Boston, U.S.A., in 1879, Professor Charles Eliot Norton wrote a
paragraph which, as the verdict of a severely discriminating--though
friendly--critic, is worth reading more than once again. He said: "The
character of this collection is unique. These drawings are not the work
of an artist by profession; there is not a 'picture' among them. They
are the studies of one who, by patience and industry, by single-minded
devotion to each special task, and by concentrated attention upon
it, has trained an eye of exceptional keenness and penetration, and
a hand of equally exceptional delicacy and firmness of touch, to be
the responsive instruments of faculties of observation and perception
such as have seldom been bestowed on artist or on poet. Few of these
drawings were undertaken as an end in themselves, but most of them as
means by which to acquire exact knowledge of the facts of nature, or to
obtain the data from which to deduce a principle in art, or to preserve
a record of the work of periods in which art gave better expression to
the higher interests and motives of life than at the present day. These
studies may consequently afford lessons to the proficients in art not
less than to the fresh beginners. The beauty of some of them will be
obvious to an untrained eye; but no one may hope to appreciate them at
their worth who will not, in a respectful and modest spirit, give time
and patience to their study."
In his childhood, long before he thought of drawing from Nature, he
had learnt great neatness of hand by amusing himself with copying out
his juvenile verses to look like print, by drawing maps and by making
facsimiles of George Cruikshank's etchings in his "Grimm's Goblins."
His father used to sketch a little in the pre-historic style, and was
fond of pictures; but they never dreamed of making John an artist. At
last, when he was thirteen, and his adopted sister, Mary, was taking
drawing lessons at school with much satisfaction to the family, he,
too, was allowed to "learn drawing." Mr. Runciman, his master, gave
him "copies"--the old, bold pencil copies--which he tried to imitate
in a kind of stipple, at first, but soon picked up the manner, and
in a year, as we find from old letters, was talking like a book
about perspective and composition, and going to begin painting "on
grey paper, with a few of the simplest colours, in order to learn
the effects of light and shade." Mr. Runciman must have been a good
teacher, for this method of his, on grey paper with a few simple
colours, to get light and shade, is exactly what John Ruskin learnt
thoroughly after awhile, and taught energetically in his turn all his
life. But Mr. Runciman could not bring him to paint in oil, and does
not seem to have had much of a system; for one of John Ruskin's letters
in verse to his father, written early in 1834, says:
"I cannot bear to paint in oil.
C. Fielding's tints alone for me!
The other costs me double toil,
And wants some fifty coats to be
Splashed on each spot successively."
In his later years he used to say that the practical reason why he
never went on with oil painting was that he had to draw--and to keep
his drawings--among books and papers, and oils were messy, and did
not smell nice. But no doubt the real fact was that his drawings
were mainly meant for book-illustration, done for the engraver,
and intended, on a small scale, to get as much form as possible.
All his experiments in oil seem to have been suppressed; though his
water-colour practice, especially in later times, was to use Chinese
white, and often a good deal of it, very nearly as if it had been flake
white.
After some feeble attempts by himself at sketching from Nature, in
1831 and 1832, he went abroad with his parents for the summer of
1833, and drew diligently. He had received for a birthday present the
volume of Rogers's "Italy," with Turner's vignettes, and intended to
make something like it, in a book of verses neatly copied out, with
vignettes reproduced in fine pen-work from his sketches on the spot.
Whenever the carriage stopped he would snatch a sketch, and whenever
they put up for the night he would write up his poetical diary. Coming
home, he began his great work, but school lessons interfered; not
before he had half filled the blank book, and pasted in a number of
neat and pretty vignettes, of which the best is _The Jungfrau from
Lauterbrunnen_, reproduced in "The Poems of John Ruskin," on the same
scale.
Meanwhile, he had come under the influence of Samuel Prout, whose work
his father admired; and on the next tour, in 1835, Turner was forgotten
in the attempt to be Prout. The drawings of this "great year," as he
called it, when they are put in order, show a wonderful progress from
the first stiff and timid studies, fresh from the attempt to copy
Prout's lithographs, to a free and quite masterly adaptation of Prout's
"line and dot" manner. By the time he reached the Oberland and Venice,
he had "got his hand in," and the subject went down upon the paper with
ease and decision, always abstracted and mannered, but with a feeling
after style which was entirely Ruskin. Both in drawing and in writing,
much as he talked of truth and simplicity, he was, first and foremost,
the stylist: and through half his life the conscious imitator of other
men's styles--Hooker or Carlyle, Prout or Turner. But there was always
more of Ruskin than of his model; and even in those juvenile essays,
when style so completely overwhelms fact, as in some sketches at
Venice or Innsbruck, there is a precocious completeness and charm, as
in the art of youthful nations, early Greeks, pre-Norman English, or
pre-Renaissance Italians.
The pen-drawings of this year have less interest, for they were made
from the originals to illustrate another intended manuscript, and the
life, of course, went out of them. Some of these pen-drawings, as well
as some of the original and superior pencil-drawings, are published in
facsimile in the "Poems" and "Poetry of Architecture" (large editions
of 1891 and 1893). Other facsimiles are given in "Studies in Both
Arts" and "Verona." The plates in these volumes very fairly represent
Ruskin's handiwork at different periods, and are indispensable to any
one who wishes to study it. Plates in "Modern Painters" and "Stones of
Venice," nearly all by engravers _after_ his work, do not represent it
in the same authentic manner.
Before he had completed his new book he wanted more skill in colour,
and took lessons from Copley Fielding, with no great result, except
that the style which he had gained by practice abroad was lost in
trying after new models. The sketches of his period as an Oxford
undergraduate are comparatively tame and commonplace (1836-1839),
though he did some neat bits for Mr. Loudon's wood engraver to spoil
in the papers on "The Poetry of Architecture," in the _Architectural
Magazine_, which were his first published writings on art.
In 1840 he broke down in health, after winning the Newdigate prize
for poetry at Oxford, and before taking his degree. His parents went
with him in the autumn to spend the winter abroad, as a cure for
consumption. He did the best for himself, according to new lights on
the subject of hygiene, by spending nearly all his time sketching
in the open air. Through France to the Loire and Auvergne, round
the Riviera to Pisa and Florence and Rome, we can trace him by his
drawings, made now on a new method. David Roberts had been showing his
Syrian sketches, hard pencil on grey paper, with yellow lights in body
colour, and the new style caught young Ruskin's attention before he
started for his journey, so that he set out with the resolve of being
Roberts now. The same decision of line shows itself on this much larger
scale; he always seems to know what he wants, and to get it without
trouble; though when one remembers that these half-imperial drawings
were done by an ailing lad, supposed to be within danger of death, it
is not a little remarkable to see in them such evidences of tenacity
and pluck.
At the beginning of 1841 they moved on to Naples, and made excursions
to Salerno, Amalfi and the neighbourhood, always with a drawing to
bring back; and when he was on his way home, through North Italy, he
wrote triumphantly to a friend that he had "got forty-seven large and
thirty-four small sketches."
But what he could do with the stimulus of travel he could not do
again in the reaction after it was over. He was not quite well yet,
and went to Leamington to be under a doctor, in dull lodgings, and
without any mountains. Still he drew. By this time he had dropped David
Roberts, and taken up Turner, whose art he had already thought of
defending against the magazine critics. It was in these circumstances
that he made the _Amboise_, from a sketch of the year before, and
certain vignettes for engraving, which were published in "Friendship's
Offering," with his poems. In the new Library edition, vol. ii.,
photographs from the original _Amboise_, and from the old engraving
after it, are given, well worth comparing.
He was not naturally a colourist. In later life he found out for
himself the ways and means of producing bits of very sweet opalescent
colour, but at any time was capable of relapsing into gaudiness, in
hours of fatigue or ill-health; and throughout his earlier life he was
much more at home in light and shade, or in work with the point. It
was not that he did not see and enjoy colour. To judge by his writings,
one would think that he lived for it, almost: and the splendid passage
in the first volume of "Modern Painters," so often quoted for its
word-painting of colour, was written from his diary-notes on the way
back from Naples in 1841. He made a drawing of the scene he described;
one would expect at least an attempt at "purple, and crimson, and
scarlet, like the curtains of God's tabernacle"; but it is merely
washed with faint tints over an elaborate outline of the architecture.
So the passing mood in sickness, which had led him to try after
Turnerian colour, left him in health, for the more attainable method
of Turner's "Liber Studiorum," and he began, in 1842, to make this
his own. A slight pencil blocking out, firm and emphatic quill-pen to
represent the etched line, and brushwork in brown, rarely in black,
sometimes with a little colour, over paper usually grey--this was
after all the manner that suited him best, and very nearly what Mr.
Runciman had talked about, ten years before. By degrees, year after
year, the pen work became finer, and the colour more predominant; the
solid white, used at first for high lights, invaded the tints and gave
a mystery to the outline, and in ten years more he had found out his
central style, a manner quite his own, producing beautiful results
but inimitable by engraving, whether the old style of steel-plate or
the new style of photographic process. That style in turn developed
into the delicate and often dainty water-colour painting of his later
years--passing by the way through a phase in which the pencil took the
place of the pen, useful for getting notes of architectural detail and
mountain form--and never quite abandoned, though the pencil drawings
of the later period became a distinct series, free and emphatic and
suggestive, apart from the more laborious elaboration of his last
paintings.
In 1845 he went alone, unaccompanied by parents and family, to Italy,
and found adventures. He made the acquaintance of the primitive
masters at Lucca and Florence, and copied a little; then to the Alps
to look for Turner's subjects in the Alpine sketches of 1842, which
had so taken his heart. Turner did not like it; it was dangerous to
have a writing young man looking behind the scenes of imaginative
picture production; but Ruskin found out Turner, and was all the more
enthusiastic for the discovery. He drew the Pass of Faido, and saw what
Turner had seen, and what he had invented, more wonderful than any
transcript from Nature; and afterwards filled half a volume with the
endeavour to expound the same. Then, with his versatility of sympathy,
he met J. D. Harding, who was not so much his teacher as a valued
friend, and together they went to Venice. One sketch-book leaf of this
time is particularly interesting--with a pen and tint drawing of a
mill at Baveno on one side, and a slapdash sunset on the other, almost
Harding. These are photogravured in the "Poems."
The drawings of 1846 were the first serious mountain studies,
afterwards used for "Modern Painters," though many things intervened.
Sickness at first, and the visit to Crossmount in the Highlands,
recorded in some drawings, not his best; and then "Seven Lamps of
Architecture," for which he studied in Normandy in 1848, and etched
the plates himself in soft ground--strong, sketchy plates which were
thought a failure at the time, and re-engraved in a queer imitation of
the originals by a professional engraver for the next edition. Then he
set to work upon "Stones of Venice."
He had already some material, but most of the drawings were made in
two winters, November 1849 to March 1850, and September 1851 to June
1852. Many of the best have been dispersed, some are in America, but
enough remain to show what a busy time it was, and how much downright
drawing went to the making of that book: how much _more_ drawing, and
of how much finer quality than one can guess at from reading the book.
The large plates in "Examples of the Architecture of Venice" were not
only from his sketches, but from carefully prepared working drawings.
For a mezzotint, like the _St. Mark's Portico_ or the _Arch of Ca'
Contarini Porta di Ferro_, he drew the outline separately for etching,
and made another drawing with the tint for the completed engraving. To
do a subject over again seemed no grievance with him, and there are
many examples of his patience in trying the identical view in different
aspects or lights, or even redrawing it from Nature without alteration,
merely to get a result more to his mind. That the result was worth
while in the end we need not stop to declare. "Stones of Venice" was a
revelation to architects and the public, and for a long while exerted
an enormous influence upon English taste. Suppose, for a moment, such
a book had been written, with all the enthusiasm and learning in the
world, by a man who could not draw!
The later volumes of "Modern Painters," which followed this, owed their
success in great measure to the same cause. The engravings, beautiful
as they are, hardly show the originals; though from the book one knows
that its author had dwelt upon the aspects of Nature with more than a
tourist's glance, and that he had struggled with the problems of art
with more than an amateur's attention. His Aiguilles and Matterhorns,
his Aspen and his mossy stones, his repeated studies from Turner and
the Old Masters, down to the enlargements from illuminated missals,
all tell the same tale of passionate interest in the subject and
penetrative insight into the situation. They are not, as Professor
Norton says, pictures; but incomplete as they are, there is in them an
appeal to which most of those who love pictures will respond.
During the progress of "Modern Painters," Mr. Ruskin planned a "History
of Swiss Towns," for which he spent several summers in gathering
material. His drawings for this series were more full of detail,
handled with extremest fineness in some parts and with great breadth,
often carelessness, in others; intended for completion and engraving
when time should serve. But this time never came. He was led into the
interests in political and social economy which, in these later years,
with a public tired of hearing about Ruskin and art, have given him
a place among the prophets. He was led into further studies of the
geology of scenery, lightly touched in "Modern Painters," and, during
long residence in Savoy and Switzerland, drew Alps chiefly for their
cleavages, and threw the drawings aside. He was led into botanical
and mineral researches, and Egyptology and Greek coins, and other
by-ways, always, however, drawing as he went, but drawing subjects
less interesting to the general onlooker. But from this backwater
he emerged into a new and more developed style which began to show
results in 1866, on a long summer tour in the Oberland, when he made
the sketch _On the Reuss below Lucerne_, in "Poetry of Architecture"--a
combination of such breadth and delicacy as he had hardly attained
before, and much fine work with the point.
Next year but one, 1868, his ancient love for French Gothic took him to
Abbeville. There the new style had full scope in the delicate drawings
of that date, a long way in advance of old "Seven Lamps" period: and
the same kind of work was continued in the next year at Verona (May to
September), a summer of very busy painting in the company of his two
assistants, Mr. William Ward and the late Mr. J. W. Bunney.
The Abbeville drawings were shown in a semi-public manner at a little
exhibition to illustrate his lecture on the "Flamboyant Architecture
of the Valley of the Somme," at the Royal Institution, January 29,
1869; and the Verona drawings at a similar lecture at the same place on
February 4, 1870. The catalogue of the latter is printed in "On the Old
Road," vol. i., part 2, with twenty pieces marked as his own.
In this year he entered on his duties as Slade Professor at Oxford,
and before long had established a drawing-school there, which took
up a great part of his attention. Of this period is a sketch "Done
with my pupils afield," and he used sometimes to draw in the school,
and often to draw for the school. A _Candle_, finely shaded, and
various botanical studies, were meant as "copies" or as examples of
the treatment he proposed to his students; and the catalogue of the
Ruskin Drawing School at Oxford contains a very large number of items
by himself, from the great _St. Catherine_, after Luini, to little
memoranda of plant forms. Several of these examples of his hand have
been engraved in Mr. E. T. Cook's "Studies in Ruskin."
In 1870 and 1872 he was again drawing at Venice. The elaborate
beginning of the "Riva de' Schiavoni," and the effective _Rialto_ (in
the possession of Miss Hilliard, Coniston), done one morning before
breakfast, are of the former year. In 1874, after a breakdown in
health, he visited Assisi, Rome, and Sicily, and beside the notes of
Mount Etna and Scylla he brought home a series of careful copies from
parts of the Botticelli frescoes at the Sistine Chapel, and the fully
realised, though not completed, _Glacier des Bossons_, a remarkable
piece of landscape work. In 1876 he went again to Venice, this time
chiefly to copy Carpaccio, though some of his best later views of
canals and palaces bear that date, or the early part of 1877, for he
stayed on until May of that year. _Casa Foscari_ (in the possession of
Mrs. Cunliffe, Ambleside) may be named as a characteristic example of
his daring point of view, and success in giving the mass of building in
steep perspective.
In 1878 an exhibition of his drawings by Turner was held at the
Fine Art Society's Galleries in New Bond Street. During the show he
was taken seriously ill, and while convalescent he amused himself
by arranging a small collection of his own sketches to add to the
exhibition. His catalogue and remarks are given in the later editions
of "Notes on his Drawings by Turner," &c., 1878. Next year a number
of his studies were shown in Boston, U.S.A., under the management of
Professor Charles Eliot Norton, whose appreciative paragraph we have
quoted.
It seemed as though his working life had come to an end at the time,
with that crisis of illness. A visit to Amiens in 1880, with Mr. Arthur
Severn and Mr. Brabazon, gave him the subject for writing the "Bible of
Amiens," but his sketches were less vigorous and full. But in 1882 he
was ordered away again for rest; and, as forty years before, he took
his rest--the best rest for a tired brain--in sketching. He gradually
warmed to work; at Avallon, in Central France, he began with a few
sketches of detail, but in Italy the ancient love of architecture took
hold of him, and he drew the _Porch at Lucca_ assiduously. His two
chief drawings of this subject were shown in the next exhibition of
the R.W.S., and one of them at the R.A. in 1901. He exhibited on many
occasions at the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, having
been elected an honorary member in 1873. He said at the time to a
visitor--"Nothing ever pleased me more. I have always been abusing the
artists, and now they have complimented me. They always said I couldn't
draw, and it's very nice to think they give me credit for knowing
something about art."
Later than this there is little to chronicle. Ill-health came down upon
him, and his last drawings were done to amuse his friend of "Hortus
Inclusus" in 1886, though he made a few pencil notes of Langdale Pikes
and Calder Abbey in 1889.
After his death an exhibition of his sketches, with some personal
relics and added examples of the art about which he had written, was
held at Coniston in the summer of 1900. It attracted over 10,000
visitors to the village, and to many was a revelation of Ruskin in a
new character, and of a kind of art which charmed in spite of all they
had been accustomed to look for in pictures.
In January and February 1901, a similar exhibition was held at the
Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, London. Many of the
drawings then shown, with a large series of engravings after his work,
are on view in the Ruskin Museum at the Institute, Coniston; where, in
1903, the Fourth Annual Exhibition contained a further instalment of
Ruskin sketches not previously shown in public, giving examples of his
great variety in subject and treatment, ranging from an early outline
of Dover (1831), to sketches at Avallon and Citeaux (1882; see above,
pages 48-51); from geological studies of Alps to notes of lions and
tigers at the Zoo, and the head of the Venus de' Medici, elaborately
shaded; and from the carefully finished and daintily detailed pen and
tint _Valley of Lauterbrunnen_, in which the lens is needed to make out
tiny chalets, smaller than a letter of this type, to large splashes
of water-colour, one of which (on a sheet 42 by 23 inches in size) is
identical in subject with the view by Laurence Hilliard given at page
33 of this volume.
One pair of sketches among these has a curious biographical interest.
When Turner's _Sun of Venice Going out to Sea_ was exhibited at the
Academy (1843), Ruskin was greatly impressed with its wonderful colour
and truth, but especially with the reflections and eddies of the calm
water, on which he wrote a well-known page in "Modern Painters" (vol.
i. p. 357). Accustomed to write from notes with pen and pencil, he
forgot, or ignored, the rule forbidding visitors at the Exhibition to
copy the pictures. These are the sketches he made, and for making them
was expelled from the Exhibition.
IX
RUSKIN'S HAND
IX
RUSKIN'S HAND
It was only the other day that a friend showed me a bundle of old
papers, saying, "Some of these are in his writing, but I don't know
what to make of the rest." I turned them over and said, "Second volume
of 'Modern Painters'; original manuscript!" He had just found them,
rolled up in brown paper, in a cupboard, where they had been for years.
My friend, who was intimate with Ruskin from his childhood, and of
course knew the Professor's later handwriting well, hardly believed me;
the difference between the early and later styles is so great.