Modern Painters

By J. RUSKIN. Vol. V. Smith, Elder, & Co. London.

THE completion of a work of the importance of the “ Modern Painters,” which has occupied in its production the thought and a large portion of the labor of fourteen years, is an event of more interest than it often falls to the lot of a book to excite; but when, as in this ease, the result shows the development of an individual taste and critical ability entirely without peer in the history of art-letters, the value of the whole work is immensely enhanced by the time which its publication covers.

The first volume of “ Modern Painters ” was, as everybody will remember, one of the sensation-books of the time, and fell upon the public opinion of the day like a thunderbolt from the clear sky. Denying, and in many instances overthrowing, the received canons of criticism, and defying all the accepted authorities in it, the author excited the liveliest astonishment and the bitterest hostility of the professional critics in general, and at once divided the world of art, so far as his influence reached, into two parts : the one embracing most of the reverent and conservative minds, and by far the larger ; the other, most of the enthusiastic, the radical, and earnest; but this, small in numbers at first, was increased, and still increases, by the force of those qualities of enthusiasm and earnestness, until now, in England, it embraces nearly all of the true and living art of our time. But that volume, professedly treating art with reference to its superficial attributes and for a special purpose, the redemption of a great and revered artist from unjust disparagement and undeserved neglect, touched in scarcely the least degree the vital questions of taste or art-production. It had no considerations of sentiment or discussion of principles to offer: it dealt with facts, and touched the simple truths of Nature with an enthusiastic fire and lucidness which were proof positive of the knowledge and feeling of the author; and the public, either conversant with those facts or capable of being satisfied of them without much thought, abandoned itself to the fascination of his eloquence and acquiesced in his teachings, or arrayed itself in utter hostility to him and his new ideas.

The second volume was more abstruse and deeper in feeling, and comparatively few of Mr. Ruskin's followers through the first cared to get entangled in the metaphysical mazes of the second, and it is generally neglected, although containing some of the deepest and most satisfactory studies on the fundamental principles of art and taste which have ever been printed.

The third and fourth volumes, coming up again nearer the surface, made an application of the principles investigated to the material for art which Nature furnishes ; and here again the author found in part his audience diminished among those who had at first been carried away by his enthusiasm or silenced and convinced by his unhesitating dogmatism. A partial reaction took place, owing not only to the change in the tone of the “ Modern Painters,” but to the springing up of a new school of painting, the consequence, mainly and legitimately, of the teachings of the work, — the pre-Raphaelite, — which, at once attacked virulently and immeasurably by the old school of critics, and defended as earnestly by Mr. Ruskin, became the subject of the war which was still waged between him and them. Turner in the meanwhile had passed away and was admitted to apotheosis, the malignant critics of yesterday becoming the ignorant adulators of to-day : his position was conceded, but the hostility to Ruskin was sustained with unabated bitterness on the new field. He was demolished anew, and proved, many useless times over and over, an ignorant pretender ; the public in the meanwhile, even his opponents, taking up in turn his proteges, as he pointed them out to their notice. The effect of his criticisms iu enhancing the value of the works they approved would be incredible, if one did not know how glad an English public is to be led. As a single instance, — a drawing which was sold from one of the water-color exhibitions at fifty guineas, sold again, after Ruskin’s notice, at two hundred and fifty ; and in the lists of pictures sold or to be sold at auction, one secs constantly,

“Noticed by Mr. Ruskin,” “ Approved by Mr. Ruskin,” appended to the title.

The third volume, being devoted to the correction of the ideas of Style and the Ideal, to Finish, and a review of the Past Landscape-Painting, recurs to Turner in its closing chapter, “On his Teachers”; the fourth was given to Mountain Beauty, following the parallel of the first, which treated of the Truth of Mountains, and bearing as its burden of moral the expression of that Ideal by Turner ; and the fifth now comes to conclude the investigations on the Ideal by chapters : first, on “ Leaf Beauty,” an exceedingly interesting investigation of the development of the forms of trees and plants as concerned with the laws of beauty ; second, “ Cloud Beauty" and then of the “ Ideas of Relation/’ in which the author comes finally to the demonstration of the right of Turner to his position amongst the thinking and poetic painters.

From the first division, “ Leaf Beauty,” we must make one extract. The author has been speaking of the influence of the Pine on Swiss character.

“But the point which I desire the reader to note is, that the character of the scene which, if any, appears to have been impressive to the inhabitant is not that which we ourselves feel when we enter the district. It was not from their lakes, nor their cliffs, nor their glaciers, though these were all peculiarly their possession, that the three venerable cantons or states received their name. They were not called the States of the Rock, nor the States of the Lake, but the States of the Forest. And the one of the three which contains the most touching record of the spiritual power of Swiss religion, in the name of the convent of the ‘ Hill of Angels,’ hits for its own none but the sweet, childish name of ' Under the Woods.’

“ And, indeed, you may pass under them, if, leaving the most sacred spot in Swiss history, the Meadow of the Three Fountains, you bid the boatman row southward a little way by the Bay of Uri. Steepest there, on its western side, the walls of its rocks ascend to heaven. Far in the blue of evening, like a great cathedral-pavement, lies the lake in its darkness; and you may hear the whisper of innumerable falling waters return from the hollows of the cliff like the voices of a multitude praying under their breath. From time to time, the beat of a wave, slow lifted, where the rocks lean over the black depth, dies heavily as the last note of a requiem. Opposite, green with steep grass and set with châlet villages, the Tron Alp rises in one solemn glow of pastoral light find peace; and above, against the clouds of twilight, ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the shadowy armies of the Unterwalden pine.

“ I have seen that it is possible for the stranger to pass through this great chapel, with its font of waters, and mountain pillars, and vaults of cloud, without being touched by one noble thought or stirred by any sacred passion; but for those who received from its waves the baptism of their youth, and learned beneath its rocks the fidelity of their manhood, and watched amidst its clouds the likeness of the dream of life, with the eyes of age, — for these I will not believe that the mountain-shrine was built or the calm of its forest-shadows guarded by their God in vain.”

But perhaps that conclusion of Ruskin's, in the new volume, which will most interest his earnest readers, is that the Venetian school is the only religious school that has ever existed. So much has Ruskin’s development seemed to contradict, itself, that one is scarcely surprised at one conclusion being apparently opposed to the former one ; but a change so great as this, from Giotto, Perugino, and Cima, to Tintoret, Titian, and Veronese, as the religious ideals, will, indeed, amaze all who read it. Yet this is but the logical consequence of his progression hitherto. If he commenced with a belief that asceticism was religion, he would recognize Perugino and Giotto as the true religious artists; but if, as seems to be the case, he has learned at last that religion is a thing of daily life, mingling in all that we do, caring for body as well as soul, sense as well as spirit, and that a complete man must be a ma who lives in every sense of the word, then the Venetians, as the painters of the truth of life in all its joy and sorrow, are the true painters, and the only ones whose art was inhabited by a religion worth following.

It is interesting to follow what are called Ruskin’s contradictions and see how perfectly they represent the whole system of artistic truth, as seen from the different points of a young artist’s or student’s growth up to mature and ripened judgment ; so that there is no stage of artistic development which has not some form of truth particularly adapted to it, in the “Modern Painters.” If it be urged that the book should have been written only from the point of final development, it can only be said that no true book will ever be so written, for no man can ever be certain of his having attained final truth. “ Modern Painters ” has value in this very showing of the critical development, which to an intelligent student is greater than that a complete and infallible guide could have.

The chapter on Invention is full of the most delightful artistic truth, and shows completely, by copious illustrations, how well Turner deserved the rank Ruskin gives him amongst great composers. The analyses of the compositions of Turner are most curious and interesting, but, of course, depend on the accompanying plates. Some most valuable mental philosophy bearing on the production of art-works concludes Part VIII., which is devoted to “ Invention Formal,” of which we quote the concluding paragraphs:—

“ Until the feelings can give strength enough to the will to enable it to conquer them, they are not strong enough. If you cannot leave your picture at any moment, cannot turn from it and go on with another while the color is drying, cannot work at any part of it you choose with equal contentment, you have not firm enough grasp of it.

“It follows, also, that no vain or selfish person can possibly paint, in the noble sense of the word. Vanity and selfishness are troublous, eager, anxious, petulant: painting can only be done in calm of mind Resolution is not enough to secure this; it must be secured by disposition as well. You may resolve to think of your picture only; but, if you have been fretted before beginning, no manly or clear grasp of it will be possible for you. No forced calm is calm enough: only honest calm, natural calm. You might as well try by external pressure to smooth a lake till it could reflect the sky, as by violence of effort to secure the peace through which only you can reach imagination. That peace must come in its own time, as the waters settle themselves into clearness as well as quietness: you can no more filter your mind into purity than you can compress it into calmness; you must keep it pure, if yon would have it pure; and throw no stones into it, if you would have it quiet. Great courage and selfcommand may to a certain extent give power of painting without the true calmness underneath, but never of doing first-rate work. There is sufficient evidence of this in even what we know of great men, though of the greatest we nearly always know the least (and that necessarily; they being very silent, and not much given to setting themselves forth to questioners,— apt to be contemptuously reserved no less than unselfishly). But in such writings and sayings as we possess of theirs we may trace a quite curious gentleness and serene courtesy. Rubens's letters are almost ludicrous in their unhurried politeness. Reynolds, swiftest of painters, vas gentlest of companions; so also Velasquez, Titian, and Veronese.

“It is gratuitous to add that no shallow or pretty person can paint. Mere cleverness or special gift never made an artist. It is only perfectness of mind, unity, depth, decision, the highest qualities, in fine, of the intellect, which will form the imagination.

“ And, lastly, no false person can paint. A person false at heart may, when it suits his purposes, seize a stray truth here or there; but the relations of truth, its perfectness, that which makes it wholesome truth, he can never perceive. As wholeness and wholesomeness go together, so also sight with sincerity ; it is only the constant desire of and submissiveness to truth, which can measure its strange angles and mark its infinite aspects, and fit them and knit them into sacred invention.

“ Sacred I call it deliberately; for it is thus in the most accurate senses, humble as well as helpful,—meek in its receiving as magnificent in its disposing; the name it bears being rightly given even to invention formal, not because it forms, but because it finds. For you cannot find a lie; you must make it for yourself. False things may be imagined, and false things composed; but only truth can be invented.”

One of those cardinal doctrines by which we may learn the bearings of a writer's system of truth is that of Ruskin’s of the intimate connection between landscape art and humanity.

“ Fragrant tissue of flowers, golden circlet of clouds, are Only fair when they meet the fondness of human thoughts and glorify human visions of heaven.

“It is the leaning oil this truth which more than any other has been the distinctive character of all my own past work. And in closing a series of art-studies, prolonged during so many years, it may be perhaps permitted me to point out this specialty,—the rather that it has been, of all their characters, the one most denied. I constantly see that the same thing takes place in the estimation formed by the modern public of the work of almost any true person, living or dead. It is not needful to state here the causes of such error; but the fact is indeed so, that precisely the distinctive root and leading force of any true man’s work and way are the things denied him.

“ And in these books of mine, their distinctive character, as essays on art, is their bringing everything to a root in human passion or human hope. Arising first not in any desire to explain the principles of art, but in the endeavor to defend an individual painter from injustice, they have been colored throughout, nay, continually altered in shape, and even warped and broken, by digressions respecting social questions, which had for me an interest tenfold greater than the work I had been forced into undertaking. Every principle of painting which I have stated is traced to some vital or spiritual fact; and in my works on architecture the preference accorded finally to one school over another is founded on a comparison of their influences on the life of the workman,—a question by all other writers on the subject of architecture wholly forgotten or despised.

“ The essential connection of the power of landscape with human emotion is not Less certain because in many impressive pictures the link is slight or local. That the connection should exist at a single point is all

that we need. . . . . That difference, and more, exists between the power of Nature through which humanity is seen, and her power in the desert. Desert,— whether of leaf or sand, —true desertuess, is not in the want of leaves, but of life. Where humanity is not and was not, the best natural beauty is more than vain. It is even terrible ; not as the dress cast aside from the body, but as an embroidered shroud hiding a skeleton.”

The volume, as a whole, will be found less dogmatic, calmer, more convincing, and more directly applicable to artistic judgment, than any of the others. There is the same love of mysticism and undermeanings, but freighted with deeper and more central truths : a charming conclusion to a fourteen-years’ diary of such study of Art and Nature, so severe, so unremitting, as never critic gave before.