_[77] the other day; only, my dear Editor, it
appears to me that you take too much trouble in the matter. Such a
lovely picture as that of Waller Paton’s must either speak for itself,
or nobody can speak for it. If you Scotch people don’t know a bit of
your own country when you see it, who is to help you to know it? If, in
that mighty wise town of Edinburgh, everybody still likes flourishes of
brush better than ferns, and dots of paint better than birch leaves,
surely there is nothing for it but to leave them in quietude of devotion
to dot and faith in flourish. At least I can see no other way of
dealing. All those platitudes from the _Scotsman_, which you took the
pains to answer, have been answered ten thousand times already, without
the smallest effect--the kind of people who utter them being always too
misty in their notions ever to feel or catch an answer. You may as well
speak to the air, or rather to a Scotch mist. The oddest part of the
business is, that all those wretched fallacies about generalization
might be quashed or crushed in an instant, by reference to any given
picture of any great master who ever lived. There never was anybody who
generalized, since paint was first ground, except Opie, and Benjamin
West, and Fuseli, and one or two other such modern stars--in their own
estimates,--night-lights, in fact, extinguishing themselves, not
odoriferously at daybreak, in a sputter in the saucer. Titian,
Giorgione, Veronese, Tintoret, Raphael, Leonardo, Correggio,--never any
of them dreamt of generalization, and would have rejected the dream as
having come by the horn gate,[78] if they had. The only difference
between them and the pre-Raphaelites is, that the latter love nature
better, and don’t yet know their artist’s business so well, having
everything to find out for themselves athwart all sorts of
contradiction, poor fellows; so they are apt to put too much into their
pictures--for love’s sake, and then not to bring this much into perfect
harmony; not yet being able to bridle their thoughts entirely with the
master’s hand. I don’t say therefore--I never have said--that their
pictures are faultless--many of them have gross faults; but the modern
pictures of the generalist school, which are opposed to them, have
nothing else but faults: they are not pictures at all, but pure daubs
and perfect blunders; nay, they have never had aim enough to be called
anything so honorable as blunders; they are mere emptinesses and
idlenesses--thistledown without seeds, and bubbles without color;
whereas the worst pre-Raphaelite picture has something _in_ it; and the
great ones, such as Windus’s “Burd Helen,”[79] will hold their own with
the most noble pictures of all time.

Always faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.

By the way, what ails you at our pre-Raphaelite Brothers’ conceits?
Windus’s heart’s-ease might have been a better conceit, I grant
you;[80] but for the conceits themselves, as such, I always enjoy them
particularly; and I don’t understand why I shouldn’t. What’s wrong in
them?

LETTERS ON ART.

IV.

TURNER.

THE TURNER BEQUEST. 1856.
THE TURNER BEQUEST AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY. 1857.
THE TURNER SKETCHES AND DRAWINGS. 1858.
THE TURNER GALLERY AT KENSINGTON. 1859.
TURNER’S DRAWINGS. 1876 (July 5).
TURNER’S DRAWINGS. 1876 (July 19).
COPIES OF TURNER’S DRAWINGS. 1876.
“TURNERS,” FALSE AND TRUE. 1871.
THE CHARACTER OF TURNER. 1857.

IV.

TURNER.

[From “The Times,” October 28, 1856.]

_THE TURNER BEQUEST._

_To the Editor of “The Times.”_

SIR: As active measures are being now[81] taken to give the public
access to the pictures and drawings left by the late Mr. Turner, you
will perhaps allow me space in your columns for a few words respecting
them.

I was appointed by Mr. Turner one of his executors. I examined the will,
and the state of the property needing administration, and, finding that
the questions arising out of the obscurity of the one and the disorder
of the other would be numerous and would involve a kind of business in
which I had no skill or knowledge, I resigned the office; but in the
course of the inquiry I catalogued the most interesting of the drawings
which are now national property, and respecting these the public will, I
think, be glad of more definite information than they at present
possess. They are referable mainly to three classes.

1. Finished water-color drawings.

2. Studies from nature, or first thoughts for pictures; in color.

3. Sketches in pencil or pen and ink.

The drawings belonging to the two latter classes are in various stages
of completion, and would contain, if rightly arranged, a perfect record
of the movements of the master’s mind during his whole life. Many of
them were so confused among prints and waste-paper that I could neither
collect nor catalogue them all in the time I had at my disposal; some
portfolios I was not able even to open. The following statement,
therefore, omits mention of many, and I believe even of some large
water-color drawings. There are in the first class forty-five drawings
of the “Rivers of France;” fifty-seven illustrating Rogers’ Poems;
twenty-three of the “River Scenery” and “Harbors of England;” four
marine vignettes; five middle-sized drawings (including the beautiful
“Ivy Bridge”); and a drawing, some three feet by two, finished with
exquisite care, of a scene in the Val d’Aosta; total, 135.

It would occupy too much of your space if I were to specify all the
various kinds of studies forming the second class. Many are far carried,
and are, to my mind, more precious and lovely than any finished
drawings; respecting some, there may be question whether Turner regarded
them as finished or not. The larger number are light sketches, valuable
only to artists, or to those interested in the processes of Turner’s
mind and hand. The total number of those which I catalogued as important
is 1,757.

The sketches of the third class are usually more elaborate than the
colored ones. They consist of studies from nature, or for composition,
in firm outline, usually on gray paper, heightened with white. They
include, among other subjects, more or less complete, fifty of the
original drawings for the Liber Studiorum, and many of the others are of
large folio size. The total of those I consider important is 1,322. Now
the value of these sketches to the public consists greatly, first, in
the preservation of each, as far as possible, in the state in which
Turner left it; secondly, in their careful arrangement and explanation;
thirdly, in convenience of general access to them. Permit me a word on
each of these heads.

Turner was in the habit of using unusual vehicles, and in the colored
studies many hues are wrought out by singular means and with singular
delicacy--nearly always in textures which the slightest damp (to which
the drawings would necessarily be subjected in the process of mounting)
would assuredly alter. I have made many experiments in mounting, putting
colored drawings, of which I had previously examined the tones, into the
hands of the best mounters, and I have never yet had a drawing returned
to me without alteration. The vast mass of these sketches, and the
comparative slightness of many, would but too probably induce a
carelessness and generalization in the treatment they might have to
undergo still more fatally detrimental to them.

Secondly, a large number are without names, and so slight that it
requires careful examination and somewhat extended acquaintance with
Turner’s works to ascertain their intention. The sketches of this class
are nearly valueless, till their meaning is deciphered, but of great
interest when seen in their proper connection. Thus there are three
progressive studies for one vignette in _Rogers’ Italy_[82] (Hannibal
passing the Alps), which I extricated from three several heaps of other
mountain sketches with which they had no connection. Thirdly, a large
number of the drawings are executed with body color, the bloom of which
any friction or handling would in a short period destroy. Their delicate
tones of color would be equally destroyed by continuous exposure to the
light or to smoke and dust.

Drawings of a valuable character, when thus destructible, are in
European museums hardly accessible to the general public. But there is
no need for this seclusion. They should be inclosed each in a light
wooden frame, under a glass the surface of which a raised mount should
prevent them from touching. These frames should slide into cases,
containing about twelve drawings each, which would be portable to any
part of the room where they were to be seen. I have long kept my own
smaller Turner drawings in this manner; fifteen frames going into the
depth of about a foot. Men are usually accused of “bad taste,” if they
express any conviction of their own ability to execute any given work.
But it would perhaps be better if in people’s sayings in general,
whether concerning others or themselves, there were less taste, and more
truth; and I think it, under the circumstances, my duty to state that I
believe none would treat these drawings with more scrupulous care, or
arrange them with greater patience, than I should myself; that I am
ready to undertake the task, and enter upon it instantly; that I will
furnish, in order to prove the working of the system proposed, a hundred
of the frames, with their cases, at my own cost; and that within six
weeks of the day on which I am permitted to begin work (illness or
accident not interfering), I will have the hundred drawings arranged,
framed, accompanied by a printed explanatory catalogue, and ready for
public inspection. It would then be in the power of the commissioners
intrusted with the administration of this portion of the national
property to decide if any, or how many more of the sketches, should be
exhibited in the same manner, as a large mass of the less interesting
ones might be kept as the drawings are at the British Museum, and shown
only on special inquiry.

I will only undertake this task on condition of the entire management of
the drawings, in every particular, being intrusted to me; but I should
ask the advice of Mr. Carpenter, of the British Museum,[83] on all
doubtful points, and intrust any necessary operations only to the person
who mounts the drawings for the British Museum.

I make this offer[84] in your columns rather than privately, first,
because I wish it to be clearly known to the public; and

[Illustration]

also because I have no time to make representations in official ways,
the very hours which I could give to the work needing to be redeemed by
allowing none to be wasted in formalities.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. RUSKIN

DENMARK HILL, _Oct._ 27.

[From “The Times,” July 9, 1857.]

_THE TURNER BEQUEST AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY._

_To the Editor of “The Times.”_

SIR: I am sorry that accident has prevented my seeing the debate of
Friday last[85] on the vote for the National Gallery until to-day. Will
you permit me, thus late, to correct the statement made by Lord Elcho,
that I offered to arrange Turner’s pictures, or could have done so as
well as Mr. Wornum[86] I only offered to arrange the sketches, and that
I am doing; but I never would have undertaken the pictures, which were
in such a state of decay that I had given up many for lost; while, also,
most of them belonged to periods of Turner’s work with which I was
little acquainted. Mr. Wornum’s patience and carefulness of research in
discovering their subjects, dates of exhibition, and other points of
interest connected with them, have been of the greatest service; and it
will be long before the labor and judgment which he has shown in
compiling, not only this, but all the various catalogues now used by the
public at our galleries, will be at all justly appreciated. I find more
real, serviceable, and trustworthy facts in one of these catalogues,
than in half a dozen of the common collections of lives of painters.

Permit me to add further, that during long residence in Venice, I have
carefully examined the Paul Veronese lately purchased by the
Government.[87] When I last saw it, it was simply the best Veronese in
Italy, if not in Europe (the “Marriage in Cana” of the Louvre is larger
and more magnificent, but not so perfect in finish); and, for my own
part, I should think no price too large for it; but putting my own deep
reverence for the painter wholly out of the question, and considering
the matter as it will appear to most persons at all acquainted with the
real character and range of Venetian work, I believe the market value of
the picture ought to be estimated at perhaps one-third more than the
Government have paid for it. Without doubt the price of the Murillo
lately purchased at Paris was much enhanced by accidental competition;
under ordinary circumstances, and putting both the pictures to a fair
trial of market value, I believe the Veronese to be worth at least
double the Murillo; in an artistical point of view, the latter picture
could not be put in any kind of comparison whatever with the Veronese.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. RUSKIN.

OXFORD, _July_ 7.

[From “The Literary Gazette,” November 13, 1858--partly reprinted in “The Two
Paths,” Appendix iv.]

_THE TURNER SKETCHES AND DRAWINGS[88]_

_To the Editor of “The Literary Gazette.”_

SIR: I do not think it generally necessary to answer criticism; yet as
yours is the first sufficient notice which has been taken of the
important collection of sketches at Marlborough House, and as your
strictures on the arrangement proposed for the body of the collection,
as well as on some statements in my catalogue, are made with such candor
and good feeling, will you allow me to offer one or two observations in
reply to them? The mode of arrangement to which you refer as determined
on by the trustees has been adopted, not to discourage the study of the
drawings by the public, but to put all more completely at their service.
Drawings so small in size and so delicate in execution cannot be seen,
far less copied, when hung on walls. As now arranged, they can be put
into the hands of each visitor, or student, as a book is into those of a
reader; he may examine them in any light, or in any position, and copy
them at his ease. The students who work from drawings exhibited on walls
will, I am sure, bear willing witness to the greater convenience of the
new system. Four hundred drawings are already thus arranged for public
use; framed, and disposed in eighty portable boxes, each containing five
sketches, so that eighty students might at once be supplied with five
drawings apiece. The oil paintings at Marlborough House, comprising as
they do the most splendid works which Turner ever produced, and the 339
drawings exhibited beside them, are surely enough for the amusement of
loungers--for do you consider as anything better than loungers those
persons who do not care enough for the Turner drawings to be at the
trouble of applying for a ticket of admission, and entering their names
in a book--that is to say, who will not, to obtain the privilege of
quiet study of perfect art, take, once for all, as much trouble as would
be necessary to register a letter, or book, or parcel?

I entirely waive for the moment the question of exposure to light. I put
the whole issue on the ground of greatest public convenience. I believe
it to be better for the public to have two collections of Turner’s
drawings than one; nay, it seems to me just the perfection of all
privilege to have one gallery for quiet, another for disquiet; one into
which the curious, idle, or speculative may crowd on wet or weary days,
and another in which people desirous of either thinking or working
seriously may always find peace, light, and elbow-room. I believe,
therefore, that the present disposition of these drawings will be at
once the most convenient and the most just, even supposing that the
finest works of Turner would not be injured by constant exposure. But
that they would be so admits of no debate. It is not on my judgment nor
on any other unsupported opinion, that the trustees have acted, but in
consideration of facts now universally admitted by persons who have
charge of drawings. You will find that the officers both of the Louvre
and of the British Museum refuse to expose their best drawings or
missal-pages to light, in consequence of ascertained damage received by
such drawings as have been already exposed; and among the works of
Turner I am prepared to name an example in which, the frame having
protected a portion while the rest was exposed, the covered portion is
still rich and lovely in colors, while the exposed spaces are reduced in
some parts nearly to white paper, and the color in general to a dull
brown.

You allude to the contrary chance that some hues may be injured by
darkness. I believe that some colors are indeed liable to darken in
perpetual shade, but not while occasionally exposed to moderate light,
as these drawings will be in daily use; nor is any liability to injury,
even by perpetual shade, as yet demonstrable with respect to the Turner
drawings; on the contrary, those which now form the great body of the
national collection were never out of Turner’s house until his death,
and were all kept by him in tight bundles or in clasped books; and all
the drawings so kept are in magnificent preservation, appearing as if
they had just been executed, while every one of those which have been in
the possession of purchasers and exposed in frames are now faded in
proportion to the time and degree of their exposure; the lighter hues
disappearing, especially from the skies, so as sometimes to leave hardly
a trace of the cloud-forms. For instance, the great Yorkshire series is,
generally speaking, merely the wreck of what it once was.[89] That
water-colors are not injured by darkness is also sufficiently proved by
the exquisite preservation of missal paintings, when the books
containing them have been little used. Observe, then, you have simply
this question to put to the public: “Will you have your Turner drawings
to look at when you are at leisure, in a comfortable room, under such
limitations as will preserve them to you forever, or will you make an
amusing exhibition of them (_if_ amusing, which I doubt) for children
and nursery-maids; dry your wet coats by them, and shake off the dust
from your feet upon them, for a score or two of years, and then send
them to the waste-paper merchant?” That is the simple question; answer
it, for the public, as you think best.

Permit me to observe farther, that the small interest manifested in the
existing Turner collection at Marlborough House does not seem to justify
any further effort at exhibition. There are already more paintings and
drawings placed in those rooms than could be examined properly in years
of labor. But how placed? Thrust into dark corners, nailed on spare
spaces of shutters, backs of doors, and tottering elongations of
screens; hung with their faces to the light, or with their backs to the
light, or with their sides to the light so that it “rakes” them (I use
an excellent expression of Sir Charles Eastlake’s), throwing every
irregularity of surface into view as if they were maps in relief of hill
countries; hung, in fine, in every conceivable mode that can exhibit
their faults, or conceal their meaning, or degrade their beauty. Neither
Mr. Wornum nor I are answerable for this; we have both done the best we
could under the circumstances; the public are answerable for it, who
suffer such things without care and without remonstrance. If they want
to derive real advantage from the treasures they possess, let them show
some regard for them, and build, or at least express some desire to get
built, a proper gallery for them. I see no way at present out of the
embarrassments which exist respecting the disposition of the entire
national collection; but the Turner gallery was intended by Turner
himself to be a distinct one, and there is no reason why a noble
building should not be at once provided for it. Place the oil pictures
now at Marlborough House in beautiful rooms, each in a light fit and
sufficient for it, and all on a level with the eye; range them in
chronological order; place the sketches at present exhibited, also in
chronological order, in a lateral gallery; let illustrative engravings
and explanations be put in cases near them; furnish the room richly and
gracefully, as the Louvre is furnished, and I do not think the public
would any longer complain of not having enough to amuse them on rainy
days.

That we ought to do as much for our whole national collection is as
certain as that we shall not do it for many a year to come, nor until we
have wasted twice as much money as would do it nobly in vain experiments
on a mean scale. I have no immediate hope in this matter, else I might
perhaps ask you to let me occupy your columns with some repetition, in
other words (such repetition being apparently always needed in these
talking days), of what I have already stated in the Appendix to my Notes
on the oil-pictures[90] at Marlborough House. But I will only, being as
I say hopeless in the matter, ask you for room for a single sentence.

“If ever we come to understand that the function of a picture,
after all, with respect to mankind, is not merely to be bought, but
to be seen, it will follow that a picture which deserves a price
deserves a place; and that all paintings which are worth keeping,
are worth, also, the rent of so much wall as shall be necessary to
show them to the best advantage, and in the least fatiguing way for
the spectator.

“It would be interesting if we could obtain a return of the sum
which the English nation pays annually for park walls to inclose
game, stable walls to separate horses, and garden walls to ripen
peaches; and if we could compare this ascertained sum with what it
pays for walls to show its art upon.”

I ask you to reprint this, because the fact is that if either Mr. Wornum
at the National Gallery, or Mr. Carpenter at the British Museum, had as
much well-lighted wall at their disposal as most gentlemen’s gardeners
have, they could each furnish the public with art enough to keep them
gazing from one year’s end to another’s. Mr. Carpenter has already made
a gallant effort with some screens in a dark room; but in the National
Gallery, whatever mode of exhibition may be determined upon for the four
hundred framed drawings, the great mass of the Turner sketches (about
fifteen thousand, without counting mere color memoranda) must lie
packed in parcels in tin cases, simply for want of room to show them. It
is true that many of these are quite slight, and would be interesting to
none but artists. There are, however, upwards of five thousand sketches
in pencil outline,[91] which are just as interesting as those now
exhibited at Marlborough House; and which might be constantly exhibited,
like those, without any harm, if there were only walls to put them on.

I have already occupied much of your space. I do not say too much,
considering the importance of the subject, but[92] I must [with more
diffidence] ask you to allow me yet leave to reply to the objections you
make to two statements [and to one omission] in my Catalogue, as those
objections would otherwise diminish its usefulness. I have asserted that
in a given drawing (named as one of the chief in the series), Turner’s
pencil did not move over the thousandth of an inch without meaning; and
you charge this expression with extravagant hyperbole. On the contrary,
it is much within the truth, being merely a mathematically accurate
description of fairly good execution in either drawing or engraving. It
is only necessary to measure a piece of any ordinarily good work to
ascertain this. Take, for instance, Finden’s engraving at the 180th page
of Rogers’ poems,[93] in which the face of the figure, from the chin to
the top of the brow, occupies just a quarter of an inch, and the space
between the upper lip and chin as nearly as possible one-seventeenth of
an inch. The whole mouth occupies one-third of this space, say,
one-fiftieth of an inch; and within that space both the lips and the
much more difficult inner corner of the mouth are perfectly drawn and
rounded, with quite successful and sufficiently subtle expression. Any
artist will assure you, that in order to draw a mouth as well as this,
there must be more than twenty gradations of shade in the touches; that
is to say, in this case, gradations changing, with meaning, within less
than the thousandth of an inch.

But this is mere child’s play compared to the refinement of any
first-rate mechanical work, much more of brush or pencil drawing by a
master’s hand. In order at once to furnish you with authoritative
evidence on this point, I wrote to Mr. Kingsley, tutor of Sidney-Sussex
College, a friend to whom I always have recourse when I want to be
precisely right in any matter; for his great knowledge both of
mathematics and of natural science is joined, not only with singular
powers of delicate experimental manipulation, but with a keen
sensitiveness to beauty in art. His answer, in its final statement
respecting Turner’s work, is amazing even to me; and will, I should
think, be more so to your readers. Observe the successions of measured
and tested refinement; here is No. 1:

“The finest mechanical work that I know of is that done by Nobert
in the way of ruling lines. I have a series of lines ruled by him
on glass, giving actual scales from .000024 and .000016 of an inch,
perfectly correct to these places of decimals;{*} and he has
executed others as fine as .000012, though I do not know how far he
could repeat these last with accuracy.”

{*} That is to say, accurate in measures estimated in _millionths_
of inches.

This is No. 1, of precision. Mr. Kingsley proceeds to No. 2:

“But this is rude work compared to the accuracy necessary for the
construction of the object-glass of a microscope such as Rosse
turns out.”

I am sorry to omit the explanation which follows of the ten lenses
composing such a glass, “each of which must be exact in radius and in
surface, and all have their axes coincident;” but it would not be
intelligible without the figure by which it is illustrated, so I pass to
Mr. Kingsley’s No. 3:

“I am tolerably familiar,” he proceeds, “with the actual grinding
and polishing of lenses and specula, and have produced by my own
hands some by no means bad optical work; and I have copied no small
amount of Turner’s work, and I still look with awe at the combined
delicacy and precision of his hand; _it beats optical work out of
sight_.[95] In optical work, as in refined drawing, the hand goes
beyond the eye,{*} and one has to depend upon the feel; and when
one has once learned what a delicate affair touch is, one gets a
horror of all coarse work, and is ready to forgive any amount of
feebleness, sooner than the boldness which is akin to impudence. In
optics the distinction is easily seen when the work is put to
trial; but here too, as in drawing, it requires an educated eye to
tell the difference when the work is only moderately bad; but with
‘bold’ work nothing can be seen but distortion and fog, and I
heartily wish the same result would follow the same kind of
handling in drawing; but here, the boldness cheats the unlearned by
looking like the precision of the true man. It is very strange how
much better our ears are than our eyes in this country: if an
ignorant man were to be ‘bold’ with a violin, he would not get many
admirers, though his boldness was far below that of ninety-nine out
of a hundred drawings one sees.”

{*} In case any of your readers should question the use, in
drawing, of work too fine for the touches to be individually, I
quote a sentence from my “Elements of Drawing.”{**} “_All_ fine
coloring, like fine drawing, is delicate; so delicate, that if at
last you see the color you are putting on, you are putting on too
much. You ought to feel a change wrought in the general tone by
touches which are individually too pale to be seen.”

{**} See the “Elements of Drawing,” Letter III. on Color and
Composition, p. 232.

The words which I have italicized[96] in the above extract are those
which were surprising to me. I knew that Turner’s was as refined as any
optical work, but had no idea of its going beyond it. Mr. Kingsley’s
word “awe,” occurring just before, is, however, as I have often felt,
precisely the right one. When once we begin at all to understand the
work of any truly great executor, such as that of any of the three great
Venetians [(Tintoret, Titian, and Veronese)], Correggio, or Turner, the
awe of it is something greater than can be felt from the most stupendous
natural scenery. For the creation of such a system as a high human
intelligence, endowed with its ineffably perfect instruments of eye and
hand, is a far more appalling manifestation of Infinite Power than the
making either of seas or mountains. After this testimony to the
completion of Turner’s work, I need not at length defend myself from the
charge of hyperbole in the statement that, “as far as I know, the
galleries of Europe may be challenged to produce one sketch[97] that
shall equal the chalk study No. 45, or the feeblest of the memoranda in
the 71st and following frames;”[98] which memoranda, however, it should
have been observed, are stated at the forty-fourth page to be in some
respects “the grandest work in gray that he did in his life.”

For I believe that, as manipulators, none but the four men whom I have
just named (the three Venetians and Correggio) were equal to Turner;
and, as far as I know, none of these four men put their full strength
into sketches. But whether they did or not, my statement in the
Catalogue is limited by my own knowledge, and as far as I can trust that
knowledge: it is not an enthusiastic statement, but an entirely calm
and considered one. It may be a mistake, but it is not an hyperbole.

Lastly, you object that the drawings for the “_Liber Studiorum_” are not
included in my catalogue. They are not so, because I did not consider
them as, in a true sense, drawings at all; they are merely washes of
color laid roughly to guide the mezzotint engraver in his first process;
the drawing, properly so called, was all put in by Turner when he etched
the plates, or superadded by repeated touchings on the proofs. These
brown “guides,” for they are nothing more, are entirely unlike the
painter’s usual work, and in every way inferior to it; so that students
wishing to understand the composition of the “_Liber_” must always work
from the plates, and not from these first indications of purpose.[99] I
have put good impressions of two of the plates in the same room, in
order to show their superiority; and for the rest, thought it useless to
increase the bulk of the Catalogue by naming subjects which have been
published and well known these thirty years.[100]

Permit me, in conclusion, to thank you for drawing attention to the
subject of this great national collection; and, again asking your
indulgence for trespassing so far upon your space, to subscribe myself,

Very respectfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.

[From “The Times,” October 21, 1859.]

_THE TURNER GALLERY AT KENSINGTON[101]_

_To the Editor of “The Times.”_

SIR: At the time of my departure for the Continent some months ago I had
heard it was proposed to light the Turner Gallery, at Kensington, with
gas; but I attached no importance to the rumor, feeling assured that a
commission would be appointed on the subject, and that its decision
would be adverse to the mode of exhibition suggested.

Such a commission has, I find, been appointed; and has, contrary to my
expectations, approved and confirmed the plan of lighting proposed.

It would be the merest presumption in me to expect weight to be attached
to any opinion of mine, opposed to that of any one of the gentlemen who
formed the commission; but as I was officially employed in some of the
operations connected with the arrangement of the Turner Gallery at
Marlborough House, and as it might therefore be supposed by the public
that I at least concurred in recommending the measures now taken for
exhibition of the Turner pictures in the evening, at Kensington, I must
beg your permission to state in your columns that I take no share in the
responsibility of lighting the pictures either of Reynolds or Turner
with gas; that, on the contrary, my experience would lead me to
apprehend serious injury to those pictures from such a measure; and that
it is with profound regret that I have heard of its adoption.

I specify the pictures of Reynolds and Turner, because the combinations
of equal coloring material employed by both these painters are various,
and to some extent unknown; and also because the body of their colors
shows peculiar liability to crack, and to detach itself from the canvas.
I am glad to be able to bear testimony to the fitness of the gallery at
Kensington, as far as could be expected under the circumstances, for the
exhibition of the Turner pictures by daylight, as well as to the
excellence of Mr. Wornum’s chronological arrangement of them in the
three principal rooms.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, _Oct._ 20.

P.S.--I wish the writer of the admirable and exhaustive letter which
appeared in your columns of yesterday on the subject of Mr. Scott’s
design for the Foreign Office would allow me to know his name.[102]

[From “The Daily Telegraph,” July 5, 1876.]

_TURNER’S DRAWINGS._

_To the Editor of “The Daily Telegraph.”_

SIR: I am very heartily glad to see the subject of Turner’s drawings
brought more definitely before the public in your remarks on the recent
debate[103] in Parliament. It is indeed highly desirable that these
drawings should be made more accessible, and I will answer your
reference to me by putting you in possession of all the facts which it
is needful that the public should know or take into consideration
respecting them, in either judging what has been hitherto done by those
entrusted with their care, or taking measures for obtaining greater
freedom in their use. Their _use_, I say, as distinguished from the mere
pleasure of seeing them. This pleasure, to the general public, is very
small indeed. You appear not to be aware that three hundred of the
finest examples, including all the originals of the Liber Studiorum,
were framed by myself, especially for the public, in the year 1858, and
have been exhibited every day, and all day long, ever since in London.
But the public never stops a moment in the room at Kensington where they
hang; and the damp, filth, and gas (under the former management of that
institution)[104] soiled their frames and warped the drawings, “by
friend remembered not.”

You have been also misinformed in supposing that “for some years these
aquarelles were unreservedly shown, and in all the fulness of daylight.”
Only the “Seine” series (rivers of France), the rivers of England, the
harbors of England, and the Rogers’ vignettes (about a hundred drawings
in all), were exhibited in the dark under-room of Marlborough House, and
a few larger and smaller examples scattered up and down in the room of
the National Gallery, including Fort Bard, Edinburgh, and Ivy
Bridge.[105] These drawings are all finished, most of them have been
engraved; they were shown as the choicest of the collection, and there
is no question but that they should always be perfectly accessible to
the public. There are no other finished drawings in the vast mass of the
remaining material for exhibition and means of education. But these are
_all_ the drawings which Turner made during his lifetime, in color,
chalk, pencil, and ink, for his own study or delight; that is to say,
pencil sketches to be counted by the thousand (how many thousands I
cannot safely so much as guess), and assuredly upwards of two thousand
colored studies, many of exquisite beauty; and all instructive as no
other water-color work ever was before, or has been since; besides the
ink and chalk studies for all his great Academy pictures.[106]

There are in this accumulation of drawings means of education in the
noblest principles of elementary art and in the most accomplished
science of color for every drawing-school in England, were they properly
distributed. Besides these, there are the three hundred chosen drawings
already named, now at Kensington, and about two hundred more of equal
value, now in the lower rooms of the National Gallery, which the
Trustees permitted me to choose out of the mass, and frame for general
service.

They are framed as I frame exercise-drawings at Oxford, for my own
schools. They are, when in use, perfectly secure from dust and all other
sources of injury; slide, when done with, into portable cabinets; are
never exposed to light, but when they are being really looked at; and
can be examined at his ease, measured, turned in whatever light he
likes, by every student or amateur who takes the smallest interest in
them. But it is necessary, for this mode of exhibition, that there
should be trustworthy persons in charge of the drawings, as of the MSS.
in the British Museum, and that there should be attendants in
observation, as in the Print Room of the Museum, that glasses may not be
broken, or drawings taken out of the frames.

Thus taken care of, and thus shown, the drawings may be a quite
priceless possession to the people of England for the next five
centuries; whereas those exhibited in the Manchester Exhibition were
virtually destroyed in that single summer.[107] There is not one of them
but is the mere wreck of what it was. I do not choose to name destroyed
drawings in the possession of others; but I will name the vignette of
the Plains of Troy in my own, which had half the sky baked out of it in
that fatal year, and the three drawings of Richmond (Yorkshire),
Egglestone Abbey, and Langharne Castle,[108] which have had by former
exposure to light their rose-colors entirely destroyed, and half of
their blues, leaving nothing safe but the brown.

I do not think it necessary to repeat my former statements respecting
the injurious power of light on certain pigments rapidly, and on all
eventually. The respective keepers of the Print Room and of the
Manuscripts in the British Museum are the proper persons to be consulted
on that matter, their experience being far larger than mine, and over
longer epochs. I will, however, myself undertake to show from my own
collection a water-color of the eleventh century absolutely as fresh as
when it was laid--having been guarded from light; and water-color burnt
by sunlight into a mere dirty stain on the paper, in a year, with the
matched piece from which it was cut beside it.

The public may, therefore, at their pleasure treat their Turner drawings
as a large exhibition of fireworks, see them explode, clap their hands,
and have done with them; or they may treat them as an exhaustless
library of noble learning. To this end, they need, first, space and
proper light--north light, as clear of smoke as possible, and large
windows; and then proper attendance--that is to say, well-paid
librarians and servants.

The space will of course be difficult to obtain, for while the British
public of the upper classes are always ready to pay any money whatever
for space to please their pride in their own dining-rooms and
ball-rooms, they would not, most of them, give five shillings a year to
get a good room in the National Gallery to show the national drawings
in. As to the room in which it is at present proposed to place them in
the new building, they might just as well, for any good that will ever
be got out of them there, be exhibited in a railway tunnel.

And the attendants will also be difficult to obtain. For--and this is
the final fact to which I beg your notice--these drawings now in
question were, as I above stated, framed by me in 1858. They have been
perfectly “accessible” ever since, and are so now, as easily as any
works[109] in the shops of Regent Street are accessible over the
counter, if you have got a shopman to hand them to you. And the British
public have been whining and growling about their exclusion from the
sight of these drawings for the last eighteen years, simply because,
while they are willing to pay for any quantity of sentinels to stand in
boxes about town and country, for any quantity of flunkeys to stand on
boards for additional weight to carriage horses, and for any quantity of
footmen to pour out their wine and chop up their meat for them, they
would not for all these eighteen years pay so much as a single attendant
to hand them the Turner drawings across the National Gallery table; but
only what was needful to obtain for two days in the week the withdrawal
from his other duties in the Gallery of the old servant of Mr. Samuel
Rogers.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. RUSKIN.

BRANTWOOD, _July_ 3.

[From “The Daily Telegraph,” July 19, 1876.]

_TURNERS DRAWINGS._

_To the Editor of “The Daily Telegraph.”_

SIR: In justice to our living water-color artists, will you favor me by
printing the accompanying letter,[110] which I think will be
satisfactory to many of your readers, on points respecting which my own
may have given some of them a false impression? In my former letter,
permit me to correct the misprint of “works” in Regent Street for
“wares.”

I have every reason to suppose Mr. Collingwood Smith’s knowledge of the
subject entirely trustworthy; but when all is conceded, must still
repeat that no water-color work of value should ever be constantly
exposed to light, or even to the air of a crowded metropolis, least of
all to gaslight or its fumes.

I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. RUSKIN.

BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE, _July_ 16.

[From “The Times,” April 25, 1876.]

_COPIES OF TURNER’S DRAWINGS._

_To the Editor of “The Times.”_

SIR: You will oblige me by correcting the misstatement in your columns
of the 22d,[111] that “only copies of the copies” of Turner exhibited at
148 New Bond Street, are for sale. The drawings offered for sale by the
company will, of course, be always made by Mr. Ward from the originals,
just as much as those now exhibited as specimens.

You observe in the course of your article that “surely such attempts
could not gratify any one who had a true insight for Mr. Turner’s
works?” But the reason that the drawings now at 148 New Bond Street are
not for sale is that they _do_ gratify _me_, and are among my extremely
valued possessions; and if among the art critics on your staff there be,
indeed, any one whose “insight for Mr. Turner’s work” you suppose to be
greater than mine, I shall have much pleasure in receiving any
instructions with which he may favor me, at the National Gallery, on the
points either in which Mr. Ward’s work may be improved, or on those in
which Turner is so superior to Titian and Correggio, that while the
public maintain, in Italy, a nation of copyists of these second-rate
masters, they are not justified in hoping any success whatever in
representing the work of the Londoner, whom, while he was alive, I was
always called mad for praising.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.

PETERBOROUGH, _April_ 23.

[From “The Times,” January 24, 1871.]

_“TURNERS,” FALSE AND TRUE._

_To the Editor of “The Times.”_

SIR: I have refused until now to express any opinion respecting the
picture No. 40[112] in the Exhibition of the Old Masters, feeling
extreme reluctance to say anything which its kind owner, to whom the
Exhibition owes so much, might deem discourteous.

But I did not suppose it was possible any doubt could long exist among
artists as to the character of the work in question; and, as I find its
authenticity still in some quarters maintained, I think no other course
is open to me than to state that the picture is not by Turner, nor even
by an imitator of Turner acquainted with the essential qualities of the
master.

I am able to assert this on internal evidence only. I never saw the
picture before, nor do I know anything of the channels through which it
came into the possession of its present proprietor.

No. 235 is, on the contrary, one of the most consummate and majestic
works that ever came from the artist’s hand, and it is one of the very
few now remaining which have not been injured by subsequent treatment.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, _Jan._ 23.

[From “The Life of Turner,” by Walter Thornbury.]

_THE CHARACTER OF TURNER.[113]_

[The following admonition, sent by Mr. Ruskin in 1857 to Mr. Thornbury,
and coupled with the advice that for the biographer of Turner there was
no time to be lost, “for those who knew him when young are dying daily,”
forms a fit conclusion to this division of the letters.]

Fix at the beginning the following main characteristics of Turner in
your mind, as the keys to the secret of all he said and did.

_Uprightness._
_Generosity._
_Tenderness_ of heart (extreme).
_Sensuality._
_Obstinacy_ (extreme).
_Irritability._
_Infidelity._

And be sure that he knew his own power, and felt himself utterly alone
in the world from its not being understood. Don’t try to mask the dark
side....

Yours most truly,
J. RUSKIN.

[See the preface to the first edition of the “Life of Turner;” that to
the second contains the following estimate of Mr. Thornbury’s book:[114]
“Lucerne, Dec. 2, 1861.--I have just received and am reading your book
with deep interest. I am much gratified by the view you have taken and
give of Turner. It is quite what I hoped. What beautiful things you have
discovered about him! Thank you for your courteous and far too
flattering references to me.”]

LETTERS ON ART.

PICTURES AND ARTISTS.

JOHN LEECH’S OUTLINES. 1872.
ERNEST GEORGE’S ETCHINGS. 1873.
THE FREDERICK WALKER EXHIBITION. 1876.

PICTURES AND ARTISTS.

[From the “Catalogue of the Exhibition of Outlines by the late John Leech, at the
Gallery, 9 Conduit Street, Regent Street.” 1872.[115]]

_JOHN LEECH’S OUTLINES._

I am honored by the request of the sister of John Leech that I should
give some account of the drawings of her brother, which remain in her
possession; and I am able to fulfil her request without departing from
the rule which has always bound me, not to allow any private interest to
weigh with me in speaking of matters which concern the public. It is
merely and simply a matter of public concern that the value of these
drawings should be known and measures taken for their acquisition, or,
at least, for obtaining a characteristic selection from them, as a
National property. It cannot be necessary for me, or for any one, now to
praise the work of John Leech. Admittedly it contains the finest
definition and natural history of the classes of our society, the
kindest and subtlest analysis of its foibles, the tenderest flattery of
its pretty and well-bred ways, with which the modesty of subservient
genius ever amused or immortalized careless masters. But it is not
generally known how much more valuable, as art, the first sketches for
the woodcuts were than the finished drawings, even before those drawings
sustained any loss in engraving.

John Leech was an absolute master of the elements of character,--but not
by any means of those of _chiaroscuro_,--and the admirableness of his
work diminished as it became elaborate. The first few lines in which he
sets down his purpose are invariably of all drawing that I know the
most wonderful in their accurate felicity and prosperous haste. It is
true that the best possible drawing, whether slight or elaborate, is
never hurried. Holbein or Titian, if they lay only a couple of lines,
yet lay them quietly, and leave them entirely right. But it needs a
certain sternness of temper to do this.

Most, in the prettiest sense of the word, _gentle_ artists indulge
themselves in the ease, and even trust to the felicity of rapid--and
even in a measure inconsiderate--work in sketching, so that the beauty
of a sketch is understood to be consistent with what is partly
unintentional.

There is, however, one condition of extreme and exquisite skill in which
haste may become unerring. It cannot be obtained in completely finished
work; but the hands of Gainsborough, Reynolds, or Tintoret often nearly
approach completion at full speed, and the pencil sketches of Turner are
expressive almost in the direct ratio of their rapidity.

But of all rapid and condensed realization ever accomplished by the
pencil, John Leech’s is the most dainty, and the least fallible, in the
subjects of which he was cognizant. Not merely right in the traits which
he seizes, but refined in the sacrifice of what he refuses.

The drawing becomes slight through fastidiousness not indolence, and the
finest discretion has left its touches rare.

In flexibility and lightness of pencilling, nothing but the best
outlines of Italian masters with the silver point can be compared to
them. That Leech sketched English squires instead of saints, and their
daughters instead of martyrs, does not in the least affect the question
respecting skill of pencilling; and I repeat deliberately that nothing
but the best work of sixteenth century Italy with the silver point
exists in art, which in rapid refinement these playful English drawings
do not excel. There are too many of them (fortunately) to be rightly
exemplary--I want to see the collection divided, dated carefully, and
selected portions placed in good light, in a quite permanent arrangement
in each of our great towns in connection with their drawing schools.

I will not indeed have any in Oxford while I am there, because I am
afraid that my pupils should think too lightly of their drawing as
compared with their other studies, and I doubt their studying anything
else but John Leech if they had him to study. But in our servile schools
of mechanical drawing, to see what drawing was indeed, which could
represent something better than machines, and could not be mimicked by
any machinery, would put more life into them than any other teaching I
can conceive.

It is, therefore, with the greatest pleasure that I accept the honor of
having my name placed on the committee for obtaining funds for the
purchase of these drawings; and I trust that the respect of the English
public for the gentle character of the master, and their gratitude for
the amusement with which he has brightened so many of their days, will
be expressed in the only way in which expression is yet possible by due
care and wise use of the precious possessions he has left to them.

(Signed) J. RUSKIN.

[From “The Architect,” December 27, 1873.]

_ERNEST GEORGE’S ETCHINGS._

_To the Editor of “The Architect.”_

MY DEAR SIR: I am entirely glad you had permission to publish some of
Mr. Ernest George’s etchings;[116] they are the most precious pieces of
work I have seen for many a day, though they are still, like nearly
everything the English do best in art, faultful in matters which might
have been easily conquered, and not a little wasteful, sometimes of
means and time; I should be glad, therefore, of space enough in your
columns to state, with reference to these sketches, some of the
principles of etching which I had not time to define in the lectures on
engraving I gave this year, at Oxford,[117] and which are too often
forgotten even by our best draughtsmen.

I call Mr. George’s work precious, chiefly because it indicates an
intense perception of points of character in architecture, and a sincere
enjoyment of them for their own sake. His drawings are not accumulative
of material for future use; still less are they vain exhibitions of his
own skill. He draws the scene in all its true relations, because it
delights him, and he perceives what is permanently and altogether
characteristic in it. As opposed to such frank and joyful work, most
modern architectural drawings are mere diagram or exercise.

I call them precious, in the second place, because they show very great
powers of true composition. All their subjects are made delightful more
by skill of arrangement than by any dexterities of execution; and this
faculty is very rare amongst landscape painters and architects, because
nearly every man who has any glimmering of it naturally takes to figure
painting--not that the ambition to paint figures is any sign of the
faculty, but that, when people have the faculty, they nearly always have
also the ambition. And, indeed, this is quite right, if they would not
forsake their architecture afterwards, but apply their power of figure
design, when gained, to the decoration of their buildings.

To return to Mr. George’s work. It is precious, lastly, in its fine
sense of serene light and shade, as opposed to the coruscations and
horrors of modern attempts in that direction. But it is a pity--and this
is the first grand principle of etching which I feel it necessary to
affirm--when the instinct of chiaroscuro leads the artist to spend time
in producing texture on his plate which cannot be ultimately perfect,
however labored. All the common raptures concerning blots, burr,
delicate biting, and the other tricks of the etching trade, merely
indicate imperfect feeling for shadow.

The proper instrument of chiaroscuro is the brush; a wash of sepia,
rightly managed, will do more in ten minutes than Rembrandt himself
could do in ten days of the most ingenious scratching, or blurt out by
the most happy mixtures of art and accident.[118] As soon as Mr. George
has learned what true light and shade is (and a few careful studies with
brush or chalk would enable him to do so), he will not labor his etched
subjects in vain. The virtue of an etching, in this respect, is to
express perfectly harmonious sense of light and shade, but not to
realize it. All fine etchings are done with few lines.

Secondly--and this is a still more important general principle (I must
let myself fall into dictatorial terms for brevity’s sake)--Let your few
lines be sternly clear, however delicate, or however dark. All burr and
botch is child’s play, and a true draughtsman must never be at the mercy
of his copper and ink. Drive your line well and fairly home; don’t
scrawl or zigzag; know where your hand is going, and what it is doing,
to a hairbreadth; then bite clear and clean, and let the last impression
be as good as the first. When it begins to fail break your plate.

Third general principle.

Don’t depend much on various biting. For a true master, and a great
purpose, even one biting is enough. By no flux or dilution of acid can
you ever etch a curl of hair or a cloud; and if you think you can etch
the gradations of coarser things, it is only because you have never
seen them. Try, at your leisure, to etch a teacup or a tallow candle, of
their real size; see what you can make of the gradations of those
familiar articles; if you succeed to your mind, you may try something
more difficult afterwards.

Lastly. For all definite shades of architectural detail, use pencil or
charcoal, or the brush, never the pen point. You can draw a leaf surface
rightly in a minute or two with these--with the pen point, never, to all
eternity. And on you knowing what the surface of a form is depends your
entire power of recognizing good work. The difference between
thirteenth-century work, wholly beautiful, and a cheap imitation of it,
wholly damnable, lies in gradation of surface as subtle as those of a
rose-leaf, and which are, to modern sculpture, what singing is to a
steam-whistle.

For the rest, the limitation of etched work to few lines enables the
sketcher to multiply his subjects, and make his time infinitely more
useful to himself and others. I would most humbly solicit, in
conclusion, such advantageous use of his gifts from Mr. George. He might
etch a little summer tour for us every year, and give permanent and
exquisite record of a score of scenes, rich in historical interest, with
no more pains than he has spent on one or two of these plates in drawing
the dark sides of a wall. Yours faithfully,

JOHN RUSKIN.

[From “The Times,” January 20, 1876.]

_THE FREDERICK WALKER EXHIBITION._

DEAR MR. MARKS:[119] You ask me to say what I feel of Frederick Walker’s
work, now seen in some collective mass, as far as anything can be seen
in black-veiled London. You have long known my admiration of his genius,
my delight in many passages of his art. These, while he lived, were all
I cared to express. If you will have me speak of him now, I will speak
the whole truth of what I feel--namely, that every soul in London
interested in art ought to go to see that Exhibition, and, amid all the
beauty and the sadness of it, very diligently to try and examine
themselves as to the share they have had, in their own busy modern life,
in arresting the power of this man at the point where it stayed. Very
chief share they have had, assuredly. But he himself, in the liberal and
radical temper of modern youth, has had his own part in casting down his
strength, following wantonly or obstinately his own fancies wherever
they led him. For instance, it being Nature’s opinion that sky should
usually be blue, and it being Mr. Walker’s opinion that it should be the
color of buff plaster, he resolutely makes it so, for his own isolated
satisfaction, partly in affectation also, buff skies being considered by
the public more sentimental than blue ones. Again, the laws of all good
painting having been long ago determined by absolute masters, whose work
cannot be bettered nor departed from--Titian having determined forever
what oil-painting is, Angelico what tempera-painting is, Perugino what
fresco-painting is, two hundred years of noble miniature-painting what
minutest work on ivory is, and, in modern times, a score of entirely
skillful and disciplined draughtsmen what pure water-color and pure
body-color painting on paper are (Turner’s Yorkshire drawing of Hornby
Castle, now at Kensington, and John Lewis’s “Encampment under
Sinai,”[120] being nameable at once as unsurpassable standards), here is
Mr. Walker refusing to learn anything from any of those schools or
masters, but inventing a semi-miniature, quarter fresco, quarter wash
manner of his own--exquisitely clever, and reaching, under such clever
management, delightfullest results here and there, but which betrays his
genius into perpetual experiment instead of achievement, and his life
into woeful vacillation between the good, old, quiet room of the
Water-Color Society, and your labyrinthine magnificence at Burlington
House.

Lastly, and in worst error, the libraries of England being full of true
and noble books--her annals of true and noble history, and her
traditions of beautiful and noble--in these scientific times I must say,
I suppose, “mythology”--not religion--from all these elements of mental
education and subjects of serviceable art, he turns recklessly away to
enrich the advertisements of the circulating library, to sketch whatever
pleases his fancy, barefooted, or in dainty boots, of modern beggary and
fashion, and enforce, with laboriously symbolical pathos, his adherence
to Justice Shallow’s sublime theology that “all shall die.”

That theology has indeed been preached by stronger men, again and again,
from Horace’s days to our own, but never to so little purpose. “Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” said wisely in his way, the Latin
farmer: ate his beans and bacon in comfort, had his suppers of the gods
on the fair earth, with his servants jesting round the table, and left
eternal monuments of earthly wisdom and of cricket-song. “Let us labor
and be just, for to-morrow we die, and after death the Judgment,” said
Holbein and Durer, and left eternal monuments of upright human toil and
honorable gloom of godly fear. “Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad,
for to-morrow we die, and shall be with God,” said Angelico and Giotto,
and left eternal monuments of divinely-blazoned heraldry of Heaven. “Let
us smoke pipes, make money, read bad novels, walk in bad air, and say
sentimentally how sick we are in the afternoon, for to-morrow we die,
and shall be made ourselves clay pipes,” says the modern world, and
drags this poor bright painter down into the abyss with it, vainly
clutching at a handful or two of scent and flowers in the May gardens.

Under which sorrowful terms, being told also by your grand Academicians
that he should paint the nude, and, accordingly, wasting a year or two
of his life in trying to paint schoolboys’ backs and legs without their
shirts or breeches, and with such other magazine material as he can pick
up of sick gypsies, faded gentlewomen, pretty girls disguised as
paupers, and the red-roofed or gray remnants of old English villages and
manor-house, last wrecks of the country’s peace and honor, remaining yet
visible among the black ravages of its ruin, he supplies the demands of
his temporary public, scarcely patient, even now that he has gone, to
pause beside his delicate tulips or under his sharp-leaved willows, and
repent for the passing tints and fallen petals of the life that might
have been so precious, and, perhaps, in better days, prolonged.

That is the main moral of the Exhibition. Of the beauty of the drawings,
accepting them for what they aim at being, there is little need that I
should add anything to what has been already said rightly by the chief
organs of the London Press. Nothing can go beyond them in subtlety of
exhibited touch (to be distinguished, however, observe always from the
serene completion of master’s work, disdaining the applause to be gained
by its manifestation); their harmonies of amber-color and purple are
full of exquisite beauty in their chosen key; their composition always
graceful, often admirable, and the sympathy they express with all
conditions of human life most kind and true; not without power of
rendering character which would have been more recognized in an inferior
artist, because it would have been less restrained by the love of
beauty.

I might, perhaps, in my days of youth and good fortune, have written
what the public would have called “eloquent passages” on the subjects of
the Almshouse and the Old Gate;[121] being now myself old and decrepit
(besides being much bothered with beggars, and in perpetual feud with
parish officers), and having seen every building I cared for in the
world ruined, I pass these two pictures somewhat hastily by, and try to
enjoy myself a little in the cottage gardens. Only one of them,
however,--No. 71,--has right sunshine in it, and that is a sort o

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