Arrows of the Chace, vol. 1/2

67

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.”

68

“Two Gentlemen of Verona,” Act ii. sc. 4. The scene of the picture was taken from Act v. sc. 4.

69

“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.

70

“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.

71

Of the two pictures described in this and the following letter, “The Light of the World” is well known from the engraving of it by W. H. Simmons. It was originally purchased by Mr. Thomas Combe, of Oxford, whose widow has recently presented it to Keble College, where it now hangs, in the library. The subject of the second picture, which is less well known, and which has never been engraved, sufficiently appears from the letter describing it.

72

Mr. Dearle informs me that this picture was bought from the walls of the Academy by a prize-holder in the Art Union of London. He adds that the purchaser resided in either America or Australia, and that the picture is now, therefore, presumably in one or other of those countries.

73

Shenstone: Elegy xxvi. The subject of the poem is that of the picture described here. The girl speaks—

The prize of the Liverpool Academy was awarded in 1858 to Millais’s “Blind Girl.” Popular feeling, however, favored another picture, the “Waiting for the Verdict” of A. Solomon, and a good deal of discussion arose as to whether the prize had been rightly awarded. As one of the judges, and as a member of the Academy, Mr. Alfred Hunt addressed a letter on the matter to Mr. Ruskin, the main portion of whose reply was sent by him to the Liverpool Albion and is now reprinted here. Mr. Solomon’s picture had been exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1857 (No. 562), and is mentioned in Mr. Ruskin’s Notes to the pictures of that year (p. 32).

74

The defence was made in a second notice (March 6, 1858) of the Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy, then open to the public. The picture of Mr. Waller Paton (now R.S.A.) alluded to here was entitled “Wild Water, Inveruglass” (161); he also exhibited one of “Arrochar Road, Tarbet” (314). The platitudes of the Scotsman against the pre-Raphaelites were contained in its second notice of the Exhibition (February 20, 1858).

75

There must be some error here, as it is the true dreams that come through the horn gate, while the fruitless ones pass through the gate of ivory. The allusion is to Homer (Odyssey, xix. 562).

76

In illustration of the old Scottish ballad of “Burd Helen,” who, fearing her lover’s desertion, followed him, dressed as a foot-page, through flood, if not through fire—

This picture (No. 141 in the Edinburgh Exhibition of 1858) was first exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1856. In the postscript to his Academy Notes of that year, Mr. Ruskin, after commenting on the “crying error of putting it nearly out of sight,” so that he had at first hardly noticed it, estimates this picture as second only to the “Autumn Leaves” of Mr. Millais in that exhibition. The following is a portion of his comment on it: “I see just enough of the figures to make me sure that the work is thoughtful and intense in the highest degree. The pressure of the girl’s hand on her side; her wild, firm, desolate look at the stream—she not raising her eyes as she makes her appeal, for fear of the greater mercilessness in the human look than in the glaze of the gliding water—the just choice of the type of the rider’s cruel face, and of the scene itself—so terrible in haggardness of rattling stones and ragged heath,—are all marks of the action of the very grandest imaginative power, shortened only of hold upon our feelings, because dealing with a subject too fearful to be for a moment believed true.”

The picture was originally purchased by Mr. John Miller, of Liverpool; at the sale of whose collection by Christie and Manson, two years later, in 1858, it fetched the price of two hundred guineas. At the same sale the “Blind Girl,” alluded to in the previous letter, was sold for three hundred.

For the poem illustrated by the picture, see Aytoun’s “Ballads of Scotland,” i. 219, where a slightly different version of it is given: it may also be found in “Percy’s Reliques” (vol. iii. p. 59), under the title of “Child Waters.” Other versions of this ballad, and other ballads of the same name, and probably origin, may be found in Jameson’s collection, vol. i. p. 117, vol. ii. p. 376, in Buchan’s “Ancient Ballads of the North,” ii. 29 (1879 ed.) and in “Four Books of Scottish Ballads,” Edin., 1868, Bk. ii. p. 21, where it is well noted that “Burd Helen” corresponds to the “Proud Elise” of northern minstrels, “La Prude Dame Elise” of the French, and the “Gentle Lady Elise” of the English—(Burd, Prud, Preux). It is also possible that it is a corruption of Burdalayn, or Burdalane, meaning an only child, a maiden, etc.

77

The Witness had objected to the “astonishing fondness” of the pre-Raphaelite school for “conceits,” instancing as typically far-fetched that in the picture of “Burd Helen,” where Lord John was represented “pulling to pieces a heart’s-ease,” as he crosses the stream.

78

The first exhibition of Turner’s pictures after his death was opened at Marlborough House early in November, 1856, seven months subsequent to the final decision as to the proper distribution of the property, which was the subject of Turner’s will.

79

See Rogers’ “Italy,” p. 29.

80

William Hookham Carpenter, for many years Keeper of the prints and drawings at the British Museum. He died in 1866.

81

Mr. Ruskin’s offer was accepted, and he eventually arranged the drawings, and, in particular, the four hundred now exhibited in one of the lower rooms of the National Gallery, and contained in the kind of cases above proposed, presented by Mr. Ruskin to the Gallery. Mr. Ruskin also printed, as promised, a descriptive and explanatory catalogue of a hundred of these four hundred drawings. (Catalogue of the Turner Sketches in the National Gallery. For private circulation. Part 1.1857.—Only one hundred copies printed, and no further parts issued.)

Writing (1858) to Mr. Norton of his whole work in arranging the Turner drawings, Mr. Ruskin said: “To show you a little what my work has been, I have facsimiled for you, as nearly as I could, one of the nineteen thousand sketches (comprised in the Turner bequest). It, like most of them, is not a sketch, but a group of sketches, made on both sides of the leaf of the note-book. The note-books vary in contents from sixty to ninety leaves: there are about two hundred books of the kind—three hundred and odd note-books in all; and each leaf has on an average this quantity of work, a great many leaves being slighter, some blank, but a great many also elaborate in the highest degree, some containing ten exquisite compositions on each side of the leaf, thus (see facsimile), each no bigger than this—and with about that quantity of work in each, but every touch of it inestimable, done with his whole soul in it. Generally the slighter sketches are written over it everywhere, as in the example inclosed, every incident being noted that was going on at the moment of the sketch.”—“List of Turner’s Drawings shown in connection with Mr. Norton’s Lectures.” Boston: 1874. p. 11. The facsimile alluded to by Mr. Norton is reproduced here.

82

July 3, 1857, upon the vote of £23,165 for the National Gallery.

83

The late Mr. Ralph Nicholson Wornum, who succeeded Mr. Uwins as Keeper of the National Gallery in 1855, and retained that office till his death in 1878.

84

“The family of Darius at the feet of Alexander after the Battle of Issus,” purchased at Venice from the Pisani collection in 1857. Lord Elcho had complained in the course of the debate that the price, £13,650, paid for this picture, had been excessive; and in reply allusion was made to the still higher price (£23,000) paid for the “Immaculate Conception” of Murillo, purchased for the Louvre by Napoleon III., in 1852, from the collection of Marshal Soult.—Of the great Veronese, Mr. Ruskin also wrote thus: “It at once, to my mind, raises our National Gallery from a second-rate to a first-rate collection. I have always loved the master, and given much time to the study of his works, but this is the best I have ever seen.” (Turner Notes, 1857, ed. v., p. 89, note.) So again before the National Gallery Commission, earlier in the same year, he had said, “I am rejoiced to hear (of its rumored purchase). If it is confirmed, nothing will have given me such pleasure for a long time. I think it is the most precious Paul Veronese in the world, as far as the completeness of the picture goes, and quite a priceless picture.”

85

The present letter was written in reply to a criticism, contained in the Literary Gazette of November 6, 1858, on Mr. Ruskin’s “Catalogue of the Turner Sketches and Drawings exhibited at Marlborough House 1857-8.” The subjects of complaint made by the Gazette sufficiently appear from this letter. They were, briefly, first, the mode of exhibition of the Turner Drawings proposed by Mr. Ruskin in his official report already alluded to, pp. 78 and 80, note; and, secondly, two alleged hyperboles and one omission in the Catalogue itself.

86

The cloud-forms which have disappeared from the drawings may be seen in the engravings.

87

“Notes on the oil pictures,” to be distinguished from the later catalogue of the Turner sketches and drawings with which this letter directly deals. See ante, p. 88, note.

88

By the way, you really ought to have given me some credit for the swivel frames in the desks of Marlborough House, which enable the public, however rough-handed, to see the drawings on both sides of the same leaf. [The identical frames, each containing examples of the sketches in pencil outline to which the letter alludes, may be seen in the windows of the lower rooms of the National Gallery, now devoted to the exhibition of the Turner drawings].

89

The rest of this letter may, with the exception of its two last paragraphs, and the slight alterations noted, be also found in “The Two Paths,” Appendix iv., “Subtlety of Hand” (pp. 226-9 of the new, and pp. 263-6 of the original edition), where the words bracketed [sic] in this reprint of it are, it will be seen, omitted.

90

From a vignette design by Stothard of a single figure, to illustrate the poem “On a Tear.” (Rogers’ Poems, London, 1834 ed.)

91

That is to say, accurate in measures estimated in millionths of inches.

92

Doubly emphasized in “The Two Paths,” where the words are printed thus: “I still look with awe at the combined delicacy and precision of his hand; IT BEATS OPTICAL WORK OUT OF SIGHT.”

93

In case any of your readers should question the use, in drawing, of work too fine for the touches to be individually, I quote a sentence from my “Elements of Drawing.” [See the “Elements of Drawing,” Letter III. on Color and Composition, p. 232]. “All fine coloring, like fine drawing, is delicate; so delicate, that if at last you see the color you are putting on, you are putting on too much. You ought to feel a change wrought in the general tone by touches which are individually too pale to be seen.”

94

“The Two paths” reprint has “put in italics.”

95

The following note is here added to the reprint in “The Two Paths:” “A sketch, observe—not a printed drawing. Sketches are only proper subjects of comparison with each other when they contain about the same quantity of work: the test of their merit is the quantity of truth told with a given number of touches. The assertion in the Catalogue which this letter was written to defend was made respecting the sketch of Rome, No. 101.”

96

No. 45 was a “Study of a Cutter.” Mr. Ruskin’s note to it in the Catalogue is partly as follows: “I have never seen any chalk sketch which for a moment could be compared with this for soul and power.... I should think that the power of it would be felt by most people; but if not, let those who do not feel its strength, try to copy it.” See the Catalogue under No. 45, as also under No. 71, referred to above.

97

In a letter to Mr. Norton written in the same year as this one to the Literary Gazette, Mr. Ruskin thus speaks of the value of these plates: “Even those who know most of art may at first look be disappointed with the Liber Studiorum. For the nobleness of these designs is not more in what is done than in what is not done in them. Every touch in these plates is related to every other, and has no permission of withdrawn, monastic virtue, but is only good in its connection with the rest, and in that connection infinitely and inimitably good. The showing how each of these designs is connected by all manner of strange intellectual chords and nerves with the pathos and history of this old English country of ours, and with the history of European mind from earliest mythology down to modern rationalism and irrationalism—all this was what I meant to try and show in my closing work; but long before that closing I felt it to be impossible.”—Extract from a letter of Mr. Ruskin, 1858, quoted in the “List of Turner Drawings, etc.,” already mentioned, p. 5.

98

The Literary Gazette of November 20, 1858, contains a reply to this letter, but as it did not provoke a further letter from Mr. Ruskin, it is not noticed in detail here.

99

There was at the date of this and the following letter an exhibition of Turner drawings at the South Kensington Museum. These pictures have, however, been since removed to the National Gallery, and the only works of Turner now at Kensington, are some half dozen oil paintings belonging to the Sheepshanks collection, and about the same number of water-color drawings, which form part of the historical series of British water-color paintings.

100

This refers to a letter signed “E. A. F.” which appeared in The Times of October 19, 1859, advising the adoption of Mr. Gilbert Scott’s Gothic design for the Foreign Office in preference to any Classic design. The writer entered at some length into the principles of Gothic and Classic architecture, which he briefly summed up in the last sentence of his letter: “Gothic, then, is national; it is constructively real; it is equally adapted to all sorts of buildings; it is convenient; it is cheap. In none of these does Italian surpass it; in most of them it is very inferior to it.” See the letters on the Oxford Museum as to the adaptability of Gothic—included in Section vi. of these Letters on Art. With regard to the cheapness of Gothic, the correspondent of The Times had pointed out that while it may be cheap and yet thoroughly good so far as it goes, Italian must always be costly.

101

Hardly a debate. Lord Francis Hervey had recently (June 30, 1876) put a question in the House of Commons to Lord Henry Lennox (First Commissioner of Works) as to whether it was the fact that many of Turner’s drawings were at that time stowed in the cellars of the National Gallery, and had never been exhibited. The Daily Telegraph in a short article on the matter (July 1, 1876) appealed to Mr. Ruskin for his opinion on the exhibition of these drawings.

102

Now I trust, under Mr. Poynter and Mr. Sparkes, undergoing thorough reform. [Mr. Poynter, R.A., was then, as now, Director, and Mr. Sparkes Head Master, of the Art School at the South Kensington Museum].

103

For notes of these drawings see the Catalogue of the Turner Sketches and Drawings already mentioned—(a) The Battle of Fort Bard, Val d’Aosta, p. 32; (b) the Edinburgh, p. 30; and (c) the Ivy Bridge, Devon, p. 32.

104

I have omitted to add to my note (p. 84) on Mr. Ruskin’s arrangement of the Turner drawings a reference to his own account of the labor which that arrangement involved, and of the condition in which he found the vast mass of the sketches. See “Modern Painters,” vol. v., Preface, p. vi.

105

The Art Treasures Exhibition in 1857, being the year in which the lectures contained in the “Political Economy of Art” were delivered. (See “A Joy for Ever”—Ruskin’s Works, vol. xi. p. 80.)

106

“The Plains of Troy;”—see for a note of this drawing Mr. Ruskin’s Notes on his own “Turners,” 1878, p. 45, where he describes it as “one of the most elaborate of the Byron vignettes, and full of beauty,” adding that “the meaning of the sunset contending with the storm is the contest of the powers of Apollo and Athene;” and for the engraving of it, see Murray’s edition of Byron’s Life and Works (1832, seventeen volumes), where it forms the vignette title-page of vol. vii. For the Richmond and the Egglestone Abbey, also in the possession of Mr. Ruskin, see the above mentioned Notes, p. 29 (Nos. 26 and 27). The Langharne Castle was formerly in the possession of Mr. W. M. Bigg, at the sale of whose collection in 1868 it was sold for £451.

107

A misprint for “wares;” see next letter, p. 104.

108

Addressed to Mr. Ruskin by Mr. Collingwood Smith, and requesting Mr. Ruskin to state in a second letter that the remarks as to the effect of light on the water colors of Turner did not extend to water color drawings in general; but that the evanescence of the colors in Turner’s drawings was due partly to the peculiar vehicles with which he painted, and partly to the gray paper (saturated with indigo) on which he frequently worked. Mr. Ruskin complied with this request by thus forwarding for publication Mr. Collingwood Smith’s letter.

109

The references to The Times allude to an article on the “Copies of Turner Drawings,” by Mr. William Ward, of 2 Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey, which were then, as now, exhibited for sale in the rooms of the Fine Art Society.

Of these copies of Turner, Mr. Ruskin says: “They are executed with extreme care under my own eye by the draughtsman trained by me for the purpose, Mr. Ward. Everything that can be learned from the smaller works of Turner may be as securely learned from these drawings. I have been more than once in doubt, seeing original and copy together, which was which; and I think them about the best works that can now be obtained for a moderate price, representing the authoritative forms of art in landscape.”—Extract from letter of Mr. Ruskin, written in 1867. List of Turner Drawings, etc., shown in connection with Mr. Norton’s lectures. Boston, 1874, p. 9. (See also “Ariadne Florentina,” p. 221, note.)

The following comment of Mr. Ruskin on one of Mr. Ward’s most recent copies is also interesting as evidence that the opinions expressed in this letter are still retained by its writer: “London, 20th March, 1880.—The copy of Turner’s drawing of ‘Fluelen,’ which has been just completed by Mr. Ward, and shown to me to-day, is beyond my best hopes in every desirable quality of execution; and is certainly as good as it is possible for care and skill to make it. I am so entirely satisfied with it that, for my own personal pleasure—irrespective of pride, I should feel scarcely any loss in taking it home with me instead of the original; and for all uses of artistic example or instruction, it is absolutely as good as the original.—John Ruskin.”—The copy in question is from a drawing in the possession of Mr. Ruskin (see the Turner Notes, 1878, No. 70), and was executed for its present proprietor, Mr. T. S. Kennedy, of Meanwoods, Leeds.

110

“Italy,” a reputed Turner, lent by the late Mr. Wynn Ellis. No. 235 was “A Landscape,” with Cattle, in the possession of Lord Leconfield.

111

See also “Modern Painters,” vol. v. pp. 345-347, and “Lectures on Architecture and Painting,” pp. 181-188, where the character of Turner is further explained, and various anecdotes given in special illustration of his truth, generosity, and kindness of heart.

112

The book was also referred to in “Modern Painters,” vol. v. p. 344, where Mr. Ruskin speaks of this “Life of Turner,” then still unpublished, as being written “by a biographer, who will, I believe, spare no pains in collecting the few scattered records which exist of a career so uneventful and secluded.”

113

Nearly eight years after Leech’s death on October 29, 1864.

114

The number of the Architect in which this letter was printed contained two sketches from Mr. George’s “Etchings on the Mosel”—those, viz., of the Elector’s Palace, Coblentz, and of the interior of Metz Cathedral. The intention of the Architect to reproduce these etchings had apparently been previously communicated to Mr. Ruskin, who wrote the present letter for the issue in which the etchings were to be given. Mr. George has since published other works of the same kind—e.g., “Etchings in Belgium,” “Etchings on the Loire” (see Mr. Ruskin’s advice to him at the end of this letter, p. 116).

115

The reference must, I think, be to “Ariadne Florentina: Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving given before the University of Oxford, Michaelmas Term, 1872,” and afterwards published, 1873-6. The lectures given in the year 1873 were upon Tuscan Art, now published in “Val d’Arno.”

116

The value of Rembrandt’s etchings is always in the inverse ratio of the labor bestowed on them after his first thoughts have been decisively expressed; and even the best of his chiaroscuros (the spotted shell, for instance) are mere child’s play compared to the disciplined light and shade of Italian masters.

117

This letter was written to Mr. H. Stacy Marks, A.R.A., in answer to a request that Mr. Ruskin would in some way record his impression of the Frederick Walker Exhibition, then open to the public. Frederick Walker died in June, 1875, at the early age of thirty-five, only four years after having been elected an Associate of the Royal Academy.

118

The “Hornby Castle” was executed, together with the rest of the “great Yorkshire series,” for Whitaker’s “History of Richmondshire” (Longman, 1823).—The picture of John Lewis here alluded to is described in Mr. Ruskin’s “Academy Notes,” 1856, No. II., p. 37.

1. “The Almshouse”—No. 52—called “The House of Refuge.” Oil on canvas. A garden and terrace in quadrangle of almshouses; on left an old woman and girl; on right a mower cutting grass. Exhibited R. A. 1872.