NOTES:

This tendency to greater calmness and generosity of view in the case of Salvator (not to recite evidences of similar nature in other cases) is a sign of healthful mental progression. Opinions taken up in the first instance, possibly as much from impulse as conviction, grown from floating speculations into recognised realities, require to be defended less strenuously than in the early doubtful phase of their being, and still less need for their support virulent onslaughts upon antagonistic views. It is no longer necessary to degradesomepainters utterly for the proper exaltation of someothers; or it may be better to say, to deifyoneby the damnification of the whole balance of the fraternity. There have been victims enough on the shrine of Turner, and his manes are now appeased and his wrongs avenged. What need of further holocausts? So Mr. Ruskin loosens his grip and half sheaths his knife, and becomes more merciful and pitiful, though yet unable to do full justice to those who oppose him: for it is one of his marked peculiarities that he is unable to shift his point of view. He judges always by his own modernex post factostandard; he cannot see with Salvator's eyes, or with the eyes of his contemporaries, and determine how fully he met the requirements of his age and time, how honestly he won the applause of the men about him. Mr. Ruskin asks two questions only—'Are these works accurate renderings of nature, as I by education and study now know nature to be?' and next, 'Are these high art in its purest, and most ideal, and most godly form?' By such Procrustean measurements he adjusts his decisions, and so misses the swarthy romance, the dramatic coarse fire of Salvator, and fails to appreciate the vigorous, affluent, gorgeous majesty of Rubens, before whose luxurious pageant canvas it always seems that, of right, pompous coronation music should be played, and multitudes huzza and banners wave. Perhaps some such feelings as these Mr. Ruskin himself at one time experienced, until, shocked by what he deemed the excessive mundaneness, the intense unspirituality of the great Fleming,—he revolted to the thoughtful, attenuated poetry of Angelico and the early Italian painters, to be in time again driven by the too intense asceticism and archaic debility of this school, to the robust excellence and the more real and material, though pure and refined, beauty of the Venetians. With them he has now found his golden mean.

To turn more particularly to the contents of Mr. Ruskin's concluding volume, and their invariable bearing upon Turner.

The first half is divided into considerations of 'Leaf' and 'Cloud Beauty,' respectively: 'The leaf between earth and man, as the cloud is between man and heaven.' Many fanciful headings are given to the chapters on these subjects. In the 'Earth Veil' Mr. Ruskin discourses in very delicate poetry, of trees and flowers, which form on the surface of the earth a veil of vegetation; 'of strange intermediate being; which breathes, but has no voice; moves, but cannot leave its appointed place; passes through life without consciousness; to death without bitterness; wears the beauty of youth without its passion, and declines to the weakness of age without its regret' Passing on, then, to the 'orders of the leaf,' he arranges plants in two classes,—theTENTED PLANTS, which live on the ground, as lilies, or crawl on the rocks, as lichen and mosses, leading ever an arab life, and so passing away and perishing; and theBUILDING PLANTS, which soar above the earth in the 'architectural edifices we call trees.' And the builders are again curiously subdivided. There are the 'builders with the shield,' with their leaves, shield-shaped, raised above, and sheltering their buds as they rise. Gentle, and pleasant, and conciliatory builders are these, living in pleasant places, and providing food and shelter for man. And there are also the 'builders with the sword,' with sharp-pointed leaves stuck fearlessly out sword fashion, the bud growing amid the points, dwelling in savage places, and of little aid to man, none in the way of food. (They are called 'pines,' we may explain, vernacularly.) Mr. Ruskin then goes on to the 'Bud,' and is at some pains to explain its gradual development and the scheme of its growth. 'Leaves' he explains to be 'broadly divisible into mainsails and studding-sails.' Many diagrams are given explanatory of the leaf system, its form and manner and charm, and the 'laws of deflection, of succession, of resilience,' all fanciful theories arising from the subject, are in turn laid down. In our progress to 'tree-structure,' we come to 'leaf aspects.' Then perhaps the object of this elaborate teaching transpires, and Mr. Ruskin speaks of the 'Pre-Raphaelites who, some years back, began to lead our wondering artists back into the eternal paths of all great art, and showed that whatever men drew at all ought to be drawn accurately and knowingly, not blunderingly nor by guess (leaves of trees among other things),' proceeding to the following curious dictum,—'If you can paint one leaf you can paint the world.' The Pre-Raphaelite laws 'lay stern on the strength of Apelles and Zeuxis, put Titian to thoughtful trouble, are unrelaxed yet, and unrelaxable for ever. Paint a leaf indeed!—the above-named Titian has done it. Corregio, moreover, and Giorgione and Leonardo, very nearly, trying hard. Holbein three or four times, in precious pieces, highest wrought. Raphael, it may be, in one or two crowns of Muse or Sibyl. If any one else in later times, we have to consider.' There is no endeavour to show how or why accurate drawing of the leaf leads to general accuracy in drawing; no analogy is attempted, for instance, between the human and vegetable anatomies. Perhaps this is as well; only it will strike even the most casual and unprofessional reader that a student may be able by practice to become a very apt draughtsman of the leaf skeleton, and yet be a feeble renderer of the human. Mr. Ruskin argues, unsoundly enough, from effects; the great Italian designers of the figure all drew leaves thoroughly well. Among the Dutch painters the leaf painting degenerates in proportion to the diminishing power in the figure; therefore, who can draw the leaf can draw the figure. Next comes sharp criticism of the Dutch leaf-treatment generally, and elaborate demonstration, by the aid of many plates, of the infinite superiority of Turner, closing with what sounds a strange admission after such teachings and such arguments:—'Remember always that Turner's greatness and rightness in all these points successively depend on no scientific knowledge.He was entirely ignorant of all the laws we have been developing.He had merely accustomed himself to see impartially, intensely, and fearlessly.'

The fact is that Mr. Ruskin is disposed to lay far too heavy a stress on the mere mechanical accuracy of the draughtsman, to think too much of his hand, too little of his head. He has been surrounded by a number of supple admirers and unquestioning students, who, placing their whole time and labour at his disposal, have rather pampered, by such ultra-allegiance, his inclination to be dogmatic on these points. 'Study this for half an hour,' he says of one illustration; 'Look here for a good five minutes,' of another; 'or, better still, get pen and paper and draw it yourself: take care you make it as nearly as you can quite right,' and so on. There is something almost ludicrous, only Mr. Ruskin has little perception of the humorous, about the strained care, the exaggeration of painstakings, bestowed on some of the drawings. Instance plate 58, drawn by one of his pupils at the Working Man's College (a joiner by trade), 'an unprejudiced person,' states Mr. Ruskin, alwaysposinghimself as addressing a suspicious and jealous audience, who would rise against him and turn him off the judgment seat, by fair means or foul, if they dared, or could. The student was set to work in the spring, the subject being a lilac branch of its real size as it grew,before it budded. It will tell how long this rather simple lesson occupied the student, that 'before he could get it quite right,the buds came out and interrupted him.' Yet Mr. Ruskin makes strong objection to the word 'niggling.' 'I should be glad if it were entirely banished from service and record. The only essential question about drawing is whether it be right or wrong; that it be small or large, swift or slow, is a matter of convenience only.' He reserves to himself, however, the right to apply the 'ugly word' to Hobbima. 'A single dusty roll of Turner's brush is more truly expressive of the infinitude of foliage than thenigglingof Hobbima could have rendered his canvas if he had worked on it till doomsday.' 'No man before (Turner) painted a distant tree rightly, or a full-leaved branch rightly.'

Chapters on the 'branch,' the 'stem,' the 'leaf monuments,' the 'leaf shadows,' and 'leaves motionless,' conclude the first division of the book. They are all in elaboration of his 'leaf-beauty' theory, and are rich in exquisite fancy and admirable writing, but it cannot be that they should be detailed or examined here. As a specimen of feeling and poetry, here are a few lines from many on the lichen:—'As in one sense the humblest, in another they are the most honoured, of the earth's children: unfading as motionless, the worm frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in lowliness, they neither blanch in heat nor pine in frost. To them, slow-fingered, constant-hearted, is intrusted the weaving of the dark eternal tapestries of the hills; to them slow, iris-eyed, the tender framing of their endless imagery. Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance; and while the winds of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip gold, far above among the mountains, the silver lichen-spots rest star-like on the stone, and the gathering orange stain upon the edge of yonder western peak reflects the sunsets of a thousand years.'

In treating of the second portion of the first half of the book, 'Cloud Beauty,' briefness is now indispensable. And first of 'Cloud Balancings.'

Why is the soft, level, floating, white mist so heavy? Why so light 'the colossal pyramids, huge and grim, with outlines as of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks?' What are clouds? Water in some fine form or other. But water is heavier than air,—cannot float on it. May, then, clouds be formed of minute hollow globules of water swimming in the air, balloon-like? These and a hundred other questions; and what is the use of asking them? 'I enjoy them,' says our author; 'perhaps the reader may—I think he ought, and not love less the clouds of morning or the summer rain because they come to him with hard questions, with only a syllable or two of answer illuminated here and there on the heavenly scroll.' And Mr. Ruskin takes credit to himself for not being 'dogmatic' on the subject of clouds.

Then of 'Cloud Flocks,'—upper clouds, detached, bird-like, with flame-like curves, tender, various, pointing, inquiring. And why do they assume these forms? Not driven by eddies of wind, they move along, unhurried, compressed in a phalanx, fifty thousand separate groups in half of a morning sky, all obedient to one rule of harmonious progress. And so of 'Cloud Perspective,' cleverly set forth and illustrated, but appealing perhaps too exclusively to the art-student for transfer here, and of 'Cloud Colours.' Is it well to watch them like Turner? or to neglect them with Claude, Salvator, Ruysdael, Wouvermans, never to look nor portray? Then of the 'Cloud Chariot,' or cumulus,—not to be drawn, not to be explained; even Turner attempted not that. Mountain-like, electric, brilliant beyond power of colour, endless in variety of form, transitory as a dream; and estimates of weight and movement, and of a chariot cloud which soared 20,000 feet from behind Berne Cathedral! Next of the 'Angel of the Sea,' the author's epithet for rain. 'Is English wet weather one of the things which we would desire to see art give perpetuity to?' Assuredly, answers Mr. Ruskin; and under five heads he ranges the climates into which the globe is divided with respect to their fitness for art. See the result:—

Wood landsShrewd intellectNo art.Sand landsHigh intellectReligious art.Vine landsHighest intellectPerfect art.Field landsHigh intellectMaterial art.Moss landsShrewd intellectNo art.

The table is worthy of study.

The second half of the volume treats of 'Ideas of Relation.' It deals with Art in its relation to God and man, and with its work in the help of human beings and the service of their Creator, and inquires into 'the various powers, conditions, and aims of mind involved in the conception or creation of pictures, in the choice of subject, and the mode and order of its history; the choice of forms, and the modes of their arrangement.' Very forcible and significant are the reflections upon invention, the 'greatest and rarest of all the qualities of art;' and on 'Composition.' If one part be taken away, all the rest are helpless and valueless; yet true composition is inexplicable—to be felt, not reasoned upon. 'A poet or creator is, therefore, a person who puts things together; not as a watchmaker, steel; or a shoemaker, leather: but who puts life into them.'

In the chapter entitled the 'Task of the Least,' the author argues, adroitly enough, 'that theminutestportion of a great composition is helpful to the whole,' and examples from Turner's compositions furnish good evidence in this respect. Under the titles of the 'Lance of Pallas,' and the 'Wings of the Lion,' the Greek and Venetian art inspirations are descanted upon. These are chapters of great interest to the student. Mr. Ruskin finds the Venetian mind perfect in its belief, its width, and its judgment. Yet it passed away. Not desiring the religion, but the delight only of its art, in proportion to the greatness of the power of the Venetians was the shame of their fall. Chapters follow on representative painters—Durer and Salvator, Claude and Poussin, with comments on the 'faithless' and 'degraded' system of classical landscape—Rubens and Cuyp. The next discourse is on 'Vulgarity.' A striking exemplification of it Mr. Ruskin finds in the expression of the butcher's dog in Landseer's 'Low Life,' and Cruikshank's Noah Claypole in the plates toOliver Twist. He counts 'among the reckless losses of the right service of intellectual power with which the century must be charged, the employing to no higher purpose than the illustration ofJack Sheppard'and the "Irish Rebellion," the great, grave (using the words deliberately and with large meaning), and singular genius of Cruikshank,' though the works selected are hardly fair specimens of the artist's general illustrative labours, and the 'Irish Rebellion' is surely worthy of art record and rendering. The most fatal form of vulgarity is described as dulness of heart and dulness of bodily sense, general stupidity being its material manifestation. 'One of the forms of death,' suggests Mr. Ruskin's 'keen-minded friend,' Mr. Brett, the painter—a vague enough definition—but it pleases Mr. Ruskin, though he amends it, and settles at last on the term 'earthful selfishness,' as embracing all the most fatal and essential forms of mental vulgarity. Hastening to an end, it can only now be simply stated that chapters on Wouvermans and Angelico succeed. Then the 'two boyhoods,' an interesting and highly-wrought comparison of the early lives of Turner and Giorgione, and of the different circumstances under which their art-minds severally dawned and developed. The remainder of the book is almost wholly devoted in glowing strains, like the pompous glory of the crowning movement of a Beethoven symphony, to loving yet deferential homage to Turner. His works and life are traced out and lingered over, not with biographical exactness, but with some effort to make them explicable of the character of the great painter. 'Much of his mind and heart I do not know—perhaps never shall know; but this much I do, and if there is anything in the previous course of this work to warrant trust in me of any kind, let me be trusted when I tell you that Turner had a heart as intensely kind and as nobly true as ever God gave to one of his creatures.' And in a tone replete with the most solemn and impassioned poetry and feeling, the author brings his great work to an end. Emphatically a great work—a noble jewel in the crown of art literature, resplendent enough to have its flaws dwelt upon and some imperfections and shortcoming in its setting pointed out, and yet to lose little in estimation after the utmost has been said and done in these respects.

NOTES:[23]In 1861 was publishedThe Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., founded on letters and papers furnished by his friends and Fellow Academicians; by Walter Thornbury. In a more recent work,Haunted London(1865), Mr. Thornbury has himself passed judgment upon hisLife of Turner, pronouncing it to be 'a careless book, but still containing much curious, authentic, and original anecdote.'[24]It may be noted, however, that in 'The Georgian Era' (1834) occurs the following passage:—'Some have gone the length of saying that in marine views Turner has wrested the palm from all competitors; but with this, few, surely, will agree who have seen the sea pieces of Powell, an artist who, though but recently deceased, has had no biographer to commemorate his poverty or his genius.' The works of Powell, however admirable, are not likely now to be preferred to Turner's. 'The Georgian Era' is not a work of much repute.[25]'What can I say of the Napoleon of Mr. Turner? called (with frightful satire) "The Exile and theRock Limpet." He stands in the midst of a scarlet tornado looking at least forty feet high. "Ah!" says the mysterious poet from whom Mr. Turner loves to quote—"Ah! thy tent-formed shell is likeThe soldier's nightly bivouac, aloneAmidst a sea of blood.............but you can join your comrades!"FALLACIES OF HOPE.'These remarkable lines entirely explain the meaning of the picture; another piece is described by lines from the same poem, in a metre more regular—"The midnight torch gleamed o'er the steamer's side,Andmerit's corsewas yielded to the tide."(This was the burial of Wilkie at sea: now in the National Gallery.)'When the pictures are re-hung, as sometimes I believe is the case, it might, perhaps, be as well to turn these upside down and see how they would lookthen. The Campo Santo of Venice, when examined closely, is scarcely less mysterious; at a little distance, however, it is a most brilliant, airy, and beautiful picture. O for the old days before Mr. Turner had lighted on "The Fallacies" and could see like other people!'—An Exhibition Gossip, by Michael Angelo Titmarsh,Ainsworth's Magazine,1843.[26]The Almanack of the Month, 1846—in which see also a comical drawing, by Mr. Richard Doyle, of 'Turner painting one of his pictures,' and the accompanying letterpress:—'Considerable discussion has arisen as to the mode in which Turner goes to work to paint his pictures. Some think he mixes a few colours on his canvas instead of on his palette, and sends the result to be exhibited. Another ingenious theory is that he puts a canvas in a sort of pillory, and pelts it with eggs and other missiles, when appending to the mess some outrageous title, he has it hung in a good position at the Academy. Our own idea is, that he chooses four or five good places in which he hangs up some regularly framed squares of blank canvas; a day or so before the opening of the Exhibition, we believe he goes down to the Academy with a quantity of colours and a nine pound brush, with which he dabs away for a few minutes, and his work is finished,' etc. etc.[27]In a letter to Phillips he adds, 'No one knew the value of this treatment better than Turner.'

[23]In 1861 was publishedThe Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., founded on letters and papers furnished by his friends and Fellow Academicians; by Walter Thornbury. In a more recent work,Haunted London(1865), Mr. Thornbury has himself passed judgment upon hisLife of Turner, pronouncing it to be 'a careless book, but still containing much curious, authentic, and original anecdote.'

[24]It may be noted, however, that in 'The Georgian Era' (1834) occurs the following passage:—'Some have gone the length of saying that in marine views Turner has wrested the palm from all competitors; but with this, few, surely, will agree who have seen the sea pieces of Powell, an artist who, though but recently deceased, has had no biographer to commemorate his poverty or his genius.' The works of Powell, however admirable, are not likely now to be preferred to Turner's. 'The Georgian Era' is not a work of much repute.

[25]'What can I say of the Napoleon of Mr. Turner? called (with frightful satire) "The Exile and theRock Limpet." He stands in the midst of a scarlet tornado looking at least forty feet high. "Ah!" says the mysterious poet from whom Mr. Turner loves to quote—"Ah! thy tent-formed shell is likeThe soldier's nightly bivouac, aloneAmidst a sea of blood.............but you can join your comrades!"FALLACIES OF HOPE.'These remarkable lines entirely explain the meaning of the picture; another piece is described by lines from the same poem, in a metre more regular—"The midnight torch gleamed o'er the steamer's side,Andmerit's corsewas yielded to the tide."(This was the burial of Wilkie at sea: now in the National Gallery.)'When the pictures are re-hung, as sometimes I believe is the case, it might, perhaps, be as well to turn these upside down and see how they would lookthen. The Campo Santo of Venice, when examined closely, is scarcely less mysterious; at a little distance, however, it is a most brilliant, airy, and beautiful picture. O for the old days before Mr. Turner had lighted on "The Fallacies" and could see like other people!'—An Exhibition Gossip, by Michael Angelo Titmarsh,Ainsworth's Magazine,1843.

"Ah! thy tent-formed shell is likeThe soldier's nightly bivouac, aloneAmidst a sea of blood.............but you can join your comrades!"

FALLACIES OF HOPE.

'These remarkable lines entirely explain the meaning of the picture; another piece is described by lines from the same poem, in a metre more regular—

"The midnight torch gleamed o'er the steamer's side,Andmerit's corsewas yielded to the tide."

(This was the burial of Wilkie at sea: now in the National Gallery.)

'When the pictures are re-hung, as sometimes I believe is the case, it might, perhaps, be as well to turn these upside down and see how they would lookthen. The Campo Santo of Venice, when examined closely, is scarcely less mysterious; at a little distance, however, it is a most brilliant, airy, and beautiful picture. O for the old days before Mr. Turner had lighted on "The Fallacies" and could see like other people!'—An Exhibition Gossip, by Michael Angelo Titmarsh,Ainsworth's Magazine,1843.

[26]The Almanack of the Month, 1846—in which see also a comical drawing, by Mr. Richard Doyle, of 'Turner painting one of his pictures,' and the accompanying letterpress:—'Considerable discussion has arisen as to the mode in which Turner goes to work to paint his pictures. Some think he mixes a few colours on his canvas instead of on his palette, and sends the result to be exhibited. Another ingenious theory is that he puts a canvas in a sort of pillory, and pelts it with eggs and other missiles, when appending to the mess some outrageous title, he has it hung in a good position at the Academy. Our own idea is, that he chooses four or five good places in which he hangs up some regularly framed squares of blank canvas; a day or so before the opening of the Exhibition, we believe he goes down to the Academy with a quantity of colours and a nine pound brush, with which he dabs away for a few minutes, and his work is finished,' etc. etc.

[27]In a letter to Phillips he adds, 'No one knew the value of this treatment better than Turner.'

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