In a note-book of 1848, we read of Ruskin’s first work:--One of the most
extraordinary and delightful books of the day, is _Modern Painters_, by
a “Graduate of Oxford;” in which the author admits and vindicates his
direct opposition to the general opinion, in placing Turner and other
modern landscape painters above those of the seventeenth
century--Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Canaletto, Hobbima, &c.
Yet, this remarkable book has been strangely treated by what is called
the literary world. The larger reviews have taken little or no notice of
it; and those periodicals which are considered to represent the
literature of the fine arts, and to watch over their progress and
interests, almost without an exception, have treated it with the most
marked injustice, and the most shameful derision. Yet, in spite of all
this neglect and maltreatment, the work has found its way into the minds
and hearts of men. This is better shown by the first volume having
reached a third edition, than by any of the most elaborate patronage
from the press.
A writer in the _North British Review_, waxing eloquently wroth at this
reception of a work of unquestionably high genius by the critics,
observed:--“The national treatment is in this case a good index to the
national mind and feeling; so that it is not to be wondered at, that
such productions as Charles Lamb’s Essays on the Genius of Hogarth, and
on the Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the productions of
Modern Art--Hazlitt’s Works on Art--those of Sir Charles Bell and his
brother John,--should rarely occur, and be not much regarded, and little
understood, when they do, in a country where Hogarth was looked upon by
the majority as a caricaturist fully as coarse as clever,--where
Wilkie’s ‘Distraining for Rent’ could get no purchaser, because it was
an unpleasant subject,--where to this day Turner is better known as
being unintelligible and untrue, than as being more truthful, more
thoughtful, than any painter of inanimate nature, ancient or
modern,--where Maclise is accounted worthy to illustrate Shakspeare, and
embody Macbeth and Hamlet, as having a kindred genius,--and where it was
reserved to a few young, self-relying, unknown Scottish artists,
(students of the Royal Scottish Academy,) to purchase Etty’s three
pictures of Judith, the Combat, and the Lion-like Men of Moab, at a
price which, though perilous to themselves, was equally disgraceful to
the public who had disregarded them, and inadequate to the deserving of
their gifted producer.”