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Library Edition
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN RUSKIN
ON THE OLD ROAD
VOLUMES I-II
NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
NEW YORK CHICAGO
ON THE OLD ROAD.
_A COLLECTION OF
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS AND ARTICLES
ON ART AND LITERATURE._
PUBLISHED 1834-1885.
VOL. II.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
PAGE
PICTURE GALLERIES.
PARLIAMENTARY EVIDENCE:--
NATIONAL GALLERY SITE COMMISSION. 1857 3
SELECT COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS. 1860 25
THE ROYAL ACADEMY COMMISSION 50
A MUSEUM OR PICTURE GALLERY 71
MINOR WRITINGS UPON ART.
THE CAVALLI MONUMENTS, VERONA. 1872 89
VERONA AND ITS RIVERS (WITH CATALOGUE). 1870 99
CHRISTIAN ART AND SYMBOLISM. 1872 118
ART SCHOOLS OF MEDIÆVAL CHRISTENDOM. 1876 121
THE EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS. 1876 125
THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 1883 132
NOTES ON NATURAL SCIENCE.
THE COLOR OF THE RHINE. 1834 141
THE STRATA OF MONT BLANC. 1834 143
THE INDURATION OF SANDSTONE. 1836 145
THE TEMPERATURE OF SPRING AND RIVER WATER. 1836. 148
METEOROLOGY. 1839 153
TREE TWIGS. 1861 158
STRATIFIED ALPS OF SAVOY. 1863 162
INTELLECTUAL CONCEPTION AND ANIMATED LIFE. 1871 168
LITERATURE.
FICTION--FAIR AND FOUL. 1880-81 175
FAIRY STORIES. 1868 290
ECONOMY.
HOME, AND ITS ECONOMIES. 1873 299
USURY. A REPLY AND A REJOINDER. 1880 314
USURY. A PREFACE. 1885 340
THEOLOGY.
NOTES ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS. 1851 347
THE LORD'S PRAYER AND THE CHURCH. 1879-81. (Letters
and Epilogue.) 382
THE NATURE AND AUTHORITY OF MIRACLE. 1873 418
AN OXFORD LECTURE. 1878 429
* * * * *
PICTURE GALLERIES:
_THEIR FUNCTIONS AND FORMATION._
A. PARLIAMENTARY EVIDENCE.
NATIONAL GALLERY SITE COMMISSION 1857.
SELECT COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS 1860.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY COMMISSION 1863.
B. LETTERS ON A MUSEUM OR PICTURE GALLERY.
(_Art Journal, June and August, 1880._)
* * * * *
PICTURE GALLERIES--THEIR FUNCTIONS AND FORMATION.
THE NATIONAL GALLERY SITE COMMISSION.[1]
_Evidence of John Ruskin, Monday, April 6, 1857._
114. _Chairman._ Has your attention been turned to the desirableness of
uniting sculpture with painting under the same roof?--Yes.
What is your opinion on the subject?--I think it almost essential that
they should be united, if a National Gallery is to be of service in
teaching the course of art.
Sculpture of all kinds, or only ancient sculpture?--Of all kinds.
Do you think that the sculpture in the British Museum should be in the
same building with the pictures in the National Gallery, that is to say,
making an application of your principle to that particular case?--Yes,
certainly; I think so for several reasons--chiefly because I think the
taste of the nation can only be rightly directed by having always
sculpture and painting visible together. Many of the highest and best
points of painting, I think, can only be discerned after some discipline
of the eye by sculpture. That is one very essential reason. I think that
after looking at sculpture one feels the grace of composition infinitely
more, and one also feels how that grace of composition was reached by
the painter.
Do you consider that if works of sculpture and works of painting were
placed in the same gallery, the same light would be useful for both of
them?--I understood your question only to refer to their collection
under the same roof. I should be sorry to see them in the same room.
You would not mix them up in the way in which they are mixed up in the
Florentine Gallery, for instance?--Not at all. I think, on the contrary,
that the one diverts the mind from the other, and that, although the one
is an admirable discipline, you should take some time for the
examination of sculpture, and pass afterwards into the painting room,
and so on. You should not be disturbed while looking at paintings by the
whiteness of the sculpture.
You do not then approve, for example, of the way in which the famous
room, the Tribune, at Florence, is arranged?--No; I think it is merely
arranged for show--for showing how many rich things can be got together.
115. _Mr. Cockerell._ Then you do not regard sculpture as a proper
decorative portion of the National Gallery of Pictures--you do not admit
the term decoration?--No; I should not use that term of the sculpture
which it was the object of the gallery to exhibit. It might be added, of
course, supposing it became a part of the architecture, but not as
independent--not as a thing to be contemplated separately in the room,
and not as a part of the room. As a part of the room, of course, modern
sculpture might be added; but I have never thought that it would be
necessary.
You do not consider that sculpture would be a repose after contemplating
painting for some time?--I should not feel it so myself.
116. _Dean of St. Paul's._ When you speak of removing the sculpture of
the British Museum, and of uniting it with the pictures of the National
Gallery, do you comprehend the whole range of the sculpture in the
British Museum, commencing with the Egyptian, and going down through its
regular series of gradation to the decline of the art?--Yes, because my
great hope respecting the National Gallery is, that it may become a
perfectly consecutive chronological arrangement, and it seems to me that
it is one of the chief characteristics of a National Gallery that it
should be so.
Then you consider that one great excellence of the collection at the
British Museum is, that it does present that sort of history of the art
of sculpture?--I consider it rather its weakness that it does not.
Then you would go down further?--I would.
You are perhaps acquainted with the ivories which have been recently
purchased there?--I am not.
Supposing there were a fine collection of Byzantine ivories, you would
consider that they were an important link in the general
history?--Certainly.
Would you unite the whole of that Pagan sculpture with what you call the
later Christian art of Painting?--I should be glad to see it done--that
is to say, I should be glad to see the galleries of painting and
sculpture collaterally placed, and the gallery of sculpture beginning
with the Pagan art, and proceeding to the Christian art, but not
necessarily associating the painting with the sculpture of each epoch;
because the painting is so deficient in many of the periods where the
sculpture is rich, that you could not carry them on collaterally--you
must have your painting gallery and your sculpture gallery.
You would be sorry to take any portion of the sculpture from the
collection in the British Museum, and to associate it with any
collection of painting?--Yes, I should think it highly inexpedient. My
whole object would be that it might be associated with a larger
collection, a collection from other periods, and not be subdivided. And
it seems to be one of the chief reasons advanced in order to justify
removing that collection, that it cannot be much more enlarged--that you
cannot at present put other sculpture with it.
Supposing that the collection of ancient Pagan art could not be united
with the National Gallery of pictures, with which would you associate
the mediæval sculpture, supposing we were to retain any considerable
amount of sculpture?--With the painting.
The mediæval art you would associate with the painting, supposing you
could not put the whole together?--Yes.
117. _Chairman._ Do you approve of protecting pictures by glass?--Yes,
in every case. I do not know of what size a pane of glass can be
manufactured, but I have never seen a picture so large but that I should
be glad to see it under glass. Even supposing it were possible, which I
suppose it is not, the great Paul Veronese, in the gallery of the
Louvre, I think would be more beautiful under glass.
Independently of the preservation?--Independently of the preservation, I
think it would be more beautiful. It gives an especial delicacy to light
colors, and does little harm to dark colors--that is, it benefits
delicate pictures most, and its injury is only to very dark pictures.
Have you ever considered the propriety of covering the sculpture with
glass?--I have never considered it. I did not know until a very few days
ago that sculpture was injured by exposure to our climate and our smoke.
_Professor Faraday._ But you would cover the pictures, independently of
the preservation, you would cover them absolutely for the artistic
effect, the improvement of the picture?--Not necessarily so, because to
some persons there might be an objectionable character in having to
avoid the reflection more scrupulously than otherwise. I should not
press for it on that head only. The advantage gained is not a great one;
it is only felt by very delicate eyes. As far as I know, many persons
would not perceive that there was a difference, and that is caused by
the very slight color in the glass, which, perhaps, some persons might
think it expedient to avoid altogether.
Do you put it down to the absolute tint in the glass like a glazing, or
do you put it down to a sort of reflection? Is the effect referable to
the color in the glass, or to some kind of optic action, which the most
transparent glass might produce?--I do not know; but I suppose it to
be referable to the very slight tint in the glass.
118. _Dean of St. Paul's._ Is it not the case when ladies with very
brilliant dresses look at pictures through glass, that the reflection of
the color of their dresses is so strong as greatly to disturb the
enjoyment and the appreciation of the pictures?--Certainly; but I should
ask the ladies to stand a little aside, and look at the pictures one by
one. There is that disadvantage.
I am supposing a crowded room--of course the object of a National
Gallery is that it should be crowded--that as large a number of the
public should have access to it as possible--there would of course be
certain limited hours, and the gallery would be liable to get filled
with the public in great numbers?--It would be disadvantageous
certainly, but not so disadvantageous as to balance the much greater
advantage of preservation. I imagine that, in fact, glass is essential;
it is not merely an expedient thing, but an essential thing to the
safety of the pictures for twenty or thirty years.
Do you consider it essential as regards the atmosphere of London, or of
this country generally?--I speak of London only. I have no experience of
other parts. But I have this experience in my own collection. I kept my
pictures for some time without glass, and I found the deterioration
definite within a very short period--a period of a couple of years.
You mean at Denmark Hill?--Yes; that deterioration on pictures of the
class I refer to is not to be afterwards remedied--the thing suffers
forever--you cannot get into the interstices.
_Professor Faraday._ You consider that the picture is permanently
injured by the dirt?--Yes.
That no cleaning can restore it to what it was?--Nothing can restore it
to what it was, I think, because the operation of cleaning must scrape
away some of the grains of paint.
Therefore, if you have two pictures, one in a dirtier place, and one in
a cleaner place, no attention will put the one in the dirtier place on
a level with that in the cleaner place?--I think nevermore.
119. _Chairman._ I see that in your "Notes on the Turner Collection,"
you recommended that the large upright pictures would have great
advantage in having a room to themselves. Do you mean each of the large
pictures or a whole collection of large pictures?--Supposing very
beautiful pictures of a large size (it would depend entirely on the
value and size of the picture), supposing we ever acquired such large
pictures as Titian's Assumption, or Raphael's Transfiguration, those
pictures ought to have a room to themselves, and to have a gallery round
them.
Do you mean that each of them should have a room?--Yes.
_Dean of St. Paul's._ Have you been recently at Dresden?--No, I have
never been at Dresden.
Then you do not know the position of the Great Holbein and of the
Madonna de S. Sisto there, which have separate rooms?--No.
_Mr. Cockerell._ Are you acquainted with the Munich Gallery--No.
Do you know the plans of it?--No.
Then you have not seen, perhaps, the most recent arrangements adopted by
that learned people, the Germans, with regard to the exhibition of
pictures?--I have not been into Germany for twenty years.
120. That subject has been handled by them in an original manner, and
they have constructed galleries at Munich, at Dresden, and I believe at
St. Petersburg upon a new principle, and a very judicious principle. You
have not had opportunities of considering that?--No, I have never
considered that; because I always supposed that there was no difficulty
in producing a beautiful gallery, or an efficient one. I never thought
that there could be any question about the form which such a gallery
should take, or that it was a matter of consideration. The only
difficulty with me was this--the persuading, or hoping to persuade, a
nation that if it had pictures at all, it should have those pictures on
the line of the eye; that it was not well to have a noble picture many
feet above the eye, merely for the glory of the room. Then I think that
as soon as you decide that a picture is to be seen, it is easy to find
out the way of showing it; to say that it should have such and such a
room, with such and such a light; not a raking light, as I heard Sir
Charles Eastlake express it the other day, but rather an oblique and
soft light, and not so near the picture as to catch the eye painfully.
That may be easily obtained, and I think that all other questions after
that are subordinate.
_Dean of St. Paul's._ Your proposition would require a great extent of
wall?--An immense extent of wall.
121. _Chairman._ I see you state in the pamphlet to which I have before
alluded, that it is of the highest importance that the works of each
master should be kept together. Would not such an arrangement increase
very much the size of the National Gallery?--I think not, because I have
only supposed in my plan that, at the utmost, two lines of pictures
should be admitted on the walls of the room; that being so, you would be
always able to put all the works of any master together without any
inconvenience or difficulty in fitting them to the size of the room.
Supposing that you put the large pictures high on the walls, then it
might be a question, of course, whether such and such a room or
compartment of the Gallery would hold the works of a particular master;
but supposing the pictures were all on a continuous line, you would only
stop with A and begin with B.
Then you would only have them on one level and one line?--In general;
that seems to me the common-sense principle.
_Mr. Richmond._ Then you disapprove of the whole of the European hanging
of pictures in galleries?--I think it very beautiful sometimes, but not
to be imitated. It produces most noble rooms. No one can but be
impressed with the first room at the Louvre, where you have the most
noble Venetian pictures one mass of fire on the four walls; but then
none of the details of those pictures can be seen.
_Dean of St. Paul's._ There you have a very fine general effect, but you
lose the effect of the beauties of each individual picture?--You lose
all the beauties, all the higher merits; you get merely your general
idea. It is a perfectly splendid room, of which a great part of the
impression depends upon the consciousness of the spectator that it is so
costly.
122. Would you have those galleries in themselves richly decorated?--Not
richly, but pleasantly.
Brilliantly, but not too brightly?--Not too brightly. I have not gone
into that question, it being out of my way; but I think, generally, that
great care should be taken to give a certain splendor--a certain
gorgeous effect--so that the spectator may feel himself among splendid
things; so that there shall be no discomfort or meagerness, or want of
respect for the things which are being shown.
123. _Mr. Richmond._ Then do you think that Art would be more worthily
treated, and the public taste and artists better served, by having even
a smaller collection of works so arranged, than by a much larger one
merely housed and hung four or five deep, as in an auction room?--Yes.
But you put a difficult choice before me, because I do think it a very
important thing that we should have many pictures. Totally new results
might be obtained from a large gallery in which the chronological
arrangement was perfect, and whose curators prepared for that
chronological arrangement, by leaving gaps to be filled by future
acquisition; taking the greatest pains in the selection of the examples,
that they should be thoroughly characteristic; giving a greater price
for a picture which was thoroughly characteristic and expressive of the
habits of a nation; because it appears to me that one of the main uses
of Art at present is not so much as Art, but as teaching us the feelings
of nations. History only tells us what they did; Art tells us their
feelings, and why they did it: whether they were energetic and fiery, or
whether they were, as in the case of the Dutch, imitating minor things,
quiet and cold. All those expressions of feeling cannot come out of
History. Even the contemporary historian does not feel them; he does not
feel what his nation is; but get the works of the same master together,
the works of the same nation together, and the works of the same
century together, and see how the thing will force itself upon
everyone's observation.
124. Then you would not exclude the genuine work of inferior
masters?--Not by any means.
You would have the whole as far as you could obtain it?--Yes, as far as
it was characteristic; but I think you can hardly call an inferior
master one who does in the best possible way the thing he undertakes to
do; and I would not take any master who did not in some way excel. For
instance, I would not take a mere imitator of Cuyp among the Dutch; but
Cuyp himself has done insuperable things in certain expressions of
sunlight and repose. Vander Heyden and others may also be mentioned as
first-rate in inferior lines.
Taking from the rise of art to the time of Raphael, would you in the
National Gallery include examples of all those masters whose names have
come down to the most learned of us?--No.
Where would you draw the line, and where would you begin to leave
out?--I would only draw the line when I was purchasing a picture. I
think that a person might always spend his money better by making an
effort to get one noble picture than five or six second or third-rate
pictures, provided only, that you had examples of the best kind of work
produced at that time. I would not have second-rate pictures. Multitudes
of masters among the disciples of Giotto might be named; you might have
one or two pictures of Giotto, and one or two pictures of the disciples
of Giotto.
Then you would rather depend upon the beauty of the work itself; if the
work were beautiful, you would admit it?--Certainly.
But if it were only historically interesting, would you then reject
it?--Not in the least. I want it historically interesting, but I want as
good an example as I can have of that particular manner.
Would it not be historically interesting if it were the only picture
known of that particular master, who was a follower of Giotto? For
instance, supposing a work of Cennino Cennini were brought to light,
and had no real merit in it as a work of art, would it not be the duty
of the authorities of a National Gallery to seize upon that picture, and
pay perhaps rather a large price for it?--Certainly; all documentary art
I should include.
Then what would you exclude?--Merely that which is inferior, and not
documentary; merely another example of the same kind of thing.
Then you would not multiply examples of the same masters if inferior
men, but you would have one of each. There is no man, I suppose, whose
memory has come down to us after three or four centuries, but has
something worth preserving in his work--something peculiar to himself,
which perhaps no other person has ever done, and you would retain one
example of such, would you not?--I would, if it was in my power, but I
would rather with given funds make an effort to get perfect examples.
Then you think that the artistic element should govern the archæological
in the selection?--Yes, and the archæological in the arrangement.
125. _Dean of St. Paul's._ When you speak of arranging the works of one
master consecutively, would you pay any regard or not to the subjects?
You must be well aware that many painters, for instance, Correggio, and
others, painted very incongruous subjects; would you rather keep them
together than disperse the works of those painters to a certain degree
according to their subjects?--I would most certainly keep them together.
I think it an important feature of the master that he did paint
incongruously, and very possibly the character of each picture would be
better understood by seeing them together; the relations of each are
sometimes essential to be seen.
_Mr. Richmond._ Do you think that the preservation of these works is one
of the first and most important things to be provided for?--It would be
so with me in purchasing a picture. I would pay double the price for it
if I thought it was likely to be destroyed where it was.
In a note you wrote to me the other day, I find this passage: "The Art
of a nation I think one of the most important points of its history, and
a part which, if once destroyed, no history will ever supply the place
of--and the first idea of a National Gallery is, that it should be a
Library of Art, in which the rudest efforts are, in some cases, hardly
less important than the noblest." Is that your opinion?--Perfectly. That
seems somewhat inconsistent with what I have been saying, but I mean
there, the noblest efforts of the time at which they are produced. I
would take the greatest pains to get an example of eleventh century
work, though the painting is perfectly barbarous at that time.
126. You have much to do with the education of the working classes in
Art. As far as you are able to tell us, what is your experience with
regard to their liking and disliking in Art--do comparatively uneducated
persons prefer the Art up to the time of Raphael, or down from the time
of Raphael?--we will take the Bolognese School, or the early Florentine
School--which do you think a working man would feel the greatest
interest in looking at?--I cannot tell you, because my working men would
not be allowed to look at a Bolognese picture; I teach them so much love
of detail, that the moment they see a detail carefully drawn, they are
caught by it. The main thing which has surprised me in dealing with
these men is the exceeding refinement of their minds--so that in a
moment I can get carpenters, and smiths, and ordinary workmen, and
various classes to give me a refinement which I cannot get a young lady
to give me when I give her a lesson for the first time. Whether it is
the habit of work which makes them go at it more intensely, or whether
it is (as I rather think) that, as the feminine mind looks for strength,
the masculine mind looks for delicacy, and when you take it simply, and
give it its choice, it will go to the most refined thing, I do not know.
_Dean of St. Paul's._ Can you see any perceptible improvement in the
state of the public mind and taste in that respect since these measures
have been adopted?--There has not been time to judge of that.
127. Do these persons who are taking an interest in Art come from
different parts of London?--Yes.
Of course the distance which they would have to come would be of very
great importance?--Yes.
Therefore one of the great recommendations of a Gallery, if you wish it
to have an effect upon the public mind in that respect, would be its
accessibility, both with regard to the time consumed in going there, and
to the cheapness, as I may call it, of access?--Most certainly.
You would therefore consider that the more central the situation,
putting all other points out of consideration, the greater advantage it
would be to the public?--Yes; there is this, however, to be said, that a
central situation involves the crowding of the room with parties wholly
uninterested in the matter--a situation more retired will generally be
serviceable enough for the real student.
Would not that very much depend upon its being in a thoroughfare? There
might be a central situation which would not be so complete a
thoroughfare as to tempt persons to go in who were not likely to derive
advantage from it?--I think that if this gallery were made so large and
so beautiful as we are proposing, it would be rather a resort, rather a
lounge every day, and all day long, provided it were accessible.
128. Would not that a good deal depend upon its being in a public
thoroughfare? If it were in a thoroughfare, a great many persons might
pass in who would be driven in by accident, or driven in by caprice, if
they passed it; but if it were at a little distance from a thoroughfare,
it would be less crowded with those persons who are not likely to derive
much advantage from it?--Quite so; but there would always be an
advantage in attracting a crowd; it would always extend its educational
ability in its being crowded. But it would seem to me that all that is
necessary for a noble Museum of the best art should be more or less
removed, and that a collection, solely for the purpose of education, and
for the purpose of interesting people who do not care much about art,
should be provided in the very heart of the population, if possible,
that pictures not of great value, but of sufficient value to interest
the public, and of merit enough to form the basis of early education,
and to give examples of all art, should be collected in the popular
Gallery, but that all the precious things should be removed and put into
the great Gallery, where they would be safest, irrespectively altogether
of accessibility.
_Chairman._ Then you would, in fact, have not one but two
Galleries?--Two only.
129. _Professor Faraday._ And you would seem to desire purposely the
removal of the true and head Gallery to some distance, so as to prevent
the great access of persons?--Yes.
Thinking that all those who could make a real use of a Gallery would go
to that one?--Yes. My opinion in that respect has been altered within
these few days from the fact having been brought to my knowledge of
sculpture being much deteriorated by the atmosphere and the total
impossibility of protecting sculpture. Pictures I do not care about, for
I can protect them, but not sculpture.
_Dean of St. Paul's._ Whence did you derive that knowledge?--I forget
who told me; it was some authority I thought conclusive, and therefore
took no special note of.
130. _Chairman._ Do you not consider that it is rather prejudicial to
art that there should be a Gallery notoriously containing no first-rate
works of art, but second-rate or third-rate works?--No; I think it
rather valuable as an expression of the means of education, that there
should be early lessons in art--that there should be this sort of art
selected especially for first studies, and also that there should be a
recognition of the exceeding preciousness of some other art. I think
that portions of it should be set aside as interesting, but not
unreplaceable; but that other portions should be set aside as being
things as to which the function of the nation was, chiefly, to take care
of those things, not for itself merely, but for all its descendants, and
setting the example of taking care of them for ever.
You do not think, then, that there would be any danger in the studying
or the copying of works which notoriously were not the best works?--On
the contrary, I think it would be better that works not altogether the
best should be first submitted. I never should think of giving the best
work myself to a student to copy--it is hopeless; he would not feel its
beauties--he would merely blunder over it. I am perfectly certain that
that cannot be serviceable in the particular branch of art which I
profess, namely, landscape-painting; I know that I must give more or
less of bad examples.
_Mr. Richmond._ But you would admit nothing into this second gallery
which was not good or true of its kind?--Nothing which was not good or
true of its kind, but only inferior in value to the others.
And if there were any other works which might be deposited there with
perfect safety, say precious drawings, which might be protected by
glass, you would not object to exhibit those to the unselected
multitude?--Not in the least; I should be very glad to do so, provided I
could spare them from the grand chronological arrangement.
Do you think that a very interesting supplementary exhibition might be
got up, say at Trafalgar Square, and retained there?--Yes, and all the
more useful because you would put few works, and you could make it
complete in series--and because, on a small scale, you would have the
entire series. By selecting a few works, you would have an epitome of
the Grand Gallery, the divisions of the chronology being all within the
compartment of a wall, which in the great Gallery would be in a separate
division of the building.
131. _Mr. Cockerell._ Do you contemplate the possibility of excellent
copies being exhibited of the most excellent works both of sculpture and
of painting?--I have not contemplated that possibility. I have a great
horror of copies of any kind, except only of sculpture. I have great
fear of copies of painting; I think people generally catch the worst
parts of the painting and leave the best.
But you would select the artist who should make the copy. There are
persons whose whole talent is concentrated in the power of imitation of
a given picture, and a great talent it is.--I have never in my life
seen a good copy of a good picture.
_Chairman._ Have you not seen any of the German copies of some of the
great Italian masters, which are generally esteemed very admirable
works?--I have not much studied the works of the copyists; I have not
observed them much, never having yet found an exception to that rule
which I have mentioned. When I came across a copyist in the Gallery of
the Vatican, or in the Gallery at Florence, I had a horror of the
mischief, and the scandal and the libel upon the master, from the
supposition that such a thing as that in any way resembled his work, and
the harm that it would do to the populace among whom it was shown.
_Mr. Richmond._ You look upon it as you would upon coining bad money and
circulating it, doing mischief?--Yes, it is mischievous.
_Mr. Cockerell._ But you admit engravings--you admit photographs of
these works, which are imitations in another language?--Yes; in abstract
terms, they are rather descriptions of the paintings than copies--they
are rather measures and definitions of them--they are hints and tables
of the pictures, rather than copies of them; they do not pretend to the
same excellence in any way.
You speak as a connoisseur; how would the common eye of the public agree
with you in that opinion?--I think it would not agree with me.
Nevertheless, if I were taking some of my workmen into the National
Gallery, I should soon have some hope of making them understand in what
excellence consisted, if I could point to a genuine work; but I should
have no such hope if I had only copies of these pictures.
132. Do you hold much to the archæological, chronological, and
historical series and teaching of pictures?--Yes.
Are you of opinion that that is essential to the creative teaching, with
reference to our future schools?--No. I should think not essential at
all. The teaching of the future artist, I should think, might be
accomplished by very few pictures of the class which that particular
artist wished to study. I think that the chronological arrangement is
in no-wise connected with the general efficiency of the gallery as a
matter of study for the artist, but very much so as a means of study,
not for persons interested in painting merely, but for those who wish to
examine the general history of nations; and I think that painting should
be considered by that class of persons as containing precious evidence.
It would be part of the philosopher's work to examine the art of a
nation as well as its poetry.
You consider that art speaks a language and tells a tale which no
written document can effect?--Yes, and far more precious; the whole soul
of a nation generally goes with its art. It may be urged by an ambitious
king to become a warrior nation. It may be trained by a single leader to
become a _great_ warrior nation, and its character at that time may
materially depend upon that one man, but in its art all the mind of the
nation is more or less expressed: it can be said, that was what the
peasant sought to when he went into the city to the cathedral in the
morning--that was the sort of book the poor person read or learned
in--the sort of picture he prayed to. All which involves infinitely more
important considerations than common history.
133. _Dean of St. Paul's._ When you speak of your objections to copies
of pictures, do you carry that objection to casts of sculpture?--Not at
all.
Supposing there could be no complete union of the great works of
sculpture in a country with the great works of painting in that country,
would you consider that a good selection of casts comprising the great
remains of sculpture of all ages would be an important addition to a
public gallery?--I should be very glad to see it.
If you could not have it of originals, you would wish very much to have
a complete collection of casts, of course selected from all the finest
sculptures in the world?--Certainly.
_Mr. Richmond._ Would you do the same with architecture--would you
collect the remains of architecture, as far as they are to be collected,
and unite them with sculpture and painting?--I should think that
architecture consisted, as far as it was portable, very much in
sculpture. In saying that, I mean, that in the different branches of
sculpture architecture is involved--that is to say, you would have the
statues belonging to such and such a division of a building. Then if you
had casts of those statues, you would necessarily have those casts
placed exactly in the same position as the original statues--it involves
the buildings surrounding them and the elevation--it involves the whole
architecture.
In addition to that, would you have original drawings of architecture,
and models of great buildings, and photographs, if they could be made
permanent, of the great buildings as well as the moldings and casts of
the moldings, and the members as far as you could obtain them?--Quite
so.
Would you also include, in the National Gallery, what may be called the
handicraft of a nation--works for domestic use or ornament? For
instance, we know that there were some salt-cellars designed for one of
the Popes; would you have those if they came to us?--Everything, pots
and pans, and salt-cellars, and knives.
You would have everything that had an interesting art element in
it?--Yes.
_Dean of St. Paul's._ In short, a modern Pompeian Gallery?--Yes; I know
how much greater extent that involves, but I think that you should
include all the iron work, and china, and pottery, and so on. I think
that all works in metal, all works in clay, all works in carved wood,
should be included. Of course, that involves much. It involves all the
coins--it involves an immense extent.
134. Supposing it were impossible to concenter in one great museum the
whole of these things, where should you prefer to draw the line? Would
you draw the line between what I may call the ancient Pagan world and
the modern Christian world, and so leave, to what may be called the
ancient world, all the ancient sculpture, and any fragments of ancient
painting which there might be--all the vases, all the ancient bronzes,
and, in short, everything which comes down to a certain period? Do you
think that that would be the best division, or should you prefer any
division which takes special arts, and keeps those arts together?--I
should like the Pagan and Christian division. I think it very essential
that wherever the sculpture of a nation was, there its iron work should
be--that wherever its iron work was, there its pottery should be, and so
on.
And you would keep the mediæval works together, in whatever form those
mediæval works existed?--Yes; I should not at all feel injured by having
to take a cab-drive from one century to another century.
Or from the ancient to the modern world?--No.
_Mr. Richmond._ If it were found convenient to keep separate the Pagan
and the Christian art, with which would you associate the mediæval?--By
"Christian and Pagan Art" I mean, before Christ and after Christ.
Then the mediæval would come with the paintings?--Yes; and also the
Mahomedan, and all the Pagan art which was after Christ, I should
associate as part, and a most essential part, because it seems to me
that the history of Christianity is complicated perpetually with that
which Christianity was effecting. Therefore, it is a matter of date, not
of Christianity. Everything before Christ I should be glad to see
separated, or you may take any other date that you like.
But the inspiration of the two schools--the Pagan and the
Christian--seems so different, that there would be no great violence
done to the true theory of a National Gallery in dividing these two,
would there, if each were made complete in itself?--That is to say,
taking the spirit of the world after Christianity was in it, and the
spirit of the world before Christianity was in it.
_Dean of St. Paul's._ The birth of Christ, you say, is the commencement
of Christian art?--Yes.
Then Christian influence began, and, of course, that would leave a small
debatable ground, particularly among the ivories for instance, which we
must settle according to circumstances?--Wide of any debatable ground,
all the art of a nation which had never heard of Christianity, the
Hindoo art and so on, would, I suppose, if of the Christian era, go into
the Christian gallery.
I was speaking rather of the transition period, which, of course, there
must be?--Yes.
_Mr. Cockerell._ There must be a distinction between the terms "museum"
and "gallery." What are the distinctions which you would draw in the
present case?--I should think "museum" was the right name of the whole
building. A "gallery" is, I think, merely a room in a museum adapted for
the exhibition of works in a series, whose effect depends upon their
collateral showing forth.
135. There are certainly persons who would derive their chief advantage
from the historical and chronological arrangement which you propose, but
there are others who look alone for the beautiful, and who say, "I have
nothing to do with your pedantry. I desire to have the beautiful before
me. Show me those complete and perfect works which are received and
known as the works of Phidias and the great Greek masters as far as we
possess them, and the works of the great Italian painters. I have not
time, nor does my genius permit that I should trouble myself with those
details." There is a large class who are guided by those feelings?--And
I hope who always will be guided by them; but I should consult their
feelings enough in the setting before them of the most beautiful works
of art. All that I should beg of them to yield to me would be that they
should look at Titian only, or at Raphael only, and not wish to have
Titian and Raphael side by side; and I think I should be able to teach
them, as a matter of beauty, that they did enjoy Titian and Raphael
alone better than mingled. Then I would provide them beautiful galleries
full of the most-noble sculpture. Whenever we come as a country and a
nation to provide beautiful sculpture, it seems to me that the greatest
pains should be taken to set it off beautifully. You should have
beautiful sculpture in the middle of the room, with dark walls round it
to throw out its profile, and you should have all the arrangements made
there so as to harmonize with it, and to set forth every line of it. So
the painting gallery, I think, might be made a glorious thing, if the
pictures were level, and the architecture above produced unity of
impression from the beauty and glow of color and the purity of form.
_Mr. Richmond._ And you would not exclude a Crevelli because it was
quaint, or an early master of any school--you would have the infancy,
the youth, and the age, of each school, would you not?--Certainly.
_Dean of St. Paul's._ Of the German as well as the Italian?--Yes.
_Mr. Richmond._ Spanish, and all the schools?--Certainly.
136. _Mr. Cockerell._ You are quite aware of the great liberality of the
Government, as we learn from the papers, in a recent instance, namely,
the purchase of a great Paul Veronese?--I am rejoiced to hear it. If it
is confirmed, nothing will have given me such pleasure for a long time.
I think it is the most precious Paul Veronese in the world, as far as
the completion of the picture goes, and quite a priceless picture.
Can you conceive a Government, or a people, who would countenance so
expensive a purchase, condescending to take up with the occupation of
the upper story of some public building, or with an expedient which
should not be entirely worthy of such a noble Gallery of Pictures?--I do
not think that they ought to do so; but I do not know how far they will
be consistent. I certainly think they ought not to put up with any such
expedient. I am not prepared to say what limits there are to consistency
or inconsistency.
_Mr. Richmond._ I understand you to have given in evidence that you
think a National Collection should be illustrative of the whole art in
all its branches?--Certainly.
Not a cabinet of paintings, not a collection of sculptured works, but
illustrative of the whole art?--Yes.
137. Have you any further remark to offer to the Commissioners?--I wish
to say one word respecting the question of the restoration of statuary.
It seems to me a very simple question. Much harm is being at present
done in Europe by restoration, more harm than was ever done, as far as
I know, by revolutions or by wars. The French are now doing great harm
to their cathedrals, under the idea that they are doing good, destroying
more than all the good they are doing. And all this proceeds from the
one great mistake of supposing that sculpture can be restored when it is
injured. I am very much interested by the question which one of the
Commissioners asked me in that respect; and I would suggest whether it
does not seem easy to avoid all questions of that kind. If the statue is
injured, leave it so, but provide a perfect copy of the statue in its
restored form; offer, if you like, prizes to sculptors for conjectural
restorations, and choose the most beautiful, but do not touch the
original work.
138. _Professor Faraday._ You said some time ago that in your own
attempts to instruct the public there had not been time yet to see
whether the course taken had produced improvement or not. You see no
signs at all which lead you to suppose that it will not produce the
improvement which you desire?--Far from it--I understood the Dean of St.
Paul's to ask me whether any general effect had been produced upon the
minds of the public. I have only been teaching a class of about forty
workmen for a couple of years, after their work--they not always
attending--and that forty being composed of people passing away and
coming again; and I do not know what they are now doing; I only see a
gradual succession of men in my own class. I rather take them in an
elementary class, and pass them to a master in a higher class. But I
have the greatest delight in the progress which these men have made, so
far as I have seen it; and I have not the least doubt that great things
will be done with respect to them.
_Chairman._ Will you state precisely what position you hold?--I am
master of the Elementary and Landscape School of Drawing at the Working
Men's College in Great Ormond Street. My efforts are directed not to
making a carpenter an artist, but to making him happier as a carpenter.
NOTE.--The following analysis of the above evidence was
given in the Index to the Report (p. 184).--ED.
114-5-6. Sculpture and painting should be combined under same
roof, not in same room.--Sculpture disciplines the eye to
appreciate painting.--But, if in same room, disturbs the
mind.--Tribune at Florence arranged too much for show--Sculpture
not to be regarded as _decorative_ of a room.--National Gallery
should include works of all kinds of art _of all ages_, arranged
chronologically (_cf._ 132). Mediæval sculpture should go with
painting, if it is found impossible to combine art of all ages.
117-8. Pictures should be protected by glass in every case. It
makes them more beautiful, independently of the
preservation,--Glass is not merely expedient, but
essential.--Pictures are permanently injured by dirt.
119-20-21. First-rate large pictures should have a room to
themselves, and a gallery round them.--Pictures must be hung on a
line with the eye.--In one, or at most two, lines.--In the Salon
Carre at the Louvre the effect is magnificent, but details of
pictures cannot be seen.
122. Galleries should be decorated not splendidly, but pleasantly.
123. Great importance of chronological arrangement. Art the truest
history (_cf._ 125 and 132).
124. Best works of inferior artists to be secured.
125. All the works of a painter, however incongruous their
subjects, to be exhibited in juxtaposition.
126. Love of detail in pictures among workmen.--Great refinement of
their perceptions.
127. Accessibility of new National Gallery.
128. There should be two galleries--one containing gems, placed in
as _safe_ a position as possible; the other containing works good,
but inferior to the highest, and located solely with a view to
accessibility.
129. Impossible to protect _sculpture_ from London atmosphere.
130. Inferior gallery would be useful as an instructor.--In this
respect superior to the great gallery.
131-32. _Copies_ of paintings much to be deprecated.
133. Good collection of casts a valuable addition to a national
gallery.--Also architectural fragments and illustrations.--And
everything which involves art.
134. If it is impossible to combine works of art of all ages, the
Pagan and Christian division is the best.--"Christian" art
including _all_ art subsequent to the birth of Christ.
135. Great importance of arranging and setting off sculpture.
136. Recent purchase by Government of the great Paul Veronese.
137. "Restoring" abroad.
138. Witness is Master of the Elementary and Landscape School of
Drawing at the Working Men's College in Great Ormond
Street.--Progress made by students highly satisfactory.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: This evidence, given by Mr. Ruskin as stated above, is
reprinted from the Report of the National Gallery Site Commission.
London: Harrison and Sons. 1857. Pp. 92-7. Questions 2392-2504. The
Commission consisted of Lord Broughton (chairman), Dean Milman,
Professor Faraday, Mr. Cockerell, R.A., and Mr. George Richmond, all of
whom were present on the occasion of Mr. Ruskin giving his
evidence.--ED.]
PICTURE GALLERIES--THEIR FUNCTIONS AND FORMATION.
SELECT COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS.[2]
_Evidence of John Ruskin, Tuesday, March 20, 1860._
139. _Chairman._ I believe you have a general acquaintance with
the leading museums, picture galleries, and institutions in this
metropolis?--Yes, I know them well.
And especially the pictures?--Yes.
I believe you have also taken much interest in the Working Men's
College?--Yes, much interest. I have been occupied there as a master for
about five years.
I believe you conduct a class on two days in the week?--On one day of
the week only.
You have given a great deal of gratuitous instruction to the working
classes?--Not so much to the working classes as to the class which
especially attends the lectures on drawing, but which of course is
connected with the working classes, and through which I know something
about them.
140. You are probably able to speak with reference to the hours at which
it would be most convenient that these institutions should be opened to
the working classes, so that they might enjoy them?--At all events, I
can form some opinion about it.
What are the hours which you think would be the most suitable to the
working classes, or those to whom you have imparted instruction?--They
would, of course, have in general no hours but in the evening.
Do you think the hours which are now found suitable for mechanics'
institutes would be suitable for them, that is, from eight till ten, or
from seven till ten at night?--The earlier the better, I should think;
that being dependent closely upon the other much more important
question, how you can prepare the workmen for taking advantage of these
institutions. The question before us, as a nation, is not, I think, what
opportunities we shall give to the workmen of instruction, unless we
enable them to receive it; and all this is connected closely, in my
mind, with the early closing question, and with the more difficult
question, issuing out of that, how far you can get the hours of labor
regulated, and how far you can get the labor during those hours made not
competitive, and not oppressive to the workmen.
141. Have you found that the instruction which you have been enabled to
give to the working classes has produced very good results upon them
already? I ought perhaps hardly to speak of my own particular modes of
instruction, because their tendency is rather to lead the workman out of
his class, and I am privately obliged to impress upon my men who come to
the Working Men's College, not to learn in the hope of being anything
but working men, but to learn what may be either advantageous for them
in their work, or make them happy after their work. In my class, they
are especially tempted to think of rising above their own rank, and
becoming artists,--becoming something better than workmen, and that
effect I particularly dread. I want all efforts for bettering the
workmen to be especially directed in this way: supposing that they are
to remain in this position forever, that they have not capacity to rise
above it, and that they are to work as coal miners, or as iron forgers,
staying as they are; how then you may make them happier and wiser?
I should suppose you would admit that the desire to rise out of a class
is almost inseparable from the amount of self-improvement that you
would wish to give them?--I should think not; I think that the moment a
man desires to rise out of his own class, he does his work badly in it;
he ought to desire to rise in his own class, and not out of it.
The instruction which you would impart one would suppose would be
beneficial to the laborer in the class which he is in?--Yes.
142. And that agrees, does it not, with what has been alleged by many
working men, that they have found in their competition with foreigners
that a knowledge of art has been most beneficial to them?--Quite so.
I believe many foreigners are now in competition with working men in the
metropolis, in matters in which art is involved?--I believe there are
many, and that they are likely still more to increase as the relations
between the nations become closer.
Is it your opinion that the individual workman who now executes works of
art in this country is less intellectually fit for his occupation than
in former days?--Very much so indeed.
Have you not some proofs of that which you can adduce for the benefit of
the Committee?--I can only make an assertion; I cannot prove it; but I
assert it with confidence, that no workman, whose mind I have examined,
is, at present, capable of design in the arts, only of imitation, and of
exquisite manual execution, such as is unsurpassable by the work of any
time or any country; manual execution, which, however, being wholly
mechanical, is always profitless to the man himself, and profitless
ultimately to those who possess the work.
143. With regard to those institutions in which pictures are exhibited,
are you satisfied that the utmost facilities are afforded to the public
compatibly with the expense which is now incurred?--I cannot tell how
far it would be compatible with the expense, but I think that a very
little increase of expense might certainly bring about a great increase
of convenience.
Various plans have been suggested, by different persons, as to an
improvement in the National Gallery, with regard to the area, and a
better distribution of the pictures?--Yes.
Are you of opinion that at a very small cost it would be possible to
increase the area considerably in the case of the National Gallery?--I
have not examined the question with respect to the area of the National
Gallery. It depends of course upon questions of rent, and respecting the
mode in which the building is now constructed, which I have not
examined; but in general this is true of large buildings, that expense
wisely directed to giving facilities for seeing the pictures, and not to
the mere show of the building, would always be productive of far more
good to the nation, and especially to the lower orders of the nation,
than expense in any other way directed, with reference to these
institutions.
144. Some persons have been disposed to doubt whether, if the
institutions were open at night, gas would be found injurious to the
pictures; would that be your impression?--I have no doubt that it would
be injurious to the pictures, if it came in contact with them. It would
be a matter of great regret to me that valuable pictures should be so
exhibited. I have hoped that pictures might be placed in a gallery for
the working classes which would interest them much more than the
_chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the great masters, and which at the same time
would not be a great loss to the nation if destroyed.
145. Have you had any experience of the working of the evening openings
of the South Kensington Museum?--No direct experience, but my impression
is that the workmen at present being compelled to think always of
getting as much work done in a day as they can, are generally led in
these institutions to look to the machinery, or to anything which bears
upon their trade; it therefore is no rest to them; it may be sometimes,
when they are allowed to take their families, as they do on certain
evenings, to the Kensington Museum, that is a great step; but the great
evil is that the pressure of the work on a man's mind is not removed,
and that he has not rest enough, thorough rest given him by proper
explanations of the things he sees; he is not led by a large printed
explanation beneath the very thing to take a happy and unpainful
interest in every subject brought before him; he wanders about
listlessly, and exerts himself to find out things which are not
sufficiently explained, and gradually he tires of it, and he goes back
to his home, or to his alehouse, unless he is a very intelligent man.
Would you recommend that some person should follow him through the
building to explain the details?--No; but I would especially recommend
that our institutions should be calculated for the help of persons whose
minds are languid with labor. I find that with ordinary constitutions,
the labor of a day in England oppresses a man, and breaks him down, and
it is not refreshment to him to use his mind after that, but it would be
refreshment to him to have anything read to him, or any amusing thing
told him, or to have perfect rest; he likes to lie back in his chair at
his own fireside, and smoke his pipe, rather than enter into a political
debate, and what we want is an extension of our art institutions, with
interesting things, teaching a man and amusing him at the same time;
above all, large printed explanations under every print and every
picture; and the subjects of the pictures such as they can enjoy.
146. Have you any other suggestion to offer calculated to enlighten the
Committee on the subject intrusted to them for consideration?--I can
only say what my own feelings have been as to my men. I have found
particularly that natural history was delightful to them; I think that
that has an especial tendency to take their minds off their work, which
is what I always try to do, not ambitiously, but reposingly. I should
like to add to what I said about the danger of injury to
_chefs-d'oeuvre_, that such danger exists, not only as to gas, but
also the breath, the variation of temperature, the extension of the
canvases in a different temperature, the extension of the paint upon
them, and various chemical operations of the human breath, the chance of
an accidental escape of gas, the circulation of variously damp air
through the ventilators; all these ought not to be allowed to affect
the great and unreplaceable works of the best masters; and those works,
I believe, are wholly valueless to the working classes; their merits are
wholly imperceptible except to persons who have given many years of
study to endeavor to qualify themselves to discover them; but what is
wanting for the working man is historical painting of events noble, and
bearing upon his own country; the history of his own country well
represented to him; the natural history of foreign countries well
represented to him; and domestic pathos brought before him. Nothing
assists him so much as having the moral disposition developed rather
than the intellectual after his work; anything that touches his feelings
is good, and puts new life into him; therefore I want modern pictures,
if possible, of that class which would ennoble and refine by their
subjects. I should like prints of all times, engravings of all times;
those would interest him with their variety of means and subject; and
natural history of three kinds, namely, shells, birds, and plants; not
minerals, because a workman cannot study mineralogy at home; but
whatever town he may be in, he may take some interest in the birds and
in the plants, or in the sea shells of his own country and coast. I
should like the commonest of all our plants first, and most fully
illustrated; the commonest of all our birds, and of our shells, and men
would be led to take an interest in those things wholly for their
beauty, and for their separate charm, irrespective of any use that might
be made of them in the arts. There also ought to be, for the more
intelligent workman, who really wants to advance himself in his
business, specimens of the manufactures of all countries, as far as the
compass of such institutions would allow.
147. You have traveled, I believe, a good deal abroad?--Yes.
And you have seen in many foreign countries that far more interest is
taken in the improvement of the people in this matter than is taken in
this country?--Far more.
Do you think that you can trace the good effects which result from that
mode of treatment?--The circumstances are so different that I do not
feel able to give evidence of any definite effect from such efforts;
only, it stands to reason, that it must be so. There are so many
circumstances at present against us, in England, that we must not be
sanguine as to too speedy an effect. I believe that one great reason of
the superiority of foreign countries in manufactures is, that they have
more beautiful things about them continually, and it is not possible for
a man who is educated in the streets of our manufacturing towns ever to
attain that refinement of eye or sense; he cannot do it; and he is
accustomed in his home to endure that which not the less blunts his
senses.
The Committee has been informed that with regard to some of our museums,
particularly the British Museum, they are very much overcharged with
objects, and I apprehend that the same remark would be true as to some
of our picture galleries. Are you of opinion that it would be conducive
to the general elevation of the people in this country if our works of
art, and objects of interest, were circulated more expeditiously, and
more conveniently, than at present, throughout the various manufacturing
districts?--I think that all precious works of art ought to be treated
with a quite different view, and that they ought to be kept together
where men whose work is chiefly concerned with art, and where the
artistically higher classes can take full advantage of them. They ought,
therefore, to be all together, as in the Louvre at Paris, and as in the
Uffizii at Florence, everything being illustrative of other things, but
kept separate from the collections intended for the working classes,
which may be as valuable as you choose, but they should be usable, and
above all things so situated that the working classes could get at them
easily, without keepers to watch what they are about, and have their
wives and children with them, and be able to get at them freely, so that
they might look at a thing as their own, not merely as the nation's, but
as a gift from the nation to them as the working class.
You would cultivate a taste at the impressionable age?--Especially in
the education of children, that being just the first question, I
suppose, which lies at the root of all you can do for the workman.
148. With regard to the circulation of pictures and such loans of
pictures as have heretofore been made in Manchester and elsewhere, are
you of opinion that, in certain cases, during a part of the year, some
of our best pictures might be lent for particular periods, to particular
towns, to be restored in the same condition, so as to give those towns
an opportunity of forming an opinion upon them, which otherwise they
would not have?--I would rather keep them all in the metropolis, and
move them as little as possible when valuable.
_Mr. Slaney._ That would not apply to loans by independent gentlemen who
were willing to lend their pictures?--I should be very glad if it were
possible to lend pictures, and send them about. I think it is one of the
greatest movements in the nation, showing the increasing kindness of the
upper classes towards the lower, that that has been done; but I think
nothing can justify the risking of noble pictures by railway, for
instance; that, of course, is an artist's view of the matter; but I do
not see that the advantage to be gained would at all correspond with the
danger of loss which is involved.
149. _Mr. Hanbury._ You mentioned that you thought it was very desirable
that there should be lectures given to the working classes?--Yes.
Do you think that the duplicate specimens at the British Museum could be
made available for lectures on natural history, if a part of that
institution could be arranged for the purpose?--I should think so; but
it is a question that I have no right to have an opinion upon. Only the
officers of the institution can say what number of their duplicate
specimens they could spare.
I put the question to you because I have observed in the British Museum
that the people took a great interest in the natural history department,
and, upon one occasion, a friend of mine stopped, and explained some of
the objects, and at once a very numerous crowd was attracted round him,
and the officials had to interfere, and told him to move on.--So much
more depends upon the explanation than on the thing explained, that I
believe, with very simple collections of very small value, but well
chosen, and exhibited by a thoroughly intelligent lecturer, you might
interest the lower classes, and teach them to any extent.
Would it be difficult to find such lecturers as you speak of?--Not in
time; perhaps at present it would be, because we have got so much in the
habit of thinking that science consists in language, and in fine words,
and not in ascertaining the nature of the thing. The workman cannot be
deceived by fine words; he always wants to know something about the
thing, and its properties. Many of our lecturers would, I have no doubt,
be puzzled if they were asked to explain the habits of a common bird.
150. Is there an increasing desire for information and improvement among
the working classes?--A thirsty desire for it in every direction,
increasing day by day, and likely to increase; it would grow by what it
feeds upon.
To what do you attribute this improvement?--Partly to the healthy and
proper efforts which have been made to elevate the working classes;
partly, I am sorry to say, to an ambitious desire throughout the nation
always to get on to a point which it has not yet reached, and which
makes one man struggle with another in every way. I think that the idea
that knowledge is power is at the root of the movement among the working
classes, much more so than in any other.
Do you consider that the distance of our public institutions is a great
hindrance to the working classes?--Very great indeed.
You would, therefore, probably consider it a boon if another institution
such as the British Museum could be established in the eastern end of
the metropolis?--I should be most thankful to see it, especially there.
151. _Mr. Slaney._ I think you stated that you considered, that for the
working classes it is a great thing to have relaxation of mind after the
close occupation of the day; that they would embrace an opportunity of
attending popular lectures on branches of natural history which they
could comprehend, if they were given to them in plain and simple
language?--Yes.
For instance, if you were to give a popular lecture upon British birds,
giving them an explanation of the habits of the various birds, assisted
by tolerably good plates, or figures describing the different habits of
migration of those that come to us in spring, remain during the summer,
and depart in the autumn to distant countries; of those which come in
the autumn, remain during the winter, and then leave us; of those which
charm us with their song, and benefit us in various ways; do you think
that such a lecture would be acceptable to the working classes?--It
would be just what they would enjoy the most, and what would do them the
most good.
Do you not think that such lectures might be given without any very
great cost, by finding persons who would endeavor to make the subjects
plain and pleasant, not requiring a very expensive apparatus, either of
figures or of birds, but which might be pointed out to them, and
explained to them from time to time?--No; I think that no such lectures
would be of use, unless a permanent means of quiet study were given to
the men between times. As far as I know, lectures are always entirely
useless, except as a matter of amusement, unless some opportunity be
afforded of accurate intermediate study, and although I should deprecate
the idea, on the one side, of giving the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the
highest masters to the workman for his daily experiments, so I should
deprecate, on the other, the idea of any economy if I saw a definite
plan of helping a man in his own times of quiet study.
152. There are some popular works on British birds which the men might
be referred to, containing accounts of the birds and their habits, which
might be referred to subsequently?--Yes.
There are several works relating to British birds which are very
beautifully illustrated, and to those they might be referred; do you not
think that something might also be done with regard to popular lectures
upon British plants, and particularly those which are perhaps the most
common, and only neglected because of their being common; that you might
point out to them the different soils in which they grow, so that they
might be able to make excursions to see them in their wild state?--My
wish is, that in every large manufacturing town there should be a
perfect collection, at all events of the principal genera of British
plants and birds, thoroughly well arranged, and a library associated
with it, containing the best illustrative works on the subject, and that
from time to time lectures should be given by the leading scientific
men, which I am sure they would be willing to give if such collections
were opened to them.
I dare say you know that there is one book upon British birds, which was
compiled by a gentleman who was in trade, and lived at the corner of St.
James's Street for many years, which is prized by all who are devoted to
that study, and which would be easily obtained for the working men. Do
you not think that this would relax their minds and be beneficial to
them in many ways, especially if they were able to follow up the
study?--Yes, in every way.
As to plants, might not they interest their wives as well?--I quite
believe so.
If such things could be done by subscription in the vicinity of large
towns, such as Manchester, would they not be very much responded to by
the grateful feelings of the humbler people, who themselves would
subscribe probably some trifle?--I think they would be grateful, however
it were done. But I should like it to be done as an expression of the
sense of the nation, as doing its duty towards the workmen, rather than
it should be done as a kind of charity by private subscription.
153. _Sir Robert Peel._ You have been five years connected with the
Working Men's College?--Yes; I think about that time.
Is the attendance good there?--There is a fair attendance, I believe.
Of the working classes?--Yes; in the other lecture-rooms; not much in
mine.
Do they go there as they please without going beforehand for
tickets?--They pass through an introductory examination, which is not
severe in any way, but merely shows that they are able to take advantage
of the classes there; of course they pay a certain sum, which is not at
all, at present, I believe, supporting to the college, for every class,
just to insure their paying attention to it.
You stated that you did not think lectures would be of any use unless
there was what you called active intermediate study?--I think not.
What did you mean by active intermediate study? if a man is working
every day of the week until Saturday afternoon, how could that take
place?--I think that you could not at all provide lectures once or twice
a week at the institutions throughout the kingdom. By intermediate
study, I mean merely that a man should have about him, when he came into
the room, things that shall tempt him to look at them, and get
interested in, say in one bird, or in one plant.
While the lecture was going on?--No, that might be given once a
fortnight, or once a month, but that this intermediate attention should
be just that which a man is delighted to give to a single plant which he
cultivates in his own garden, or a single bird which he may happen to
have obtained; the best of all modes of study.
154. You are in favor of the Early Closing Association?--I will not say
that I am, because I have not examined their principles. I want to have
our labor regulated, so that it shall be impossible for men to be so
entirely crushed in mind and in body as they are by the system of
competition.
You stated that you would wish the hours during which they would be able
to enjoy the institutions to be as early as possible?--Yes, certainly.
But it would be impossible to have them earlier than they are now, on
account of the organization of labor in the country.--I do not know what
is possible. I do not know what the number of hours necessary for labor
will ultimately be found to be.
Still you are of opinion that, if there was a half-holiday on the
Saturday, it would be an advantage to the working classes, and enable
them to visit and enjoy these institutions?--Certainly.
155. You observed, I think, that there was a thirsty desire on the part
of the working classes for improvement?--Certainly.
And you also stated that there was a desire on their part to rise in
that class, but not out of it?--I did not say that they wanted to rise
in that class; they wish to emerge from it; they wish to become
something better than workmen, and I want to keep them in that class; I
want to teach every man to rest contented in his station, and I want all
people, in all stations, to better and help each other as much as they
can.
But you never saw a man, did you, who was contented?--Yes, I have seen
several; nearly all the very good workmen are contented; I find that it
is only the second-rate workmen who are discontented.
156. Surely competition with foreigners is a great advantage to the
working classes of this country?--No.
It has been stated that competition is an immense advantage in the
extension of artistic knowledge among the people of this country, who
are rapidly stepping on the heels of foreigners?--An acquaintance with
what foreign nations have accomplished may be very useful to our
workmen, but a spirit of competition with foreign nations is useful to
no one.
Will you be good enough to state why?--Every nation has the power of
producing a certain number of objects of art, or of manufacturing
productions which are peculiar to it, and which it can produce
thoroughly well; and, when that is rightly understood, every nation will
strive to do its own work as well as it can be done, and will desire to
be supplied, by other nations, with that which they can produce; for
example, if we tried here in England to produce silk, we might possibly
grow unhealthy mulberry trees and bring up unhealthy silkworms, but not
produce good silk. It may be a question how far we should compete with
foreigners in matters of taste. I think it doubtful, even in that view,
that we should ever compete with them thoroughly. I find evidence in
past art, that the French have always had a gift of color, which the
English never had.
157. You stated that you thought that at very little expense the
advantages to be derived from our national institutions might be greatly
increased; will you state why you think very little expense would be
necessary, and how it should be done?--By extending the space primarily,
and by adding very cheap but completely illustrative works; by making
all that such institutions contain thoroughly accessible; and giving, as
I think I have said before, explanations, especially in a visible form,
beside the thing to be illustrated, not in a separate form.
But that only would apply to daytime?--To nighttime as well.
But would you not have to introduce a system of lighting?--Yes; a system
of lighting I should only regret as applied to the great works of art; I
should think that the brightest system of lighting should be applied,
especially of an evening, so that such places should be made delightful
to the workman, and withdraw him from the alehouse and all other evil
temptation; but I want them rather to be occupied by simple, and more or
less cheap collections, than by the valuable ones, for fear of fire.
If, at the British Museum, they had printed information upon natural
history, that, you think, would do great good?--Yes.
158. You stated that you thought there was far more interest taken in
foreign countries in the intellectual development of the working classes
than in England?--I answered that question rather rashly. I hardly ever
see anything of society in foreign countries, and I was thinking, at the
time, of the great efforts now being made in France, and of the general
comfort of the institutions that are open.
Not political?--No.
Still you think that there is more interest taken in the intellectual
development of the working classes in foreign countries than in
England?--I think so, but I do not trust my own opinion.
I have lived abroad, and I have remarked that there is a natural
facility in the French people, for instance, in acquiring a knowledge of
art, and of combination of colors, but I never saw more, but far less
desire or interest taken in the working classes than in England.--As far
as relates to their intellectual development, I say yes; but I think
there is a greater disposition to make them happy, and allow them to
enjoy their happiness, in ordinary associations, at _fêtes_, and
everything of that kind, that is amusing or recreative to them.
But that is only on Sundays?--No; on all _fête_ days, and throughout, I
think you see the working man, with his wife, happier in the gardens or
in the suburbs of a town, and on the whole in a happier state; there is
less desire to get as much out of him for the money as they can; less of
that desire to oppress him and to use him as a machine than there is in
England. But, observe, I do not lean upon that point; and I do not quite
see how that bears upon the question, because, whatever interest there
may be in foreign countries, or in ours, it is not as much as it should
be in either.
But you were throwing a slur upon the character of the upper classes in
this country, by insinuating that abroad a great deal more interest was
taken in the working classes than in England. Now I assert, that quite
the contrary is the fact.--I should be very sorry to express all the
feelings that I have respecting the relations between the upper classes
and the working classes in this country; it is a subject which cannot at
present be discussed, and one upon which I would decline any further
examination.
159. You stated that the working men were not so happy in this country
as they were abroad, pursuing the same occupations?--I should think
certainly not.
You have been in Switzerland?--Yes.
And at Zurich?--Not lately.
That is the seat of a great linen manufacture?--I have never examined
the manufactures there, nor have I looked at Switzerland as a
manufacturing country.
But you stated that there was much more interest taken in the
intellectual developments of the working classes in foreign countries
than in England?--Yes; but I was not thinking of Switzerland or of
Zurich. I was thinking of France, and I was thinking of the working
classes generally, not specially the manufacturing working classes. I
used the words "working classes" generally.
Then do you withdraw the expression that you made use of, that in
foreign countries the upper classes take more interest in the condition
of the working classes, than they do in England?--I do not withdraw it;
I only said that it was my impression.
But you cannot establish it?--No.
Therefore it is merely a matter of individual impression?--Entirely so.
You said, I think, that abroad the people enjoy their public
institutions better, because inspectors do not follow them about?--I did
not say so. I was asked the question whether I thought teaching should
be given by persons accompanying the workman about, and I said certainly
not. I would rather leave him to himself, with such information as
could be given to him by printed documents.
160. _Mr. Sclater Booth._ With regard to the National Gallery, are you
aware that there is great pressure and want of space there now, both
with regard to the room for hanging pictures, and also with reference to
the crowds of persons who frequent the National Gallery?--I am quite
sure that if there is not great pressure, there will be soon, owing to
the number of pictures which are being bought continually.
Do you not think that an extension of the space in the National Gallery
is a primary consideration, which ought to take precedence of any
improvement that might be made in the rooms as they are, with a view to
opening them of an evening?--Most certainly.
That is the first thing, you think, that ought to be done?--Most
certainly.
When you give your lectures at the Working Men's College, is it your
habit to refer to special pictures in the National Gallery, or to
special works of art in the British Museum?--Never; I try to keep
whatever instruction I give bearing upon what is easily accessible to
the workman, or what he can see at the moment. I do not count upon his
having time to go to these institutions; I like to put the thing in his
hand, and have it about.
Has it never been a stumbling-block in your path that you have found a
workman unable to compare your lectures with any illustrations that you
may have referred him to?--I have never prepared my lectures with a view
to illustrate them by the works of the great masters.
161. You spoke, and very justly, of the importance of fixing on works of
art printed explanations; are you not aware that that has been done to
some extent at the Kensington Museum?--Yes.
Do you not think that a great part of the popularity of that institution
is owing to that circumstance?--I think so, certainly.
On the whole, I gather from your evidence that you are not very sanguine
as to the beneficial results that would arise from the opening of the
British Museum and the National Gallery of an evening, as those
institutions are at present constituted, from a want of space and the
crowding of the objects there?--Whatever the results might be, from
opening them, as at present constituted, I think better results might be
attained by preparing institutions for the workman himself alone.
Do you think that museums of birds and plants, established in various
parts of the metropolis, illustrated and furnished with pictures of
domestic interest, and possibly with specimens of manufactures, would be
more desirable, considering the mode in which the large institutions are
now seen?--I think in these great institutions attention ought
specially to be paid to giving perfect security to all the works and
objects of art which they possess; and to giving convenience to the
thorough student, whose business lies with those museums; and that
collections for the amusement and improvement of the working classes
ought to be entirely separate.
If such institutions as I have described were to be established, you
would of course desire that they should be opened of an evening, and be
specially arranged, with a view to evening exhibition?--Certainly.
It has been stated that the taxpayer has a right to have these
exhibitions opened at hours when the workpeople can go to them, they
being taxpayers; do not you think that the real interest of the taxpayer
is, first, to have the pictures as carefully preserved as possible, and
secondly, that they should be accessible to those whose special
occupation in life is concerned in their study?--Most certainly.
Is not the interest of the taxpayer reached in this way, rather than by
any special opportunity being given of visiting at particular
hours?--Most certainly.
162. _Mr. Kinnaird._ Have you ever turned your attention to any peculiar
localities, where museums of paintings and shells, and of birds and
plants, might be opened for the purpose referred to?--Never; I have
never examined the subject.
Has it ever occurred to you that the Vestry Halls, which have recently
been erected, and which are lighted, might be so appropriated?--No; I
have never considered the subject at all.
Supposing that suitable premises could be found, do you not think that
many people would contribute modern paintings, and engravings, and
various other objects of interest?--I think it is most probable; in
fact, I should say certain.
You would view such an attempt with great favor?--Yes; with great
delight indeed.
You rather look upon it as the duty of the Government to provide such
institutions for the people?--I feel that very strongly indeed.
Do you not think that the plan which has been adopted at Versailles, of
having modern history illustrated by paintings, would prove of great
interest to the people?--I should think it would be an admirable plan in
every way.
And a very legitimate step to be taken by the Government, for the
purpose of encouraging art in that way?--Most truly.
Would it have, do you think, an effect in encouraging art in this
country?--I should think so, certainly.
Whose duty would you consider it to be to superintend the formation of
such collections? are there any Government officers who are at present
capable of organizing a staff for employment in local museums that you
are aware of?--I do not know; I have not examined that subject at all.
163. _Chairman._ The Committee would like to understand you more
definitely upon the point that has been referred to, as to foreigners
and Englishmen. I presume that what you wished the Committee to
understand was, that upon the whole, so far as you have observed, more
facilities are in point of fact afforded to the working classes, in some
way or other, abroad than in this country for seeing pictures and
visiting public institutions?--My answer referred especially to the
aspect of the working classes as I have watched them in their times of
recreation; I see them associated with the upper classes, more happily
for themselves; I see them walking through the Louvre, and walking
through the gardens of all the great cities of Europe, and apparently
less ashamed of themselves, and more happily combined with all the upper
classes of society, than they are here. Here our workmen, somehow, are
always miserably dressed, and they always keep out of the way, both at
such institutions and at church. The temper abroad seems to be, while
there is a sterner separation and a more aristocratic feeling between
the upper and the lower classes, yet just on that account the workman
confesses himself for a workman, and is treated with affection. I do not
say workmen merely, but the lower classes generally, are treated with
affection, and familiarity, and sympathy by the master or employer,
which has to me often been very touching in separate eases; and that
impression being on my mind, I answered, not considering that the
question was of any importance, hastily; and I am not at present
prepared to say how far I could, by thinking, justify that impression.
164. _Mr. Kinnaird._ In your experience, in the last few years, have you
not seen a very marked improvement in the working classes in this
country in every respect to which you have alluded; take the last twenty
years, or since you have turned your attention that way?--I have no
evidence before me in England of that improvement, because I think that
the struggle for existence becomes every day more severe, and that,
while greater efforts are made to help the workman, the principles on
which our commerce is conducted are every day oppressing him, and
sinking him deeper.
Have you ever visited the manufacturing districts of Lancashire and
Yorkshire, with a view of ascertaining the state of the people
there?--Not with a definite view. My own work has nothing to do with
those subjects; and it is only incidentally, because I gratuitously give
such instruction as I am able to give at the Working Men's College, that
I am able to give you any facts on this subject. All the rest that I can
give is, as Sir Robert Peel accurately expressed it, nothing but
personal impression.
You admit that the Working Men's College is, after all, a very limited
sphere?--A very limited sphere.
165. _Sir Robert Peel._ You have stated that, in the Louvre, a working
man looks at the pictures with a greater degree of self-respect than the
same classes do in the National Gallery here?--I think so.
You surely never saw a man of the upper class, in England, scorn at a
working man because he appeared in his working dress in the National
Gallery in London?--I have certainly seen working men apprehensive of
such scorn.
_Chairman._ Is it not the fact, that the upper and lower classes
scarcely ever meet on the same occasions?--I think, if possible, they do
not.
Is it not the fact that the laboring classes almost invariably cease
labor at such hours as would prevent them from going to see pictures at
the time when the upper classes do go?--I meant, before, to signify
assent to your question, that they do not meet if it can be avoided.
_Sir Robert Peel._ Take the Crystal Palace as an example; do not working
men and all classes meet there together, and did you ever see a working
man _gêné_ in the examination of works of art?--I am sure that a working
man very often would not go where he would like to go.
But you think he would abroad?--I think they would go abroad; I only say
that I believe such is the fact.
_Mr. Slaney._ Do not you think that the light-hearted temperament of our
southern neighbors, and the fineness of the climate, which permits them
to enjoy themselves more in the open air, has something to do with
it?--I hope that the old name of Merry England may be recovered one of
these days. I do not think that it is in the disposition of the
inhabitants to be in the least duller than other people.
_Sir Robert Peel._ When was that designation lost?--I am afraid ever
since our manufactures have prospered.
_Chairman._ Referring to the Crystal Palace, do you think that that was
an appropriate instance to put, considering the working man pays for his
own, and is not ashamed to enjoy his own for his own money?--I have
never examined the causes of the feeling; it did not appear to me to be
a matter of great importance what was the state of feeling in foreign
countries. I felt that it depended upon so many circumstances, that I
thought it would be a waste of time to trace it.
166. _Sir Robert Peel._ You stated that abroad the working classes were
much better dressed?--Yes.
Do you think so?--Yes.
Surely they cannot be better dressed than they are in England, for you
hardly know a working man here from an aristocrat?--It is precisely
because I do know working men on a Sunday and every other day of the
week from an aristocrat that I like their dress better in France; it is
the ordinary dress belonging to their position, and it expresses
momentarily what they are; it is the blue blouse which hangs freely
over their frames, keeping them sufficiently protected from cold and
dust; but here it is a shirt open at the collar, very dirty, very much
torn, with ragged hair, and a ragged coat, and altogether a dress of
misery.
You think that they are better dressed abroad because they wear a
blouse?--Because they wear a costume appropriate to their work.
Are you aware that they make it an invariable custom to leave off the
blouse on Sundays and on holidays, and that after they have finished
their work they take off their blouse?--I am not familiar, nor do I
profess to be familiar, with the customs of the Continent; I am only
stating my impressions; but I like especially their habit of wearing a
national costume. I believe the national costume of work in Switzerland
to be at the root of what prosperity Switzerland yet is retaining. I
think, for instance, although it may sound rather singular to say so,
that the pride which the women take in their clean chemise sleeves, is
one of the healthiest things in Switzerland, and that it is operative in
every way on the health of the mind and the body, their keeping their
costume pure, fresh, and beautiful.
You stated that the working classes were better dressed abroad than in
England?--As far as I know, that is certainly the fact.
Still their better dress consists of a blouse, which they take off when
they have finished their work?--I bow to your better knowledge of the
matter.
_Chairman._ Are you aware that a considerable number of the working
classes are in bed on the Sunday?--Perhaps it is the best place for
them.
167. _Mr. Kinnaird._ You trace the deterioration in the condition of the
working classes to the increase of trade and manufactures in this
country?--To the increase of competitive trades and manufactures.
It is your conviction that we may look upon this vast extension of
trade, and commerce, and competition, altogether as an evil?--Not on
the vast extension of trade, but on the vast extension of the struggle
of man with man, instead of the principle of help of man by man.
_Chairman._ I understood you to say, that you did not object to trade,
but that you wished each country to produce that which it was best
fitted to produce, with a view to an interchange of its commodities with
those of other countries?--Yes.
You did not intend to cast a slur upon the idea of competition?--Yes,
very distinctly; I intended not only to cast a slur, but to express my
excessive horror of the principle of competition, in every way; for
instance, we ought not to try to grow claret here, nor to produce silk;
we ought to produce coal and iron, and the French should give us wine
and silk.
You say that, with a view to an interchange of such commodities?--Yes.
Each country producing that which it is best fitted to produce?--Yes, as
well as it can; not striving to imitate or compete with the productions
of other countries. Finally, I believe that the way of ascertaining what
ought to be done for the workman in any position, is for any one of us
to suppose that he was our own son, and that he was left without any
parents, and without any help; that there was no chance of his ever
emerging out of the state in which he was, and then, that what we should
each of us like to be done for our son, so left, we should strive to do
for the workman.
The following analysis of the above evidence was mainly given in
the Index to the Report (p. 153).--ED.
139. Is well acquainted with the museums, picture galleries, etc.,
in the metropolis.--Conducts a drawing class at the Working Men's
College.
140. Desirableness of the public institutions being open in the
evening (cp. 154, 161).
141. Remarks relative to the system of teaching expedient for the
working classes; system pursued by witness at the Working Men's
College.--Workmen to aim at rising in their class, not _out of_ it
(cp. 155).
142. Backward state, intellectually, of the working man of the
present time; superiority of the foreigner.
143. Improvement of the National Gallery suggested (cp. 157, 160).
144. Inexpediency of submitting valuable ancient pictures to the
risk of injury from gas, etc. (cp. 146, 157).
145. Statement as to the minds of the working classes after their
day's labor being too much oppressed to enable them to enjoy or
appreciate the public institutions, if merely opened in the
evening.
146. Suggested collection of pictures and prints of a particular
character for the inspection of the working classes.--Suggestions
with a view to special collections of shells, birds, and plants
being prepared for the use of the working classes; system of
lectures, of illustration, and of intermediate study necessary in
connection with such collections (cp. 151-52).
147. Statement as to greater interest being taken in France and
other foreign countries than in England in the intellectual
development of the working classes; examination on this point, and
on the effect produced thereby upon the character and demeanor of
the working people (cp. 158, 163-64).
148. Objection to circulating valuable or rare works of art
throughout the country, on account of the risk of
injury--Disapproval of inspectors, etc., going about with the
visitors (cp. 159).--Advantage in the upper classes lending
pictures, etc., for public exhibition.
149. Lectures to working men. Advantage if large printed
explanations were placed under every picture (cp. 157, 161).
150. Great desire among the working classes to acquire knowledge;
grounds of such desire (cp. 155).--Great boon if a museum were
formed at the east end of London.
151. Lectures on natural history for working men.
152. Books available on British birds.
153. Intermediate study essential to use of Lectures.--Good
attendance at Working Men's College.--Terms and conditions of
admission to it.
154. Approval of Saturday half-holiday movement (cp. 140, 161).
155. See above, s. 142.
156. Competition in trade and labor regarded by witness as a great
evil.
157. See above, s. 143, 149.
158-59. Happier condition of lower classes abroad than at home.
Their dress also better abroad. 163-64, 166, and see above, s. 142.
160. See above, s. 143, 149, 157.
161. See above, s. 149, 154.
162. Use of existing public buildings for art collections.
163-64. See above, s. 158-59.
165. Surely England may one day be Merry England again.--When it
ceased to be so.
166. See above, s. 158-59.
167. Increase of trade and deteriorated condition of
working-classes.--Our duty to them.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: Reprinted from "The Report of the Select Committee on
Public Institutions. _Ordered by_ the House of Commons _to be printed_,
27 March 1860," pp. 113-123. The following members of the Committee were
present on the occasion of the above evidence being given: -Sir John
Trelawny (_Chairman_), Mr. Sclater Booth, Mr. Du Pre, Mr. Kinnaird, Mr.
Hanbury, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Slaney, and Mr. John Tollemache.--ED.]
PICTURE GALLERIES--THEIR FUNCTIONS AND FORMATION.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY COMMISSION.[3]
_Evidence of John Ruskin, Monday, June 8th, 1863._
168. _Chairman._ You have, no doubt, frequently considered the position
of the Royal Academy in this country?--Yes.
Is it in all points satisfactory to you?--No, certainly not.
Do you approve, for example, of the plan by which, on a vacancy
occurring, the Royal Academicians supply that vacancy, or would you wish
to see that election confided to any other hands?--I should wish to see
the election confided to other hands. I think that all elections are
liable to mistake, or mischance, when the electing body elect the
candidate into them. I rather think that elections are only successful
where the candidate is elected into a body other than the body of
electors; but I have not considered the principles of election fully
enough to be able to give any positive statement of opinion upon that
matter. I only feel that at present the thing is liable to many errors
and mischances.
Does it not seem, however, that there are some precedents, such, for
example, as the Institute of France, in which the body electing to the
vacancies that occur within it keeps up a very high character, and
enjoys a great reputation?--There are many such precedents; and, as
every such body for its own honor must sometimes call upon the most
intellectual men of the country to join it, I should think that every
such body must retain a high character where the country itself has a
proper sense of the worth of its best men; but the system of election
may be wrong, though the sense of the country may be right; and I think,
in appealing to a precedent to justify a system, we should estimate
properly what has been brought about by the feeling of the country. We
are all, I fancy, too much in the habit of looking to forms as the cause
of what really is caused by the temper of the nation at the particular
time, working, through the forms, for good or evil.
If, however, the election of Academicians were to be confided to artists
who were not already Academicians themselves, would it be easy to meet
this objection, that they would have in many cases a personal interest
in the question; that each might be striving for his own admission to
that distinction; whereas, when the election takes place among those who
have already attained that distinction, direct personal interest at all
events is absent?--I should think personal interest would act in a
certain sense in either case; it would branch into too many subtleties
of interest to say in what way it would act. I should think that it
would be more important to the inferior body to decide rightly upon
those who were to govern them, than to the superior body to decide upon
those who were to govern other people; and that the superior body would
therefore generally choose those who were likely to be pleasant to
themselves;--pleasant, either as companions, or in carrying out a system
which they chose for their own convenience to adopt; while the inferior
body would choose men likely to carry out the system that would tend
most to the general progress of art.
169. As I understand you, though you have a decided opinion that it
would be better for some other constituent body to elect the members of
the Royal Academy, you have not a decided opinion as to how that
constituent body would best be composed?--By no means.
I presume you would wish that constituent body to consist of artists,
though you are not prepared to say precisely how they should be
selected?--I should like the constituent body to consist both of artists
and of the public. I feel great difficulties in offering any suggestion
as to the manner in which the electors should elect: but I should like
the public as well as artists to have a voice, so that we might have the
public feeling brought to bear upon painting as we have now upon music;
and that the election of those who were to attract the public eye, or
direct the public mind, should indicate also the will of the public in
some respects; not that I think that "will" always wise, but I think you
would then have pointed out in what way those who are teaching the
public should best regulate the teaching; and also it would give the
public itself an interest in art, and a sense of responsibility, which
in the present state of things they never can have.
Will you explain more fully the precedent of music to which you have
just adverted?--The fame of any great singer or any great musician
depends upon the public enthusiasm and feeling respecting him. No Royal
Academy can draw a large audience to the opera by stating that such and
such a piece of music is good, or that such and such a voice is clear;
if the public do not feel the voice to be delicious, and if they do not
like the music, they will not go to hear it. The fame of the musician,
whether singer, instrumentalist, or composer, is founded mainly upon his
having produced a strong effect upon the public intellect and
imagination. I should like that same effect to be produced by painters,
and to be expressed by the public enthusiasm and approbation; not merely
by expressions of approbation in conversation, but by the actual voice
which in the theater is given by the shout and by the clapping of the
hands. You cannot clap a picture, nor clap a painter at his work, but I
should like the public in some way to bring their voice to bear upon the
painter's work.
170. Have you formed any opinion upon the position of the Associates in
the Royal Academy?--I have thought of it a little, but the present
system of the Academy is to me so entirely nugatory, it produces so
little effect in any way (what little effect it does produce being in my
opinion mischievous), that it has never interested me; and I have felt
the difficulty so greatly, that I never, till your lordship's letter
reached me, paid much attention to it. I always thought it would be a
waste of time to give much time to thinking how it might be altered; so
that as to the position of Associates I can say little, except that I
think, in any case, there ought to be some period of probation, and some
advanced scale of dignity, indicative of the highest attainments in art,
which should be only given to the oldest and most practiced painters.
From the great knowledge which you possess of British art, looking to
the most eminent painters, sculptors, and architects at this time,
should you say that the number of the Royal Academy is sufficient fully
to represent them, or would you recommend an increase in the present
number of Academicians?--I have not considered in what proportion the
Academicianships at present exist. That is rather a question bearing
upon the degree of dignity which one would be glad to confer. I should
like the highest dignity to be limited, but I should like the inferior
dignity corresponding to the Associateship to be given, as the degrees
are given in the universities, without any limitation of number, to
those possessing positive attainments and skill. I should think a very
limited number of Academicianships would always meet all the
requirements of the highest intellect of the country.
171. Have you formed any opinion upon the expediency of intrusting
laymen with some share in the management of the affairs of the
Academy?--No, I have formed no opinion upon that matter. I do not know
what there is at present to be managed in the Academy. I should think if
the Academy is to become an available school, laymen cannot be joined in
the management of that particular department. In matters of revenue, and
in matters concerning the general interests and dignity of the Academy,
they might be.
Should you think that non-professional persons would be fitly associated
with artists in such questions as the selection and hanging of the
pictures sent in for exhibition?--No, I think not.
Some persons have suggested that the president of the Academy should not
always nor of necessity be himself an artist; should you approve of any
system by which a gentleman of high social position, not an artist, was
placed at the head of such a body as the Academy?--"Of such a body as
the Academy," if I may be permitted to repeat your words, must of course
have reference to the constitution to be given to it. As at present
constituted, I do not know what advantage might or might not be derived
from such a gentleman being appointed president. As I should like to see
it constituted, I think he ought to be an artist only.
172. Have you had any reason to observe or to make yourself acquainted
with the working of the schools of the Royal Academy?--Yes, I have
observed it. I have not made myself acquainted with the actual methods
of teaching at present in use, but I know the general effect upon the
art of the country.
What should you say was that effect?--Nearly nugatory: exceedingly
painful in this respect, that the teaching of the Academy separates, as
the whole idea of the country separates, the notion of art-education
from other education, and when you have made that one fundamental
mistake, all others follow. You teach a young man to manage his chalk
and his brush--not always that--but having done that, you suppose you
have made a painter of him; whereas to educate a painter is the same
thing as to educate a clergyman or a physician--you must give him a
liberal education primarily, and that must be connected with the kind of
learning peculiarly fit for his profession. That error is partly owing
to our excessively vulgar and excessively shallow English idea that the
artist's profession is not, and cannot be, a liberal one. We respect a
physician, and call him a gentleman, because he can give us a purge and
clean out our stomachs; but we do not call an artist a gentleman, whom
we expect to invent for us the face of Christ. When we have made that
primary mistake, all other mistakes in education are trivial in
comparison. The very notion of an art academy should be, a body of
teachers of the youth who are to be the guides of the nation through its
senses; and that is a very important means of guiding it. We have done a
good deal through dinners, but we may some day do a good deal more
through pictures.
You would have a more comprehensive system of teaching?--Much more
comprehensive.
173. Do I rightly understand you that you would wish it to embrace
branches of liberal education in general, and not be merely confined to
specific artistic studies?--Certainly. I would have the Academy
education corresponding wholly to the university education. The schools
of the country ought to teach the boy the first conditions of
manipulation. He should come up, I say not at what age, but probably at
about fourteen or fifteen, to the central university of art, wherever
that was established; and then, while he was taught to paint and to
carve and to work in metal--just as in old times he would have been
taught to manage the sword and lance, they being the principal business
of his life,--during the years from fifteen to twenty, the chief
attention of his governors should be to make a gentleman of him in the
highest sense; and to give him an exceedingly broad and liberal
education, which should enable him not only to work nobly, but to
conceive nobly.
174. As to the point, however, of artistic manipulation, is not it the
fact that many great painters have differed, and do differ, from each
other, and would it therefore be easy for the Academy to adopt any
authoritative system of teaching, excluding one mode and acknowledging
another?--Not easy, but very necessary. There have been many methods;
but there has never been a case of a great school which did not fix upon
its method: and there has been no case of a thoroughly great school
which did not fix upon the right method, as far as circumstances enabled
it to do so. The meaning of a successful school is, that it has adopted
a method which it teaches to its young painters, so that right working
becomes a habit with them; so that with no thought, and no effort, and
no torment, and no talk about it, they have the habit of doing what
their school teaches them.
You do not think a system is equally good which leaves to each eminent
professor, according to the bent of his genius or the result of his
experience, to instruct young men, the instruction varying with the
character of each professor?--Great benefit would arise if each
professor founded his own school, and were interested in his own pupils;
but, as has been sufficiently illustrated in the schools of Domenichino
and Guido, there is apt to arise rivalry between the masters, with no
correlative advantages, unless the masters are all of one mind. And the
only successful idea of an academy has been where the practice was
consistent, and where there was no contradiction. Considering the
knowledge we now have, and the means we now have of comparing all the
works of the greatest painters, though, as you suggest by your question,
it is not easy to adopt an authoritative system, yet it is perfectly
possible. Let us get at the best method and let us teach that. There is
unquestionably a best way if we can find it; and we have now in England
the means of finding it out.
The teaching in the Academy is now, under all circumstances, gratuitous;
would you wish that system to continue, or should you prefer to see a
system of payment?--I am not prepared to answer that question. It would
depend upon the sort of system that was adopted and on the kind of
persons you received into your schools.
175. I presume you would say that in artistic teaching there are some
points on which there would be common ground, and others upon which
there must be specific teaching; for instance, in sculpture and painting
there is a point up to which the proportions of the human figure have to
be studied, but afterwards there is a divergence between the two arts of
chiseling marble and laying colors on the canvas?--Certainly. I should
think all that might be arranged in an Academy system very simply. You
would have first your teaching of drawing with the soft point; and
associated with that, chiaroscuro: you would then have the teaching of
drawing with the hard or black point, involving the teaching of the best
system of engraving, and all that was necessary to form your school of
engravers: you would then proceed to metal work; and on working in metal
you would found your school of sculpture, and on that your school of
architecture: and finally, and above all, you would have your school of
painting, including oil painting and fresco painting, and all painting
in permanent material; (not comprising painting in any material that was
not permanent:) and with that you would associate your school of
chemistry, which should teach what was permanent and what was not; which
school of chemistry should declare authoritatively, with the Academy's
seal, what colors would stand and what process would secure their
standing: and should have a sort of Apothecaries' Hall where anybody who
required them could procure colors in the purest state; all these things
being organized in one great system, and only possibly right by their
connection and in their connection.
176. Do you approve of the encouragement which of late years has been
given to fresco painting, and do you look forward to much extension of
that branch of art in England?--I found when I was examining the term
"fresco painting," that it was a wide one, that none of us seemed to
know quite the limitation or extent of it; and after giving a good deal
more time to the question I am still less able to answer distinctly on
an understanding of the term "fresco painting:" but using the term
"decorative painting, applicable to walls in permanent materials," I
think it essential that every great school should include as one of its
main objects the teaching of wall painting in permanent materials, and
on a large scale.
You think it should form a branch of the system of teaching in the
Academy?--I think it should form a branch of the teaching in the
Academy, possibly the principal branch.
Does it so far as you know form a separate branch of teaching in any of
the foreign academies?--I do not know.
177. Looking generally, and of course without mentioning any names, have
you in the course of the last few years been generally satisfied with
the selection of artists into the Royal Academy?--No, certainly not.
Do you think that some artists of merit have been excluded, or that
artists whom you think not deserving of that honor have been
elected?--More; that artists not deserving of the honor have been
elected. I think it does no harm to any promising artist to be left out
of the Academy, but it does harm to the public sometimes that an
unpromising artist should be let into it.
You think there have been cases within the last few years in which
persons, in your judgment, not entitled to that distinction have
nevertheless been elected?--Certainly.
178. With respect to the selection of pictures for the exhibition, are
you satisfied in general with that selection, or have you in particular
instances seen ground to think that it has been injudiciously
exercised?--In some cases it has been injudiciously exercised, but it is
a matter of small importance; it causes heartburning probably, but
little more. If a rejected picture is good, the public will see it some
day or other, and find out that it is a good picture. I care little
about what pictures are let in or not, but I do care about seeing the
pictures that are let in. The main point, which everyone would desire to
see determined, is how the pictures that are admitted are to be best
seen. No picture deserving of being seen at all should be so hung as to
give you any pain or fatigue in seeing it. If you let a picture into the
room at all, it should not be hung so high as that either the feelings
of the artist or the neck of the public should be hurt.
179. _Viscount Hardinge._ I gather from your evidence that you would
wish to see the Royal Academy a sort of central university to which
young men from other institutions should be sent. Assuming that there
were difficulties in the way of carrying that out, do you think, under
the present system, you could exact from young men who are candidates
for admission into the Royal Academy, some educational test?--Certainly;
I think much depends upon that. If the system of education which I have
been endeavoring to point out were adopted, you would have in every one
of those professions very practiced workmen. You could not have any of
this education carried out, unless you had thoroughly practiced workmen;
and you should fix your pass as you fix your university pass, and you
should pass a man in architecture, sculpture, and painting, because he
knows his business, and knows as much of any other science as is
necessary for his profession. You require a piece of work from him, and
you examine him, and then you pass him,--call him whatever you
like;--but you say to the public, Here is a workman in this branch who
will do your work well.
You do not think there would in such a system be any risk of excluding
men who might hereafter be great men who under such a system might not
be able to pass?--There are risks in every system, but I think every man
worth anything would pass. A great many who would be good for nothing
would pass, but your really great man would assuredly pass.
180. Has it ever struck you that it would be advantageous to art if
there were at the universities professors of art who might give lectures
and give instruction to young men who might desire to avail themselves
of it, as you have lectures on botany and geology?--Yes, assuredly. The
want of interest on the part of the upper classes in art has been very
much at the bottom of the abuses which have crept into all systems of
education connected with it. If the upper classes could only be
interested in it by being led into it when young, a great improvement
might be looked for; therefore I feel the expediency of such an addition
to the education of our universities.
181. Is not that want of refinement which may be observed in many of the
pictures from time to time exhibited in the Royal Academy to be
attributed in a great measure to the want of education amongst
artists?--It is to be attributed to that, and to the necessity which
artists are under of addressing a low class of spectators: an artist to
live must catch the public eye. Our upper classes supply a very small
amount of patronage to artists at present, their main patronage being
from the manufacturing districts and from the public interested in
engravings;--an exceedingly wide sphere, but a low sphere,--and you
catch the eye of that class much more by pictures having reference to
their amusements than by any noble subject better treated, and the
better treated it was the less it would interest that class.
Is it not often the case that pictures exhibiting such a want of
refinement, at the same time fetch large prices amongst what I may call
the mercantile patrons of art?--Certainly; and, the larger the price,
the more harm done of course to the school, for that is a form of
education you cannot resist. Plato said long ago, when you have your
demagogue against you no human form of education can resist that.
182. _Sir E. Head._ What is your opinion of the present mode of teaching
in the life school and the painting school, namely, by visitors
constantly changing?--I should think it mischievous. The unfortunate
youths, I should imagine, would just get what they could pick up; it
would be throwing them crumbs very much as you throw bones to the
animals in the Zoological Gardens.
Do you conceive that anything which can be properly called a school, is
likely to be formed where the teaching is conducted in that
way?--Assuredly not.
183. You stated that in the event of the introduction of lay members
into the Academy, you would not think it desirable that they should take
part in the selection or hanging of pictures for exhibition. Is not
there a great distinction between the selection of the pictures and the
hanging of the pictures, and might not they take part in the one without
taking part in the other?--I should think hardly. My notion of hanging a
picture is to put it low enough to be seen. If small it should be placed
near the eye. Anybody can hang a picture, but the question should be, is
there good painting enough in this picture to make it acceptable to the
public, or to make it just to the artist to show it? And none but
artists can quite judge of the workmanship which should entitle it to
enter the Academy.
Do you think it depends solely upon the workmanship?--Not by any means
solely, but I think that is the first point that should be looked to. An
ill-worked picture ought not to be admitted; let it be exhibited
elsewhere if you will, but your Academy has no business to let bad work
pass. If a man cannot carve or paint, though his work may be well
conceived, do not let his work pass. Unless you require good work in
your Academy exhibition, you can form no school.
_Mr. Reeve._ Applying the rule you have just laid down, would the effect
be to exclude a considerable proportion of the works now exhibited in
the Academy?--Yes; more of the Academicians' than of others.
_Sir E. Head._ Selection now being made by technical artists?--No.
Professional?--Yes.
_Lord Elcho._ Do you think that none but professional artists
are capable of judging of the actual merit or demerit of a
painting?--Non-professional persons may offer a very strong opinion upon
the subject, which may happen to be right,--or which may be wrong.
Your opinion is that the main thing with respect to the exhibition is,
that the pictures should be seen; that they should not be hung too high
or too low. That question has been already raised before the Commission,
and it has been suggested that two feet from the ground should be the
minimum height for the base of the picture, and some witnesses have said
that six feet and others eight feet should be the maximum height for the
base of the picture; what limit would you fix?--I should say that the
horizontal line in the perspective of the picture ought always to be
opposite the spectator's eye, no matter what the height may be from the
floor. If the horizontal line is so placed that it must be above the
spectator's eye, in consequence of the size of the picture, it cannot
be helped, but I would always get the horizontal line opposite the eye
if possible.
184. _Chairman._ Should you concur in the suggestion which a witness has
made before this Commission, that it would be an improvement, if the
space admitted of it, that works of sculpture should be intermixed in
the same apartment with works of painting, instead of being kept as at
present in separate apartments?--I should think it would be very
delightful to have some works of sculpture mixed with works of painting;
that it would make the exhibition more pleasing, and that the eye would
be rested sometimes by turning from the colors to the marble, and would
see the colors of the paintings better in return. Sir Joshua Reynolds
mentions the power which some of the Flemish pictures seemed to derive,
in his opinion, by looking at them after having consulted his note-book.
Statuary placed among the pictures would have the same effect. I would
not have the sculpture that was sent in for the exhibition of the year
exhibited with the paintings, but I would have works of sculpture placed
permanently in the painting rooms.
_Lord Elcho._ Supposing there were no works of sculpture available for
being placed in the rooms permanently, and supposing among the works
sent in for annual exhibition there were works of a character fit to be
placed among the paintings, should you see any objection to their being
so placed?--That would cause an immense amount of useless trouble, and
perpetual quarrels among the sculptors, as to whose works were entitled
to be placed in the painting rooms or not.
Are you aware that in the exhibition in Paris in 1855, that was the
system adopted?--No. If the French adopted it, it was likely to be
useful, and doubtless they would carry it out very cleverly; but we have
not the knack of putting the right things in the right places by any
means.
Did you see our own International Exhibition last year?--No.
Are you aware that a similar system was resorted to in the exhibition of
pictures there?--I should think in our exhibitions we must put anything
where it would go, in the sort of way that we manage them.
185. At the present moment there are on the books of the Academy five
honorary members, who hold certain titular offices, Earl Stanhope being
antiquary to the Academy, Mr. Grote being professor of ancient history,
Dean Milman being professor of ancient literature, the Bishop of Oxford
being chaplain, and Sir Henry Holland being secretary for foreign
correspondence; these professors never deliver any lectures and have no
voice whatever in the management, but have mere honorary titular
distinctions; should you think it desirable that gentlemen of their
position and character should have a voice in the management of the
affairs of the Academy?--It would be much more desirable that they
should give lectures upon the subjects with which they are acquainted. I
should think Earl Stanhope and all the gentlemen you have mentioned,
would be much happier in feeling that they were of use in their
positions; and that if you gave them something to do they would very
nobly do it. If you give them nothing to do I think they ought not to
remain in the institution.
186. It has been suggested that the Academy now consisting of forty-two
might be increased advantageously to fifty professional members,
architecture, sculpture, and painting being fairly represented, and that
in addition to those fifty there might be elected or nominated somehow
or other ten non-professional persons, that is, men taking an interest
in art, who had a certain position and standing in the country, and who
might take an active part in the management of the affairs of the
institution, so tending to bring the Royal Academy and the public
together?--I do not know enough of society to be able to form an opinion
upon the subject.
Irrespective of society, as a question of art, you know enough of
non-professional persons interested in art to judge as to whether the
infusion of such an element into the Academy might be of advantage to
the Academy and to art generally?--I think if you educate our upper
classes to take more interest in art, which implies, of course, to know
something about it, they might be most efficient members of the
Academy; but if you leave them, as you leave them now, to the education
which they get at Oxford and Cambridge, and give them the sort of scorn
which all the teaching there tends to give, for art and artists, the
less they have to do with an academy of art the better.
Assuming that, at present, you have not a very great number of those
persons in the country, do you not think that the mere fact of the
adoption of such a principle in any reform in the constitution of the
Academy might have the effect of turning attention more to this matter
at the Universities, and leading to the very thing which you think so
desirable?--No, I should think not. It would only at present give the
impression that the whole system was somewhat artificial, and that it
was to remain ineffective.
Notwithstanding the neglect of this matter at the Universities, do you
think, at the present moment, you could not find ten non-professional
persons, of the character you would think desirable, to add to the
Academy?--If I may be so impertinent, I may say that you as one of the
upper classes, and I as a layman in the lower classes, are tolerably
fair examples of the kind of persons who take an interest in art, and I
think both of us would do a great deal of mischief if we had much to do
with the Academy.
187. Assuming those two persons to be appointed lay members, will you
state in what way you think they would do mischief in the councils of
the Academy?--We should be disturbing elements, whereas what I should
try to secure, if I had anything to do with its arrangements, would be
entire tranquillity, a regular system of tuition in which there should
be little excitement, and little operation of popular, aristocratic, or
any other disturbing influence; none of criticism, and therefore none of
tiresome people like myself;--none of money patronage, or even of
aristocratic patronage. The whole aim of the teachers should be to
produce work which could be demonstrably shown to be good and useful,
and worthy of being bought, or used in any way; and after that the
whole question of patronage and interest should be settled. The school
should teach its art-grammar thoroughly in everything, and in every
material, and should teach it carefully; and that could be done if a
perfect system were adopted, and above all, if a few thoroughly good
examples were put before the students. That is a point which I think of
very great importance. I think it very desirable that grants should be
made by the Government to obtain for the pupils of the Academy beautiful
examples of every kind, the very loveliest and best; not too many; and
that their minds should not be confused by having placed before them
examples of all schools and times; they are confused enough by what they
see in the shops, and in the annual exhibitions. Let engraving be taught
by Marc Antonio and Albert Dürer,--painting by Giorgione, Paul Veronese,
Titian and Velasquez,--and sculpture by good Greek and selected Roman
examples, and let there be no question of other schools or their merits.
Let those things be shown as good and right, and let the student be
trained in those principles:--if afterwards he strikes out an original
path, let him; but do not let him torment himself and other people with
his originalities, till he knows what is right, so far as is known at
present.
You are opposed, on the whole, to the introduction of the lay
element?--Yes; but I am not opposed strongly or distinctly to it,
because I have not knowledge enough of society to know how it would
work.
Your not being in favor of it results from your belief that the lay
element that would be useful to the Academy does not at present exist in
this country; but you think, if it did exist, and if it could be made to
grow out of our schools and universities by art teaching, it might, with
advantage to the Academy and to artists, be introduced into the
Academy?--Yes.
188. Supposing the class of Royal Academicians to be retained, and that
you had fifty Royal Academicians, should you think it desirable that
their works should be exhibited by themselves, so that the public might
see together the works of those considered to be the first artists of
this country?--Certainly, I should like all pictures to be well seen,
but I should like one department of the exhibition to be given to the
Associates or Graduates. I use that term because I suppose those
Associates to have a degree given them for a certain amount of
excellence, and any person who had attained that degree should be
allowed to send in so many pictures. Then the pictures sent in by
persons who had attained the higher honor of Royal Academician should be
separately exhibited.
That would act as a stimulus to them to keep up their position and show
themselves worthy of the honor?--Yes. I do not think they ought to be
mixed at all as they are now.
189. What is your opinion with reference to the present system of
traveling studentships?--I think it might be made very useful indeed.
On the one hand it has been suggested that there should be, as is the
system adopted by the French Academy, a permanent professor at Rome to
look after the students; on the other hand it has been said that it is
not desirable, if you have those traveling studentships, that the
students should go to Rome, that it is better for them to travel, and to
go to Venice or Lombardy, and to have no fixed school in connection with
the Academy at Rome. To which of those two systems do you give the
preference?--I should prefer the latter; if a man goes to travel, he
ought to travel, and not be plagued with schools.
It has been suggested that fellowships might be given to rising artists,
pecuniary assistance being attached to those fellowships, the artist
being required annually to send in some specimen of his work to show
what he was doing, but it being left optional with him to go abroad or
to work at home; should you think that would be desirable, or as has
been suggested in a letter by Mr. Armitage, supposing those fellowships
to be established for four years, that two of those years should be
spent abroad and two at home?--Without entering into any detail as to
whether two years should be spent abroad and two years at home, I feel
very strongly that one of the most dangerous and retarding influences
you have operating upon art is the enormous power of money, and the
chances of entirely winning or entirely losing, that is, of making your
fortune in a year by a large taking picture, or else starving for ten
years by very good small ones. The whole life of an artist is a lottery,
and a very wild lottery, and the best artist is liable to be warped away
from what he knows is right by the chance of at once making a vast
fortune by catching the public eye, the public eye being only to be
caught by bright colors and certain conditions of art not always
desirable. If, therefore, connected with the Academy schools there could
be the means of giving a fixed amount of income to certain men, who
would as a consideration for that income furnish a certain number of
works that might be agreed upon, or undertake any national work that
might be agreed upon, that I believe would be the healthiest way in
which a good painter could be paid. To give him his bread and cheese,
and so much a day, and say, Here are such and such things we want you to
do, is, I believe, the healthiest, simplest, and happiest way in which
great work can be produced. But whether it is compatible with our
present system I cannot say, nor whether every man would not run away as
soon as he found he could get two or three thousand pounds by painting a
catching picture. I think your best men would not.
You would be in favor of those fellowships?--Yes.
190. I gather that you are in favor of the encouragement of mural
decoration, fresco painting, and so forth. The system that prevails
abroad, in France, for instance, is for painters to employ pupils to
work under them. It was in that way that Delaroche painted his hemicycle
at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, employing four pupils, who worked for
him, and who from his small sketch drew the full-sized picture on the
walls, which was subsequently corrected by him. They then colored it up
to his sketch, after which he shut himself up again, and completed it.
On the other hand, if you go to the Victoria Gallery in the House of
Lords, you find Mr. Maclise at work on a space of wall forty-eight feet
long, painting the Death of Nelson on the deck of the "Victory," every
figure being life size, the deck of the ship and the ropes and
everything being the actual size, and you see him painting with his own
hand each little bit of rope and the minutest detail. Which of the two
systems do you think is the soundest and most calculated to produce
great and noble work?--The first is the best for the pupils, the other
is the best for the public. But unquestionably not only can a great work
be executed as Mr. Maclise is executing his, but no really great work
was executed otherwise, for in all mighty work, whether in fresco or
oil, every touch and hue of color to the last corner has been put on
lovingly by the painter's own hand, not leaving to a pupil to paint so
much as a pebble under a horse's foot.
191. Do you believe that most of the works of the great masters in Italy
were so executed?--No; because the pupils were nearly as mighty as the
masters. Great men took such an interest in their work, and they were so
modest and simple that they were repeatedly sacrificing themselves to
the interests of their religion or of the society they were working for;
and when a thing was to be done in a certain time it could only be done
by bringing in aid; but whenever precious work was to be done, then the
great man said, "Lock me up here by myself, give me a little wine and
cheese, and come in a month, and I will show you what I have done."
Do you think it desirable that the pupils should be so trained as to be
capable of assisting great masters in such works?--Assuredly.
NOTE.--The following analysis of the above evidence was
given in the Index to the Report (pp. 139, 140).--ED.
168-69. The Academy not in all points satisfactory. Would wish to
see the Academicians not self-elected.--But by a constituency
consisting both of artists and the public.--Public influence to be
the same in painting as in music.
170. As to the Associates: is in favor of some period of
probation.--Their class to be unlimited, with a very limited number
of Academicians.
171. Has formed no opinion on the question of introducing laymen
into the Academy; in matters of revenue they might be joined with
artists, but not in the selection and hanging of pictures: opposed
on the whole to their introduction, considering the present state
of art education.--As he would like to see the Academy constituted,
thinks the president ought to be an artist.
172. General effect of the Academy's teaching upon the art of the
country merely nugatory.--Would have a much more comprehensive
system of teaching.
173. The Academy education to correspond wholly to the University
education.
174. Not easy but very necessary for the Academy to adopt an
authoritative system of teaching.
175. His idea of what the Academy teaching should be; would have a
school of chemistry.
176. The teaching of wall-painting in permanent materials should be
a branch, possibly the principal branch.
177. Not satisfied with the selection of artists to be members of
the Academy.
178. In some cases the selection of pictures has been injudicious,
but this a matter of small importance; the main point is how the
pictures that are admitted are to be best seen.
179. In favor of an educational test for candidates for admission
into the Academy.
180. And of professors of art at the Universities.
181. Causes of the want of refinement observable in many modern
pictures; the large prices they fetch harmful.
182. Teaching by visitors constantly changing mischievous.
183. How a picture should be hung.--An ill-worked picture ought not
to be admitted by the Academy.--Bearing of this last opinion upon
the present Exhibition.
184. Would have works of sculpture placed permanently in the
painting-room, but not any of those sent in for the Exhibition of
the year.
185. In favor of the present honorary members being made of use in
their positions.
186. Introduction of laymen into the Academy deprecated under
present circumstances, and why.--Present feeling towards art and
artists at the Universities.
187. Desirable that Government grants should be made to obtain for
the pupils of the Academy beautiful examples of every kind of art.
188. In favor of separate exhibitions of the works of Associates
(or Graduates) and Academicians.
189. In favor of art-fellowships, but not of a fixed school in
connection with the Academy at Rome.
190. Comparison of the French, and English systems (as regards
assistance from pupils) in the production of great public
paintings.
191. How the works of the Italian masters were executed.--Desirable
that pupils should be trained to assist great masters in public
works.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: Reprinted from "The Report of the Commissioners appointed
to inquire into the Present Position of the Royal Academy in Relation to
the Fine Arts." London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1863 (pp. 546-55.
Questions 5079-5142). The Commission consisted of Earl Stanhope
(_Chairman_), Viscount Hardinge, Lord Elcho, Sir E. W. Head, Mr. William
Stirling, Mr. H. D. Seymour, and Mr. Henry Reeve, all of whom, except
Mr. Seymour, were present at the above sitting.--ED.]
A MUSEUM OR PICTURE GALLERY:
ITS FUNCTIONS AND ITS FORMATION.[4]
_March 20th, 1880._
MY DEAR ----,
192. If I put off writing the paper you asked me for, till I can do it
conveniently, it may hang fire till this time next year. If you will
accept a note on the subject now and then, keeping them till there are
enough to be worth printing, all practical ends may be enough answered,
and much more quickly.
The first function of a Museum--(for a little while I shall speak of Art
and Natural History as alike cared for in an ideal one)--is to give
example of perfect order and perfect elegance, in the true sense of that
test word, to the disorderly and rude populace. Everything in its _own_
place, everything looking its best because it is there, nothing crowded,
nothing unnecessary, nothing puzzling. Therefore, after a room has been
once arranged, there must be no change in it. For new possessions there
must be new rooms, and after twenty years' absence--coming back to the
room in which one learned one's bird or beast alphabet, we should be
able to show our children the old bird on the old perch in the
accustomed corner. But--first of all, let the room be beautifully
complete, _i.e._ complete enough for its proper business.
193. In the British Museum, at the top of the stairs, we encounter in a
terrific alliance a giraffe, a hippopotamus, and a basking shark. The
public--young and old--pass with a start and a stare, and remain as wise
as they were before about all the three creatures. The day before
yesterday I was standing by the big fish--a father came up to it with
his little boy. "That's a shark," says he; "it turns on its side when it
wants to eat you," and so went on--literally as wise as he was before;
for he had read in a book that sharks turn on their side to bite, and he
never looked at the ticket, which told him this particular shark only
ate small fish. Now he never looked at the ticket, because he didn't
expect to find anything on it except that this was the Sharkogobalus
Smith-Jonesianius. But if, round the walls of the room, there had been
all the _well-known_ kinds of shark, going down, in graduated sizes,
from that basking one to our waggling dog-fish, and if every one of
these had had a plain English ticket, with ten words of common sense on
it, saying where and how the beast lived, and a number (unchangeable)
referring to a properly arranged manual of the shark tribe (sold by the
Museum publisher, who ought to have his little shop close by the
porter's lodge), both father and son must have been much below the level
of average English man and boy in mother wit if they did not go out of
the room by the door in front of them very distinctly, and--to
themselves--amazingly, wiser than they had come in by the door behind
them.
194. If I venture to give instances of fault from the British Museum, it
is because, on the whole, it is the best-ordered and pleasantest
institution in all England, and the grandest concentration of the means
of human knowledge in the world. And I am heartily sorry for the
break-up of it, and augur no good from any changes of arrangement likely
to take place in concurrence with Kensington, where, the same day that I
had been meditating by the old shark, I lost myself in a Cretan
labyrinth of military ironmongery, advertisements of spring blinds,
model fish-farming, and plaster bathing nymphs with a year's smut on all
the noses of them; and had to put myself in charge of a policeman to get
out again. Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.
_March 29th, 1880._
MY DEAR ----,
195. The only chance of my getting these letters themselves into fairly
consistent and Museum-like order is by writing a word or two always the
first thing in the morning till I get them done; so, I shall at least
remember what I was talking of the day before; but for the rest--I must
speak of one thing or another as it may come into my head, for there are
too many to classify without pedantry and loss of time.
My requirement of "elegance" in that last letter contemplates chiefly
architecture and fittings. These should not only be perfect in
stateliness, durability, and comfort, but beautiful to the utmost point
consistent with due subordination to the objects displayed. To enter a
room in the Louvre is an education in itself; but two steps on the
filthy floor and under the iron forks, half scaffold, half gallows, of
the big Norwood glass bazaar, debase mind and eye at once below
possibility of looking at anything with profit all the day afterwards. I
have just heard that a French picture dealer is to have charge of the
picture gallery there, and that the whole interior is to become
virtually a large café, when--it is hoped--the glass monster may at last
"pay." Concerning which beautiful consummation of Mr. Dickens's
"Fairyland" (see my pamphlet[5] on the opening of the so-called
"palace"), be it here at once noted, that all idea of any "payment," in
that sense, must be utterly and scornfully abjured on the foundation
stone of every National or Civic Museum. There must be neither companies
to fill their own pockets out of it, nor trustees who can cramp the
management, or interfere with the officering, or shorten the supplies of
it. Put one man of reputation and sense at its head; give him what staff
he asks for, and a fixed annual sum for expenditure--specific accounts
to be printed annually for all the world's seeing--and let him alone.
The original expenditure for building and fitting must be magnificent,
and the current expenditure for cleaning and refitting magnanimous; but
a certain proportion of this current cost should be covered by small
entrance fees, exacted, not for any miserly helping out of the
floor-sweepers' salaries, but for the sake of the visitors themselves,
that the rooms may not be incumbered by the idle, or disgraced by the
disreputable. You must not make your Museum a refuge against either rain
or ennui, nor let into perfectly well-furnished, and even, in the true
sense, palatial, rooms, the utterly squalid and ill-bred portion of the
people. There should, indeed, be refuges for the poor from rain and
cold, and decent rooms accessible to indecent persons, if they like to
go there; but neither of these charities should be part of the function
of a Civic Museum.
196. Make the entrance fee a silver penny (a silver groat, typically
representing the father, mother, eldest son, and eldest daughter,
passing always the total number of any one family), and every person
admitted, however young, being requested to sign their name, or make
their mark.
That the entrance money should be always of silver is one of the
beginnings of education in the place--one of the conditions of its
"elegance" on the very threshold.
And the institution of silver for bronze in the lower coinage is a part
of the system of National education which I have been teaching these
last ten years--a very much deeper and wider one than any that can be
given in museums--and without which all museums will ultimately be
vain.--Ever affectionately yours,
J. R.
P.S.--There should be a well-served coffee-room attached to the
building; but this part of the establishment without any luxury in
furniture or decoration, and without any cooking apparatus for
carnivora.
_Easter Monday, 1880._
DEAR ----,
197. The day is auspicious for the beginning of reflection on the right
manner of manifestation of all divine things to those who desire to see
them. For every house of the Muses, where, indeed, they live, is an
Interpreter's by the wayside, or rather, a place of oracle and
interpretation in one. And the right function of every museum, to simple
persons, is the manifestation to them of what is lovely in the life of
Nature, and heroic in the life of Men.
There are already, you see, some quaint restrictions in that last
sentence, whereat sundry of our friends will start, and others stop. I
must stop also, myself, therefore, for a minute or two, to insist on
them.
198. A Museum, primarily, is to be for _simple_ persons. Children, that
is to say, and peasants. For your student, your antiquary, or your
scientific gentleman, there must be separate accommodation, or they must
be sent elsewhere. The Town Museum is to be for the Town's People, the
Village Museum for the Villagers. Keep that first principle clear to
start with. If you want to found an academy of painting in
Littleborough, or of literature in Squattlesea Mere, you must get your
advice from somebody else, not me.
199. Secondly. The museum is to manifest to these simple persons the
beauty and life of all things and creatures in their perfectness. Not
their modes of corruption, disease, or death. Not even, always, their
genesis, in the more or less blundering beginnings of it; not even their
modes of nourishment, if destructive; you must not stuff a blackbird
pulling up a worm, nor exhibit in a glass case a crocodile crunching a
baby.
Neither must you ever show bones or guts, or any other charnel-house
stuff. Teach your children to know the lark's note from the
nightingale's; the length of their larynxes is their own business, and
God's.
I cannot enough insist upon this point, nor too solemnly. If you wish
your children to be surgeons, send them to Surgeons' College; if
jugglers or necromancers, to Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke; and if
butchers, to the shambles: but if you want them to lead the calm life of
country gentlemen and gentlewomen, manservants and maidservants, let
them seek none of Death's secrets till they die. Ever faithfully and
affectionately yours,
J. R.
_Easter Tuesday, 1880._
DEAR ----,
200. I must enter to-day somewhat further on the practical, no less than
emotional, reason for the refusal of anatomical illustrations to the
general public.
It is difficult enough to get one clear idea into anybody, of any single
thing. But next to impossible to get _two_ clear ideas into them, of the
same thing. We have had lions' heads for door-knockers these hundred and
fifty years, without ever learning so much as what a lion's head is
like. But with good modern stuffing and fetching, I can manage now to
make a child really understand something about the beast's look, and his
mane, and his sullen eyes and brindled lips. But if I'm bothered at the
same time with a big bony box, that has neither mane, lips, nor eyes,
and have to explain to the poor wretch of a parish schoolboy how somehow
this fits on to that, I will be bound that, at a year's end, draw one as
big as the other, and he won't know a lion's head from a tiger's--nor a
lion's skull from a rabbit's. Nor is it the parish boy only who suffers.
The scientific people themselves miss half their points from the habit
of hacking at things, instead of looking at them. When I gave my lecture
on the Swallow[6] at Oxford, I challenged every anatomist there to tell
me the use of his tail (I believe half of them didn't know he had one).
Not a soul of them could tell me, which I knew beforehand; but I did not
know, till I had looked well through their books, how they were
quarreling about his wings! Actually at this moment (Easter Tuesday,
1880), I don't believe you can find in any scientific book in Europe a
true account of the way a bird flies--or how a snake serpentines. My
Swallow lecture was the first bit of clear statement on the one point,
and when I get my Snake lecture published, you will have the first
extant bit of clear statement on the other; and that is simply because
the anatomists can't, for their life, look at a thing till they have
skinned it.
201. And matters get worse and worse every hour. Yesterday, after
writing the first leaf of this note, I went into the British Museum, and
found a nasty skeleton of a lizard, with its under jaw dropped off, on
the top of a table of butterflies--temporarily of course--but then
everything has been temporary or temporizing at the British Museum for
the last half-century; making it always a mere waste and weariness to
the general public, because, forsooth, it had always to be kept up to
the last meeting of the Zoological Society, and last edition of the
_Times_. As if there had not been beasts enough before the Ark to tell
our children the manners of, on a Sunday afternoon!
202. I had gone into the Museum that day to see the exact form of a
duck's wing, the examination of a lively young drake's here at Coniston
having closed in his giving me such a cut on the wrist with it, that I
could scarcely write all the morning afterwards. Now in the whole bird
gallery there are only two ducks' wings expanded, and those in different
positions. Fancy the difference to the mob, and me, if the shells and
monkey skeletons were taken away from the mid-gallery, and instead,
three gradated series of birds put down the length of it (or half the
length--or a quarter would do it--with judgment), showing the
transition, in length of beak, from bunting to woodcock--in length of
leg, from swift to stilted plover--and in length of wing, from auk to
frigate-bird; the wings, all opened, in one specimen of each bird to
their full sweep, and in another, shown at the limit of the down back
stroke. For what on earth--or in air--is the use to me of seeing their
boiled sternums and scalped sinciputs, when I'm never shown either how
they bear their breasts--or where they carry their heads?
Enough of natural history, you will say! I will come to art in my next
letter--finishing the ugly subject of this one with a single sentence
from section ix. of the "Tale of a Tub," commending the context of it to
my friends of the Royal Academy.
"Last week, I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much
it altered her person for the worse."--Ever, my dear ----, affectionately
yours,
J. R.
_7th April, 1880._
MY DEAR ----,
203. I suppose that proper respect for the great first principles of the
British Constitution, that every man should do as he pleases, think what
he likes, and see everything that can be seen for money, will make most
of your readers recoil from my first principle of Museum
arrangement,--that nothing should be let inside the doors that isn't
good of its sort,--as from an attempt to restore the Papacy, revive the
Inquisition, and away with everybody to the lowest dungeon of the
castle moat. They must at their pleasure charge me with these sinister
views; they will find that there is no dexter view to be had of the
business, which does not consist primarily in knowing Bad from Good, and
Right from Wrong. Nor, if they will condescend to begin simply enough,
and at the bottom of the said business, and let the cobbler judge of the
crepida, and the potter of the pot, will they find it so supremely
difficult to establish authorities that shall be trustworthy, and
judgments that shall be sure.
204. Suppose, for instance, at Leicester, whence came first to us the
inquiry on such points, one began by setting apart a Hunter's Room, in
which a series of portraits of their Master's favorites, for the last
fifty years or so, should be arranged, with certificate from each Squire
of his satisfaction, to such and such a point, with the portrait of
Lightfoot, or Lucifer, or Will o' the Wisp; and due notification, for
perhaps a recreant and degenerate future, of the virtues and perfections
at this time sought and secured in the English horse. Would not such a
chamber of chivalry have, in its kind, a quite indisputable authority
and historical value, not to be shaken by any future impudence or
infidelity?
Or again in Staffordshire, would it not be easily answered to an honest
question of what is good and not, in clay or ware, "This will work, and
that will stand"? and might not a series of the mugs which have been
matured with discrimination, and of the pots which have been popular in
use, be so ordered as to display their qualities in a convincing and
harmonious manner against all gainsayers?
205. Nor is there any mystery of taste, or marvel of skill, concerning
which you may not get quite easy initiation and safe pilotage for the
common people, provided you once make them clearly understand that there
is indeed something to be learned, and something to be admired, in the
arts, which will need their attention for a time; and cannot be
explained with a word, nor seen with a wink. And provided also, and with
still greater decision, you set over them masters, in each branch of
the arts, who know their own minds in that matter, and are not afraid to
speak them, nor to say, "We know," when they know, and "We don't know,"
when they don't.
To which end, the said several branches must be held well apart, and
dealt with one at a time. Every considerable town ought to have its
exemplary collections of woodwork, iron-work, and jewelry, attached to
the schools of their several trades, leaving to be illustrated in its
public museum, as in an hexagonal bee's cell, the six queenly and
muse-taught arts of needlework, writing, pottery, sculpture,
architecture, and painting.
206. For each of these, there should be a separate Tribune or Chamber of
absolute tribunal, which need not be large--that, so called, of
Florence, not the size of a railway waiting-room, has actually for the
last century determined the taste of the European public in two
arts!--in which the absolute best in each art, so far as attainable by
the communal pocket, should be authoritatively exhibited, with simple
statement that it is good, and reason why it is good, and notification
in what particulars it is unsurpassable, together with some not too
complex illustrations of the steps by which it has attained to that
perfection, where these can be traced far back in history.
207. These six Tribunes, or Temples, of Fame, being first set with their
fixed criteria, there should follow a series of historical galleries,
showing the rise and fall (if fallen) of the arts in their beautiful
associations, as practiced in the great cities and by the great nations
of the world. The history of Egypt, of Persia, of Greece, of Italy, of
France, and of England, should be given in their arts,--dynasty by
dynasty and age by age; and for a seventh, a Sunday Room, for the
history of Christianity in its art, including the farthest range and
feeblest efforts of it; reserving for this room, also, what power could
be reached in delineation of the great monasteries and cathedrals which
were once the glory of all Christian lands.
208. In such a scheme, every form of noble art would take harmonious
and instructive place, and often very little and disregarded things be
found to possess unthought-of interest and hidden relative beauty; but
its efficiency--and in this chiefly let it be commended to the patience
of your practical readers--would depend, not on its extent, but on its
strict and precise limitation. The methods of which, if you care to have
my notions of them, I might perhaps enter into, next month, with some
illustrative detail.--Ever most truly yours,
J. R.
_10th June, 1880._[7]
MY DEAR ----,
209. I can't give you any talk on detail, yet; but, not to drop a stitch
in my story, I want to say why I've attached so much importance to
needlework, and put it in the opening court of the six. You see they are
progressive, so that I don't quite put needlework on a _level_ with
painting. But a nation that would learn to "touch" _must_ primarily know
how to "stitch." I am always busy, for a good part of the day, in my
wood, and wear out my leathern gloves fast, after once I can wear them
at all: but that's the precise difficulty of the matter. I get them from
the shop looking as stout and trim as you please, and half an hour after
I've got to work they split up the fingers and thumbs like ripe
horse-chestnut shells, and I find myself with five dangling rags round
my wrist, and a rotten white thread draggling after me through the wood,
or tickling my nose, as if Ariadne and Arachne had lost their wits
together. I go home, invoking the universe against sewing-machines; and
beg the charity of a sound stitch or two from any of the maids who know
their woman's art; and thenceforward the life of the glove proper
begins. Wow, it is not possible for any people that put up with this
sort of thing, to learn to paint, or do anything else with their fingers
decently:--only, for the most part they don't think their museums are
meant to show them how to do anything decently, but rather how to be
idle, indecently. Which extremely popular and extremely erroneous
persuasion, if you please, we must get out of our way before going
further.
210. I owe some apology, by the way, to Mr. Frith, for the way I spoke
of his picture[8] in my letter to the Leicester committee, not intended
for publication, though I never write what I would not allow to be
published, and was glad that they asked leave to print it. It was not I
who instanced the picture, it had been named in the meeting of the
committee as the kind of thing that people best like, and I was obliged
to say _why_ people best liked it:--namely, not for the painting, which
is good, and worthy their liking, but for the sight of the racecourse
and its humors. And the reason that such a picture ought not to be in a
museum, is precisely because in a museum people ought not to fancy
themselves on a racecourse. If they want to see races, let them go to
races; and if rogues, to Bridewells. They come to museums to see
something different from rogues and races.
211. But, to put the matter at once more broadly, and more accurately,
be it remembered, for sum of all, that a museum is not a theater. Both
are means of noble education--but you must not mix up the two. Dramatic
interest is one thing; aesthetic charm another; a pantomime must not
depend on its fine color, nor a picture on its fine pantomime.
Take a special instance. It is long since I have been so pleased in the
Royal Academy as I was by Mr. Britton Rivière's "Sympathy." The dog in
uncaricatured doggedness, divine as Anubis, or the Dog-star; the child
entirely childish and lovely, the carpet might have been laid by
Veronese. A most precious picture in itself, yet not one for a museum.
Everybody would think only of the story in it; everybody be wondering
what the little girl had done, and how she would be forgiven, and if she
wasn't, how soon she would stop crying, and give the doggie a kiss, and
comfort his heart. All which they might study at home among their own
children and dogs just as well; and should not come to the museum to
plague the real students there, since there is not anything of especial
notableness or unrivaled quality in the actual painting.
212. On the other hand, one of the four pictures I chose for permanent
teaching in Fors was one of a child and a dog. The child is doing
nothing; neither is the dog. But the dog is absolutely and beyond
comparison the best painted dog in the world--ancient or modern--on this
side of it, or at the Antipodes, (so far as I've seen the contents of
said world). And the child is painted so that child _cannot_ be better
done. _That_ is a picture for a museum.
Not that dramatic, still less didactic, intention should disqualify a
work of art for museum purposes. But--broadly--dramatic and didactic art
should be universally national, the luster of our streets, the treasure
of our palaces, the pleasure of our homes. Much art that is weak,
transitory, and rude may thus become helpful to us. But the museum is
only for what is eternally right, and well done, according to divine law
and human skill. The least things are to be there--and the greatest--but
all _good_ with the goodness that makes a child cheerful and an old man
calm; the simple should go there to learn, and the wise to remember.
213. And now to return to what I meant to be the subject of this
letter--the arrangement of our first ideal room in such a museum. As I
think of it, I would fain expand the single room, first asked for, into
one like Prince Houssain's,--no, Prince Houssain had the flying
tapestry, and I forget which prince had the elastic palace. But, indeed,
it must be a lordly chamber which shall be large enough to exhibit the
true nature of thread and needle--omened in "Thread-needle Street!"
The structure, first of wool and cotton, of fur, and hair, and down, of
hemp, flax, and silk:--microscope permissible if any cause can be shown
_why_ wool is soft, and fur fine, and cotton downy, and down downier;
and how a flax fiber differs from a dandelion stalk, and how the
substance of a mulberry leaf can become velvet for Queen Victoria's
crown, and clothing of purple for the housewife of Solomon.
Then the phase of its dyeing. What azures, and emeralds, and Tyrians
scarlets can be got into fibers of thread.
214. Then the phase of its spinning. The mystery of that divine
spiral, from finest to firmest, which renders lace possible at
Valenciennes--anchorage possible, after Trafalgar--if Hardy had but done
as he was bid.
Then the mystery of weaving. The eternal harmony of warp and woof, of
all manner of knotting, knitting, and reticulation, the art which makes
garment possible, woven from the top throughout, draughts of fishes
possible, miraculous enough in any pilchard or herring shoal, gathered
into companionable catchableness;--which makes, in fine, so many Nations
possible, and Saxon and Norman beyond the rest.
215. And finally, the accomplished phase of needlework, the _Acu
Tetigisti_ of all time, which does, indeed, practically exhibit what
mediæval theologists vainly tried to conclude inductively--How many
angels can stand on a needle-point. To show the essential nature of a
stitch--drawing the separate into the inseparable, from the lowly work
of duly restricted sutor, and modestly installed cobbler, to the
needle-Scripture of Matilda, the Queen.
All the acicular Art of Nations, savage and civilized, from Lapland
boot, letting in no snow-water--to Turkey cushion bossed with pearl--to
valance of Venice gold in needlework -to the counterpanes and samplers
of our own lovely ancestresses, imitable, perhaps, once more, with good
help from Whiteland's College--and Girton.
216. It was but yesterday, my own womankind were in much wholesome and
sweet excitement delightful to behold, in the practice of some new
device of remedy for rents (to think how much of evil there is in the
two senses of that four-lettered word! as in the two methods of
intonation of its synonym tear!) whereby they might be daintily effaced,
and with a newness which would never make them worse. The process began
beautifully, even to my uninformed eyes, in the likeness of herring-bone
masonry, crimson on white, but it seemed to me marvelous that anything
should yet be discoverable in needle process, and that of so utilitarian
character.
All that is reasonable, I say of such work is to be in our first museum
room. All that Athena and Penelope would approve. Nothing that vanity
has invented for change, or folly loved for costliness; but all that can
bring honest pride into homely life, and give security to health--and
honor to beauty.
J. RUSKIN.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: These letters are reprinted from the _Art Journal_ of June
and August 1880, where they were prefaced with the following note by the
editor in explanation of their origin:--"We are enabled, through Mr.
Ruskin's kindness, to publish this month a series of letters to a friend
upon the functions and formation of a model Museum or Picture Gallery.
As stated in our last issue the question arose thus:--At the
distribution of the prizes to the School of Art at Leicester by Mr. J.
D. Linton and Mr. James Orrock, members of the Institute of Painters in
Water Colors, the latter, after stating the vital importance of study
from nothing but the finest models, and expressing his regret that the
present price of works of Art of the first class rendered their
attainment by schools almost prohibitory, offered drawings by William
Hunt and David Cox as a nucleus for a collection. He urged others to
follow this example, and with so much success that a few days saw a
large sum and many works of Art promised in aid of a students' gallery.
The attention of the Leicester Corporation was thereupon drawn to the
movement, and they at once endeavored to annex the scheme to their
Museum. Failing in this, they in friendly rivalry subscribed a large sum
of money, and the question at once arose how best to dispose of it, each
naturally thinking his own ideas the best. At this juncture Mr. Ruskin's
aid was invoked by one section of the subscribers, and he replied in a
letter which, owing to its having been circulated without its context,
has been open to some misconstruction. As he was only asked, so he only
advised, what should _not_ be done. However, the letter bore its fruits,
for both parties have had the attention of the country drawn to their
proposals, and so are now more diffident how to set about carrying them
into effect than they were before. Under these circumstances Mr. Ruskin
has been induced to set out the mode in which he considers an Art Museum
should be formed."
The letter which was "open to some misconstruction" may be found in
_Arrows of the Chace_.]
[Footnote 5: Reprinted in vol. i., §§ 253-273.--ED.]
[Footnote 6: In 1873. See the second lecture of _Love's
Meinie_.--ED..]
[Footnote 7: _Art Journal_, August, 1880.]
[Footnote 8: The "Derby Day." See _Arrows of the Chase_.]
* * * * *
MINOR WRITINGS UPON ART.
THE CAVALLI MONUMENTS, VERONA. 1872.
VERONA AND ITS RIVERS (WITH CATALOGUE). 1870.
CHRISTIAN ART AND SYMBOLISM. 1872.
ART SCHOOLS OF MEDIÆVAL CHRISTENDOM. 1876.
THE EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS. 1876.
THE STUDY OF BEAUTY. 1883.
* * * * *
THE CAVALLI MONUMENTS IN THE CHURCH OF ST. ANASTASIA, VERONA.[9]
217. The tomb of Federigo and Nicola Cavalli is in the southernmost
chapel of the five which form the east end of the church of St.
Anastasia at Verona.
The traveler in Italy is so often called upon to admire what he cannot
enjoy, that it must relieve the mind of any reader intending to visit
Verona to be assured that this church deserves nothing but extraordinary
praise; it has, however, some characters which a quarter of an hour's
attention will make both interesting and instructive, and which I will
note briefly before giving an account of the Cavalli chapel. This church
"would, if the font were finished, probably be the most perfect specimen
in existence of the style to which it belongs," says a critic quoted in
"Murray's Guide." The conjecture is a bold one, for the font is not only
unfinished, and for the most part a black mass of ragged brickwork, but
the portion pretending to completion is in three styles; approaches
excellence only in one of them; and in that the success is limited to
the sides of the single entrance door. The flanks and vaults of this
porch, indeed, deserve our almost unqualified admiration for their
beautiful polychrome masonry. They are built of large masses of green
serpentine alternating with red and white marble, and the joints are so
delicate and firm that a casual spectator might pass the gate with
contempt, thinking the stone was painted.
218. The capitals on these two sides, the carved central shaft, and the
horizontal lintel of this door are also excellent examples of Veronese
thirteenth century sculpture, and have merits of a high order, but of
which the general observer cannot be cognizant. I do not mean, in
saying this, to extol them greatly; the best art is pleasing to all, and
its virtue, or a portion of its virtue, instantly manifest. But there
are some good qualities in every earnest work which can only be
ascertained by attention; and in saying that a casual observer cannot
see the good qualities in early Veronese sculpture, I mean that it
possesses none but these, nor of these many.
219. Yet it is worth a minute's delay to observe how much the sculpture
has counted on attention. In later work, figures of the size of life, or
multitudinous small ones, please, if they do not interest, the spectator
who can spare them a momentary glance. But all the figures on this door
are diminutive, and project so slightly from the stone as scarcely to
catch the eye; there are none in the sides and none in the vault of the
gate, and it is only by deliberate examination that we find the faith
which is to be preached in the church, and the honor of its preacher,
conclusively engraved on the lintel and door-post. The spiral flutings
of the central shaft are uninterrupted, so as to form a slight recess
for the figure of St. Dominic, with, I believe, St. Peter Martyr and St.
Thomas Aquinas, one on each side with the symbols of the sun and moon.
At the end of the lintel, on the left, is St. Anastasia; on the right,
St. Catherine (of Siena); in the center, on the projecting capital, the
Madonna; and on the lintel, the story of Christ, in the four passages of
the Annunciation, Nativity, Crucifixion, and Resurrection.
220. This is the only part of the front of the church which is certainly
part of the first structure in 1260. The two statues of St. Anastasia
and St. Catherine are so roughly joined to the lateral capitals as to
induce a suspicion that even these latter and the beautiful polychrome
vault are of later work, not, however, later than 1300. The two pointed
arches which divide the tympanum are assuredly subsequent, and the
fresco which occupies it is a bad work of the end of the fourteenth
century; and the marble frieze and foundations of the front are at least
not earlier than 1426.
Of this portion of the building the foundation is noble, and its color
beautifully disposed, but the sculpture of the paneling is poor, and of
no interest or value.
221. On entering the church, and turning immediately to the left, there
will be seen on the inner side of the external wall a tomb under a
boldly trefoiled canopy. It is a sarcophagus with a recumbent figure on
it, which is the only work of art in the church deserving serious
attention. It is the tomb of Gerard Bolderius "sui temporis physicorum
principi," says his epitaph,[10] not, as far as I can discover, untruly.
On the front of the sarcophagus is the semi-figure of Christ rising from
the tomb, used generally at the period for the type of resurrection,
between the Virgin and St. John; and two shields, bearing, one the
fleur-de-lys, the other an eagle. The recumbent figure is entirely
simple and right in treatment, sculptured without ostentation of skill
or exaggeration of sentiment, by a true artist, who endeavors only to
give the dead due honor, and his own art subordinate and modest scope.
This monument, being the best in St. Anastasia, is, by the usual spite
of fortune, placed where it is quite invisible except on bright days. On
the opposite side of the church, the first monument on the right, well
lighted by the tall western window, should be looked at next to the
physician's; for as that is the best, this is essentially the worst,
piece of sculptured art in the building; a series of academy studies in
marble, well executed, but without either taste or invention, and
necessarily without meaning, the monument having been erected to a
person whose only claim to one was his having stolen money enough to pay
for it before he died. It is one of the first pieces extant of entirely
mechanical art workmanship, done for money; and the perfection of its
details may justify me in directing special attention to it.
222. There are no other monuments, still less pictures, in the body of
the church deserving notice. The general effect of the interior is
impressive, owing partly to the boldness and simplicity of the pillars
which sustain the roof; partly to the darkness which involves them:
these Dominican churches being, in fact, little more than vast halls for
preaching in, and depending little on decoration, and not at all on
light. But the sublimity of shadow soon fails when it has nothing
interesting to shade; and the chapel or monuments which, opposite each
interval between the pillars, fill the sides of the aisles, possess no
interest except in their arabesques of cinque-cento sculpture, of which
far better examples may be seen elsewhere; while the differences in
their ages, styles, and purposes hinder them from attaining any unity of
decorative effect, and break the unity of the church almost as fatally,
though not as ignobly, as the incoherent fillings of the aisles at
Westminster. The Cavalli chapel itself, though well deserving the
illustration which the Arundel Society has bestowed upon it, is filled
with a medley of tombs and frescoes of different dates, partly
superseding, none illustrating, each other, and instructive mainly as
showing the unfortunate results of freedom and "private enterprise" in
matters of art, as compared with the submission to the design of one
ruling mind which is the glory of all the chapels in Italy where the art
is entirely noble.
223. Instructive, thus, at least, even if seen hastily; much better
teaching may be had even from the unharmonious work, if we give time and
thought to it. The upper fresco on the north wall, representing the
Baptism of Christ, has no beauty, and little merit as art; yet the
manner of its demerit is interesting. St. John kneels to baptize. This
variation from the received treatment, in which he stands above the
Christ, is enough in itself to show that the poor Veronese painter had
some intelligence of his subject; and the quaint and haggard figure,
grim-featured, with its black hair rising in separate locks like a crown
of thorns, is a curious intermediate type between the grotesque
conception which we find in earlier art (or, for instance, on the coins
of Florence) and the beautiful, yet always melancholy and severe figures
of St. John painted by Cima da Conegliano at Venice. With this stern
figure, in raiment of camel's hair, compare the Magdalen in the frescoes
at the side of the altar, who is veiled from head to foot with her own,
and sustained by six angels, being the type of repentance from the
passions, as St. John of resistance to them. Both symbols are, to us, to
say the very least, without charm, and to very few without offense; yet
consider how much nobler the temper of the people must have been who
could take pleasure in art so gloomy and unadorned, than that of the
populace of to-day, which must be caught with bright colors and excited
by popular sentiment.
224. Both these frescoes, with the others on the north wall of the
chapel, and Madonna between four saints on the south side, by the
Cavalli tomb, are evidently of fourteenth century work, none of it good,
but characteristic; and the last-named work (seen in the plate) is so
graceful as to be quite worth some separate illustration. But the one
above it is earlier, and of considerable historical interest. It was
discovered with the other paintings surrounding the tomb, about the year
1838, when Persico published his work, "Verona, e la sua Provincia," in
which he says (p. 13), "levatane l'antica incrostatura, tornarono a vita
novella."
It would have been more serviceable to us if we could have known the
date of the rough cast, than of its removal; the period of entire
contempt for ancient art being a subject of much interest in the
ecclesiastical history of Italy. But the tomb itself was an
incrustation, having been raised with much rudeness and carelessness
amidst the earlier art which recorded the first rise of the Cavalli
family.
225. It will be seen by reference to the plate that the frescoes round
the tomb have no symmetrical relation to it. They are all of earlier
date, and by better artists. The tomb itself is roughly carved, and
coarsely painted, by men who were not trying to do their best, and could
not have done anything very well, even if they had tried: it is an
entirely commonplace and dull work, though of a good school, and has
been raised against the highest fresco with a strange disregard of the
merit of the work itself, and of its historical value to the family.
This fresco is attributable by Persico to Giotto, but is, I believe,
nothing more than an interesting example of the earnest work of his
time, and has no quality on which I care to enlarge; nor is it
ascertainable who the three knights are whom it commemorates, unless
some evidence be found of the date of the painting, and there is, yet,
none but that of its manner. But they are all three Cavallis, and I
believe them to represent the three first founders of the family,
Giovanni, "che fioriva intorno al 1274," his son Nicola (1297), and
grandson Federigo, who was Podesta of Vicenza under the Scaligers in
1331, and by whom I suppose the fresco to have been commanded. The
Cavallis came first from Germany into the service of the Visconti of
Milan, as condottieri, thence passing into the service of the Scaligers.
Whether I am right in this conjecture or not, we have, at all events,
record in this chapel of seven knights of the family, of whom two are
named on the sarcophagus, of which the inscription (on the projecting
ledge under the recumbent figure) is:--
S. (Sepulchrum) nobilis et egregii viri Federici et egregii et
strenui viri domini Nicolai de Cavalis suorunique heredum, qui
spiritum redidit astris Ano Dni MCCCLXXXX.
Of which, I think, the force may be best given thus in modern terms:--
"The tomb of the noble and distinguished Herr Frederic, and of the
distinguished and energetic Herr the Lord Nicholas of the house of the
Horse, and of their heirs, who gave back his soul to the stars in the
year of our Lord 1390."
226. This Frederic and Nicolas Cavalli were the brothers of the Jacopo
Cavalli who is buried at Venice, and who, by a singular fatality, was
enrolled among the Venetian nobles of the senate in the year in which
his brother died at Verona (for I assume the "spiritum redidit" to be
said of the first-named brother). Jacopo married Constance della Scala,
of Verona, and had five sons, of whom one, Giorgio, Conte di Schio,
plotted, after the fall of the Scaligers, for their restoration to power
in Verona, and was exiled, by decree of the Council of Ten, to Candia,
where he died. From another son, Conrad, are descended the Cavallis of
Venice, whose palace has been the principal material from which recent
searchers for the picturesque in Venice compose pictures of the Grand
Canal. It forms the square mass of architecture on the left, in the
continually repeated view of the Church of the Salute seen from the
steps of the Academy.
The genealogy of the family, from the thirteenth century, when they
first appeared in Italy, to the founder of this Venetian lordship, had
better be set before the reader in one view.[11]
GIOVANNI,
Condottiere in service of the Visconti, 1274.
|
NICOLA,
Condottiere, 1297.
|
FEDERICO,
Podesta of Vicenza under the Scaligers, 1331.
|
CONRADO,
Condottiere, 1350.
|
|--------------+-------------|
FEDERIGO, JACOPO, NICOLA,
|
|---------+----------+----------+----------|
NICOLA, GIOVANNI, CONRADO, FEDERIGO, GIORGIO.
Founds Venetian family.
227. Now, as above stated, I believe that the fresco of the three
knights was commanded by the Podesta of Vicenza, on his receiving that
authority from the Scaligers in 1331, and that it represents Giovanni,
Nicola, and himself; while the tomb of Federigo and Nicola would be
ordered by the Venetian Cavallis, and completed without much care for
the record of the rise of the family at Verona.
Whether my identification of the figures seen kneeling in the fresco be
correct or not, the representation of these three Cavalli knights to the
Madonna, each interceded for by his patron saint, will be found to
receive a peculiar significance if the reader care to review the
circumstances influencing the relation of the German chivalry to the
power of the Church in the very year when Giovanni Cavalli entered the
ranks of the Visconti.
228. For the three preceding centuries, Milan, the oldest archbishopric
of Lombardy, had been the central point at which the collision between
the secular and ecclesiastical power took place in Europe. The Guelph
and Ghibelline naturally met and warred throughout the plain of
Lombardy; but the intense civic stubbornness and courage of the Milanese
population formed a kind of rock in their tide-way, where the quarrel of
burgher with noble confused itself with, embittered, and brought again
and again to trial by battle, that of pope with emperor. In 1035 their
warrior archbishop, heading their revolt against Conrad of Franconia,
organized the first disciplined resistance of foot-soldiers to cavalry
by his invention and decoration of the Carroccio; and the contest was
only closed, after the rebuilding of the walls of ruined Milan, by the
wandering of Barbarossa, his army scattered, through the maize fields,
which the traveler now listlessly crosses at speed in the train between
Milan and Arona, little noting the name of the small station, "Legnano,"
where the fortune of the Lombard republic finally prevailed. But it was
only by the death of Frederick II. that the supremacy of the Church was
secured; and when Innocent IV., who had written, on hearing of that
death, to his Sicilian clergy, in words of blasphemous exultation,
entered Milan, on his journey from Lyons to Perugia, the road, for ten
miles before he reached the gates, was lined by the entire population of
the city, drawn forth in enthusiastic welcome; as they had invented a
sacred car for the advance of their standard in battle, they invented
some similar honor for the head of their Church as the harbinger of
peace: under a canopy of silk, borne by the first gentlemen of Milan,
the Pope received the hosannas of a people who had driven into shameful
flight their Caesar-king; and it is not uninteresting for the English
traveler to remember, as he walks through the vast arcades of shops, in
the form of a cross, by which the Milanese of to-day express their
triumph in liberation from Teutonic rule, that the "Baldacchino" of all
mediæval religious ceremony owed its origin to the taste of the
milliners of Milan, as the safety of the best knights in European battle
rested on the faithful craftsmanship of her armorers.
229. But at the date when the Cavalli entered the service of the great
Milanese family, the state of parties within the walls had singularly
changed. Three years previously (1271) Charles of Anjou had drawn
together the remnants of the army of his dead brother, had confiscated
to his own use the goods of the crusading knights whose vessels had been
wrecked on the coast of Sicily, and called the pontifical court to
Viterbo, to elect a pope who might confirm his dominion over the
kingdoms of Sicily and Jerusalem.
On the deliberations of the Cardinals at Viterbo depended the fates of
Italy and the Northern Empire. They chose Tebaldo Visconti, then a monk
in pilgrimage at Jerusalem. But, before that election was accomplished,
one of the candidates for the Northern Empire had involuntarily
withdrawn his claim; Guy de Montfort had murdered, at the altar foot,
the English Count of Cornwall, to avenge his father, Simon de Montfort,
killed at Evesham. The death of the English king of the Romans left the
throne of Germany vacant. Tebaldo had returned from Jerusalem with no
personal ambition, but having at heart only the restoration of Greece to
Europe, and the preaching of a new crusade in Syria. A general council
was convoked by him at Lyons, with this object; but before anything
could be accomplished in the conclave, it was necessary to balance the
overwhelming power of Charles of Anjou, and the Visconti (Gregory X.)
ratified, in 1273, the election of Rudolph of Hapsburg.
230. But Charles of Anjou owed his throne, in reality, to the assistance
of the Milanese. Their popular leader, Napoleone della Torre, had
facilitated his passage through Lombardy, which otherwise must have been
arrested by the Ghibelline states; and in the year in which the Visconti
pope had appointed the council at Lyons, the Visconti archbishop of
Milan was heading the exiled nobles in vain attempts to recover their
supremacy over the popular party. The new Emperor Rudolph not only sent
a representative to the council, but a German contingent to aid the
exiled archbishop. The popular leader was defeated, and confined in an
iron cage, in the year 1274, and the first entrance of the Cavalli into
the Italian armies is thus contemporary with the conclusive triumph of
the northern monarchic over the republican power, or, more literally, of
the wandering rider, Eques, or Ritter, living by pillage, over the
sedentary burgher, living by art, and hale peasant, living by labor. The
essential nature of the struggle is curiously indicated in relation to
this monument by the two facts that the revolt of the Milanese burghers,
headed by their archbishop, began by a gentleman's killing an
importunate creditor, and that, at Venice, the principal circumstance
recorded of Jacopo Cavalli (see my notice of his tomb in the "Stones of
Venice," Vol. III. ch. ii. § 69) is his refusal to assault Feltre,
because the senate would not grant him the pillage of the town. The
reader may follow out, according to his disposition, what thoughts the
fresco of the three kneeling knights, each with his helmet-crest, in the
shape of a horse's head, thrown back from his shoulders, may suggest to
him on review of these passages of history: one thought only I must
guard him against, strictly; namely, that a condottiere's religion must
necessarily have been false or hypocritical. The folly of nations is in
nothing more manifest than in their placid reconciliation of noble
creeds with base practices. But the reconciliation, in the fourteenth as
in the nineteenth century, was usually foolish only, not insincere.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 9: Published by the Arundel Society (1872), together with a
chromo-lithograph after a drawing by Herr Gnauth.--ED.]
[Footnote 10:
D.M.
Gerardo Bolderio
sui temporis
Physicorum Principi
Franciscus et
Matthaeus Nepotes
P.P.]
[Footnote 11: I am indebted for this genealogy to the research and to
the courtesy of Mr. J. Stefani. The help given me by other Venetian
friends, especially Mr. Rawdon Brown, dates from many years back in
matters of this kind.]
VERONA AND ITS RIVERS.[12]
231. The discourse began with a description of the scenery of the
eastern approach to Verona, with special remarks upon its magnificent
fortifications, consisting of a steep ditch, some thirty feet deep by
sixty or eighty wide, cut out of the solid rock, and the precipice-like
wall above, with towers crested with forked battlements set along it at
due intervals. The rock is a soft and crumbling limestone, containing
"fossil creatures still so like the creatures they were once, that there
it first occurred to the human brain to imagine that the buried shapes
were not mockeries of life, but had indeed once lived; and, under those
white banks by the roadside, was born, like a poor Italian gypsy, the
modern science of geology." ... "The wall was chiefly built, the moat
entirely excavated, by Can Grande della Scala; and it represents
typically the form, of defense which rendered it possible for the life
and the arts of citizens to be preserved and practiced in an age of
habitual war. Not only so, but it is the wall of the actual city which
headed the great Lombard league, which was the beginner of personal and
independent power in the Italian nation, and the first banner-bearer,
therefore, of all that has been vitally independent in religion and in
art throughout the entire Christian world to this day." At the upper
angle of the wall, looking down the northern descent, is seen a great
round tower at the foot of it, not forked in battlements, but with
embrasures for guns. "The battlemented wall was the cradle of civic
life. That low circular tower is the cradle of modern war and of all its
desolation. It is the first European tower for artillery; the beginning
of fortification against gunpowder--the beginning, that is to say, of
the end of _all_ fortification."
232. After noticing the beautiful vegetation of the district, Mr. Ruskin
described the view from the promontory or spur, about ten miles long, of
which the last rock dies into the plain at the eastern gate of Verona.
"This promontory," he said, "is one of the sides of the great gate out
of Germany into Italy, through which the Goths always entered, cloven up
to Innspruck by the Inn, and down to Verona by the Adige. And by this
gate not only the Gothic armies came, but after the Italian nation is
formed, the current of northern life enters still into its heart through
the mountain artery, as constantly and strongly as the cold waves of the
Adige itself." ... "The rock of this promontory hardens as we trace it
back to the Alps, first into a limestone having knots of splendid brown
jasper in it as our chalk has flints, and in a few miles more into true
marble, colored by iron into a glowing orange or pale warm red--the
peach-blossom marble, of which Verona is chiefly built--and then as you
advance farther into the hills into variegated marbles very rich and
grotesque in their veinings."
233. After dilating on the magnificent landscape viewed from the top of
this promontory, embracing the blue plain of Lombardy and its cities"
Mr. Ruskin said:--
"I do not think that there is any other rock in all the world from which
the places and monuments of so complex and deep a fragment of the
history of its ages can be visible as from this piece of crag with its
blue and prickly weeds. For you have thus beneath you at once the
birthplaces of Virgil and of Livy--the homes of Dante and Petrarch, and
the source of the most sweet and pathetic inspiration to your own
Shakespeare--the spot where the civilization of the Gothic kingdoms was
founded on the throne of Theodoric; and there whatever was strongest in
the Italian race redeemed itself into life by its league against
Barbarossa; the beginning of the revival of natural science and medicine
in the schools of Padua; the center of Italian chivalry, in the power
of the Scaligers; of Italian cruelty, in that of Ezzelin; and, lastly,
the birthplace of the highest art; for among those hills, or by this
very Adige bank, were born Mantegna, Titian, Correggio, and Veronese."
234. Mr. Ruskin then referred to a series of drawings and photographs
taken at Verona by himself and his assistants, Mr. Burgess and Mr.
Bunney, which he had divided into three series, and of which he had
furnished a number of printed catalogues illustrated with notes.[13]
I. "Lombard, extending to the end of the twelfth century, being the
expression of the introduction of Christianity into barbaric minds;
Christianization.
II. "The Gothic period. Dante's time, from 1200 to 1400 (Dante beginning
his poem exactly in the midst of it, in 1300); the period of vital
Christianity, and of the development of the laws of chivalry and forms
of imagination which are founded on Christianity.
III. "The first period of the revival, in which the arts of Greece and
some of its religion return and join themselves to Christianity; not
taking away its sincerity or earnestness, but making it poetical instead
of practical. In the following period even this poetical Christianity
expired; the arts became devoted to the pursuit of pleasure, and in that
they persist except where they are saved by a healthy naturalism or
domesticity.
235. I. "The Lombardic period is one of savage but noble life gradually
subjected to law. It is the forming of men, not out of clay but wild
beasts. And art of this period in all countries, including our own
Norman especially, is, in the inner heart of it, the subjection of
savage or terrible, or foolish and erring life, to a dominant law. It is
government and conquest of fearful dreams. There is in it as yet no
germ of true hope--only the conquest of evil, and the waking from
darkness and terror. The literature of it is, as in Greece, far in
advance of art, and is already full of the most tender and impassioned
beauty, while the art is still grotesque and dreadful; but, however
wild, it is supreme above all others by its expression of governing law,
and here at Verona is the very center and utmost reach of that
expression.
"I know nothing in architecture at once so exquisite and so wild and so
strange in the expression of self-conquest achieved almost in a dream.
For observe, these barbaric races, educated in violence--chiefly in war
and in hunting--cannot feel or see clearly as they are gradually
civilized whether this element in which they have been brought up is
evil or not. They _must_ be good soldiers and hunters--that is their
life; yet they know that killing is evil, and they do not expect to find
wild beasts in heaven. They have been trained by pain, by violence, by
hunger and cold. They know there is a good in these things as well as
evil: they are perpetually hesitating between the one and the other
thought of them. But one thing they see clearly, that killing and
hunting, and every form of misery, pleasure, and of passion, must
somehow at last be subdued by law, which shall bring good out of it all,
and which they feel more and more constraining them every hour. Now, if
with this sympathy you look at their dragon and wild beast decoration,
you will find that it now tells you about these Lombards far more than
they could know of themselves.... All the actions, and much more the
arts, of men tell to others, not only what the worker does not know, but
what he can never know of himself, which you can only recognize by being
in an element more advanced and wider than his.... In deliberate
symbolism, the question is always, not what a symbol meant first or
meant elsewhere, but what it means now and means here. Now, this dragon
symbol of the Lombard is used of course all over the world; it means
good here, and evil there; sometimes means nothing; sometimes
everything. You have always to ask what the man who here uses it means
by it. Whatever is in his mind, that he is sure partly to express by
it; nothing else than that can he express by it."
236. II. In the second period Mr. Ruskin said was to be found "the
highest development of Italian character and chivalry, with an entirely
believed Christian religion; you get, therefore, joy and courtesy, and
hope, and a lovely peace in death. And with these you have two fearful
elements of evil. You have first such confidence in the virtue of the
creed that men hate and persecute all who do not accept it. And worse
still, you find such confidence in the power of the creed that men not
only can do anything that is wrong, and be themselves for a word of
faith pardoned, but are even sure that after the wrong is done God is
sure to put it all right again for them, or even make things better than
they were before. Now, I need not point out to you how the spirit of
persecution, as well as of vain hope founded on creed only, is mingled
in every line with the lovely moral teaching of the 'Divina Conmedia,'
nor need I point out to you how, between the persecution of other
people's creeds and the absolution of one's own crimes, all Christian
error is concluded."
In relation to this Mr. Ruskin referred to the history of the founder of
the power of the Scalas, Mastino, a simple citizen, chosen first to be
podesta and then captain of Verona, for his justice and sagacity, who,
although wise and peaceful in his policy, employed the civil power in
the persecution of heresy, burning above two hundred persons; and he
also related how Can Signorio della Scala on his death-bed, after giving
a pious charge to his children, ordered the murder of his
brother--examples of the boundless possibility of self-deception. One of
these children killed the other, and was himself driven from the throne,
so ending the dynasty of the Scalas. Referring to his illustrations, Mr.
Ruskin pointed out the expressions of hope, in the conquest of death,
and the rewards of faith, apparent in the art of the time. The Lombard
architecture expresses the triumph of law over passion, the Christian,
that of hope over sorrow.
Mr. Ruskin concluded his remarks on this period by commenting on the
history and the tomb of Can Grande della Scala, a good knight and true,
as busy and bright a life as is found in the annals of chivalry.
237. III. "The period when classical literature and art were again known
in Italy, and the painters and sculptors, who had been gaining steadily
in power for two hundred years--power not of practice merely, but of
race also--with every circumstance in their favor around them, received
their finally perfect instruction, both in geometrical science, in that
of materials, and in the anatomy and action of the human body. Also the
people about them--the models of their work--had been perfected in
personal beauty by a chivalric war; in imagination by a transcendental
philosophy; in practical intellect by stern struggle for civic law; and
in commerce, not in falsely made or vile or unclean things, but in
lovely things, beautifully and honestly made. And now, therefore, you
get out of all the world's long history since it was peopled by men till
now--you get just fifty years of perfect work. Perfect. It is a strong
word; it is also a _true_ one. The doing of these fifty years is
unaccusably Right, as art; what its sentiment may be--whether too great
or too little, whether superficial or sincere--is another question, but
as artists' work it admits no conception of anything better.
"It is true that in the following age, founded on the absolutely stern
rectitude of this, there came a phase of gigantic power and of exquisite
ease and felicity which possess an awe and a charm of their own. They
are more inimitable than the work of the perfect school. But they are
not _perfect_." ...
238. This period Mr. Ruskin named "the 'Time of the Masters,' Fifty
Years, including Luini, Leonardo, John Bellini, Vitto Carpaccio, Andrea
Mantegna, Andrea Verrocchio, Cima da Conegliano, Perugino, and in date,
though only in his earlier life, belonging to the school, Raphael....
The great fifty years was the prime of life of three men: John Bellini,
born 1430, died at 90, in 1516; Mantegna, born 1430, died at 76, in
1506; and Vittor Carpaccio, who died in 1522."
"The object of these masters is wholly different from that of the former
school. The central Gothic men always want chiefly to impress you with
the facts of their subject; but the masters of this finished time desire
only to make everything dainty and delightful. We have not many pictures
of the class in England, but several have been of late added to the
National Gallery, and the Perugino there, especially the compartment
with Raphael and Tobit, and the little St. Jerome by John Bellini, will
perfectly show you this main character--pictorial perfectness and
deliciousness--sought before everything else. You will find, if you look
into that St. Jerome, that everything in it is exquisite, complete, and
pure; there is not a particle of dust in the cupboards, nor a cloud in
the air; the wooden shutters are dainty, the candlesticks are dainty,
the saint's scarlet hat is dainty, and its violet tassel, and its
ribbon, and his blue cloak and his spare pair of shoes, and his little
brown partridge--it is all a perfect quintessence of innocent
luxury--absolute delight, without one drawback in it, nor taint of the
Devil anywhere." ...
239. After dilating on several other pictures of this class, giving
evidence of the entire devotion of the artists of the period to their
art and work, Mr. Ruskin adverted to the second part of his discourse,
the rivers of Verona. "There is but one river at Verona, nevertheless
Dante connects its name with that of the Po when he says of the whole of
Lombardy,--
'In sul paese, ch' Adice e Po riga,
Solea valore e cortesia trovarsi
Prima che Federigo avesse briga.'
I want to speak for a minute or two about those great rivers, because in
the efforts that are now being made to restore some of its commerce to
Venice precisely the same questions are in course of debate which again
and again, ever since Venice was a city, have put her senate at
pause--namely, how to hold in check the continually advancing morass
formed by the silt brought down by the Alpine rivers. Is it not strange
that for at least six hundred years the Venetians have been contending
with those rivers at their _mouths_--that is to say, where their
strength has become wholly irresistible--and never once thought of
contending with them at their sources, where their infinitely separated
streamlets might be, and are meant by Heaven to be, ruled as easily as
children? And observe how sternly, how constantly the place where they
are to be governed is marked by the mischief done by their liberty.
Consider what the advance of the delta of the Po in the Adriatic
signifies among the Alps. The evil of the delta itself, however great,
is as nothing in comparison of that which is in its origin.
240. "The gradual destruction of the harborage of Venice, the endless
cost of delaying it, the malaria of the whole coast down to Ravenna,
nay, the raising of the bed of the Po, to the imperiling of all
Lombardy, are but secondary evils. Every acre of that increasing delta
means _the devastation of part of an Alpine valley, and the loss of so
much fruitful soil and ministering rain_. Some of you now present must
have passed this year through the valleys of the Toccia and Ticino. You
know therefore the devastation that was caused there, as well as in the
valley of the Rhone, by the great floods of 1868, and that ten years of
labor, even if the peasantry had still the heart for labor, cannot
redeem those districts into fertility. What you have there seen on a
vast scale takes place to a certain extent during every summer
thunderstorm, and from the ruin of some portion of fruitful land the
dust descends to increase the marshes of the Po. But observe
further--whether fed by sudden melting of snow or by storm--every
destructive rise of the Italian rivers signifies the loss of so much
power of irrigation on the south side of the Alps. You must all well
know the look of their chain--seen from Milan or Turin late in
summer--how little snow is left, except on Monte Rosa, how vast a
territory of brown mountain-side heated and barren, without rocks, yet
without forest. There is in that brown-purple zone, and along the
flanks of every valley that divides it, another Lombardy of cultivable
land; and every drift of rain that swells the mountain torrents if it
were caught where it falls is literally rain of gold. We seek gold
beneath the rocks; and we will not so much as make a trench along the
hillside to catch it where it falls from heaven, and where, if not so
caught, it changes into a frantic monster, first ravaging hamlet, hill,
and plain, then sinking along the shores of Venice into poisoned sleep.
Think what that belt of the Alps might be--up to four thousand feet
above the plain--if the system of terraced irrigation which even
half-savage nations discovered and practiced long ago in China and in
Borneo, and by which our own engineers have subdued vast districts of
farthest India, were but in part also practiced here--here, in the
oldest and proudest center of European arts, where Leonardo da
Vinci--master among masters--first discerned the laws of the coiling
clouds and wandering streams, so that to this day his engineering
remains unbettered by modern science; and yet in this center of all
human achievements of genius no thought has been taken to receive with
sacred art these great gifts of quiet snow and flying rain. Think, I
repeat, what that south slope of the Alps might be: one paradise of
lovely pasture and avenued forest of chestnut and blossomed trees, with
cascades docile and innocent as infants, laughing all summer long from
crag to crag and pool to pool, and the Adige and the Po, the Dora and
the Ticino, no more defiled, no more alternating between fierce flood
and venomous languor, but in calm clear currents bearing ships to every
city and health to every field of all that azure plain of Lombard
Italy....
241. "It has now become a most grave object with me to get some of the
great pictures of the Italian schools into England; and that, I think,
at this time--with good help--might be contrived. Further, without in
the least urging my plans impatiently on anyone else, I know thoroughly
that this, which I have said _should_ be done, _can_ be done, for the
Italian rivers, and that no method of employment of our idle
able-bodied laborers would be in the end more remunerative, or in the
beginnings of it more healthful and every way beneficial than, with the
concurrence of the Italian and Swiss governments, setting them to redeem
the valleys of the Ticino and the Rhone. And I pray you to think of
this; for I tell you truly--you who care for Italy--that both her
passions and her mountain streams are noble; but that her happiness
depends not on the liberty, but the right government of both."[14]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 12: Report (with extracts) of a paper entitled "A Talk
respecting Verona and its Rivers," read by Mr. Ruskin at the Weekly
Evening Meeting of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Feb. 4th,
1870. See _Proceedings_ of the Royal Institution, vol. vi., p.
55.--ED.]
[Footnote 13: This catalogue (London: Queen Street Printing-Office,
1870) is printed below, p. 109, § 242 _seqq._--ED.]
[Footnote 14: See _Arrows of the Chace_.]
CATALOGUE.
(_See ante,_ p. 101.--ED.)
_Drawings and Photographs, illustrative of the Architecture of Verona,
shown at the Royal Institution, Feb. 4th, 1870._
SECTION I. NOS. 1 TO 7. LOMBARD.
242. (1.) _Porch of the Church of St. Zeno._ (Photograph.)
Of the 12th century.
(2.) _Porch of the South Entrance of the Duomo._
Probably of the 10th or 11th century, and highly remarkable for the
wildness of its grotesque or monstrous sculpture, which has been
most carefully rendered by the draughts-man, Mr. Bunney.
It will save space to note that the sketches by my two most
skillful and patient helpers, Mr. A. Burgess and Mr. Bunney, will
be respectively marked (A) and (B), and my own (R).
(3.) _Porch of the Western Entrance of the Duomo._ (Photograph.)
Later in date--but still of 12th or very early 13th century.
Details of it are given in the next drawings.
243. (4.) _Griffin_ (I keep the intelligible old English spelling),
_sustaining the Pillar on the North Side of the Porch seen in No. 3._
(R.)
Painted last summer.
I engraved his head and breast, seen from the other side, in the
plate of "True and False Griffins," in "Modern Painters." Only the
back of the head and neck of the small dragon he holds in his
fore-claws can be seen from this side.
(5.) _Capital of the Pillar sustained by the Griffin, of which the base
is seen in No. 4._ (A.)
First-rate sculpture of the time, and admirably drawn.
(6.) _Portion of decorative Lombardic molding from the South Side of the
Duomo._ (A.)
Showing the peculiar writhing of the branched tracery with a
serpentine flexure--altogether different from the springing lines
of Gothic ornament. It would be almost impossible to draw this
better; it is much more like the real thing than a cast would be.
(7.) _Lion, with Dragon in its claws, of Lombardic sculpture_ (now built
into a wall at Venice); _above it, head of one of the Dogs which
support the Tomb of Can Grande, at Verona._ (R.)
The lion--in its emaciated strength, and the serpent with its vital
writhe and deadly reverted bite, are both characteristic of the
finest Lombard work. The dog's head is 14th century Gothic--a
masterpiece of broad, subtle, easy sculpture, getting expression
with every touch, and never losing the least undulation of surface,
while it utterly disdains the mere imitation of hair, or attainment
of effect by deep cutting.