1832 until his death in 1868. He was the author of various works on
art, amongst them one entitled “Works of Art and Artists in England”
(London, 1838), which is that alluded to here. The passage quoted
concludes a description of his “first attempt to navigate the watery
paths,” in a voyage from Hamburg to the London Docks (vol. i. p. 13).
His criticism of Turner may be found in the same work (vol. ii. p.
80), where commenting on Turner’s “Fishermen endeavoring to put their
fish on board,” then, as now, in the gallery of Bridgewater House
(No. 169), and which was painted as a rival to the great sea-storm of
Vandevelde, he writes, that “in the truth of clouds and waves” ... it
is inferior to that picture, compared with which “it appears like a
successful piece of scene-painting. The great crowd of amateurs, who
ask nothing more of the art, will always far prefer Turner’s picture.”
Dr. Waagen revised and re-edited his book in a second, entitled,
“Treasures of Art in Great Britain” (1854), in which these passages
are repeated with slight verbal alterations (vol. i. p. 3, vol. ii.
p. 53). In this work he acknowledges his ignorance of Turner at the
time the first was written, and gives a high estimate of his genius.
“Buildings,” he writes, “he treats with peculiar felicity, while _the
sea_ in its most varied aspects _is equally subservient to his magic
brush_”!! He adds, that but for one deficiency, the want of a sound
technical basis, he “should not hesitate to recognize Turner as the
greatest landscape painter of all time”! With regard, however, to the
above-named picture, it may be remembered that Mr. Ruskin has himself
instanced it as one of the marine pictures which Turner spoiled by
imitation of Vandevelde (“Pre-Raphaelitism,” p. 45).
[15] See the Preface to the second edition of “Modern Painters” (vol.
i. p. xix., etc.) Frederick Richard Lee, R.A., died in June, 1879.
[16] Abraham Janssens, in his jealousy of Rubens, proposed to him that
they should each paint a picture, and submit the rival works to the
decision of the public. Mr. Ruskin gives Rubens’ reply, the tenor of
which may be found in any life of the artist. See Hasselt’s “Histoire
de Rubens” (Brussels, 1840), p. 48, from which Mr. Ruskin quotes;
Descamps, vol. i. p. 304; Walpole’s “Anecdotes of Painting,” Bonn’s
octavo edition, p. 306.
[17] This is a singular instance of the profound ignorance of
landscape in which great and intellectual painters of the human form
may remain; an ignorance, which commonly renders their remarks on
landscape painting nugatory, if not false.[18]
[18] The amazement of the painter is underrated: “You will believe
me much nearer heaven upon Mount Cenis than I was before, or shall
probably be again for some time. We passed this mountain on Sunday
last, and about seven in the morning were near the top of the road
over it, on both sides of which the mountain rises to a very great
height, yet so high were we in the valley between them that the moon,
which was above the horizon of the mountains, appeared at least five
times as big as usual, and much more distinctly marked than I ever saw
it through some very good telescopes.”--Letter to Edmund Burke, dated
Turin, Sept. 24, 1766. Works of James Barry, R.A., 2 vols., quarto
(London, 1809), vol. i p 58. He died in 1806.
[19]
Plato.--“_Hippias._ Men do not commonly say so. _Socrates._ Who do
not say so--those who know, or those who do not know? _Hippias._ The
multitude. _Socrates._ Are then the multitude acquainted with truth?
_Hippias._ _Certainly not._
The answer is put into the mouth of the sophist; but put as an
established fact, which he cannot possibly deny.[20]
[20] Plato: Hippias Major, 284 E. Steph.
[21] Wordsworth. “Poems of Sentiment and Reflection,” i.
“Expostulation and Reply.”
[22] “Memorials of a Tour in Scotland. 1814. iii. Effusion.”
[23] See the _Artist and Amateur’s Magazine_, p. 248. The article
named was written in dualogue, and in the passage alluded to
“Palette,” an artist, points out to his companion “Chatworthy,” who
represents the general public, that “next to the highest authorities
in Art are the pure, natural, untainted, highly educated, and
intelligent _few_” The argument is continued over some pages, but
although the _Magazine_ is not now readily accessible to the ordinary
reader, it will not be thought necessary to go further into the
discussion.
[24] Mr. Thomas Wakley, at this time M.P. for Finsbury, and coroner
for Middlesex. He was the founder of the _Lancet_, and took a deep
interest in medicine, which he at one time practised. I do not find,
however, that he published any volume of poems, though he may well
have been the author, as the letter seems to imply, of some occasional
verses. He died in 1862.
[25] The references to this and the five passages following are (1)
Burns, “The Twa Dogs;” (2) Milton, “Paradise Lost,” vi. 79; (3)
Burns, “Death and Doctor Hornbook;” (4) Byron, “Hebrew Melodies,”
“Oh! snatched away in beauty’s bloom;” (5) Campbell; and (6) Shelley,
“Prometheus Unbound,” Act ii. sc. 1.
[26] It will be felt at once that the more serious and higher passages
generally suffer most. But Stanfield, little as it may be thought,
suffers grievously in the Academy, just as the fine passage from
Campbell is ruined by its position between the perfect tenderness of
Byron and Shelley. The more vulgar a picture is, the better it bears
the Academy.
[27] “Although it is in verse that the most consummate skill in
composition is to be looked for, and all the artifices of language
displayed, yet it is in verse only that we throw off the yoke of
the world, and are, as it were, privileged to utter our deepest and
holiest feelings. Poetry in this respect may be called the salt of
the earth. We express in it, and receive in it, sentiments for which,
were it not for this permitted medium, the usages of the world would
neither allow utterance nor acceptance.”--_Southey’s Colloquies_[28]
Such allowance is never made to the painter. In him, inspiration is
called insanity--in him, the sacred fire, possession.
[28] “Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of
Society.” Colloquy xiv. (vol. ii. p. 399, in Murray’s edition, 1829).
[29] “This Turner, of whom you have known so little while he was
living among you, will one day take his place beside Shakespeare and
Verulam, in the annals of the light of England.
“Yes: beside Shakespeare and Verulam, a third star in that central
constellation, round which, in the astronomy of intellect, all other
stars make their circuit. By Shakespeare, humanity was unsealed
to you; by Verulam the _principles_ of nature; and by Turner, her
_aspect_. All these were sent to unlock one of the gates of light, and
to unlock it for the first time. But of all the three, though not the
greatest, Turner was the most unprecedented in his work. Bacon did
what Aristotle had attempted; Shakespeare did perfectly what Æschylus
did partially; but none before Turner had lifted the veil from the
face of nature; the majesty of the hills and forests had received
no interpretation, and the clouds passed unrecorded from the face
of the heavens which they adorned, and of the earth to which they
ministered,”--“Lectures on Architecture and Painting,” by John Ruskin;
published 1854; pp. 180, 181.
[30] We have not sufficiently expressed our concurrence in the opinion
of her friend, that Turner’s modern works are his greatest. His early
ones are nothing but amplifications of what others have done, or hard
studies of every-day truth. His later works no one but himself could
have conceived: they are the result of the most exalted imagination,
acting with the knowledge acquired by _means_ of his former works.
[31] Wordsworth. “Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.” ii. “The Tables
Turned” (1798), being the companion poem to that quoted _ante_, p. 17.
The second line should read, “Close up these barren leaves.”
[32] This work related to University co-operation with schemes for
middle-class education, and included letters from various authorities,
amongst others one from Mr. Hullah on Music. The present letter was
addressed to the Rev. F. Temple (now Bishop of Exeter), and was
written in reply to a statement of certain points in debate between
him and Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Acland. In forwarding it to his opponent,
Mr. Temple wrote as follows: “The liberal arts are supreme over their
sciences. Instead of the rules being despotic, the great artist
usually proves his greatness by rightly setting aside rules; and
the great critic is he who, while he knows the rule, can appreciate
the ‘law within the law’ which overrides the rule. In no other way
does Ruskin so fully show his greatness in criticism as in that fine
inconsistency for which he has been so often attacked by men who do
not see the real consistency that lies beneath.”
[33] In the following year Mr. Ruskin wrote a paper for the National
Association for the Promotion of Social Science, on “Education in
Art” (Transactions, 1858, pp. 311-316), now reprinted in the eleventh
volume of Mr. Ruskin’s works, “A Joy for Ever,” p. 185. To this paper
the reader of the present letter is referred.
[34] “Giotto passed the first ten years of his life, a shepherd-boy,
among these hills (of Fiésole); was found by Cimabue, near his native
village, drawing one of his sheep upon a smooth stone; was yielded
up by his father, ‘a simple person, a laborer of the earth,’ to the
guardianship of the painter, who, by his own work, had already made
the streets of Florence ring with joy; attended him to Florence,
and became his disciple.”--“Giotto and his Works in Padua,” by John
Ruskin, 1854, p. 12.
[35] This letter was, it appears, originally addressed to an artist,
Mr. Williams (of Southampton), and was then printed, some years later,
in the number of _Nature and Art_ above referred to.
[36] Some words are necessary to explain this and the following
letter. In the autumn of 1846 a correspondence was opened in the
columns of _The Times_ on the subject of the cleaning and restoration
of the national pictures during the previous vacation. Mr. (afterwards
Sir Charles) Eastlake was at this time Keeper of the Gallery, though
he resigned office soon after this letter was written, partly in
consequence of the attacks which had been made upon him. He was
blamed, not only for restoring good pictures, but also for buying
bad ones, and in particular the purchase of a “libel on Holbein” was
quoted against him. The attack was led by the picture-dealer, and
at one time artist, Mr. Morris Moore, writing at first under the
pseudonym of “Verax,” and afterwards in his own name. He continued his
opposition through several years, especially during 1850 and 1852.
He also published some pamphlets on the subject, amongst them one
entitled “The Revival of Vandalism at the National Gallery, a reply to
John Ruskin and others” (London, Ollivier, 1853). The whole discussion
may be gathered in all its details from the Parliamentary Report of
the Select Committee on the National Gallery in 1853.
[37] The “violent attack” alludes to a letter of “Verax,” in _The
Times_ of Thursday (not Friday), December 31, 1846, and the “attempted
defence” to another letter signed “A. G.” in _The Times_ of January 4,
two days (not _the_ day) before Mr. Ruskin wrote the present letter.
[38] “The Crucifixion, or Adoration of the Cross,” in the church of
San Marco. An engraving of this picture may be found in Mrs. Jameson’s
“History of our Lord,” vol. i. p. 189.
[39] No. 46 in the National Gallery.
[40] “Landscape, with Cattle and Figures--Evening” (No. 53). Since the
bequest of the somewhat higher “large Dort” in 1876 (No. 961), it has
ceased to be “the large Cuyp.”
[41] No. 35 in the National Gallery. This and the two pictures already
mentioned were the typical instances of “spoilt pictures,” quoted by
“Verax.”
[42] “Modern Painters,” vol. i. p. 146.
[43] “Philip IV. of Spain, hunting the Wild Boar” (No. 197), purchased
in 1846.
[44] On this and other collateral subjects the reader is referred to
the next letter; to Mr. Ruskin’s evidence before the National Gallery
Commission in 1857; and to the Appendix to his Notes on the Turner
Gallery at Marlborough House, 1856-7. It is hardly necessary to state
that a very large number of the national pictures, especially the
Turners, are now preserved under glass. Of the other strictures here
pronounced, some are no longer deserved; and it may well be remembered
that at the time this letter was written the National Gallery had been
founded less than five-and-twenty years.
[45] “Lot and his Daughters Leaving Sodom” (No. 193), bequeathed
to the gallery in 1844, and “Susannah and the Elders” (No. 196),
purchased in the same year.
[46] The “two good Guidos” previously possessed are the “St. Jerome”
(No. 11) and the “Magdalen” (No. 177). The “wretched panel” is No.
181, “The Virgin and Infant Christ with St. John.” For the rest,
the gallery now includes two other Peruginos, “The Virgin adoring
the Infant Christ, the Archangel Michael, the Archangel Raphael and
Tobias” (No. 288), three panels, purchased in 1856, and the very
recent (1879) purchase of the “Virgin and Child with St. Jerome and
St. Francis” (No. 1075). It boasts also two Angelicos--“The Adoration
of the Magi” (No. 582) and “Christ amid the Blessed” (No. 663),
purchased in 1857 and 1860; one Albertinelli, “Virgin and Child “(No.
645), also purchased in 1860; and two Lorenzo di Credis, both of the
“Virgin and Child” (Nos. 593 and 648), purchased in 1857 and 1865. But
it still possesses no Fra Bartolomeo, no Ghirlandajo, and no Verrochio.
[47] “The Judgment of Paris” (No. 194), purchased from Mr. Penrice’s
collection in 1846.
[48] “The Last Judgment;” its purchaser was the Earl of Dudley, in
whose possession the picture, now hanging at Dudley House in London,
has ever since remained. An engraving of this work (pronounced the
finest of Angelico’s four representations of this subject), may be
found in Mrs. Jameson’s “History of our Lord,” vol. ii. p. 414.
Cardinal Fesch was Archbishop of Lyons, and the uncle of Napoleon
Buonaparte. His gallery contained in its time the finest private
collection of pictures in Rome.
[49] The “libel on Holbein” was bought as an original, from Mr.
Rochard, in 1845. It now figures in the National Gallery as “A Medical
Professor,--artist unknown” (No. 195).
[50] The Bellini is the “Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredano” (No.
189), purchased in 1844; four more examples (Nos. 280, 726, 808, 812)
of the same “mighty Venetian master” have since been introduced, so
that he is no longer “poorly represented by a single head.” The Van
Eyck is the “Portrait of Jean Arnolfini and his Wife” (No. 186),
purchased in 1842.
[51] Claude’s “Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca” (No. 12), and his “Queen
of Sheba” picture (No. 14, Seaport, with figures). The only pictures
of Veronese which the Gallery at this time contained, were the
“Consecration of St. Nicholas” (No. 26), and the “Rape of Europa” (No.
97). It is the former of these two that is here spoken of as injured
(see the report of the National Gallery Committee in 1853).
[52] Mr. Thomas Uwins, R.A., had succeeded Sir Charles Eastlake as
Keeper of the National Gallery in 1847; and resigned, for a similar
reason, in 1855.
[53] The public may not, perhaps, be generally aware that the
condition by which the nation retains the two pictures bequeathed to
it by Turner, and now in the National Gallery, is that “they shall be
hung beside Claude’s.”{*}
{*} “Dido building Carthage” (No. 498), and “The Sun rising in a Mist”
(No. 479). The actual wording of Turner’s will on the matter ran thus:
“I direct that the said pictures, or paintings, shall be hung, kept,
and placed, that is to say, always between the two pictures painted by
Claude, the Seaport and the Mill.” Accordingly they now hang side by
side with these two pictures (Nos. 5 and 12) in the National Gallery.
[54] See p. 42, note.
[55] Query, a misprint? as _six_ pictures are mentioned.
[56] “The Art of a nation is, 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.”--National Gallery Commission, 1857: Mr. Ruskin’s evidence.
[57] It was at this time proposed to remove the national pictures
from Trafalgar Square to some new building to be erected for them
elsewhere. This proposal was, however, negatived by the commission
ultimately appointed (1857) to consider the matter, and to some extent
rendered unnecessary by the enlargement of the gallery, decided upon
in 1866.
[58] The galleries of the Louvre were reorganized on their being
declared national instead of crown property, after the Revolution of
1848; and the choicest pictures were then collected together in the
“grand salon carré,” which, although since rearranged, still contains
a similar selection. The “best Tintoret on this side of the Alps” is
the “Susannah and the Elders,” now No. 349 in that room.
[59] The _gift_ of Mr. Robert Vernon, in 1847, consisted of 157
pictures, all of them, with two exceptions only, of the British
school. The Turner bequest included 105 finished oil paintings, in
addition to the numerous sketches and drawings.
[60] An example of a cognate school might, however, be occasionally
introduced for the sake of direct comparison, as in one instance would
be necessitated by the condition above mentioned attached to part of
the Turner bequest.
[61] At the meeting of the Society, in the Hall, Adelphi, Lord
Henry Lennox read a paper on “The Uses of National Museums to Local
Institutions,” in which he spoke of Mr. Ruskin’s suggestions “adopted
and recommended to Parliament in annual reports, and in obedience to
distinct Commissions,” as having been unwarrantably disregarded since
1858. See Mr. Ruskin’s official report on the Turner Bequest, printed
in the “Report of the Director of the National Gallery to the Lords of
the Treasury, 1858,” Appendix vii.
[62] Professor Nevil Story-Maskelyne (now M.P. for Cricklade) was
then, and till his recent resignation, Keeper of Mineralogy at the
Museum.
[63] In Mr. Ruskin’s official report already mentioned, and which was
made at the close of his labors in arranging the Turner drawings, and
dated March 27, 1858, he divided the collection into three classes, of
which the third consisted of drawings available for distribution among
provincial Schools of Art. The passage of the report referred to is
as follows: “The remainder of the collection consists of drawings of
miscellaneous character, from which many might be spared with little
loss to the collection in London, and great advantage to students in
the provinces. Five or six collections, each completely illustrative
of Turner’s modes of study, and successions of practice, might easily
be prepared for the academies of Edinburgh, Dublin, and the principal
English manufacturing towns.”--See also the similar recommendation
with regard to the “Outlines of John Leech,” in the letter on that
subject.
[64] Titian’s “Bacchus and Ariadne”--already mentioned, p. 40. Henry
VI.’s Psalter is in the British Museum (“Domitian A. 17,” in the
Cottonian Catalogue). It is of early fifteenth century work, and was
executed in England by a French artist for the then youthful king,
from whom it takes its name.
[65] This letter was written in reply to one requesting Mr. Ruskin’s
views on the best means of forming a public Gallery at Leicester.
[66] That the critique was sufficiently bitter, may be gathered from
the following portions of it: “These young artists have unfortunately
become notorious by addicting themselves to an antiquated style and
an affected simplicity in painting.... We can extend no toleration
to a mere senile imitation of the cramped style, false perspective,
and crude color of remote antiquity. We want not to see what Fuseli
termed drapery ‘snapped instead of folded;’ faces bloated into
apoplexy, or extenuated to skeletons; color borrowed from the jars
in a druggist’s shop, and expression forced into caricature.... That
morbid infatuation which sacrifices truth, beauty, and genuine feeling
to mere eccentricity, deserves no quarter at the hands of the public.”
[67] A sacred picture (No. 518) upon the text, “And one shall say
unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer,
Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends” (Zechariah
xiii. 6). He had two other pictures in the Academy of 1850, namely,
“Portrait of a gentleman and his grandchild” (No. 429), and “Ferdinand
lured by Ariel” (No. 504)--Shakespeare, “Tempest,” Act ii. sc. 2.
[68] See the next letter, p. 96. With regard to the religious tone of
some parts of Mr. Ruskin’s early writings, it is worth noting that
in the recent reissue (1880) of the “Seven Lamps of Architecture,”
“some pieces of rabid and utterly false Protestantism ... are cut from
text and appendix alike.”--(Preface, p. 1; and see the note on one
such omission on p. 19.) So again in the preface to the final edition
of “Modern Painters,” issued in 1873, Mr. Ruskin stated that his
objection to republishing unrevised the first two volumes of that work
was that “they are written in a narrow enthusiasm, and the substance
of their metaphysical and religious speculation is only justifiable on
the ground of its absolute sincerity.”--See also “Sesame and Lilies,”
1871 ed., Preface, p. 2.
[69] The pre-Raphaelite pictures exhibited in the Academy of this
year, and referred to here and in the following letter, were the
“Mariana” (No. 561) of Millais, “The Return of the Dove to the Ark”
(No. 651), and “The Woodman’s Daughter” (No. 799), (see Coventry
Patmore’s Poems, vol. i. p. 184--4 vol. ed., 1879), both also by
Millais; the “Valentine receiving (rescuing?) Sylvia from Proteus”
(No. 594), of Holman Hunt; and the “Convent Thoughts” (No. 493) of Mr.
C. Collins, to which were affixed the lines from “Midsummer Night’s
Dream” (Act i. sc. 1),
“Thrice blessed they, that master so their blood To undergo such
maiden pilgrimage;”
and the verse (Psalm cxliii. 5), “I meditate on all Thy works; I muse
on the work of Thy hands.” The last-named artist also had a portrait
of Mr. William Bennett (No. 718) in the Exhibition--not, however,
alluded to in this letter. Mr. Charles Allston Collins, who was the
son of William Collins, R.A., and the younger brother of Mr. Wilkie
Collins, subsequently turned his attention to literature, and may be
remembered as the author of “A Cruise upon Wheels,” “The Eye-Witness,”
and other writings.
[70] Compare “Modern Painters,” vol. i. p. 415, note, where allusion
is made to the painters of a society which “unfortunately, or
rather unwisely, has given itself the name of ‘Pre-Raphaelite;’
unfortunately, because the principles on which its members are working
are neither pre- nor post-Raphaelite, but everlasting. They are
endeavoring to paint with the highest possible degree of completion,
what they see in nature, without reference to conventional established
rules; but by no means to imitate the style of any past epoch.”
[71] “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” Act ii. sc. 4. The scene of the
picture was taken from Act v. sc. 4.
[72] “The Hhareem” (No. 147), noticed, partly to the above effect,
in _The Times_, May 1, 1850. It will be remembered that John Lewis
is, with Turner, Millais, Prout, Mulready, and Edwin Landseer, one
of the artists particularly mentioned in Mr. Ruskin’s pamphlet on
“Pre-Raphaelitism” (1851), p. 33; and see also “Academy Notes,” III.,
1857, p. 48.
[73] “I have great hope that they may become the foundation of
a more earnest and able school of art than we have seen for
centuries.”--“Modern Painters,” vol. i. p. 415, note.