what the public would have called “eloquent passages” on the subjects of
the Almshouse and the Old Gate;[121] being now myself old and decrepit
(besides being much bothered with beggars, and in perpetual feud with
parish officers), and having seen every building I cared for in the
world ruined, I pass these two pictures somewhat hastily by, and try to
enjoy myself a little in the cottage gardens. Only one of them,
however,--No. 71,--has right sunshine in it, and that is a sort of
walled paddock where I begin directly to feel uncomfortable about the
lamb, lest, perchance, some front shop in the cottages belong to a
butcher. If only it and I could get away to a bit of thymy hill-side, we
should be so much happier, leaving the luminous--perhaps too ideally
luminous--child to adorn the pathetic paddock. I am too shy to speak to
either of those two beautiful ladies among the lilies (37, 67), and take
refuge among the shy children before the “Chaplain’s Daughter”
(20)--delightfullest, it seems to me, of the minor designs, and a piece
of most true and wise satire. The sketches of the “Daughter of Heth” go
far to tempt me to read the novel; and, ashamed of this weakness, I
retreat resolutely to the side of the exemplary young girl knitting in
the “Old Farm Garden” (33), and would instantly pick up her ball of
worsted for her, but that I wouldn’t for the world disappoint the cat.
No drawing in the room is more delicately completed than this
unpretending subject, and the flower-painting in it, for instantaneous
grace of creative touch, cannot be rivalled; it is worth all the Dutch
flower-pieces in the world.
Much instructed, and more humiliated, by passage after passage of its
rapidly-grouped color, I get finally away into the comfortable corner
beside the salmon-fishers and the mushrooms; and the last-named drawing,
despise me who may, keeps me till I’ve no more time to stay, for it
entirely beats my dear old William Hunt in the simplicity of its
execution, and rivals him in the subtlest truth.
I say nothing of the “Fishmonger’s Stalls” (952), though there are
qualities of the same kind in these also, for they somewhat provoke me
by their waste of time--the labor spent on one of them would have
painted twenty instructive studies of fish of their real size. And it is
well for artists in general to observe that when they do condescend to
paint still life carefully--whether fruit, fungi, or fish--it must at
least be of the real size. The portrait of a man or woman is only
justifiably made small that it may be portable, and nobody wants to
carry about the miniature of a cod; and if the reader will waste five
minutes of his season in London in the National Gallery, he may see in
the hand of Perugino’s Tobias a fish worth all these on the boards
together.
Some blame of the same kind attaches to the marvellous drawing No. 68.
It is all very well for a young artist to show how much work he can put
into an inch, but very painful for an old gentleman of fifty-seven to
have to make out all the groups through a magnifying-glass. I could say
something malicious about the boat, in consequence of the effect of this
exertion on my temper, but will not, and leave with unqualified praise
the remainder of the lesser drawings to the attention which each will
variously reward.
Nor, in what I have already, it may be thought, too bluntly said, ought
the friends of the noble artist to feel that I am unkind. It is because
I know his real power more deeply than any of the admirers who give him
indiscriminate applause, that I think it right distinctly to mark the
causes which prevented his reaching heights they did not conceive, and
ended by placing one more tablet in the street of tombs, which the
passionate folly and uninstructed confusion of modern English society
prolong into dark perspective above the graves of its youth.
I am, dear Marks, always very faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
LETTERS ON ART.
VI.
ARCHITECTURE.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND THE OXFORD MUSEUM. 1858.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND THE OXFORD MUSEUM. 1859.
THE CASTLE ROCK (EDINBURGH). 1857 (Sept. 14).
EDINBURGH CASTLE. 1857 (Sept. 17).
CASTLES AND KENNELS. 1871 (Dec. 22).
VERONA _v._ WARWICK. 1871 (Dec. 24).
NOTRE DAME DE PARIS. 1871.
MR RUSKIN’S INFLUENCE--A DEFENCE. 1872 (March 15).
MR RUSKIN’S INFLUENCE--A REJOINDER. 1872 (March 21).
MODERN RESTORATION. 1877.
RIBBESFORD CHURCH. 1877.
Circular relating to ST. MARK’S, VENICE. 1879.
VI.
ARCHITECTURE.
[From “The Oxford Museum,” by H. W. Acland and J. Ruskin. 1859. pp. 44-56.]
_GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND THE OXFORD MUSEUM.[122]_
DEAR ACLAND: I have been very anxious, since I last heard from you,
respecting the progress of the works at the Museum, as I thought I could
trace in your expressions some doubt of an entirely satisfactory issue.
_Entirely_ satisfactory very few issues are, or can be; and when the
enterprise, as in this instance, involves the development of many new
and progressive principles, we must always be prepared for a due measure
of disappointment,--due partly to human weakness, and partly to what the
ancients would have called fate,--and we may, perhaps, most wisely call
the law of trial, which forbids any great good being usually
accomplished without various compensations and deductions, probably not
a little humiliating.
Perhaps in writing to you what seems to me to be the bearing of matters
respecting your Museum, I may be answering a few of the doubts of
others, as well as fears of your own.
I am quite sure that when you first used your influence to advocate the
claims of a Gothic design, you did so under the conviction, shared by
all the seriously-purposed defenders of the Gothic style, that the
essence and power of Gothic, properly so called, lay in its adaptability
to all need; in that perfect and unlimited flexibility which would
enable the architect to provide all that was required, in the simplest
and most convenient way; and to give you the best offices, the best
lecture-rooms, laboratories, and museums, which could be provided with
the sum of money at his disposal.
So far as the architect has failed in doing this; so far as you find
yourself, with the other professors, in anywise inconvenienced by forms
of architecture; so far as pillars or piers come in your way, when you
have to point, or vaults in the way of your voice, when you have to
speak, or mullions in the way of your light, when you want to see--just
so far the architect has failed in expressing his own principles, or
those of pure Gothic art. I do not suppose that such failure has taken
place to any considerable extent; but so far as it has taken place, it
cannot in justice be laid to the score of the style, since precedent has
shown sufficiently, that very uncomfortable and useless rooms may be
provided in all other styles as well as in Gothic; and I think if, in a
building arranged for many objects of various kinds, at a time when the
practice of architecture has been somewhat confused by the inventions of
modern science, and is hardly yet organized completely with respect to
the new means at his disposal; if, under such circumstances, and with
somewhat limited funds, you have yet obtained a building in all main
points properly fulfilling its requirements, you have, I think, as much
as could be hoped from the adoption of any style whatsoever.
But I am much more anxious about the decoration of the building; for I
fear that it will be hurried in completion, and that, partly in haste
and partly in mistimed economy, a great opportunity may be lost of
advancing the best interest of architectural, and in that, of all other
arts. For the principles of Gothic decoration, in themselves as simple
and beautiful as those of Gothic construction, are far less understood,
as yet, by the English public, and it is little likely that any
effective measures can be taken to carry them out. You know as well as
I, what those principles are; yet it may be convenient to you that I
should here state them briefly as I accept them myself, and have reason
to suppose they are accepted by the principal promoters of the Gothic
revival.
I. The first principle of Gothic decoration is that a given quantity of
good art will be more generally useful when exhibited on a large scale,
and forming part of a connected system, than when it is small and
separated. That is to say, a piece of sculpture or painting, of a
certain allowed merit, will be more useful when seen on the front of a
building, or at the end of a room, and therefore by many persons, than
if it be so small as to be only capable of being seen by one or two at a
time; and it will be more useful when so combined with other work as to
produce that kind of impression usually termed “sublime,”--as it is felt
on looking at any great series of fixed paintings, or at the front of a
cathedral,--than if it be so separated as to excite only a special
wonder or admiration, such as we feel for a jewel in a cabinet.
The paintings by Meissonier in the French Exhibition of this year were
bought, I believe, before the Exhibition opened, for 250 guineas each.
They each represented one figure, about six inches high--one, a student
reading; the other, a courtier standing in a dress-coat. Neither of
these paintings conveyed any information, or produced any emotion
whatever, except that of surprise at their minute and dextrous
execution. They will be placed by their possessors on the walls of small
private apartments, where they will probably, once or twice a week, form
the subject of five minutes’ conversation while people drink their
coffee after dinner. The sum expended on these toys would have been
amply sufficient to cover a large building with noble frescoes,
appealing to every passer-by, and representing a large portion of the
history of any given period. But the general tendency of the European
patrons of art is to grudge all sums spent in a way thus calculated to
confer benefit on the public, and to grudge none for minute treasures of
which the principal advantage is that a lock and key can always render
them invisible.
I have no hesitation in saying that an acquisitive selfishness,
rejoicing somewhat even in the sensation of possessing what can NOT be
seen by others, is at the root of this art-patronage. It is, of course,
coupled with a sense of securer and more convenient investment in what
may be easily protected and easily carried from place to place, than in
large and immovable works; and also with a vulgar delight in the minute
curiosities of productive art, rather than in the exercise of inventive
genius, or the expression of great facts or emotions.
The first aim of the Gothic Revivalists is to counteract, as far as
possible, this feeling on all its three grounds. We desire (A) to make
art large and publicly beneficial, instead of small and privately
engrossed or secluded; (B) to make art fixed instead of portable,
associating it with local character and historical memory; (C) to make
art expressive instead of curious, valuable for its suggestions and
teachings, more than for the mode of its manufacture.
II. The second great principle of the Gothic Revivalists is that all art
employed in decoration should be informative, conveying truthful
statements about natural facts, if it conveys _any_ statement. It may
sometimes merely compose its decorations of mosaics, checkers, bosses,
or other meaningless ornaments: but if it represents organic form (and
in all important places it _will_ represent it), it will give that form
truthfully, with as much resemblance to nature as the necessary
treatment of the piece of ornament in question will admit of.
This principle is more disputed than the first among the Gothic
Revivalists themselves. I, however, hold it simply and entirely,
believing that ornamentation is always, _cæteris paribus_, most valuable
and beautiful when it is founded on the most extended knowledge of
natural forms, and conveys continually such knowledge to the
spectator.[123]
III. The third great principle of the Gothic Revival is that all
architectural ornamentation should be executed by the men who design it,
and should be of various degrees of excellence, admitting, and therefore
exciting, the intelligent co-operation of various classes of workmen;
and that a great public edifice should be, in sculpture and painting,
somewhat the same as a great chorus of music, in which, while, perhaps,
there may be only one or two voices perfectly trained, and of perfect
sweetness (the rest being in various degrees weaker and less
cultivated), yet all being ruled in harmony, and each sustaining a part
consistent with its strength, the body of sound is sublime, in spite of
individual weaknesses.
The Museum at Oxford was, I know, intended by its designer to exhibit in
its decoration the working of these three principles; but in the very
fact of its doing so, it becomes exposed to chances of occasional
failure, or even to serious discomfitures, such as would not at all have
attended the adoption of an established mode of modern work. It is easy
to carve capitals on models known for four thousand years, and
impossible to fail in the application of mechanical methods and
formalized rules. But it is not possible to appeal vigorously to new
canons of judgment without the chance of giving offence; nor to summon
into service the various phases of human temper and intelligence,
without occasionally finding the tempers rough and the intelligence
feeble. The Oxford Museum is, I believe, the first building in this
country which has had its ornamentation, in any telling parts, trusted
to the invention of the workman: the result is highly satisfactory, the
projecting windows of the staircases being as beautiful in effect as
anything I know in civil Gothic: but far more may be accomplished for
the building if the completion of its carving be not hastened; many men
of high artistic power might be brought to take an interest in it, and
various lessons and suggestions given to the workmen which would
materially advantage the final decoration of leading features. No very
great Gothic building, so far as I know, was ever yet completed without
some of this wise deliberation and fruitful patience.
I was in hopes from the beginning that the sculpture might have been
rendered typically illustrative of the English Flora: how far this idea
has been as yet carried out I do not know; but I know that it cannot be
properly carried out without a careful examination of the available
character of the principal genera, such as architects have not hitherto
undertaken. The proposal which I heard advanced the other day, of adding
a bold entrance-porch to the façade, appeared to me every way full of
advantage, the blankness of the façade having been, to my mind, from the
first, a serious fault in the design. If a subscription were opened for
the purpose of erecting one, I should think there were few persons
interested in modern art who would not be glad to join in forwarding
such an object.
I think I could answer for some portions of the design being
superintended by the best of our modern sculptors and painters; and I
believe that, if so superintended, the porch might and would become the
crowning beauty of the building, and make all the difference between its
being only a satisfactory and meritorious work, or a most lovely and
impressive one.
The interior decoration is a matter of much greater difficulty; perhaps
you will allow me to defer the few words I have to say about it till I
have time for another letter: which, however, I hope to find speedily.
Believe me, my dear Acland, ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN[124]
[From “the Oxford Museum,” pp. 60-90.]
_Gothic Architecture and the Oxford Museum._
_January_ 20, 1859.
MY DEAR ACLAND: I was not able to write, as I had hoped, from
Switzerland, for I found it impossible to lay down any principles
respecting the decoration of the Museum which did not in one way or
other involve disputed points, too many, and too subtle, to be discussed
in a letter. Nor do I feel the difficulty less in writing to you now, so
far as regards the question occurring in our late conversations,
respecting the best mode of completing those interior decorations. Yet I
must write, if only to ask that I may be in some way associated with you
in what you are now doing to bring the Museum more definitely before the
public mind--that I may be associated at least in the expression of my
deep sense of the noble purpose of the building--of the noble sincerity
of effort in its architect--of the endless good which the teachings to
which it will be devoted must, in their ultimate issue, accomplish for
mankind. How vast the range of that issue, you have shown in the lecture
which I have just read, in which you have so admirably traced the chain
of the physical sciences as it encompasses the great concords of this
visible universe.[125] But how deep the workings of these new springs of
knowledge are to be, and how great our need of them, and how far the
brightness and the beneficence of them are to reach among all the best
interests of men--perhaps none of us can yet conceive, far less know or
say. For, much as I reverence physical science as a means of mental
education (and you know how I have contended for it, as such, now these
twenty years, from the sunny afternoon of spring when Ehrenberg and you
and I went hunting for infusoria in Christchurch meadow streams, to the
hour when the prize offered by Sir Walter Trevelyan and yourself for the
best essay on the Fauna of that meadow, marked the opening of a new era
in English education[126])--much, I say, as I reverence physical science
in this function, I reverence it, at this moment, more as the source of
utmost human practical power, and the means by which the far-distant
races of the world, who now sit in darkness and the shadow of death, are
to be reached and regenerated. At home or far away--the call is equally
instant--here, for want of more extended physical science, there is
plague in our streets, famine in our fields; the pest strikes root and
fruit over a hemisphere of the earth, we know not why; the voices of our
children fade away into silence of venomous death, we know not why; the
population of this most civilized country resists every effort to lead
it into purity of habit and habitation--to give it genuineness of
nourishment, and wholesomeness of air, as a new interference with its
liberty; and insists vociferously on its right to helpless death. All
this is terrible; but it is more terrible yet that dim, phosphorescent,
frightful superstitions still hold their own over two-thirds of the
inhabited globe, and that all the phenomena of nature which were
intended by the Creator to enforce His eternal laws of love and
judgment, and which, rightly understood, enforce them more strongly by
their patient beneficence, and their salutary destructiveness, than the
miraculous dew on Gideon’s fleece, or the restrained lightnings of
Horeb--that all these legends of God’s daily dealing with His creatures
remain unread, or are read backwards, into blind, hundred-armed horror
of idol cosmogony.
How strange it seems that physical science should ever have been thought
adverse to religion! The pride of physical science is, indeed, adverse,
like every other pride, both to religion and truth; but sincerity of
science, so far from being hostile, is the path-maker among the
mountains for the feet of those who publish peace.
Now, therefore, and now only, it seems to me, the University has become
complete in her function as a teacher of the youth of the nation to
which every hour gives wider authority over distant lands; and from
which every rood of extended dominion demands new, various, and
variously applicable knowledge of the laws which govern the constitution
of the globe, and must finally regulate the industry, no less than
discipline the intellect, of the human race. I can hardly turn my mind
from these deep causes of exultation to the minor difficulties which
beset or restrict your undertaking. The great work is accomplished; the
immediate impression made by it is of little importance; and as for my
own special subjects of thought or aim, though many of them are closely
involved in what has been done, and some principles which I believe to
be, in their way, of great importance, are awkwardly compromised in what
has been imperfectly done--all these I am tempted to waive, or content
to compromise when only I know that the building is in main points fit
for its mighty work. Yet you will not think that it was matter of
indifference to me when I saw, as I went over Professor Brodie’s[127]
chemical laboratories the other day, how closely this success of
adaptation was connected with the choice of the style. It was very
touching and wonderful to me. Here was the architecture which I had
learned to know and love in pensive ruins, deserted by the hopes and
efforts of men, or in dismantled fortress-fragments recording only their
cruelty--here was this very architecture lending itself, as if created
only for these, to the foremost activities of human discovery, and the
tenderest functions of human mercy. No other architecture, as I felt in
an instant, could have thus adapted itself to a new and strange office.
No fixed arrangements of frieze and pillar, nor accepted proportions of
wall and roof, nor practised refinement of classical decoration, could
have otherwise than absurdly and fantastically yielded its bed to the
crucible, and its blast to the furnace; but these old vaultings and
strong buttresses--ready always to do service to man, whatever his
bidding--to shake the waves of war back from his seats of rock, or
prolonged through faint twilights of sanctuary, the sighs of his
superstition--he had but to ask it of them, and they entered at once
into the lowliest ministries of the arts of healing, and the sternest
and clearest offices in the service of science.
And the longer I examined the Museum arrangements, the more I felt that
it could be only some accidental delay in the recognition of this
efficiency for its work which had caused any feeling adverse to its
progress among the members of the University. The general idea about the
Museum has perhaps been, hitherto, that it is a forced endeavor to bring
decorative forms of architecture into uncongenial uses; whereas, the
real fact is, as far as I can discern it, that no other architecture
would, under the required circumstances, have been _possible_; and that
any effort to introduce classical types of form into these laboratories
and museums must have ended in ludicrous discomfiture. But the building
has now reached a point of crisis, and it depends upon the treatment
which its rooms now receive in completion, whether the facts of their
propriety and utility be acknowledged by the public, or lost sight of in
the distraction of their attention to matters wholly external.
So strongly I feel this, that, whatever means of decoration had been at
your disposal, I should have been inclined to recommend an exceeding
reserve in that matter. Perhaps I should even have desired such reserve
on abstract grounds of feeling. The study of Natural History is one
eminently addressed to the active energies of body and mind. Nothing is
to be got out of it by dreaming, not always much by thinking--everything
by seeking and seeing. It is work for the hills and fields,--work of
foot and hand, knife and hammer,--so far as it is to be afterwards
carried on in the house, the more active and workmanlike our proceedings
the better, fresh air blowing in from the windows, and nothing
interfering with the free space for our shelves and instruments on the
walls. I am not sure that much interior imagery or color, or other
exciting address to any of the observant faculties, would be desirable
under such circumstances. You know best; but I should no more think of
painting in bright colors beside you, while you were dissecting or
analyzing, than of entertaining you by a concert of fifes and cymbals.