Modern Painters Volume III Part 1

Modern Painters.

Vol. III.

by John Ruskin.

PREFACE.

As this preface is nearly all about myself, no one need take the trouble of reading it, unless he happens to be desirous of knowing-- what I, at least, am bound to state,--the circ.u.mstances which have caused the long delay of the work, as well as the alterations which will be noticed in its form.

The first and second volumes were written to check, as far as I could, the attacks upon Turner which prevented the public from honoring his genius, at the time when his power was greatest. The check was partially given, but too late; Turner was seized by painful illness not long after the second volume appeared; his works, towards the close of the year 1845, showed a conclusive failure of power; and I saw that nothing remained for me to write, but his epitaph.

The critics had done their proper and appointed work; they had embittered, more than those who did not know Turner intimately could have believed possible, the closing years of his life; and had blinded the world in general (as it appears ordained by Fate that the world always _shall_ be blinded) to the presence of a great spirit among them, till the hour of its departure. With them, and their successful work, I had nothing more to do; the account of gain and loss, of gifts and grat.i.tude, between Turner and his countrymen, was for ever closed. _He_ could only be left to his quiet death at Chelsea,--the sun upon his face; _they_ to dispose a length of funeral through Ludgate, and bury, with threefold honor, his body in St. Paul's, his pictures at Charing Cross, and his purposes in Chancery. But with respect to the ill.u.s.tration and preservation of those of his works which remained unburied, I felt that much might yet be done, if I could at all succeed in proving that these works had some n.o.bleness in them, and were worth preservation. I pursued my task, therefore, as I had at first proposed, with this only difference in method,--that instead of writing in continued haste, such as I had been forced into at first by the urgency of the occasion, I set myself to do the work as well as I could, and to collect materials for the complete examination of the canons of art received among us.

I have now given ten years of my life to the single purpose of enabling myself to judge rightly of art, and spent them in labor as earnest and continuous as men usually undertake to gain position, or acc.u.mulate fortune. It is true, that the public still call me an "amateur;" nor have I ever been able to persuade them that it was possible to work steadily and hard with any other motive than that of gaining bread, or to give up a fixed number of hours every day to the furtherance of an object unconnected with personal interests. I have, however, given up so much of life to this object; earnestly desiring to ascertain, and be able to teach, the truth respecting art; and also knowing that this truth was, by time and labor, definitely ascertainable.

It is an idea too frequently entertained, by persons who are not much interested in art, that there are no laws of right or wrong concerning it; and that the best art is that which pleases most widely. Hence the constant allegation of "dogmatism" against any one who states unhesitatingly either preference or principle, respecting pictures.

There are, however, laws of truth and right in painting, just as fixed as those of harmony in music, or of affinity in chemistry. Those laws are perfectly ascertainable by labor, and ascertainable no other way.

It is as ridiculous for any one to speak positively about painting who has not given a great part of his life to its study, as it would be for a person who had never studied chemistry to give a lecture on affinities of elements; but it is also as ridiculous for a person to speak hesitatingly about laws of painting who has conscientiously given his time to their ascertainment, as it would be for Mr. Faraday to announce in a dubious manner that iron had an affinity for oxygen, and to put the question to the vote of his audience whether it had or not.

Of course there are many things, in all stages of knowledge, which cannot be dogmatically stated; and it will be found, by any candid reader, either of what I have before written, or of this book, that in many cases, I am _not_ dogmatic. The phrase, "I think so," or, "it seems so to me," will be met with continually; and I pray the reader to believe that I use such expression always in seriousness, never as matter of form.

It may perhaps be thought that, considering the not very elaborate structure of the following volumes, they might have been finished sooner. But it will be found, on reflection, that the ranges of inquiry engaged in demanded, even for their slight investigation, time and pains which are quite unrepresented in the result. It often required a week or two's hard walking to determine some geological problem, now dismissed in an unnoticed sentence; and it constantly needed examination and thought, prolonged during many days in the picture gallery, to form opinions which the reader may suppose to be dictated by caprice, and will hear only to dispute.

A more serious disadvantage, resulting from the necessary breadth of subject, was the chance of making mistakes in minor and accessory points. For the labor of a critic who sincerely desires to be just, extends into more fields than it is possible for any single hand to furrow straightly. He has to take _some_ note of many physical sciences; of optics, geometry, geology, botany, and anatomy; he must acquaint himself with the works of all great artists, and with the temper and history of the times in which they lived; he must be a fair metaphysician, and a careful observer of the phenomena of natural scenery. It is not possible to extend the range of work thus widely, without running the chance of occasionally making mistakes; and if I carefully guarded against that chance, I should be compelled both to shorten my powers of usefulness in many directions, and to lose much time over what work I undertook. All that I can secure, therefore, is rightness in main points and main tendencies; for it is perfectly possible to protect oneself against small errors, and yet to make great and final error in the sum of work: on the other hand, it is equally possible to fall into many small errors, and yet be right in tendency all the while, and entirely right in the end. In this respect, some men may be compared to careful travellers, who neither stumble at stones, nor slip in sloughs, but have, from the beginning of their journey to its close, chosen the wrong road; and others to those who, however slipping or stumbling at the wayside, have yet their eyes fixed on the true gate and goal (stumbling, perhaps, even the more because they have), and will not fail of reaching them. Such are a.s.suredly the safer guides: he who follows them may avoid their slips, and be their companion in attainment.

Although, therefore, it is not possible but that, in the discussion of so many subjects as are necessarily introduced in the following pages, here and there a chance should arise of minor mistake or misconception, the reader need not be disturbed by the detection of any such. He will find always that they do not affect the matter mainly in hand.

I refer especially in these remarks to the chapters on Cla.s.sical and Mediaeval Landscape. It is certain, that in many respects, the views there stated must be inaccurate or incomplete; for how should it be otherwise when the subject is one whose proper discussion would require knowledge of the entire history of two great ages of the world? But I am well a.s.sured that the suggestions in those chapters are useful; and that even if, after farther study of the subject, the reader should find cause to differ with me in this or the other speciality, he will yet thank me for helping him to a certain length in the investigation, and confess, perhaps, that he could not at last have been right, if I had not first ventured to be wrong.

And of one thing he may be certified, that any error I fall into will not be in an illogical deduction: I may mistake the meaning of a symbol, or the angle of a rock-cleavage, but not draw an inconsequent conclusion. I state this, because it has often been said that I am not logical, by persons who do not so much as know what logic means. Next to imagination, the power of perceiving logical relation is one of the rarest among men; certainly, of those with whom I have conversed, I have found always ten who had deep feeling, quick wit, or extended knowledge, for one who could set down a syllogism without a flaw; and for ten who could set down a syllogism, only one who could _entirely_ understand that a square has four sides. Even as I am sending these sheets to press, a work is put into my hand, written to prove (I would, from the depth of my heart, it could prove) that there was no ground for what I said in the Stones of Venice respecting the logical probability of the continuity of evil. It seems learned, temperate, thoughtful, everything in feeling and aim that a book should be, and yet it begins with this sentence:

"The question cited in our preface, 'Why not infinite good out of infinite evil?' must be taken to imply--for it else can have no weight,--that in order to the production of infinite good, the existence of infinite evil is indispensable."

So, if I had said that there was no reason why honey should not be sucked out of a rock, and oil out of a flinty rock, the writer would have told me this sentence must be taken to imply--for it else could have no weight,--that in order to the production of honey, the existence of rocks is indispensable. No less intense and marvellous are the logical errors into which our best writers are continually falling, owing to the notion that laws of logic will help them better than common sense. Whereas any man who can reason at all, does it instinctively, and takes leaps over intermediate syllogisms by the score, yet never misses his footing at the end of the leap; but he who cannot instinctively argue, might as well, with the gout in both feet, try to follow a chamois hunter by the help of crutches, as to follow, by the help of syllogism, a person who has the right use of his reason.

I should not, however, have thought it necessary to allude to this common charge against my writings, but that it happens to confirm some views I have long entertained, and which the reader will find glanced at in their proper place, respecting the necessity of a more _practically_ logical education for our youth. Of other various charges I need take no note, because they are always answered the one by the other. The complaint made against me to-day for being narrow and exclusive, is met to-morrow by indignation that I should admire schools whose characters cannot be reconciled; and the a.s.sertion of one critic, that I am always contradicting myself, is balanced by the vexation of another, at my ten years' obstinacies in error.

I once intended the ill.u.s.trations to these volumes to be more numerous and elaborate, but the art of photography now enables any reader to obtain as many memoranda of the facts of nature as he needs; and, in the course of my ten years' pause, I have formed plans for the representation of some of the works of Turner on their own scale; so that it would have been quite useless to spend time in reducing drawings to the size of this page, which were afterwards to be engraved of their own size.[1] I have therefore here only given ill.u.s.trations enough to enable the reader, who has not access to the works of Turner, to understand the principles laid down in the text, and apply them to such art as may be within his reach. And I owe sincere thanks to the various engravers who have worked with me, for the zeal and care with which they have carried out the requirements in each case, and overcome difficulties of a nature often widely differing from those involved by their habitual practice. I would not make invidious distinction, where all have done well; but may perhaps be permitted to point, as examples of what I mean, to the 3rd and 6th Plates in this volume (the 6th being left unlettered in order not to injure the effect of its ground), in which Mr. Le Keux and Mr.

Armytage have exactly facsimiled, in line engraving, drawings of mine made on a grey ground touched with white, and have given even the _loaded_ look of the body color. The power of thus imitating actual touches of color with pure lines will be, I believe, of great future importance in rendering Turner's work on a large scale. As for the merit or demerit of these or other drawings of my own, which I am obliged now for the sake of ill.u.s.tration often to engrave, I believe I could speak of it impartially, and should unreluctantly do so; but I leave, as most readers will think I ought, such judgment to them, merely begging them to remember that there are two general principles to be kept in mind in examining the drawings of any writer on art: the first, that they ought at least to show such ordinary skill in draughtsmans.h.i.+p, as to prove that the writer knows _what_ the good qualities of drawing _are_; the second, that they are never to be expected to equal, in either execution or conception, the work of accomplished artists,--for the simple reason, that in order to do _any_thing thoroughly well, the whole mind, and the whole available time, must be given to that single art. It is probable, for reasons which will be noted in the following pages, that the critical and executive faculties are in great part independent of each other; so that it is nearly as great an absurdity to require of any critic that he should equal in execution even the work which he condemns, as to require of the audience which hisses a piece of vocal music that they should instantly chant it in truer harmony themselves. But whether this be true or not (it is at least untrue to this extent, that a certain power of drawing is _indispensable_ to the critic of art), and supposing that the executive and critical powers always exist in some correspondent degree in the same person, still they cannot be cultivated to the same extent. The attention required for the development of a theory is necessarily withdrawn from the design of a drawing, and the time devoted to the realization of a form is lost to the solution of a problem. Choice _must_ at last be made between one and the other power, as the princ.i.p.al aim of life; and if the painter should find it necessary sometimes to explain one of his pictures in words, or the writer to ill.u.s.trate his meaning with a drawing, the skill of the one need not be doubted because his logic is feeble, nor the sense of the other because his pencil is listless.

As, however, it is sometimes alleged by the opponents of my principles, that I have never _done_ _any_thing, it is proper that the reader should know exactly the amount of work for which I am answerable in these ill.u.s.trations. When an example is given from any of the works of Turner, it is either etched by myself from the original drawing, or engraved from a drawing of mine, translating Turner's work out of color into black and white, as for instance, the frontispiece to the fourth volume. When a plate is inscribed as "_after_" such and such a master, I have always myself made the drawing, in black and white, from the original picture; as, for instance, Plate 11, in this volume. If it has been made from a previously existing engraving, it is inscribed with the name of the first engraver at the left-hand lowest corner; as, for instance, Plate 18, in Vol. IV. Outline etchings are either by my own hand on the steel, as Plate 12, here, and 20, 21, in Vol. IV.; or copies from my pen drawings, etched by Mr. Boys, with a fidelity for which I sincerely thank him; one, Plate 22, Vol. IV., is both drawn and etched by Mr. Boys from an old engraving. Most of the other ill.u.s.trations are engraved from my own studies from nature. The colored Plate (7, in this volume) is from a drawing executed with great skill by my a.s.sistant, Mr. J. J. Laing, from MSS. in the British Museum; and the lithography of it has been kindly superintended by Mr. Henry Shaw, whose renderings of mediaeval ornaments stand, as far as I know, quite unrivalled in modern art. The two woodcuts of mediaeval design, Figs. 1 and 3, are also from drawings by Mr. Laing, admirably cut by Miss Byfield. I use this word "admirably," not with reference to mere delicacy of execution, which can usually be had for money, but to the perfect fidelity of facsimile, which is in general _not_ to be had for money, and by which Miss Byfield has saved me all trouble with respect to the numerous woodcuts in the fourth volume; first, by her excellent renderings of various portions of Albert Durer's woodcuts; and, secondly, by reproducing, to their last dot or scratch, my own pen diagrams, drawn in general so roughly that few wood-engravers would have condescended to cut them with care, and yet always involving some points in which care was indispensable. One or two changes have been permitted in the arrangement of the book, which make the text in these volumes not altogether a symmetrical continuation of that in former ones. Thus, I thought it better to put the numbers of paragraphs always at the left-hand side of the page; and as the summaries, in small type, appeared to me for the most part c.u.mbrous and useless, I have banished them, except where there were complicated divisions of subject which it seemed convenient to indicate at the margin. I am not sorry thus to carry out my own principle of the sacrifice of architectural or constructive symmetry to practical service. The plates are, in a somewhat unusual way, numbered consecutively through the two volumes, as I intend them to be also through the fifth. This plan saves much trouble in references.

I have only to express, in conclusion, my regret that it has been impossible to finish the work within the limits first proposed.

Having, of late, found my designs always requiring enlargement in process of execution, I will take care, in future, to set no limits whatsoever to any good intentions. In the present instance I trust the reader will pardon me, as the later efforts of our schools of art have necessarily introduced many new topics of discussion.

And so I wish him heartily a happy New Year.

Denmark Hill, Jan. 1856.

[1] I should be very grateful to the proprietors of pictures or drawings by Turner, if they would send me lists of the works in their possession; as I am desirous of forming a systematic catalogue of all his works.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lake, Land, and Cloud. (near Como.)]

MODERN PAINTERS.

PART IV.

OF MANY THINGS.

CHAPTER I.

OF THE RECEIVED OPINIONS TOUCHING THE "GRAND STYLE."

-- 1. In taking up the clue of an inquiry, now intermitted for nearly ten years, it may be well to do as a traveller would, who had to recommence an interrupted journey in a guideless country; and, ascending, as it were, some little hill beside our road, note how far we have already advanced, and what pleasantest ways we may choose for farther progress.

I endeavored, in the beginning of the first volume, to divide the sources of pleasure open to us in Art into certain groups, which might conveniently be studied in succession. After some preliminary discussion, it was concluded (Part I. Chap. III. -- 86), that these groups were, in the main, three; consisting, first, of the pleasures taken in perceiving simple resemblance to Nature (Ideas of Truth); secondly, of the pleasures taken in the beauty of the things chosen to be painted (Ideas of Beauty); and, lastly, of pleasures taken in the meanings and relations of these things (Ideas of Relation).

The first volume, treating of the ideas of Truth, was chiefly occupied with an inquiry into the various success with which different artists had represented the facts of Nature,--an inquiry necessarily conducted very imperfectly, owing to the want of pictorial ill.u.s.tration.

The second volume nearly opened the inquiry into the nature of ideas of Beauty and Relation, by a.n.a.lysing (as far as I was able to do so) the two faculties of the human mind which mainly seized such ideas; namely, the contemplative and imaginative faculties.

It remains for us to examine the various success of artists, especially of the great landscape-painter whose works have been throughout our princ.i.p.al subject, in addressing these faculties of the human mind, and to consider who among them has conveyed the n.o.blest ideas of beauty, and touched the deepest sources of thought.

-- 2. I do not intend, however, now to pursue the inquiry in a method so laboriously systematic; for the subject may, it seems to me, be more usefully treated by pursuing the different questions which rise out of it just as they occur to us, without too great scrupulousness in marking connections, or insisting on sequences. Much time is wasted by human beings, in general, on establishment of systems; and it often takes more labor to master the intricacies of an artificial connection, than to remember the separate facts which are so carefully connected. I suspect that system-makers, in general, are not of much more use, each in his own domain, than, in that of Pomona, the old women who tie cherries upon sticks, for the more convenient portableness of the same. To cultivate well, and choose well, your cherries, is of some importance; but if they can be had in their own wild way of cl.u.s.tering about their crabbed stalk, it is a better connection for them than any other; and, if they cannot, then, so that they be not bruised, it makes to a boy of a practical disposition, not much difference whether he gets them by handfuls, or in beaded symmetry on the exalting stick. I purpose, therefore, henceforward to trouble myself little with sticks or twine, but to arrange my chapters with a view to convenient reference, rather than to any careful division of subjects, and to follow out, in any by-ways that may open, on right hand or left, whatever question it seems useful at any moment to settle.

-- 3. And, in the outset, I find myself met by one which I ought to have touched upon before--one of especial interest in the present state of the Arts. I have said that the art is greatest which includes the greatest ideas; but I have not endeavored to define the nature of this greatness in the ideas themselves. We speak of great truths, of great beauties, great thoughts. What is it which makes one truth greater than another, one thought greater than another?

This question is, I repeat, of peculiar importance at the present time; for, during a period now of some hundred and fifty years, all writers on Art who have pretended to eminence, have insisted much on a supposed distinction between what they call the Great and the Low Schools; using the terms "High Art," "Great or Ideal Style," and other such, as descriptive of a certain n.o.ble manner of painting, which it was desirable that all students of Art should be early led to reverence and adopt; and characterising as "vulgar," or "low," or "realist," another manner of painting and conceiving, which it was equally necessary that all students should be taught to avoid.

But lately this established teaching, never very intelligible, has been gravely called in question. The advocates and self-supposed practisers of "High Art" are beginning to be looked upon with doubt, and their peculiar phraseology to be treated with even a certain degree of ridicule. And other forms of Art are partly developed among us, which do not pretend to be high, but rather to be strong, healthy, and humble. This matter of "highness" in Art, therefore deserves our most careful consideration. Has it been, or is it, a true highness, a true princeliness, or only a show of it, consisting in courtly manners and robes of state? Is it rocky height or cloudy height, adamant or vapor, on which the sun of praise so long has risen and set? It will be well at once to consider this.

-- 4. And first, let us get, as quickly as may be, at the exact meaning with which the advocates of "High Art" use that somewhat obscure and figurative term.

I do not know that the principles in question are anywhere more distinctly expressed than in two papers in the Idler, written by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of course under the immediate sanction of Johnson; and which may thus be considered as the utterance of the views then held upon the subject by the artists of chief skill, and critics of most sense, arranged in a form so brief and clear, as to admit of their being brought before the public for a morning's entertainment.

I cannot, therefore, it seems to me, do better than quote these two letters, or at least the important parts of them, examining the exact meaning of each pa.s.sage as it occurs. There are, in all, in the Idler three letters on painting, Nos. 76, 79, and 82; of these, the first is directed only against the impertinences of pretended connoisseurs, and is as notable for its faithfulness, as for its wit, in the description of the several modes of criticism in an artificial and ignorant state of society; it is only, therefore, in the two last papers that we find the expression of the doctrines which it is our business to examine.

No. 79 (Sat.u.r.day, Oct. 20th, 1759) begins, after a short preamble, with the following pa.s.sage:--

"Amongst the painters, and the writers on painting, there is one maxim universally admitted and continually inculcated. Imitate nature is the invariable rule; but I know none who have explained in what manner this rule is to be understood; the sequence of which is, that every one takes it in the most obvious sense, that objects are represented naturally when they have such relief that they seem real. It may appear strange, perhaps, to hear this sense of the rule disputed; but it must be considered, that, if the excellency of a painter consisted only in this kind of imitation, Painting must lose its rank, and be no longer considered as a liberal art, and sister to Poetry, this imitation being nearly mechanical, in which the slowest intellect is always sure to succeed best; for the painter of genius cannot stoop to drudgery, in which the understanding has no part; and what pretence has the art to claim kindred with poetry but by its power over the imagination? To this power the painter of genius directs him; in this sense he studies nature, and often arrives at his end, even by being unnatural in the confined sense of the word."