Lamp of Beauty - Writings on Art 0801491975

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LANDMARKS IN ART HISTOI�Y

The Latnp of Beauty Writings on Art by JOHN RUSKIN

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PORTRAIT OF RUSKIN AT THE WATERFALL.

Detail of the painting by Milbis.

Coll. Sir i Villi,1111 Acli111d, Bt.

The Lalllp of Beauty Writings on Art by

JOHN RUSKIN

Selected a11d edited by Joa11 Eva11s

A Pl1aido11 Book

Cor11cll U11ivcrsity l) rcss ITI IACA, NEW Y()l{K

©

I 9 59

by Phaidon Press Lin1ited, Oxford

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, n1ust not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address Cornell University Press, l 24 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 148 50. First published 1959 First published, Cornell Paperbacks, 1980 International Standard Book Nun1ber 0-8014-9197-5 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 80-66414 Printed in Great Britain by The Pitn1an Press, Bath

CONTENTS

INTR ODUCTION Page 7 PART ON E · PAINTING Page 17 PART TWO ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE Page 177 PART THREE THE ORGANIZATION AND THE STUDY OF ART r:age 289 LIST OF PLATES Page 325 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Page

32 8

INDEX Page 329

PUBLISHER'S NOTE This volun1e has been photographicaliy reprinted fro111 the first edition, published in I 9 59. The six colour plates in the earlier edition (frontispiece, and plates facing pages 46, 82, 98, 114 and 130) are here reproduced in black and white, although they are still referred to as 'colour-plates' in son1e footnotes and in the list of plates. For production reasons, their blank verso pages have been retained in this edition. Like the black and \vhite plates, they are unpaginated. The locations of son1e of the works reproduced have changed during the past twenty years; in particular, the painting reproduced in the plate facing page 82 is no\v in the Tate Gallery, the picture in Plate 48 no\v belongs to Roy Miles Fine Paintings, London, and so111c of the \\'orks listed as belonging to private O\vners ha\·e changed hands.

INTRODUCTION

HEN RusKIN DIED IN 1900 his friends E. T. Cook and Alexander W edderbum embarked upon the preparation of a great Library Edition of his ,vorks. It is admirably edited and splendidly produced; yet its very completeness has 1nade it less a me1norial than a to1nbstone. Few people 110,vadays ,vill read through thirty-eight n1assive volu1nes, or even consult an index that occupies 688 pages in double colunms. It is partly for this reason that Ruskin's ,vritings on art are now little read. That fact is the justification for the present volu1nc of sclections: 1 a volu1ne fro1n ,vhich 1nuch has necessarily had to be on1itted, and in \vhich a single colour of Ruskin's portrayal of life is torn fro1n its web; yet one which niay help to re1nind its readers that n1uch that ,ve still take for granted in our vie,v of art is derived fro1n Ruskin. A strictly chronological arrange1nent, v.rith three broad divisions of subject, will, I hope, show the develop111ent of his n1ind and of his taste. John Ruskin 2 \Vas bon1 on February 18, 1819, the only child of two people ,vho had n1arried late in life. His father was a 111an of taste, ,vho had risen frorn his father's shop in Edinburgh to beco1ne a parn1er in a finn of sherry 111erchants. He used to take his ,vife and child \Vith hi1n on his sun1n1er journeys in search of orders round the country houses of England, and so introduced the boy to private galleries which hdd the pictures brought fro1n Grand Tours in Italy by their ovvners or their ancestors. Ruskin pcre had tried his hand at dra,ving as a boy, and encouraged his son in the san1e pursuit, as in the con1position of endless prose and verse, ,vhich c1nerged fro1n the boy's n1ind in facile and undistinguished quantities. A-. early .1s 1891 W. G. Collmgwood publi'>htc.1 Tlzc Art Te,1cl1i11.i: ofjt>lw R11ski11 with thl" s:11nc imcncion; hl" rndcavourcd, however, co cake a synoptic rather than a chronologic.d view, and for rcal' p .1r.1tcl y I l l .lil y CO I J '> l lk LHt < l l l or l{u-..J... 1 1 1 \ dcvclo l '­

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37

P ROUT , COX A N D F I E L D I N G

tivcly luminous or aerial than the distance of the Gainsborough, nothing more bold or inventive than the fonns of its crags and the diffusion of the broad distant light upon the1n, where a vulgar artist would have thrown then1 into dark contrast. But it will be found that the light of the distance is brought out by a violent exaggeration of the gloorn in the valley; that the forms of the green trees ,vhich bear the chief light are careless and ineffective; that the markings of the crags are equally hasty, and that no object in the foreground has realization enough to enable the eye to rest upon it. The Turner, a much feebler picture in its first i1npression, and altogether inferior in the quality and value of its individual hues, will yet be found in the end n1ore forcible, because unexaggerated; its gloo111 is n1oderatc and aerial, its light deep in tone, its colour entirely unconven­ tional, and the forms of its rocks studied with the most devoted care . . . . Unteachablcness sce111s to have been a main feature of [Constable'sJ character, and there is corresponding want of veneration in the way he approaches nature herself. His early education and associations were also against hin1; they induced in him a morbid preference of subjects of a low order. I have never seen any work of his in which there were any signs of his being able to draw, and hence even the n1ost necessary details are painted by him inefficiently. His works arc also eminently wanting both in rest and rcfine1ncnt; and Fuscli's jesting con1pliment 1 is too true; for the showery weather, in which the artist delights, nusscs alike the 1najesty of stonn and the loveliness of cahn weather; it is great-coat weather, and nothing 1norc. There is strange want of depth in the n1ind which has no pleasure in sun­ bcan1s but when piercing painfully through clouds, nor in foliage but when shaken by the wind, nor in light itself but when flickering, glistening, rest­ less and feeble. Yct, with all these deductions, his works arc to be deeply respected, as thoroughly original, thoroughly honest, free fro111 affectation, manly in 1nanncr, frequently successful in cool colour, and realizing certain n1otivcs of English scenery ,vith perhaps as 1nuch affection as such scenery, unless ,vhcn regarded through 1ncdia of feeling derived fro1n higher sources, is calculated to inspire. From Modem Painters, Vol.

I,

3 rd cdn ., Part

II,

Sec.

I,

Ch .

VII ,

,r

1 5-

Prout, Cox and Fielding . . . The reed pen outline and peculiar touch of Prout, \vhich arc frequently considered as 1ncrc 1nanncr, arc in fact the only n1cans of expressing the cru111bling character of stone \vhich the artist loves and desires. That char­ acter never has been expressed except by hi1n, nor \vill it ever be expressed 1

'I am going co sec Constable·, brinn � me mine ombrdla.'

38

PRO U T , COX AND FIE L D I N G

except by his n1cans. And it is of the greatest i1nportance to distinguish this kind of necessary and virtuous 1 nanner fro1n the conventional 111anners very frequent in derivative schools, and ahvays utterly to be conte1nncd, wherein an artist, desiring nothing and feeling nothing, executes every­ thing in his own particular 111odc, and teaches c1nulous scholars ho\V to do ,vith difficulty ,vhat 1night have been done ,vith case. It is true that there are son1etin1es instances in vvhich great 111asters . have e1nployed different 1ncans of getting at the sa1nc end, but in these cases their choice has been ahvays of those which to thc1n appeared the shortest and 111ost co111pletc; their practice has never been prescribed by affectation or continued fron1 habit, except so for as 1nust be expected fro1n such ,vcakness as is co1nn1on to all 1ncn; fro1n hands that necessarily do n1ost readily ,vhat they are n 1ost accusto1ncd to do, and 1ninds always liable to prescribe to the hands that ,vhich they can do 1nost readily. The recollection of this ,vill keep us fro1n being offended ,vith the loose and blotted handling of David Cox. 1 There is no other 1ncans by ,vhich his object could be attained; the looseness, coolness and 1noisturc of his heritage, the rustling cn11npled freshness of his broad-leaved ,veeds, the play of pleasan t light across his deep heathered 1noor or plashing sand, the n1elting of frag1ncnts of white n1ist into the dropping blue above; all this has not been fully recorded except by hi1n, and ,vhat there is of accidental in his 1node of reaching it, ans,vcrs gracefully to the acciden tal part of nature herself. Yct he is capable of 1 nore than this, ::ind if he suffers hi1nself unifonnly to paint beneath his capability, that ,vhich began in feeling 111ust necessarily end in n 1:1nncr. . . . . . . I suppose that there arc 1nany who, like 1nyself, at son1c period of thei r l i fe have derived 111orc intense and healthy pleasure fron1 the ,vorks of [Copley Fielding] than of any other whatsoever; healthy, because alv1ays based on his faithful and si1nple rendering of nature, and that of very lovely and i1nprcssivc nature, altogether freed fron 1 coarseness, violence or vulgarity . . . . He indulges hi1nsclf too 111uch in the use of crude colour. Pure cobalt, violent rose, and purple, arc of frequent occurrence in his distances; pure siennas and other bro\vns in his foregrounds, and that not as expressive of lighted but of local colour. . . . Crude colour is not bright colour, and there ,vas never a noble or brillian t ,vork of colour yet produced, ,vhose real po,ver did not depend on the subduing of its tints rather than the elevation of tb cn1. It is perhaps one of the n1ost difficult lessons to learn in art, that the ,vann colours of distance, even the n1ost glo,ving, arc subdued by the air so as in no ,vise to rcsc1nblc the sa1ne colour seen on a foreground object; 1

Cf 1st edition, printed above, p. 2 3 .

39

TURNER

so that the rose of sunset on clouds or 111ountains has a grey in it which dis­ tinguishes it from the rose colour of the leaf of a flower; and the nungling of this grey of distance without in the slightest degree taking away the intense and perfect purity of the colour in and by itself, is perhaps the last attainn1cnt of the great landscape colourist. In the sa1nc way the blue of distance, ho\vcvcr intense, is not the blue of a bright blue flower; and it is not distinguished fron1 it by different texture 1 nerely, but by a certain intcrniixturc and undercurrent of \Vann colour, \Vhich arc altogether want­ ing in nuny of the blues of Fielding's distances; and so of every bright colour; \vhilc in foreground, \vhcre colours 1 nay be, and ought to be, pure, they yet bcco1nc expressive of light only where there is the accurate fitting of thcn1 to their relative shadows \vhich \Ve find in the works of Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, Veronese, Turner, and all other great colourists. Of this fitting of light to shado\v Fielding is altogether regardless, so that his fore­ grounds arc constantly assuniing the aspect of overcharged local colour instead of sunsliinc, and his figures and cattle look transparent. . . . It sccn1s strange that to an artist of so q nick feeling the details of a n1ountain foreground should not prove irresistibly attractive, and entice hi1n to greater accuracy of study. There is not a frag1ncnt of its living rock, nor a tuft of its heathery herbage, that has not adorable 1nanifcstations of God's \Vorking thereupon. The hannonies of colour a1nong the native lichens arc better than Titian's; the intcnvovcn bells of ca1npanula and heather arc better than all the arabesques of the Vatican; they need n o i111provc1ncnt, arrangc1ncn t, nor alteration, nothing but love; and every con1bi11ation of thc111 is different fro1n every other, so that a painter need never repeat hi1nself if he will only to be true. Yct all these sources of power have been of late en tirely neglected by Fielding. There is evidence through all his foregrounds of their being 1ncrc ho1nc inven tions, and like all ho1nc inventions, they exhibit perpetual rcsc1nbbnccs and repetitions ; the painter is eviden tly cn1barrasscd \Vithout his rutted road in the n1iddlc, and his boggy pool at the side, \vhich pool he has of late painted in hard lines of violent blue ; there is not a stone, even of the nearest and n1ost i1nportant, \vhich has its real lichens upon it, or a studied fonn, or anything n1ore to occupy the n1ind than certain variations of dark and light browns. . . . 1:rom l\ lodcm Painters, Vol .

1,

3 rd cd11., Part

II,

Sec.

I,

Ch .

\'I I , �; 20.

Turner . Turner is the only painter, so for as I kno\V, \vho has ever dra\\Tll the sky, not the clear sky, \vhich we before saw belonged exclusively to the

40

NINETEENTH CENTURY ART

religious schools, but the various forms and phenon1ena o f the cloudy heavens; all previous artists having only represented it typically or partially, but he absolutely and universally. He is the only painter who has ever drawn a n1ountain, or a stone ; no other 1nan ever having learned their organization, or possessed himself of their spirit, except in part or obscurely . . . . He is the only painter who ever drew the sten1 of a tree, Titian having co111e the nearest before him, and excelling him in the muscular develop­ ment of the larger trunks ( though sometimes losing the woody strength in a serpent-like fl a ccidi ty ) , but nussing the grace and character of the ranufications. He is the only painter who has ever represented the surface of calm, or the force of agitated water; who has represented the effects of space on distant objects, or who has rendered the abstract beauty of natural colour. These assertions I n1ake deliberately, after careful weighing and consideration, in no spirit o f dispute or mo1nentary zeal ; but fron1 strong and convinced feeling, and ,vith the consciousness of being able to prove them. From Modem Painters, Vol.

I,

3 rd edn., Part I I , Sec.

I,

Ch. vu, � 46.

Nineteenth Century Art T H E R E I s, perhaps, no phenomenon connected with the history of the first half of the nineteenth century, which will become a subject of 1nore curious investigation in after ages, than the coincident develop1nent of the Critical facul ty , and extinction of the Arts o f D esign. Our mechanical energies, vast though they be, are not singular nor characteristic; s uch, and so great, have before been n1anifested-and it rnay perhaps be recorded of us with wonder rather than respect, that we pierced mountains and ex­ cavated valleys, only to e1nulate the activi ty of the gnat and the s,vifmess of the s,vallo"\V . Our discoveries in science, ho"\vever, accelerated or con1prehensive, are but the necessary developn1ent o f the more wonderful reachings into vacancy of past centuries ; and they who struck the piles of the bridge of Chaos will arrest the eyes of Futuri ty rather than we builders of its towers and gates-theirs the authority of Light, ours but the ordering of courses to the Sun and Moon. But the Negative character of the age is distinctive. There has not be­ fore appeared a race like that of civilized Europe at this day, thoughtfully unproductive of all art-a1nbitious-industrious-investigative-refl e ctive, and incapable. Disdained by the savage, or scattered by the soldier, dis­ honoured by the voluptuary, or forbidden by the fanatic, the arts have not, till no,v, been extinguished by analysis and paralyzed by protection. O ur

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