'These remarkable lines entirely explain the meaning of the picture;
another piece is described by lines from the same poem, in a metre more
regular--
"The midnight torch gleamed o'er the steamer's side,
And _merit's corse_ was yielded to the tide."
(This was the burial of Wilkie at sea: now in the National Gallery.)
'When the pictures are re-hung, as sometimes I believe is the case, it
might, perhaps, be as well to turn these upside down and see how they
would look _then_. The Campo Santo of Venice, when examined closely, is
scarcely less mysterious; at a little distance, however, it is a most
brilliant, airy, and beautiful picture. O for the old days before Mr.
Turner had lighted on "The Fallacies" and could see like other
people!'--_An Exhibition Gossip_, by Michael Angelo Titmarsh,
_Ainsworth's Magazine_,1843.
[26] _The Almanack of the Month_, 1846--in which see also a comical
drawing, by Mr. Richard Doyle, of 'Turner painting one of his pictures,'
and the accompanying letterpress:--'Considerable discussion has arisen
as to the mode in which Turner goes to work to paint his pictures. Some
think he mixes a few colours on his canvas instead of on his palette,
and sends the result to be exhibited. Another ingenious theory is that
he puts a canvas in a sort of pillory, and pelts it with eggs and other
missiles, when appending to the mess some outrageous title, he has it
hung in a good position at the Academy. Our own idea is, that he chooses
four or five good places in which he hangs up some regularly framed
squares of blank canvas; a day or so before the opening of the
Exhibition, we believe he goes down to the Academy with a quantity of
colours and a nine pound brush, with which he dabs away for a few
minutes, and his work is finished,' etc. etc.
'Cut off in great part,' says Mr. Ruskin, 'from all society, first by
labour and last by sickness, hunted to his grave by the malignities of
small critics and the jealousies of hopeless rivalry, he died in the
house of a stranger.' As Mr. Leslie, his fellow-academician, remarks
upon this passage truly enough, 'This was Turner's own fault. No
death-bed could be more surrounded by attentive friends than his might
have been, had he chosen to let his friends know where he lived.' But he
seldom answered letters; his place of residence was a profound mystery
to all; and he was living under an assumed name. To the Chelsea
street-boys he was known as 'Puggy Booth,' and by his neighbours he was
deemed to be an old admiral in reduced circumstances. His house in Queen
Anne Street was closed, terribly out of repair--black with dirt. After
much knocking at the door it was opened, if at all, by an old woman, her
face half-concealed, owing to some cancerous disfigurement; she had
kept the visitor waiting while she assumed a large apron--hung always
behind the door on a peg, handy for the purpose,--which hid the grimy
and tattered state of her dress. The drawing-room was tenanted by
half-a-dozen Manx cats. In the other rooms, rats and mice made havoc
with hoarded drawings and engravings. Many of the pictures in the
gallery were warped and cracked, and mildewed by neglect and damp. At
Sandycombe Lodge, a few of the academicians, including Mr. Mulready, had
once been regaled with tea; and Mr. Pye, the engraver, had been treated
to cheese and porter; but of the hospitalities of Queen Anne Street
there are no records. Rogers, poet and satirist, expressed his wonder at
a beautiful table adorning the painter's parlour. 'But how much more
wonderful it would be,' he went on, 'to see any of his friends sitting
round it!' And there is the story of the visitor who praised the wine of
which he had had two glasses, a year intervening between them. 'It ought
to be good,' said Turner; 'it's the _same bottle_ you tasted before!'
True or false, and their accuracy has been much questioned, that such
stories could be repeated at all, says quite enough for the kind of life
led by the painter at his gallery. And what claims upon society had the
man who chose to conduct himself towards it after this manner?
Yet it is curious to note that Turner was in many ways fitted to be
socially successful. He had very considerable humour, and highly
appreciated the jests of others, even when they were directed against
himself. He sat for a long time shaking with laughter, on a high seat at
the Academy, one varnishing day, when Mulready had said 'that his cows
were like the dough pigs, with currant eyes, in the bakers' shops.' He
was gay and playful at times, and shone in careless conversation.
Personally he was not less liked than as a painter he was respected by
his fellow-academicians; and yet, from some mental warp, he closed his
doors against the world, shunned his friends, preferred to live
miserably and obscurely, hoarding his money, and treasuring his works.
It is difficult to believe that he was not afflicted, late in life, with
some morbid affection of mind that amounted almost to insanity, not
alleviated by a manner of life that was far from regular, and habits
that were anything but temperate. The more he avoided refined society,
the more he found pleasure in dissipation of the lowest kind.
'Melancholy' Burton derived relief and amusement listening to the
ribaldry of the bargemen. Turner found these and other solaces, it would
seem, in his occasional mysterious absences from home, and indecorous
sojournings at Wapping and elsewhere.
It is with a sense of relief we turn from the contemplation of the
imperfect man to consider the nearly perfect artist. The meanness, the
squalor, the degradation of his _morale_ and life are not discernible in
his works. The affluence of beauty of some of these is indeed
marvellous. But this fallen man had extraordinary gifts as a painter,
and these he heightened and intensified by labour and industry the most
ceaseless. It would be difficult to conceive any one endowed with a
keener sensibility to colour, or with a more devotional love for its
glories; it would be equally hard to estimate the enhancement of the
worth of English art effected by the colour of Turner. It should be
remembered that he appeared at a time when coldness of tone was almost a
fashion in painting. The chilliness of the shadows of Lawrence and his
followers was remarkable. Turner raised the chord of colour a whole
octave, if it is permissible to say so, illustrating one art by the
terms of another. Mr. Ruskin ascribes to him the discovery of the
_scarlet shadow_. It was in truth less a new discovery than the
re-awakening of an old one. The early masters were well aware of the
value of warmth in this respect. Wilkie comments in his journal on the
great picture of Correggio: 'And here I observe _hot shadows_ prevail,
_not cold_, as some of us would have it. This he has to a fault, making
parts of his figures look like red chalk drawings, but the sunny and
dazzling effect of the whole may be attributed to this artifice.'[27] If
we look for a prevalent tone in Turner's pictures--though a prevalent
tone is always a vice in a painter, nature being without bias in the
question of hue--we shall find it to be _yellow_, which he himself
declared to be his favourite colour, and which occasioned those jokes
about the 'mustard-pot' as a source of inspiration, to which
art-students were at one time addicted. But, indeed, Turner's sense of
all colour was very limitless. A Mrs. Austin once said to him, 'I find,
Mr. Turner, that, in copying one of your works, touches of blue, red,
and yellow appear all through the work.' He answered: 'Well, don't you
see that yourself in nature, because, if you don't, Heaven help you!'
Mr. Ruskin writes: 'Other painters had rendered the golden tones and
blue tones of the sky; Titian especially the latter in perfection. But
none had dared to paint--none seem to have seen--the scarlet and
purple.' In representing the glare of sunlight, Turner surpassed even
Claude. Cuyp hardly attempted this feat, his suns generally gleaming
through a mist; though Turner standing before a splendid example of
Cuyp, exclaimed: 'I would give a thousand pounds to have painted that'
In atmospheric perspective he was perfect; but in linear faulty and ill
grounded, although he had held the appointment of Professor of
Perspective at the Academy for some years. The drawbacks to his pictures
consist in their frequent sacrifice of truth to effect. From this cause
he constantly failed to satisfy critics who were well acquainted with
the scenes and subjects he attempted to represent. A tar said of his
_Battle of Trafalgar_ at Greenwich: 'What a Trafalgar! it's a d----d
deal more like a brick-field!' while Sir Thomas Hardy used to call it a
'street scene,' as the ships had more the effect of houses than
men-of-war. Of the wreck of the _Minotaur_, Admiral Bowles complained
'that no ship or boat could live in such a sea.'
[27] In a letter to Phillips he adds, 'No one knew the value of this
treatment better than Turner.'
To Turner's credit must be placed many acts of consideration for, and
kindness towards, his brother artists. He has been known to displace one
of his own pictures to make room for the work of a promising beginner.
His love for art is the real redeeming point in his history. He was
devoted to the Academy, which had recognised his genius at an early
date, and was wholly conservative in his opinion upon all academic
questions. Yet his zeal did not blind him. Haydon, whose life had been a
gallant though almost fruitless struggle against the despotic
exclusiveness of the Academy, drew back, we are told, in the midst of
his exultation at a brief victory gained over his opponents, and said
calmly: 'But Turner behaved well, and did me justice.'
Turner's biographer, with a scrupulousness that looks a little like
timidity, has abstained steadily from all demur to the _dicta_ of Mr.
Ruskin. Mr. Thornbury's volumes represent rather elaborations than
contradictions of the Ruskin opinions, just as what are known as
'variations' in music are rather amplifications of, than departures
from, the original theme. But we are by no means sure that Mr. Thornbury
has strengthened the case in the painter's favour. We believe that, at
the bar, the junior counsel has been sometimes found to injure the
effect of his chief's advocacy, by entering into and disclosing matters
of detail which had been purposely left untouched by him. Something of
the same sort has happened in the present instance. Mr. Ruskin bade us
worship his hero, classically screened in a cloud. Mr. Thornbury unveils
the idol, and the too apparent deformity disclosed renders adoration no
longer possible. Mr. Ruskin's five volumes of _Modern Painters_ will
therefore probably still be considered to comprise the true 'Turneriad.'
A more imposing monument to Turner's memory than is afforded by this
book, with all its defects, can hardly be. For something like a quarter
of a century Mr. Ruskin employed himself in examining and lauding the
achievements of Turner. He did not complete his self-imposed task until
the great painter had been dead some ten years.
It is really curious to go back to the beginning of this remarkable
work.
In 1843 appeared the first volume of '_Modern Painters: their
Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient
Masters_. By a Graduate of Oxford.' A further volume was issued three
years afterwards, to accompany an extended and amended edition of the
first. A ten years' pause, and third and fourth portions were given to
the world. Then came 1860, and the final volume. Not, as the author
avowed, that his subject was concluded, for 'he had been led by it into
fields of infinite inquiry, where it was only possible to break off
with such imperfect results as may at any given moment have been
attained.' He stopped because he must stop at some time or other. The
future art-writings of Mr. Ruskin will no longer bear the collective
title of _Modern Painters_. Perhaps that is all that the 'finis' at the
end of the fifth volume really amounts to.
In his fifth volume, Mr. Ruskin has narrated the history of the birth
and growth of his book. He has ascribed to himself from his earliest
years, 'the gift of taking pleasure in landscape.' This, he says, 'I
assuredly possess in a greater degree than most men, it having been the
ruling passion of my life, and the reason for the choice of its field of
labour.' Certain articles in a review condemnatory of the pictures of
Turner offended keenly so ardent an admirer of the king of landscape
painters. Mr. Ruskin addressed a letter to the editor of the review,
'reprobating the matter and style of those critiques, and pointing out
their dangerous tendency;' for 'he knew it to be demonstrable that
Turner was right and true, and that his critics were wrong, false, and
base.' The letter grew to be a book; the defence expanded into an
attack. What began as a few comments upon a particular branch of
painting ended in being the most elaborate English dissertation upon
art, in its widest and weightiest significance. The title originally
selected for the book was _Turner and the Ancients_; and it was not then
proposed to refer in it to any other modern painter than Turner. But the
design enlarged,--'The title was changed, and notes on other living
painters inserted in the first volume, in deference to the advice of
friends; probably wise, for unless the change had been made, the book
might never have been read at all.' So writes the author in his last
pages; and returning to his first love, it is hard to say whether from
fickleness or from constancy he adds, 'So far as I am concerned, I
regretted the change then, and regret it still.'
To this book, then, commenced almost without a plan, time subsequently
gave form and pattern. At a certain period of his labour Mr. Ruskin
paused to map out the future of his work, to define the limits of his
undertaking. But in examining the concluding volume it will be seen that
the waywardness of the beginning characterizes also the end. Time has
taken away its gift; the scheme has fallen through; the book ends; but
the design it had gathered to itself as it advanced, which had budded
out from it unexpectedly as it were, remains in a large measure
uncompleted. Over the boundaries he had himself imposed, his eloquent
diffuseness long since surged: the book doubled its promised length; and
now the author stays his hand, turns from his toil, and leaves
unfinished and shapeless the long-expected 'section on the sea,' holding
out but vague promise of his ever being able to accomplish, even in a
separate work, his intentions in regard to that portion of his project.
It is almost of necessity that there should be deviation from the
original planned economy of a work occupying more than a score of years;
but Mr. Ruskin is more than ordinarily susceptible to vicissitude. It is
part of his idiosyncrasy to start impulsively with an ill-digested
project, and to run off the lines of his argument upon the slightest
provocation and at the earliest opportunity. So that in his case time
and his own temper have combined to exaggerate the vibration of his
book. His manner of progression is very much what Mr. Assheton Smith's
huntsman used to denominate 'zedding.' He cannot proceed
straightforwardly. He must wander from the direct track; as a
consequence, he is betrayed into all sorts of _culs de sac_, wrong
turnings, and roundabout roads; and in the end, although much ground is
gone over, very little advance is made. He is as the bee which does not
make its final burglarious headlong plunge into the calyx until after a
protracted course of circuitous buzzing and much prefatory waste of
time: and this with all the insect's credit for industry. So
over-perverse a traveller, so ultra-dilatory a bee as the author of
_Modern Painters, must_ shorten his journey, _must_ leave much honey
unfilched. He is as the army which commences in orderly retreat and ends
in rabble-like riot and demoralization, gaining a place of safety at
last, with the sacrifice of much baggage and treasure. So, as has been
said, Mr. Ruskin flings away altogether a large division of his idea. In
one place he writes,--
'I find it convenient in this volume, and I wish I had thought of the
expedient before, whenever I get into a difficulty to leave the reader
to work it out;' and in another we are stopped by such a half-indolent
half-arrogant, 'No Thoroughfare' as this. He has been discoursing on the
leaf,--then follows an inquiry into the conditions of the stem. Then he
tells us:--
'I intended to have given a figure to show the results of the pressure
of the weight of all the leafage on a great lateral bough in modifying
its curves, the strength of timber being greatest where the leverage of
the mass tells most. _But I find nobody ever reads things which it takes
any trouble to understand, so that it is no use to write them._'
In a higher tone he had once announced the aim and principle of his
book, claiming for it a difference from most books, and 'a chance of
being in some respects better for the difference, in that it had not
been written either for fame, or for money, or for conscience' sake, but
of necessity.' 'I saw an injustice done and tried to remedy it. I heard
a falsehood taught and was compelled to deny it. Nothing else was
possible to me.' In that good time there was no question as to whether
people would or would not take the trouble to understand. They were
taught what the teacher deemed to be true, and the risk was on their own
heads if they neglected the teaching. It was of use to write then,
intelligibly or unintelligibly, truly and wholly; but this was before
Mr. Ruskin had strayed very much from his road, or broken off,
breathless and worn out, from a journey, doubled by aberrations,
rendered wearisome by the most wilful wandering, and stopped at
last,--not perfected.
In extenuation of the delay in the completion of the work, the author
pleads his many employments during five years:--his book on the
_Elements of Drawing_; his addresses at Manchester, and his examination,
'with more attention than they deserved,' of some of the theories of
political economy referred to in those addresses; the Manchester
Exhibition, 'chiefly in its magnificent Reynolds' constellation;' a
visit to Scotland, to look at Dunblane and Jedburgh, and other favourite
sites of Turner's; and the arrangement of the Turner drawings, the
property of the nation, for the trustees of the National Gallery. To
this last task Mr. Ruskin set himself with characteristic enthusiasm. In
the lower room of the National Gallery, when he began his work, there
were 'upwards of nineteen thousand pieces of paper drawn upon by Turner
in one way or other,'--many on both sides, some with four, five, or six
subjects on each side,--'some in chalk, which the touch of the finger
would sweep away, others in ink rotted into holes, others eaten away by
damp and mildew, and falling into dust at the edges, in cases and bags
of fragile decay, others worm-eaten, some mouse-eaten, many torn halfway
through, numbers doubled (quadrupled I should say) into four, being
Turner's favourite mode of packing for travelling; nearly all rudely
flattened out from the bundles in which Turner had finally rolled them
up and squeezed them into his drawers in Queen Anne Street' In the edges
of these flattened bundles lay the 'dust of thirty years' accumulation,
black, dense, and sooty.' With two assistants, Mr. Ruskin was at work,
all the autumn and winter of 1857, 'every day all day long, and often
far into the night.' Then, by way of resting himself, Mr. Ruskin
proceeded to hunt down Turner subjects along the course of the Rhine on
the north of Switzerland. He crossed Lombardy afterwards, and found,
unexpectedly, some good Paul Veroneses at Turin. He had been troubled by
many questions respecting the 'real motives of Venetian work,' which he
had planned to work out in the Louvre; but 'seeing that Turin was a good
place wherein to keep out of people's way,' he settled there instead.
'With much consternation, but more delight,' he discovered that he 'had
never got to the roots of the moral power of the Venetians;' that for
this a stern course of study was required of him. The book was given up
for the year.
'The winter was spent mainly in trying to get at the mind of Titian.'
The issue necessitated his going in the spring to Berlin, 'to see,' as
he tells us, 'Titian's portrait of Lavinia there, and to Dresden to see
the Tribute Money, the elder Lavinia, and girl in white with the
flag-fan. Another portrait at Dresden, of a lady in a dress of rose and
gold, by me unheard of before, and one of an admiral at Munich, had like
to have kept me in Germany all the summer.' How expositive is all this
of the unstable fashion of Mr. Ruskin's temper and writings!
It is not to be marvelled at that the term 'Ruskinism' should be evolved
from a system of opinions so impassioned and earnest, so thorough and
deep-rooted, and, at the time at which they were first broached, so
singular and courageous, as those of the author of _Modern Painters_.
When Mr. Ruskin took up his pen, the 'old masters' were the religion,
and the creed, and the idols, of the connoisseurs. It was of landscape
he was particularly writing, but his fiery condemnation in one sentence
of such names as 'Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Cuyp, Berghem,
Both, Ruysdael, Hobbima, Teniers (in his landscapes), Paul Potter,
Canaletti, and the various Van-Somethings and Back-Somethings, more
especially and malignantly those who had libelled the sea,' carried
dismay into the hearts of collectors, and he was denounced as guilty of
an art sacrilege scarcely more marvellous for its impiety than its
daring. His opinions, however, have passed through a burning fiery
furnace of criticism, and have survived the ordeal. Earnestness is half
success; and the truth that was the substratum of that earnestness has
accomplished the rest. 'Ruskinism,' in its least invective and
censorious form, has a host of followers and disciples. Take as its text
the noble view of it contained in the following words descriptive of the
book:--'It declares the perfectness and eternal beauty of the works of
God, and tests all works of man by concurrence with or subjection to
that.'
Time, that has given and changed the plan, has also been at work with
certain of the judgments of the book. (It is with the fifth volume we
are especially dealing,--for this may fairly be regarded as the 'summing
up' of the divers opinions scattered through the earlier portions of the
work.) The author of a book long in hand becomes himself the president
of a court of appeal, in which his own earlier sentences are to be
reversed or confirmed. It is one of the results of the heat and passion
of first opinions that they seem to be harshly and cruelly framed when
the time comes to tone down and qualify them; and the question arises,
was it indispensable to be so savage,--was it absolutely necessary that
what seemed to be the sword of justice should be wielded so angrily and
without the slightest tempering of mercy? Still is there worth in the
author's apology, 'that the oscillations of temper and progressions of
discovery ought not to diminish the reader's confidence in the book;'
'that unless important changes are occurring in his opinions continually
all his life long, not one of those opinions can be on any questionable
subject true; all true opinions are living, and show their life by being
capable of nourishment, therefore of change. But their change is that of
a tree, not of a cloud.'
So, then, come repentance and recantation. Mr. Ruskin's 'boy veneration
for Rubens's physical art power,' and the 'strong expression of
admiration for him, which to his great regret occur in the first
volume,' are now solemnly withdrawn. Rubens is now only a 'healthy,
worthy, kind-hearted, courtly-phrased animal.' But the fault lies as
much at the door of the time, as at that of the man. The Reformation had
come and gone. The reformers had cast out the errors, and rent in twain
the fallacies of the Roman Catholic Church. Then came a standing still;
a paralysis of religion. The Evangelicals despised the arts; effete and
insincere Roman Catholicism had lost its hold on men. The painters sunk
into rationalism; they became men of the world, 'with no belief in
spiritual existence, no interests or affections beyond the grave.' They
painted religious subjects, of course; these were duly supplied as per
order, especially martyrdom; they liked the vigorous cruelty of them,
and painted atrocities with gusto, deeming they were illustrating
religion; and they painted 'virgins in blue,' and 'St. Johns in red,' as
many as were wanted,--but all utterly cold, and soul-less, and
irreverential. 'Happily,' remarks Mr. Ruskin, 'there is just this
difference between the men of this modern period and the Florentines or
Venetians, that whereas the latter never exert themselves fully except
on a sacred subject, the Flemish and Dutch masters are always languid
unless they are profane. Leonardo is only to be seen in the 'Cena';
Titian only in the 'Assumption'; but Rubens only in the 'Battle of the
Amazons'; and Vandyck only at court; and he adds, his indignation
mounting as he proceeds, 'absolutely now at last we find ourselves
without sight of God in all the world!'
In another place Mr. Ruskin's old enemy, Salvator, receives more lenient
treatment than of yore. True, he still regards him as a lost spirit,
rendering Michelet's, 'Ce damné Salvator' tenderly as 'that condemned
Salvator.' But Mr. Ruskin now perceives in him the 'last traces of
spiritual life in the art of Europe, the last man to whom the thought of
a spiritual existence presented itself as a conceivable reality. All
succeeding men, however powerful,--Rembrandt, Rubens, Vandyck,
Reynolds,--would have mocked at the idea of a spirit. They were men of
the world, they are never in earnest, and they are never appalled. But
Salvator was capable of pensiveness, of faith, and of fear.' 'He would
have acknowledged religion had he seen any that was true, anything
rather than that baseness which he did see.' 'If there is no other
religion than this of popes and cardinals, let us to the robber's ambush
and the dragon's den.' 'A little early sympathy, a word of true
guidance, perhaps had saved him. What says he of himself? "Despiser of
wealth and of death." Two grand scorns; but, oh! condemned Salvator, the
question is not for man what he can scorn, but what he can love!' Again
further on,--'In Salvator you have an awakened conscience and some
spiritual power contending with evil, but conquered by it and brought
into captivity to it.' Generally there is in this last volume a
disposition to judge of the painter's art merits, especially in relation
to his faculty of imitation, with more kindness and respect than in the
earlier volumes.
This tendency to greater calmness and generosity of view in the case of
Salvator (not to recite evidences of similar nature in other cases) is a
sign of healthful mental progression. Opinions taken up in the first
instance, possibly as much from impulse as conviction, grown from
floating speculations into recognised realities, require to be defended
less strenuously than in the early doubtful phase of their being, and
still less need for their support virulent onslaughts upon antagonistic
views. It is no longer necessary to degrade _some_ painters utterly for
the proper exaltation of some _others_; or it may be better to say, to
deify _one_ by the damnification of the whole balance of the fraternity.
There have been victims enough on the shrine of Turner, and his manes
are now appeased and his wrongs avenged. What need of further
holocausts? So Mr. Ruskin loosens his grip and half sheaths his knife,
and becomes more merciful and pitiful, though yet unable to do full
justice to those who oppose him: for it is one of his marked
peculiarities that he is unable to shift his point of view. He judges
always by his own modern _ex post facto_ standard; he cannot see with
Salvator's eyes, or with the eyes of his contemporaries, and determine
how fully he met the requirements of his age and time, how honestly he
won the applause of the men about him. Mr. Ruskin asks two questions
only--'Are these works accurate renderings of nature, as I by education
and study now know nature to be?' and next, 'Are these high art in its
purest, and most ideal, and most godly form?' By such Procrustean
measurements he adjusts his decisions, and so misses the swarthy
romance, the dramatic coarse fire of Salvator, and fails to appreciate
the vigorous, affluent, gorgeous majesty of Rubens, before whose
luxurious pageant canvas it always seems that, of right, pompous
coronation music should be played, and multitudes huzza and banners
wave. Perhaps some such feelings as these Mr. Ruskin himself at one time
experienced, until, shocked by what he deemed the excessive mundaneness,
the intense unspirituality of the great Fleming,--he revolted to the
thoughtful, attenuated poetry of Angelico and the early Italian
painters, to be in time again driven by the too intense asceticism and
archaic debility of this school, to the robust excellence and the more
real and material, though pure and refined, beauty of the Venetians.
With them he has now found his golden mean.
To turn more particularly to the contents of Mr. Ruskin's concluding
volume, and their invariable bearing upon Turner.
The first half is divided into considerations of 'Leaf' and 'Cloud
Beauty,' respectively: 'The leaf between earth and man, as the cloud is
between man and heaven.' Many fanciful headings are given to the
chapters on these subjects. In the 'Earth Veil' Mr. Ruskin discourses in
very delicate poetry, of trees and flowers, which form on the surface of
the earth a veil of vegetation; 'of strange intermediate being; which
breathes, but has no voice; moves, but cannot leave its appointed place;
passes through life without consciousness; to death without bitterness;
wears the beauty of youth without its passion, and declines to the
weakness of age without its regret' Passing on, then, to the 'orders of
the leaf,' he arranges plants in two classes,--the TENTED PLANTS, which
live on the ground, as lilies, or crawl on the rocks, as lichen and
mosses, leading ever an arab life, and so passing away and perishing;
and the BUILDING PLANTS, which soar above the earth in the
'architectural edifices we call trees.' And the builders are again
curiously subdivided. There are the 'builders with the shield,' with
their leaves, shield-shaped, raised above, and sheltering their buds as
they rise. Gentle, and pleasant, and conciliatory builders are these,
living in pleasant places, and providing food and shelter for man. And
there are also the 'builders with the sword,' with sharp-pointed leaves
stuck fearlessly out sword fashion, the bud growing amid the points,
dwelling in savage places, and of little aid to man, none in the way of
food. (They are called 'pines,' we may explain, vernacularly.) Mr.
Ruskin then goes on to the 'Bud,' and is at some pains to explain its
gradual development and the scheme of its growth. 'Leaves' he explains
to be 'broadly divisible into mainsails and studding-sails.' Many
diagrams are given explanatory of the leaf system, its form and manner
and charm, and the 'laws of deflection, of succession, of resilience,'
all fanciful theories arising from the subject, are in turn laid down.
In our progress to 'tree-structure,' we come to 'leaf aspects.' Then
perhaps the object of this elaborate teaching transpires, and Mr. Ruskin
speaks of the 'Pre-Raphaelites who, some years back, began to lead our
wondering artists back into the eternal paths of all great art, and
showed that whatever men drew at all ought to be drawn accurately and
knowingly, not blunderingly nor by guess (leaves of trees among other
things),' proceeding to the following curious dictum,--'If you can paint
one leaf you can paint the world.' The Pre-Raphaelite laws 'lay stern on
the strength of Apelles and Zeuxis, put Titian to thoughtful trouble,
are unrelaxed yet, and unrelaxable for ever. Paint a leaf indeed!--the
above-named Titian has done it. Corregio, moreover, and Giorgione and
Leonardo, very nearly, trying hard. Holbein three or four times, in
precious pieces, highest wrought. Raphael, it may be, in one or two
crowns of Muse or Sibyl. If any one else in later times, we have to
consider.' There is no endeavour to show how or why accurate drawing of
the leaf leads to general accuracy in drawing; no analogy is attempted,
for instance, between the human and vegetable anatomies. Perhaps this
is as well; only it will strike even the most casual and unprofessional
reader that a student may be able by practice to become a very apt
draughtsman of the leaf skeleton, and yet be a feeble renderer of the
human. Mr. Ruskin argues, unsoundly enough, from effects; the great
Italian designers of the figure all drew leaves thoroughly well. Among
the Dutch painters the leaf painting degenerates in proportion to the
diminishing power in the figure; therefore, who can draw the leaf can
draw the figure. Next comes sharp criticism of the Dutch leaf-treatment
generally, and elaborate demonstration, by the aid of many plates, of
the infinite superiority of Turner, closing with what sounds a strange
admission after such teachings and such arguments:--'Remember always
that Turner's greatness and rightness in all these points successively
depend on no scientific knowledge. _He was entirely ignorant of all the
laws we have been developing._ He had merely accustomed himself to see
impartially, intensely, and fearlessly.'
The fact is that Mr. Ruskin is disposed to lay far too heavy a stress on
the mere mechanical accuracy of the draughtsman, to think too much of
his hand, too little of his head. He has been surrounded by a number of
supple admirers and unquestioning students, who, placing their whole
time and labour at his disposal, have rather pampered, by such
ultra-allegiance, his inclination to be dogmatic on these points. 'Study
this for half an hour,' he says of one illustration; 'Look here for a
good five minutes,' of another; 'or, better still, get pen and paper and
draw it yourself: take care you make it as nearly as you can quite
right,' and so on. There is something almost ludicrous, only Mr. Ruskin
has little perception of the humorous, about the strained care, the
exaggeration of painstakings, bestowed on some of the drawings. Instance
plate 58, drawn by one of his pupils at the Working Man's College (a
joiner by trade), 'an unprejudiced person,' states Mr. Ruskin, always
_posing_ himself as addressing a suspicious and jealous audience, who
would rise against him and turn him off the judgment seat, by fair means
or foul, if they dared, or could. The student was set to work in the
spring, the subject being a lilac branch of its real size as it grew,
_before it budded_. It will tell how long this rather simple lesson
occupied the student, that 'before he could get it quite right, _the
buds came out and interrupted him_.' Yet Mr. Ruskin makes strong
objection to the word 'niggling.' 'I should be glad if it were entirely
banished from service and record. The only essential question about
drawing is whether it be right or wrong; that it be small or large,
swift or slow, is a matter of convenience only.' He reserves to himself,
however, the right to apply the 'ugly word' to Hobbima. 'A single dusty
roll of Turner's brush is more truly expressive of the infinitude of
foliage than the _niggling_ of Hobbima could have rendered his canvas if
he had worked on it till doomsday.' 'No man before (Turner) painted a
distant tree rightly, or a full-leaved branch rightly.'
Chapters on the 'branch,' the 'stem,' the 'leaf monuments,' the 'leaf
shadows,' and 'leaves motionless,' conclude the first division of the
book. They are all in elaboration of his 'leaf-beauty' theory, and are
rich in exquisite fancy and admirable writing, but it cannot be that
they should be detailed or examined here. As a specimen of feeling and
poetry, here are a few lines from many on the lichen:--'As in one sense
the humblest, in another they are the most honoured, of the earth's
children: unfading as motionless, the worm frets them not, and the
autumn wastes not. Strong in lowliness, they neither blanch in heat nor
pine in frost. To them, slow-fingered, constant-hearted, is intrusted
the weaving of the dark eternal tapestries of the hills; to them slow,
iris-eyed, the tender framing of their endless imagery. Sharing the
stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance; and
while the winds of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom
like drifted snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of
its cowslip gold, far above among the mountains, the silver lichen-spots
rest star-like on the stone, and the gathering orange stain upon the
edge of yonder western peak reflects the sunsets of a thousand years.'
In treating of the second portion of the first half of the book, 'Cloud
Beauty,' briefness is now indispensable. And first of 'Cloud
Balancings.'
Why is the soft, level, floating, white mist so heavy? Why so light 'the
colossal pyramids, huge and grim, with outlines as of rocks, and
strength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery
flanks?' What are clouds? Water in some fine form or other. But water is
heavier than air,--cannot float on it. May, then, clouds be formed of
minute hollow globules of water swimming in the air, balloon-like? These
and a hundred other questions; and what is the use of asking them? 'I
enjoy them,' says our author; 'perhaps the reader may--I think he ought,
and not love less the clouds of morning or the summer rain because they
come to him with hard questions, with only a syllable or two of answer
illuminated here and there on the heavenly scroll.' And Mr. Ruskin takes
credit to himself for not being 'dogmatic' on the subject of clouds.
Then of 'Cloud Flocks,'--upper clouds, detached, bird-like, with
flame-like curves, tender, various, pointing, inquiring. And why do they
assume these forms? Not driven by eddies of wind, they move along,
unhurried, compressed in a phalanx, fifty thousand separate groups in
half of a morning sky, all obedient to one rule of harmonious progress.
And so of 'Cloud Perspective,' cleverly set forth and illustrated, but
appealing perhaps too exclusively to the art-student for transfer here,
and of 'Cloud Colours.' Is it well to watch them like Turner? or to
neglect them with Claude, Salvator, Ruysdael, Wouvermans, never to look
nor portray? Then of the 'Cloud Chariot,' or cumulus,--not to be drawn,
not to be explained; even Turner attempted not that. Mountain-like,
electric, brilliant beyond power of colour, endless in variety of form,
transitory as a dream; and estimates of weight and movement, and of a
chariot cloud which soared 20,000 feet from behind Berne Cathedral! Next
of the 'Angel of the Sea,' the author's epithet for rain. 'Is English
wet weather one of the things which we would desire to see art give
perpetuity to?' Assuredly, answers Mr. Ruskin; and under five heads he
ranges the climates into which the globe is divided with respect to
their fitness for art. See the result:--
Wood lands Shrewd intellect No art.
Sand lands High intellect Religious art.
Vine lands Highest intellect Perfect art.
Field lands High intellect Material art.
Moss lands Shrewd intellect No art.
The table is worthy of study.
The second half of the volume treats of 'Ideas of Relation.' It deals
with Art in its relation to God and man, and with its work in the help
of human beings and the service of their Creator, and inquires into 'the
various powers, conditions, and aims of mind involved in the conception
or creation of pictures, in the choice of subject, and the mode and
order of its history; the choice of forms, and the modes of their
arrangement.' Very forcible and significant are the reflections upon
invention, the 'greatest and rarest of all the qualities of art;' and on
'Composition.' If one part be taken away, all the rest are helpless and
valueless; yet true composition is inexplicable--to be felt, not
reasoned upon. 'A poet or creator is, therefore, a person who puts
things together; not as a watchmaker, steel; or a shoemaker, leather:
but who puts life into them.'
In the chapter entitled the 'Task of the Least,' the author argues,
adroitly enough, 'that the _minutest_ portion of a great composition is
helpful to the whole,' and examples from Turner's compositions furnish
good evidence in this respect. Under the titles of the 'Lance of
Pallas,' and the 'Wings of the Lion,' the Greek and Venetian art
inspirations are descanted upon. These are chapters of great interest to
the student. Mr. Ruskin finds the Venetian mind perfect in its belief,
its width, and its judgment. Yet it passed away. Not desiring the
religion, but the delight only of its art, in proportion to the
greatness of the power of the Venetians was the shame of their fall.
Chapters follow on representative painters--Durer and Salvator, Claude
and Poussin, with comments on the 'faithless' and 'degraded' system of
classical landscape--Rubens and Cuyp. The next discourse is on
'Vulgarity.' A striking exemplification of it Mr. Ruskin finds in the
expression of the butcher's dog in Landseer's 'Low Life,' and
Cruikshank's Noah Claypole in the plates to _Oliver Twist_. He counts
'among the reckless losses of the right service of intellectual power
with which the century must be charged, the employing to no higher
purpose than the illustration of _Jack Sheppard_'and the "Irish
Rebellion," the great, grave (using the words deliberately and with
large meaning), and singular genius of Cruikshank,' though the works
selected are hardly fair specimens of the artist's general illustrative
labours, and the 'Irish Rebellion' is surely worthy of art record and
rendering. The most fatal form of vulgarity is described as dulness of
heart and dulness of bodily sense, general stupidity being its material
manifestation. 'One of the forms of death,' suggests Mr. Ruskin's
'keen-minded friend,' Mr. Brett, the painter--a vague enough
definition--but it pleases Mr. Ruskin, though he amends it, and settles
at last on the term 'earthful selfishness,' as embracing all the most
fatal and essential forms of mental vulgarity. Hastening to an end, it
can only now be simply stated that chapters on Wouvermans and Angelico
succeed. Then the 'two boyhoods,' an interesting and highly-wrought
comparison of the early lives of Turner and Giorgione, and of the
different circumstances under which their art-minds severally dawned and
developed. The remainder of the book is almost wholly devoted in glowing
strains, like the pompous glory of the crowning movement of a Beethoven
symphony, to loving yet deferential homage to Turner. His works and life
are traced out and lingered over, not with biographical exactness, but
with some effort to make them explicable of the character of the great
painter. 'Much of his mind and heart I do not know--perhaps never shall
know; but this much I do, and if there is anything in the previous
course of this work to warrant trust in me of any kind, let me be
trusted when I tell you that Turner had a heart as intensely kind and as
nobly true as ever God gave to one of his creatures.' And in a tone
replete with the most solemn and impassioned poetry and feeling, the
author brings his great work to an end. Emphatically a great work--a
noble jewel in the crown of art literature, resplendent enough to have
its flaws dwelt upon and some imperfections and shortcoming in its
setting pointed out, and yet to lose little in estimation after the
utmost has been said and done in these respects.