“The finest mechanical work that I know of is that done by Nobert in the way of ruling lines. I have a series of lines ruled by him on glass, giving actual scales from .000024 and .000016 of an inch, perfectly correct to these places of decimals;{*} and he has executed others as fine as .000012, though I do not know how far he could repeat these last with accuracy.”{*} That is to say, accurate in measures estimated inmillionthsof inches.
“The finest mechanical work that I know of is that done by Nobert in the way of ruling lines. I have a series of lines ruled by him on glass, giving actual scales from .000024 and .000016 of an inch, perfectly correct to these places of decimals;{*} and he has executed others as fine as .000012, though I do not know how far he could repeat these last with accuracy.”
{*} That is to say, accurate in measures estimated inmillionthsof inches.
This is No. 1, of precision. Mr. Kingsley proceeds to No. 2:
“But this is rude work compared to the accuracy necessary for the construction of the object-glass of a microscope such as Rosse turns out.”
“But this is rude work compared to the accuracy necessary for the construction of the object-glass of a microscope such as Rosse turns out.”
I am sorry to omit the explanation which follows of the ten lenses composing such a glass, “each of which must be exact in radius and in surface, and all have their axes coincident;” but it would not be intelligible without the figure by which it is illustrated, so I pass to Mr. Kingsley’s No. 3:
“I am tolerably familiar,” he proceeds, “with the actual grinding and polishing of lenses and specula, and have produced by my own hands some by no means bad optical work; and I have copied no small amount of Turner’s work, and I still look with awe at the combined delicacy and precision of his hand;it beats optical work out of sight.[95]In optical work, as in refined drawing, the hand goes beyond the eye,{*} and one has to depend upon the feel; and when one has once learned what a delicate affair touch is, one gets a horror of all coarse work, and is ready to forgive any amount of feebleness, sooner than the boldness which is akin to impudence. In optics the distinction is easily seen when the work is put to trial; but here too, as in drawing, it requires an educated eye to tell the difference when the work is only moderately bad; but with ‘bold’ work nothing can be seen but distortion and fog, and I heartily wish the same result would follow the same kind of handling in drawing; but here, the boldness cheats the unlearned by looking like the precision of the true man. It is very strange how much better our ears are than our eyes in this country: if an ignorant man were to be ‘bold’ with a violin, he would not get many admirers, though his boldness was far below that of ninety-nine out of a hundred drawings one sees.”{*} 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.”{**} “Allfine 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.”{**} See the “Elements of Drawing,” Letter III. on Color and Composition, p. 232.
“I am tolerably familiar,” he proceeds, “with the actual grinding and polishing of lenses and specula, and have produced by my own hands some by no means bad optical work; and I have copied no small amount of Turner’s work, and I still look with awe at the combined delicacy and precision of his hand;it beats optical work out of sight.[95]In optical work, as in refined drawing, the hand goes beyond the eye,{*} and one has to depend upon the feel; and when one has once learned what a delicate affair touch is, one gets a horror of all coarse work, and is ready to forgive any amount of feebleness, sooner than the boldness which is akin to impudence. In optics the distinction is easily seen when the work is put to trial; but here too, as in drawing, it requires an educated eye to tell the difference when the work is only moderately bad; but with ‘bold’ work nothing can be seen but distortion and fog, and I heartily wish the same result would follow the same kind of handling in drawing; but here, the boldness cheats the unlearned by looking like the precision of the true man. It is very strange how much better our ears are than our eyes in this country: if an ignorant man were to be ‘bold’ with a violin, he would not get many admirers, though his boldness was far below that of ninety-nine out of a hundred drawings one sees.”
{*} 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.”{**} “Allfine 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.”
{**} See the “Elements of Drawing,” Letter III. on Color and Composition, p. 232.
The words which I have italicized[96]in the above extract are those which were surprising to me. I knew that Turner’s was as refined as any optical work, but had no idea of itsgoing beyond it. Mr. Kingsley’s word “awe,” occurring just before, is, however, as I have often felt, precisely the right one. When once we begin at all to understand the work of any truly great executor, such as that of any of the three great Venetians [(Tintoret, Titian, and Veronese)], Correggio, or Turner, the awe of it is something greater than can be felt from the most stupendous natural scenery. For the creation of such a system as a high human intelligence, endowed with its ineffably perfect instruments of eye and hand, is a far more appalling manifestation of Infinite Power than the making either of seas or mountains. After this testimony to the completion of Turner’s work, I need not at length defend myself from the charge of hyperbole in the statement that, “as far as I know, the galleries of Europe may be challenged to produce one sketch[97]that shall equal the chalk study No. 45, or the feeblest of the memoranda in the 71st and following frames;”[98]which memoranda, however, it should have been observed, are stated at the forty-fourth page to be in some respects “the grandest work in gray that he did in his life.”
For I believe that, as manipulators, none but the four men whom I have just named (the three Venetians and Correggio) were equal to Turner; and, as far as I know, none of these four men put their full strength into sketches. But whether they did or not, my statement in the Catalogue is limited by my own knowledge, and as far as I can trust that knowledge:it is not an enthusiastic statement, but an entirely calm and considered one. It may be a mistake, but it is not an hyperbole.
Lastly, you object that the drawings for the “Liber Studiorum” are not included in my catalogue. They are not so, because I did not consider them as, in a true sense, drawings at all; they are merely washes of color laid roughly to guide the mezzotint engraver in his first process; the drawing, properly so called, was all put in by Turner when he etched the plates, or superadded by repeated touchings on the proofs. These brown “guides,” for they are nothing more, are entirely unlike the painter’s usual work, and in every way inferior to it; so that students wishing to understand the composition of the “Liber” must always work from the plates, and not from these first indications of purpose.[99]I have put good impressions of two of the plates in the same room, in order to show their superiority; and for the rest, thought it useless to increase the bulk of the Catalogue by naming subjects which have been published and well known these thirty years.[100]
Permit me, in conclusion, to thank you for drawing attention to the subject of this great national collection; and, againasking your indulgence for trespassing so far upon your space, to subscribe myself,
Very respectfully yours,J. Ruskin.
[From “The Times,” October 21, 1859.]THE TURNER GALLERY AT KENSINGTON[101]
To the Editor of “The Times.”
Sir: At the time of my departure for the Continent some months ago I had heard it was proposed to light the Turner Gallery, at Kensington, with gas; but I attached no importance to the rumor, feeling assured that a commission would be appointed on the subject, and that its decision would be adverse to the mode of exhibition suggested.
Such a commission has, I find, been appointed; and has, contrary to my expectations, approved and confirmed the plan of lighting proposed.
It would be the merest presumption in me to expect weight to be attached to any opinion of mine, opposed to that of any one of the gentlemen who formed the commission; but as I was officially employed in some of the operations connected with the arrangement of the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House, and as it might therefore be supposed by the public that I at least concurred in recommending the measures now taken for exhibition of the Turner pictures in the evening, at Kensington, I must beg your permission to state in your columns that I take no share in the responsibility of lighting the pictures either of Reynolds or Turner with gas; that, onthe contrary, my experience would lead me to apprehend serious injury to those pictures from such a measure; and that it is with profound regret that I have heard of its adoption.
I specify the pictures of Reynolds and Turner, because the combinations of equal coloring material employed by both these painters are various, and to some extent unknown; and also because the body of their colors shows peculiar liability to crack, and to detach itself from the canvas. I am glad to be able to bear testimony to the fitness of the gallery at Kensington, as far as could be expected under the circumstances, for the exhibition of the Turner pictures by daylight, as well as to the excellence of Mr. Wornum’s chronological arrangement of them in the three principal rooms.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill,Oct.20.
P.S.—I wish the writer of the admirable and exhaustive letter which appeared in your columns of yesterday on the subject of Mr. Scott’s design for the Foreign Office would allow me to know his name.[102]
[From “The Daily Telegraph,” July 5, 1876.]TURNER’S DRAWINGS.
To the Editor of “The Daily Telegraph.”
Sir: I am very heartily glad to see the subject of Turner’s drawings brought more definitely before the public in your remarks on the recent debate[103]in Parliament. It is indeed highly desirable that these drawings should be made more accessible, and I will answer your reference to me by putting you in possession of all the facts which it is needful that the public should know or take into consideration respecting them, in either judging what has been hitherto done by those entrusted with their care, or taking measures for obtaining greater freedom in their use. Theiruse, I say, as distinguished from the mere pleasure of seeing them. This pleasure, to the general public, is very small indeed. You appear not to be aware that three hundred of the finest examples, including all the originals of the Liber Studiorum, were framed by myself, especially for the public, in the year 1858, and have been exhibited every day, and all day long, ever since in London. But the public never stops a moment in the room at Kensington where they hang; and the damp, filth, and gas (under the former management of that institution)[104]soiled their frames and warped the drawings, “by friend remembered not.”
You have been also misinformed in supposing that “for some years these aquarelles were unreservedly shown, and in all the fulness of daylight.” Only the “Seine” series (rivers of France), the rivers of England, the harbors of England, and the Rogers’ vignettes (about a hundred drawings in all), were exhibited in the dark under-room of Marlborough House, and a few larger and smaller examples scattered up and down in the room of the National Gallery, including Fort Bard, Edinburgh, and Ivy Bridge.[105]These drawings are all finished, most of them have been engraved; they were shown as the choicest of the collection, and there is no question but that they should always be perfectly accessible to the public. There are no other finished drawings in the vast mass of the remaining material for exhibition and means of education. But these areallthe drawings which Turner made during his lifetime, in color, chalk, pencil, and ink, for his own study or delight; that is to say, pencil sketches to be counted by the thousand (how many thousands I cannot safely so much as guess), and assuredly upwards of two thousand colored studies, many of exquisite beauty; and all instructive as no other water-color work ever was before, or has been since; besides the ink and chalk studies for all his great Academy pictures.[106]
There are in this accumulation of drawings means of education in the noblest principles of elementary art and in the most accomplished science of color for every drawing-school in England, were they properly distributed. Besides these, there are the three hundred chosen drawings already named, now at Kensington, and about two hundred more of equal value, now in the lower rooms of the National Gallery, which the Trustees permitted me to choose out of the mass, and frame for general service.
They are framed as I frame exercise-drawings at Oxford, for my own schools. They are, when in use, perfectly secure from dust and all other sources of injury; slide, when done with, into portable cabinets; are never exposed to light, but when they are being really looked at; and can be examined at his ease, measured, turned in whatever light he likes, by every student or amateur who takes the smallest interest in them. But it is necessary, for this mode of exhibition, that there should be trustworthy persons in charge of the drawings, as of the MSS. in the British Museum, and that there should be attendants in observation, as in the Print Room of the Museum, that glasses may not be broken, or drawings taken out of the frames.
Thus taken care of, and thus shown, the drawings may be a quite priceless possession to the people of England for the next five centuries; whereas those exhibited in the Manchester Exhibition were virtually destroyed in that single summer.[107]There is not one of them but is the mere wreck of what it was. I do not choose to name destroyed drawings in the possession of others; but I will name the vignette of the Plains of Troy in my own, which had half the sky baked out of it in that fatal year, and the three drawings of Richmond (Yorkshire), Egglestone Abbey, and Langharne Castle,[108]which have had by former exposure to light their rose-colors entirely destroyed, and half of their blues, leaving nothing safe but the brown.
I do not think it necessary to repeat my former statements respecting the injurious power of light on certain pigments rapidly, and on all eventually. The respective keepers of the Print Room and of the Manuscripts in the British Museum are the proper persons to be consulted on that matter, their experience being far larger than mine, and over longer epochs. I will, however, myself undertake to show from my own collection a water-color of the eleventh century absolutely as fresh as when it was laid—having been guarded from light; and water-color burnt by sunlight into a mere dirty stain on the paper, in a year, with the matched piece from which it was cut beside it.
The public may, therefore, at their pleasure treat their Turner drawings as a large exhibition of fireworks, see them explode, clap their hands, and have done with them; or they may treat them as an exhaustless library of noble learning. To this end, they need, first, space and proper light—north light, as clear of smoke as possible, and large windows; and then proper attendance—that is to say, well-paid librarians and servants.
The space will of course be difficult to obtain, for while the British public of the upper classes are always ready to pay any money whatever for space to please their pride in their own dining-rooms and ball-rooms, they would not, most of them, give five shillings a year to get a good room in the National Gallery to show the national drawings in. As to the room in which it is at present proposed to place them in the new building, they might just as well, for any good that will ever be got out of them there, be exhibited in a railway tunnel.
And the attendants will also be difficult to obtain. For—and this is the final fact to which I beg your notice—these drawings now in question were, as I above stated, framed by me in 1858. They have been perfectly “accessible” ever since, and are so now, as easily as any works[109]in the shops of Regent Street are accessible over the counter, if you have gota shopman to hand them to you. And the British public have been whining and growling about their exclusion from the sight of these drawings for the last eighteen years, simply because, while they are willing to pay for any quantity of sentinels to stand in boxes about town and country, for any quantity of flunkeys to stand on boards for additional weight to carriage horses, and for any quantity of footmen to pour out their wine and chop up their meat for them, they would not for all these eighteen years pay so much as a single attendant to hand them the Turner drawings across the National Gallery table; but only what was needful to obtain for two days in the week the withdrawal from his other duties in the Gallery of the old servant of Mr. Samuel Rogers.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,J. Ruskin.
Brantwood,July3.
[From “The Daily Telegraph,” July 19, 1876.]TURNERS DRAWINGS.
To the Editor of “The Daily Telegraph.”
Sir: In justice to our living water-color artists, will you favor me by printing the accompanying letter,[110]which I think will be satisfactory to many of your readers, on points respecting which my own may have given some of them a false impression? In my former letter, permit me to correct the misprint of “works” in Regent Street for “wares.”
I have every reason to suppose Mr. Collingwood Smith’s knowledge of the subject entirely trustworthy; but when all is conceded, must still repeat that no water-color work of value should ever be constantly exposed to light, or even to the air of a crowded metropolis, least of all to gaslight or its fumes.
I am, Sir, yours, etc.,J. Ruskin.
Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire,July16.
[From “The Times,” April 25, 1876.]COPIES OF TURNER’S DRAWINGS.
To the Editor of “The Times.”
Sir: You will oblige me by correcting the misstatement in your columns of the 22d,[111]that “only copies of the copies” of Turner exhibited at 148 New Bond Street, are for sale. The drawings offered for sale by the company will, of course, be always made by Mr. Ward from the originals, just as much as those now exhibited as specimens.
You observe in the course of your article that “surely such attempts could not gratify any one who had a true insight for Mr. Turner’s works?” But the reason that the drawings now at 148 New Bond Street are not for sale is that theydogratifyme, and are among my extremely valued possessions; and if among the art critics on your staff there be, indeed, any one whose “insight for Mr. Turner’s work” you suppose to be greater than mine, I shall have much pleasure in receiving any instructions with which he may favor me, at the National Gallery, on the points either in which Mr. Ward’s work may be improved, or on those in which Turner is so superior to Titian and Correggio, that while the public maintain, in Italy, a nation of copyists of these second-rate masters, they are not justified in hoping any success whatever in representing the work of the Londoner, whom, while he was alive, I was always called mad for praising.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,John Ruskin.
Peterborough,April23.
[From “The Times,” January 24, 1871.]“TURNERS,” FALSE AND TRUE.
To the Editor of “The Times.”
Sir: I have refused until now to express any opinion respecting the picture No. 40[112]in the Exhibition of the OldMasters, feeling extreme reluctance to say anything which its kind owner, to whom the Exhibition owes so much, might deem discourteous.
But I did not suppose it was possible any doubt could long exist among artists as to the character of the work in question; and, as I find its authenticity still in some quarters maintained, I think no other course is open to me than to state that the picture is not by Turner, nor even by an imitator of Turner acquainted with the essential qualities of the master.
I am able to assert this on internal evidence only. I never saw the picture before, nor do I know anything of the channels through which it came into the possession of its present proprietor.
No. 235 is, on the contrary, one of the most consummate and majestic works that ever came from the artist’s hand, and it is one of the very few now remaining which have not been injured by subsequent treatment.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,John Ruskin.
Denmark Hill,Jan.23.
[From “The Life of Turner,” by Walter Thornbury.]THE CHARACTER OF TURNER.[113]
[The following admonition, sent by Mr. Ruskin in 1857 to Mr. Thornbury, and coupled with the advice that for the biographer of Turner there was no time to be lost, “for those who knew him when young are dying daily,” forms a fit conclusion to this division of the letters.]
Fix at the beginning the following main characteristics of Turner in your mind, as the keys to the secret of all he said and did.
Uprightness.Generosity.Tendernessof heart (extreme).Sensuality.Obstinacy(extreme).Irritability.Infidelity.
Uprightness.Generosity.Tendernessof heart (extreme).Sensuality.Obstinacy(extreme).Irritability.Infidelity.
Uprightness.Generosity.Tendernessof heart (extreme).Sensuality.Obstinacy(extreme).Irritability.Infidelity.
And be sure that he knew his own power, and felt himself utterly alone in the world from its not being understood. Don’t try to mask the dark side....
Yours most truly,J. Ruskin.
[See the preface to the first edition of the “Life of Turner;” that to the second contains the following estimate of Mr. Thornbury’s book:[114]“Lucerne, Dec. 2, 1861.—I have just received and am reading your book with deep interest. I am much gratified by the view you have taken and give of Turner. It is quite what I hoped. What beautiful things you have discovered about him! Thank you for your courteous and far too flattering references to me.”]
John Leech’s Outlines.1872.Ernest George’s Etchings.1873.The Frederick Walker Exhibition.1876.
John Leech’s Outlines.1872.Ernest George’s Etchings.1873.The Frederick Walker Exhibition.1876.
John Leech’s Outlines.1872.Ernest George’s Etchings.1873.The Frederick Walker Exhibition.1876.
[From the “Catalogue of the Exhibition of Outlines by the late John Leech, at theGallery, 9 Conduit Street, Regent Street.” 1872.[115]]JOHN LEECH’S OUTLINES.
I am honored by the request of the sister of John Leech that I should give some account of the drawings of her brother, which remain in her possession; and I am able to fulfil her request without departing from the rule which has always bound me, not to allow any private interest to weigh with me in speaking of matters which concern the public. It is merely and simply a matter of public concern that the value of these drawings should be known and measures taken for their acquisition, or, at least, for obtaining a characteristic selection from them, as a National property. It cannot be necessary for me, or for any one, now to praise the work of John Leech. Admittedly it contains the finest definition and natural history of the classes of our society, the kindest and subtlest analysis of its foibles, the tenderest flattery of its pretty and well-bred ways, with which the modesty of subservient genius ever amused or immortalized careless masters. But it is not generally known how much more valuable, as art, the first sketches for the woodcuts were than the finished drawings, even before those drawings sustained any loss in engraving.
John Leech was an absolute master of the elements of character,—but not by any means of those ofchiaroscuro,—and the admirableness of his work diminished as it became elaborate. The first few lines in which he sets down his purposeare invariably of all drawing that I know the most wonderful in their accurate felicity and prosperous haste. It is true that the best possible drawing, whether slight or elaborate, is never hurried. Holbein or Titian, if they lay only a couple of lines, yet lay them quietly, and leave them entirely right. But it needs a certain sternness of temper to do this.
Most, in the prettiest sense of the word,gentleartists indulge themselves in the ease, and even trust to the felicity of rapid—and even in a measure inconsiderate—work in sketching, so that the beauty of a sketch is understood to be consistent with what is partly unintentional.
There is, however, one condition of extreme and exquisite skill in which haste may become unerring. It cannot be obtained in completely finished work; but the hands of Gainsborough, Reynolds, or Tintoret often nearly approach completion at full speed, and the pencil sketches of Turner are expressive almost in the direct ratio of their rapidity.
But of all rapid and condensed realization ever accomplished by the pencil, John Leech’s is the most dainty, and the least fallible, in the subjects of which he was cognizant. Not merely right in the traits which he seizes, but refined in the sacrifice of what he refuses.
The drawing becomes slight through fastidiousness not indolence, and the finest discretion has left its touches rare.
In flexibility and lightness of pencilling, nothing but the best outlines of Italian masters with the silver point can be compared to them. That Leech sketched English squires instead of saints, and their daughters instead of martyrs, does not in the least affect the question respecting skill of pencilling; and I repeat deliberately that nothing but the best work of sixteenth century Italy with the silver point exists in art, which in rapid refinement these playful English drawings do not excel. There are too many of them (fortunately) to be rightly exemplary—I want to see the collection divided, dated carefully, and selected portions placed in good light, in a quite permanent arrangement in each of our great towns in connection with their drawing schools.
I will not indeed have any in Oxford while I am there, because I am afraid that my pupils should think too lightly of their drawing as compared with their other studies, and I doubt their studying anything else but John Leech if they had him to study. But in our servile schools of mechanical drawing, to see what drawing was indeed, which could represent something better than machines, and could not be mimicked by any machinery, would put more life into them than any other teaching I can conceive.
It is, therefore, with the greatest pleasure that I accept the honor of having my name placed on the committee for obtaining funds for the purchase of these drawings; and I trust that the respect of the English public for the gentle character of the master, and their gratitude for the amusement with which he has brightened so many of their days, will be expressed in the only way in which expression is yet possible by due care and wise use of the precious possessions he has left to them.
(Signed)J. Ruskin.
[From “The Architect,” December 27, 1873.]ERNEST GEORGE’S ETCHINGS.
To the Editor of “The Architect.”
My Dear Sir: I am entirely glad you had permission to publish some of Mr. Ernest George’s etchings;[116]they are the most precious pieces of work I have seen for many a day, though they are still, like nearly everything the English dobest in art, faultful in matters which might have been easily conquered, and not a little wasteful, sometimes of means and time; I should be glad, therefore, of space enough in your columns to state, with reference to these sketches, some of the principles of etching which I had not time to define in the lectures on engraving I gave this year, at Oxford,[117]and which are too often forgotten even by our best draughtsmen.
I call Mr. George’s work precious, chiefly because it indicates an intense perception of points of character in architecture, and a sincere enjoyment of them for their own sake. His drawings are not accumulative of material for future use; still less are they vain exhibitions of his own skill. He draws the scene in all its true relations, because it delights him, and he perceives what is permanently and altogether characteristic in it. As opposed to such frank and joyful work, most modern architectural drawings are mere diagram or exercise.
I call them precious, in the second place, because they show very great powers of true composition. All their subjects are made delightful more by skill of arrangement than by any dexterities of execution; and this faculty is very rare amongst landscape painters and architects, because nearly every man who has any glimmering of it naturally takes to figure painting—not that the ambition to paint figures is any sign of the faculty, but that, when people have the faculty, they nearly always have also the ambition. And, indeed, this is quite right, if they would not forsake their architecture afterwards, but apply their power of figure design, when gained, to the decoration of their buildings.
To return to Mr. George’s work. It is precious, lastly, in its fine sense of serene light and shade, as opposed to the coruscations and horrors of modern attempts in that direction. But it is a pity—and this is the first grand principle of etchingwhich I feel it necessary to affirm—when the instinct of chiaroscuro leads the artist to spend time in producing texture on his plate which cannot be ultimately perfect, however labored. All the common raptures concerning blots, burr, delicate biting, and the other tricks of the etching trade, merely indicate imperfect feeling for shadow.
The proper instrument of chiaroscuro is the brush; a wash of sepia, rightly managed, will do more in ten minutes than Rembrandt himself could do in ten days of the most ingenious scratching, or blurt out by the most happy mixtures of art and accident.[118]As soon as Mr. George has learned what true light and shade is (and a few careful studies with brush or chalk would enable him to do so), he will not labor his etched subjects in vain. The virtue of an etching, in this respect, is to express perfectly harmonious sense of light and shade, but not to realize it. All fine etchings are done with few lines.
Secondly—and this is a still more important general principle (I must let myself fall into dictatorial terms for brevity’s sake)—Let your few lines be sternly clear, however delicate, or however dark. All burr and botch is child’s play, and a true draughtsman must never be at the mercy of his copper and ink. Drive your line well and fairly home; don’t scrawl or zigzag; know where your hand is going, and what it is doing, to a hairbreadth; then bite clear and clean, and let the last impression be as good as the first. When it begins to fail break your plate.
Third general principle.
Don’t depend much on various biting. For a true master, and a great purpose, even one biting is enough. By no flux or dilution of acid can you ever etch a curl of hair or a cloud; and if you think you can etch the gradations of coarser things,it is only because you have never seen them. Try, at your leisure, to etch a teacup or a tallow candle, of their real size; see what you can make of the gradations of those familiar articles; if you succeed to your mind, you may try something more difficult afterwards.
Lastly. For all definite shades of architectural detail, use pencil or charcoal, or the brush, never the pen point. You can draw a leaf surface rightly in a minute or two with these—with the pen point, never, to all eternity. And on you knowing what the surface of a form is depends your entire power of recognizing good work. The difference between thirteenth-century work, wholly beautiful, and a cheap imitation of it, wholly damnable, lies in gradation of surface as subtle as those of a rose-leaf, and which are, to modern sculpture, what singing is to a steam-whistle.
For the rest, the limitation of etched work to few lines enables the sketcher to multiply his subjects, and make his time infinitely more useful to himself and others. I would most humbly solicit, in conclusion, such advantageous use of his gifts from Mr. George. He might etch a little summer tour for us every year, and give permanent and exquisite record of a score of scenes, rich in historical interest, with no more pains than he has spent on one or two of these plates in drawing the dark sides of a wall. Yours faithfully,
John Ruskin.
[From “The Times,” January 20, 1876.]THE FREDERICK WALKER EXHIBITION.
Dear Mr. Marks:[119]You ask me to say what I feel of Frederick Walker’s work, now seen in some collective mass, asfar as anything can be seen in black-veiled London. You have long known my admiration of his genius, my delight in many passages of his art. These, while he lived, were all I cared to express. If you will have me speak of him now, I will speak the whole truth of what I feel—namely, that every soul in London interested in art ought to go to see that Exhibition, and, amid all the beauty and the sadness of it, very diligently to try and examine themselves as to the share they have had, in their own busy modern life, in arresting the power of this man at the point where it stayed. Very chief share they have had, assuredly. But he himself, in the liberal and radical temper of modern youth, has had his own part in casting down his strength, following wantonly or obstinately his own fancies wherever they led him. For instance, it being Nature’s opinion that sky should usually be blue, and it being Mr. Walker’s opinion that it should be the color of buff plaster, he resolutely makes it so, for his own isolated satisfaction, partly in affectation also, buff skies being considered by the public more sentimental than blue ones. Again, the laws of all good painting having been long ago determined by absolute masters, whose work cannot be bettered nor departed from—Titian having determined forever what oil-painting is, Angelico what tempera-painting is, Perugino what fresco-painting is, two hundred years of noble miniature-painting what minutest work on ivory is, and, in modern times, a score of entirely skillful and disciplined draughtsmen what pure water-color and pure body-color painting on paper are (Turner’s Yorkshire drawing of Hornby Castle, now at Kensington, and John Lewis’s “Encampment under Sinai,”[120]being nameable at once as unsurpassable standards), here is Mr. Walker refusing to learn anything from any of those schools or masters, but inventing a semi-miniature, quarter fresco, quarter wash manner of his own—exquisitely clever, and reaching, under suchclever management, delightfullest results here and there, but which betrays his genius into perpetual experiment instead of achievement, and his life into woeful vacillation between the good, old, quiet room of the Water-Color Society, and your labyrinthine magnificence at Burlington House.
Lastly, and in worst error, the libraries of England being full of true and noble books—her annals of true and noble history, and her traditions of beautiful and noble—in these scientific times I must say, I suppose, “mythology”—not religion—from all these elements of mental education and subjects of serviceable art, he turns recklessly away to enrich the advertisements of the circulating library, to sketch whatever pleases his fancy, barefooted, or in dainty boots, of modern beggary and fashion, and enforce, with laboriously symbolical pathos, his adherence to Justice Shallow’s sublime theology that “all shall die.”
That theology has indeed been preached by stronger men, again and again, from Horace’s days to our own, but never to so little purpose. “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” said wisely in his way, the Latin farmer: ate his beans and bacon in comfort, had his suppers of the gods on the fair earth, with his servants jesting round the table, and left eternal monuments of earthly wisdom and of cricket-song. “Let us labor and be just, for to-morrow we die, and after death the Judgment,” said Holbein and Durer, and left eternal monuments of upright human toil and honorable gloom of godly fear. “Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, for to-morrow we die, and shall be with God,” said Angelico and Giotto, and left eternal monuments of divinely-blazoned heraldry of Heaven. “Let us smoke pipes, make money, read bad novels, walk in bad air, and say sentimentally how sick we are in the afternoon, for to-morrow we die, and shall be made ourselves clay pipes,” says the modern world, and drags this poor bright painter down into the abyss with it, vainly clutching at a handful or two of scent and flowers in the May gardens.
Under which sorrowful terms, being told also by yourgrand Academicians that he should paint the nude, and, accordingly, wasting a year or two of his life in trying to paint schoolboys’ backs and legs without their shirts or breeches, and with such other magazine material as he can pick up of sick gypsies, faded gentlewomen, pretty girls disguised as paupers, and the red-roofed or gray remnants of old English villages and manor-house, last wrecks of the country’s peace and honor, remaining yet visible among the black ravages of its ruin, he supplies the demands of his temporary public, scarcely patient, even now that he has gone, to pause beside his delicate tulips or under his sharp-leaved willows, and repent for the passing tints and fallen petals of the life that might have been so precious, and, perhaps, in better days, prolonged.
That is the main moral of the Exhibition. Of the beauty of the drawings, accepting them for what they aim at being, there is little need that I should add anything to what has been already said rightly by the chief organs of the London Press. Nothing can go beyond them in subtlety of exhibited touch (to be distinguished, however, observe always from the serene completion of master’s work, disdaining the applause to be gained by its manifestation); their harmonies of amber-color and purple are full of exquisite beauty in their chosen key; their composition always graceful, often admirable, and the sympathy they express with all conditions of human life most kind and true; not without power of rendering character which would have been more recognized in an inferior artist, because it would have been less restrained by the love of beauty.
I might, perhaps, in my days of youth and good fortune, have written what the public would have called “eloquent passages” on the subjects of the Almshouse and the Old Gate;[121] being now myself old and decrepit (besides being muchbothered with beggars, and in perpetual feud with parish officers), and having seen every building I cared for in the world ruined, I pass these two pictures somewhat hastily by, and try to enjoy myself a little in the cottage gardens. Only one of them, however,—No. 71,—has right sunshine in it, and that isa sort of walled paddock where I begin directly to feel uncomfortable about the lamb, lest, perchance, some front shop in the cottages belong to a butcher. If only it and I could get away to a bit of thymy hill-side, we should be so much happier, leaving the luminous—perhaps too ideally luminous—child to adorn the pathetic paddock. I am too shy to speak to either of those two beautiful ladies among the lilies (37, 67), and take refuge among the shy children before the “Chaplain’s Daughter” (20)—delightfullest, it seems to me, of the minor designs, and a piece of most true and wise satire. The sketches of the “Daughter of Heth” go far to tempt me to read the novel; and, ashamed of this weakness, I retreat resolutely to the side of the exemplary young girl knitting in the “Old Farm Garden” (33), and would instantly pick up her ball of worsted for her, but that I wouldn’t for the world disappoint the cat. No drawing in the room is more delicately completed than this unpretending subject, and the flower-painting in it, for instantaneous grace of creative touch, cannot be rivalled; it is worth all the Dutch flower-pieces in the world.
Much instructed, and more humiliated, by passage after passage of its rapidly-grouped color, I get finally away into the comfortable corner beside the salmon-fishers and the mushrooms; and the last-named drawing, despise me who may, keeps me till I’ve no more time to stay, for it entirely beats my dear old William Hunt in the simplicity of its execution, and rivals him in the subtlest truth.
I say nothing of the “Fishmonger’s Stalls” (952), though there are qualities of the same kind in these also, for they somewhat provoke me by their waste of time—the labor spent on one of them would have painted twenty instructive studies of fish of their real size. And it is well for artists in general to observe that when they do condescend to paint still life carefully—whether fruit, fungi, or fish—it must at least be of the real size. The portrait of a man or woman is only justifiably made small that it may be portable, and nobody wants to carry about the miniature of a cod; and if the reader will waste five minutes of his season in London in the National Gallery, hemay see in the hand of Perugino’s Tobias a fish worth all these on the boards together.
Some blame of the same kind attaches to the marvellous drawing No. 68. It is all very well for a young artist to show how much work he can put into an inch, but very painful for an old gentleman of fifty-seven to have to make out all the groups through a magnifying-glass. I could say something malicious about the boat, in consequence of the effect of this exertion on my temper, but will not, and leave with unqualified praise the remainder of the lesser drawings to the attention which each will variously reward.
Nor, in what I have already, it may be thought, too bluntly said, ought the friends of the noble artist to feel that I am unkind. It is because I know his real power more deeply than any of the admirers who give him indiscriminate applause, that I think it right distinctly to mark the causes which prevented his reaching heights they did not conceive, and ended by placing one more tablet in the street of tombs, which the passionate folly and uninstructed confusion of modern English society prolong into dark perspective above the graves of its youth.
I am, dear Marks, always very faithfully yours,J. Ruskin.