Arrows of the Chace, vol. 1/2

13

This letter was written in reply to one signed “Matilda Y.,” which had been printed in the Artist and Amateur’s Magazine, p. 265, December, 1843, and which related to the opposite opinions held by different critics of the works of Turner, which were praised by some as “beautiful and profoundly truthful representations of nature,” whilst others declared them to be “executed without end, aim, or principle.” “May not these contradictions,” wrote the correspondent, in the passage alluded to by Mr. Ruskin, “be in a great measure the result of extreme ignorance of art in the great mass of those persons who take upon themselves the office of critics and reviewers? Can any one be a judge of art whose judgment is not founded on an accurate knowledge of nature? It is scarcely possible that a mere knowledge of pictures, however extensive, can qualify a man for the arduous and responsible duties of public criticism of art.”

14

Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Director of the Berlin Gallery from 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. [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].

18

The answer is put into the mouth of the sophist; but put as an established fact, which he cannot possibly deny. [Plato: Hippias Major, 284 E. Steph.].

19

Wordsworth. “Poems of Sentiment and Reflection,” i. “Expostulation and Reply.”

20

“Memorials of a Tour in Scotland. 1814. iii. Effusion.”

21

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.

22

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.

23

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.

24

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.

25

“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 [“Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society.” Colloquy xiv. (vol. ii. p. 399, in Murray’s edition, 1829)]. Such allowance is never made to the painter. In him, inspiration is called insanity—in him, the sacred fire, possession.

26

“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.

27

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.

28

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.”

29

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.”

30

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.

31

“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.

32

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.

33

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.

34

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.

35

“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.

36

No. 46 in the National Gallery.

37

“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.”

38

No. 35 in the National Gallery. This and the two pictures already mentioned were the typical instances of “spoilt pictures,” quoted by “Verax.”

39

“Modern Painters,” vol. i. p. 146.

40

“Philip IV. of Spain, hunting the Wild Boar” (No. 197), purchased in 1846.

41

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.

42

“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.

43

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.

44

“The Judgment of Paris” (No. 194), purchased from Mr. Penrice’s collection in 1846.

45

“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.

46

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).

47

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.

48

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).

49

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.

50

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].

51

See p. 42, note.

52

Query, a misprint? as six pictures are mentioned.

53

“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.

54

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.

55

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.

56

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.

57

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.

58

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.

59

Professor Nevil Story-Maskelyne (now M.P. for Cricklade) was then, and till his recent resignation, Keeper of Mineralogy at the Museum.

60

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.

61

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.

62

This letter was written in reply to one requesting Mr. Ruskin’s views on the best means of forming a public Gallery at Leicester.

63

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.”

64

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.

65

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.

66

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),

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.