(Westminster Review, April 1856)
OUR TABLE this time does not, according to the favourite metaphor, ‘groan’ under the light literature of the quarter, for the quarter has not been very productive; but, in compensation, we ourselves groan under it rather more than usual, for the harvest is principally of straw, and few grains of precious corn remain after the winnowing. We except one book, however, which is a rich sheaf in itself, and will serve as bread, and seed-corn too, for many days. We mean the new volume of Mr Ruskin’s Modern Painters, to which he appropriately gives the subordinate title, ‘Of Many Things’. It may be taken up with equal pleasure whether the reader be acquainted or not with the previous volumes, and no special artistic culture is necessary in order to enjoy its excellences or profit by its suggestions. Every one who cares about nature, or poetry, or the story of human development – every one who has a tinge of literature, or philosophy, will find something that is for him and that will ‘gravitate to him’ in this volume. Since its predecessors appeared, Mr Ruskin has devoted ten years to the loving study of his great subject – the principles of art; which, like all other great subjects, carries the student into many fields. The critic of art, as he tells us, ‘has to take some note of optics, geometry, geology, botany, and anatomy; he must acquaint himself with the works of all great artists, and with the temper and history of the times in which they lived; he must be a fair metaphysician, and a careful observer of the phenomena of natural scenery’. And when a writer like Mr Ruskin brings these varied studies to bear on one great purpose, when he has to trace their common relation to a grand phase of human activity, it is obvious that he will have a great deal to say which is of interest and importance to others besides painters. The fundamental principles of all just thought and beautiful action or creation are the same, and in making clear to ourselves what is best and noblest in art, we are making clear to ourselves what is best and noblest in morals; in learning how to estimate the artistic products of a particular age according to the mental attitude and external life of that age, we are widening our sympathy and deepening the basis of our tolerance and charity.
Of course, this treatise ‘Of Many Things’ presents certain old characteristics and new paradoxes which will furnish a fresh text to antagonistic critics; but, happily for us, and happily for our readers, who probably care more to know what Mr Ruskin says than what other people think he ought to say, we are not among those who are more irritated by his faults than charmed and subdued by his merits. When he announces to the world in his Preface, that he is incapable of falling into an illogical deduction – that, whatever other mistakes he may commit, he cannot possibly draw an inconsequent conclusion, we are not indignant, but amused, and do not in the least feel ourselves under the necessity of picking holes in his arguments in order to prove that he is not a logical Pope. We value a writer not in proportion to his freedom from faults, but in proportion to his positive excellences – to the variety of thought he contributes and suggests, to the amount of gladdening and energizing emotions he excites. Of what comparative importance is it that Mr Ruskin undervalues this painter, or overvalues the other, that he sometimes glides from a just argument into a fallacious one, that he is a little absurd here, and not a little arrogant there, if, with all these collateral mistakes, he teaches truth of infinite value, and so teaches it that men will listen? The truth of infinite value that he teaches is realism – the doctrine that all truth and beauty are to be attained by a humble and faithful study of nature, and not by substituting vague forms, bred by imagination on the mists of feeling, in place of definite, substantial reality. The thorough acceptance of this doctrine would remould our life; and he who teaches its application to any one department of human activity with such power as Mr Ruskin’s, is a prophet for his generation. It is not enough simply to teach truth; that may be done, as we all know, to empty walls, and within the covers of unsaleable books; we want it to be so taught as to compel men’s attention and sympathy. Very correct singing of very fine music will avail little without a voice that can thrill the audience and take possession of their souls. Now, Mr Ruskin has a voice, and one of such power, that whatever error he may mix with his truth, he will make more converts to that truth than less erring advocates who are hoarse and feeble. Considered merely as a writer, he is in the very highest rank of English stylists. The vigour and splendour of his eloquence are not more remarkable than its precision, and the delicate truthfulness of his epithets. The fine largo of his sentences reminds us more of De Quincy1 than of any other writer, and his tendency to digressiveness is another and less admirable point of resemblance to the English Opium-eater. Yet we are not surprised to find that he does not mention De Quincy among the favourite writers who have influenced him, for Mr Ruskin’s style is evidently due far more to innate faculty than to modifying influences; and though he himself thinks that his constant study of Carlyle must have impressed itself on his language as well as his thought, we rarely detect this. In the point of view from which he looks at a subject, in the correctness of his descriptions, and in a certain rough flavour of humour, he constantly reminds us of Carlyle, but in the mere tissue of his style, scarcely ever. But while we are dilating on Mr Ruskin’s general characteristics, we are robbing ourselves of the room we want for what is just now more important – namely, telling the reader something about the contents of the particular volume before us.
It opens with a discussion of the ‘Grand Style’, which, after an analysis and dismissal of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s opinion, that it consists in attending to what is invariable, ‘the great and general ideas only inherent in universal nature’,2 Mr Ruskin concludes to be ‘the suggestion by the imagination of noble grounds for noble emotions’. The conditions on which this result depends are, first, the choice of noble subjects, i.e., subjects which involve wide interests and profound passions, as opposed to those which involve narrow interests and slight passions. And the choice which characterizes the school of high art, is seen as much in the treatment of the subject as the selection. ‘For the artist who sincerely chooses the noblest subject, will also choose chiefly to represent what makes that subject noble, namely, the various heroism or other noble emotions of the persons represented.’3 But here two dangers present themselves: that of superseding expression by technical excellence, as when Paul Veronese makes the Supper at Emmaus a background to the portraits of two children playing with a dog; and that of superseding technical excellence by expression.
This is usually done under the influence of another kind of vanity. The artist desires that men should think he has an elevated soul, affects to despise the ordinary excellence of art, contemplates with separated egotism the course of his own imaginations or sensations, and refuses to look at the real facts around about him, in order that he may adore at leisure the shadow of himself. He lives in an element of what he calls tender emotions and lofty aspirations; which are, in fact, nothing more than very ordinary weaknesses or instincts, contemplated through a mist of pride.4
The second condition of greatness of style is love of beauty – the tendency to introduce into the conception of the subject as much beauty as is possible, consistently with truth.
The corruption of the schools of high art, so far as this particular quality is concerned, consists in the sacrifice of truth to beauty. Great art dwells on all that is beautiful; but false art omits or changes all that is ugly. Great art accepts Nature as she is, but directs the eyes and thoughts to what is most perfect in her; false art saves itself the trouble of direction, by removing or altering whatever it thinks objectionable. The evil results of which proceeding are twofold.
First. That beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadow ceases to be enjoyed as light. A white canvas cannot produce an effect of sunshine; the painter must darken it in some places before he can make it luminous in others; nor can an uninterrupted succession of beauty produce the true effect of beauty: it must be foiled by inferiority before its own power can be developed. Nature has for the most part mingled her inferior and nobler elements as she mingles sunshine with shade, giving due use and influence to both; and the painter who chooses to remove the shadow, perishes in the burning desert he has created. The truly high and beautiful art of Angelico is continually refreshed and strengthened by his frank portraiture of the most ordinary features of his brother monks, and of the recorded peculiarities of ungainly sanctity; but the modern German and Raphaelesque schools lose all honour and nobleness in barber-like admiration of handsome faces, and have, in fact, no real faith except in straight noses and curled hair. Paul Veronese opposes the dwarf to the soldier, and the negress to the queen; Shakespeare places Caliban beside Miranda, and Autolycus beside Perdita; but the vulgar idealist withdraws his beauty to the safety of the saloon, and his innocence to the seclusion of the cloister; he pretends that he does this in delicacy of choice and purity of sentiment, while in truth he has neither courage to front the monster, nor wit enough to furnish the knave.
It is only by the habit of representing faithfully all things, that we can truly learn what is beautiful, and what is not. The ugliest objects contain some element of beauty; and in all, it is an element peculiar to themselves, which cannot be separated from their ugliness, but must either be enjoyed together with it, or not at all. The more a painter accepts nature as he finds it, the more unexpected beauty he discovers in what he at first despised; but once let him arrogate the right of rejection, and he will gradually contract his circle of enjoyment, until what he supposed to be nobleness of selection ends in narrowness of perception. Dwelling perpetually upon one class of ideas, his art becomes at once monstrous and morbid; until at last he cannot faithfully represent even what he chooses to retain; his discrimination contracts into darkness, and his fastidiousness fades into fatuity.5
The third characteristic of great art is sincerity. The artist should include the largest possible quantity of truth in the most perfect possible harmony. All the truths of nature cannot be given; hence a choice must be made of some facts which can be represented from amongst others which must be passed by in silence. ‘The inferior artist chooses unimportant and scattered truths; the great artist chooses the most necessary first, and afterwards the most consistent with these, so as to obtain the greatest possible and most harmonious scene.’ Thus, Rembrandt sacrifices all other effects to the representation of the exact force with which the light on the most illumined part of an object is opposed to its obscurer portions. Paul Veronese, on the contrary, endeavours to embrace all the great relations of visible objects; and this difference between him and Rembrandt as to light and shade is typical of the difference between great and inferior artists throughout the entire field of art. He is the greatest who conveys the largest sum of truth. And as the sum of truth can always be increased by delicacy of handling, it follows
that all great art must have this delicacy to the utmost possible degree. This rule is infallible and inflexible. All coarse work is the sign of low art. Only, it is to be remembered, that coarseness must be estimated by the distance from the eye; it being necessary to consult this distance, when great, by laying on touches which appear coarse when seen near; but which, so far from being coarse, are, in reality, more delicate in a master’s work than the finest close handling, for they involve a calculation of result, and are laid on with a subtlety of sense precisely correspondent to that with which a good archer draws his bow; the spectator seeing in the action nothing but the strain of the strong arm, while there is, in reality, in the finger and eye, an ineffably delicate estimate of distance, and touch on the arrow plume.6
The last characteristic of great art is invention. It must not only present grounds for noble emotion, but must furnish these grounds by imaginative power, i.e., by an inventive combination of distinctly known objects. Thus imaginative art includes the historical faculties, which simply represent observed facts, but renders these faculties subservient to a poetic purpose.
And now, finally, since this poetical power includes the historical, if we glance back to the other qualities required in great art, and put all together, we find that the sum of them is simply the sum of all the powers of man. For as (1) the choice of the high subject involves all conditions of right moral choice, and as (2) the love of beauty involves all conditions of right admiration, and as (3) the grasp of truth involves all strength of sense, evenness of judgement, and honesty of purpose, and as (4) the poetical power involves all swiftness of invention, and accuracy of historical memory, the sum of all these powers is the sum of the human soul. Hence we see why the word ‘Great’ is used of this art. It is literally great. It compasses and calls forth the entire human spirit, whereas any other kind of art, being more or less small or narrow, compasses and calls forth only part of the human spirit. Hence the idea of its magnitude is a literal and just one, the art being simply less or greater in proportion to the number of faculties it exercises and addresses. And this is the ultimate meaning of the definition I gave of it long ago, as containing the ‘greatest number of the greatest ideas’.7
We have next a discussion of the False Ideal, and first of all, in Religious Art. The want of realization in the early religious painters prevented their pictures from being more than suggestions to the feelings. They attempted to express, not the actual fact, but their own enthusiasm about the fact; they covered the Virgin’s dress with gold, not with any idea of representing her as she ever was or will be seen, but with a burning desire to show their love for her. As art advanced in technical power and became more realistic, there arose a more pernicious falsity in the treatment of religious subjects; more pernicious, because it was more likely to be accepted as a representation of fact.
Take a very important instance. I suppose there is no event in the whole life of Christ to which, in hours of doubt or fear, men turn with more anxious thirst to know the close facts of it, or with more earnest and passionate dwelling upon every syllable of its recorded narrative, than Christ showing Himself to his disciples at the lake of Galilee. There is something pre-eminently open, natural, full fronting our disbelief in this manifestation. The others, recorded after the resurrection, were sudden, phantom-like, occurring to men in profound sorrow and wearied agitation of heart; not, it might seem, safe judges of what they saw. But the agitation was now over. They had gone back to their daily work, thinking still their business lay net-wards, unmeshed from the literal rope and drag. Simon Peter saith unto them, ‘I go a fishing.’ They say unto him, ‘We also go with thee.’ True words enough, and having far echo beyond those Galilean hills. That night they caught nothing; but when the morning came, in the clear light of it, behold, a figure stood on the shore. They were not thinking of anything but their fruitless hauls. They had no guess who it was. It asked them simply if they had caught anything. They said no. And it tells them to cast yet again. And John shades his eyes from the morning sun with his hand, to look who it is; and though the glinting of the sea, too, dazzles him, he makes out who it is, at last; and poor Simon, not to be outrun this time, tightens his fisher’s coat about him, and dashes in, over the nets. One would have liked to see him swim those hundred yards, and stagger to his knees on the beach.
Well, the others get to the beach, too, in time, in such slow way as men in general do get, in this world, to its true shore, much impeded by that wonderful ‘dragging the net with fishes’; but they get there – seven of them in all; – first the Denier, and then the slowest believer, and then the quickest believer, and then the two throne-seekers, and two more, we know not who.
They sit down on the shore face to face with Him, and eat their broiled fish as He bids. And then, to Peter, all dripping still, shivering, and amazed, staring at Christ in the sun, on the other side of the coal fire, – thinking a little, perhaps, of what happened by another coal fire, when it was colder, and having had no word once changed with him by his Master since that look of His, – to him, so amazed, comes the question, ‘Simon, lovest thou me?’ Try to feel that a little, and think of it till it is true to you; and then, take up that infinite monstrosity and hypocrisy – Raphael’s cartoon of the Charge to Peter. Note, first, the bold fallacy – the putting all the Apostles there, a mere lie to serve the papal heresy of the Petric supremacy, by putting them all in the background while Peter receives the charge, and making them all witnesses to it. Note the handsomely curled hair and neatly tied sandals of the men who had been out all night in the sea-mists and on the slimy decks. Note their convenient dresses for going a-fishing, with trains that lie a yard along the ground, and goodly fringes, – all made to match, an apostolic fishing costume. Note how Peter especially (whose chief glory was in his wet coat girt about him and naked limbs) is enveloped in folds and fringes, so as to kneel and hold his keys with grace. No fire of coals at all, nor lonely mountain shore, but a pleasant Italian landscape, full of villas and churches, and a flock of sheep to be pointed at; and the whole group of Apostles, not round Christ, as they would have been naturally, but straggling away in a line, that they may all be shown.
The simple truth is, that the moment we look at the picture we feel our belief of the whole thing taken away. There is, visibly, no possibility of that group ever having existed, in any place, or on any occasion. It is all a mere mythic absurdity, and faded concoction of fringes, muscular arms, and curly heads of Greek philosophers.8
Mr Ruskin glances rapidly at the False Ideal in profane art – the pursuit of mere physical beauty as a gratification to the idle senses; and then enters into an extended consideration of the True Ideal, distinguished by him into three branches. 1. Purist Idealism, which results from the unwillingness of pure and tender minds to contemplate evil, of which Angelico is the great example, among the early painters; and among the moderns, Stothard exhibits the same tendency in the treatment of worldly subjects. 2. Naturalist Idealism, which accepts the weaknesses, faults, and wrongnesses in all things that it sees, but so places them that they form a noble whole, in which the imperfection of each several part is not only harmless, but absolutely essential, and yet in which whatever is good in each several part shall be completely displayed. 3. The Grotesque Ideal, which is either playful, terrible, or symbolical. The essence of an admirable chapter on ‘Finish’ is, that all real finish is not mere polish, but added truth. Great artists finish not to show their skill, nor to produce a smooth piece of work, but to render clearer the expression of knowledge.
We resist the temptation to quote any of the very fine things Mr Ruskin says about the ‘Use of Pictures’, and pass on to the succeeding chapter, in which he enters on his special subject, namely, landscape painting. With that intense interest in landscape which is a peculiar characteristic of modern times, is associated the ‘Pathetic Fallacy’ – the transference to external objects of the spectator’s own emotions, as when Kingsley says of the drowned maiden, –
They rowed her in across the rolling foam –
The cruel, crawling foam.9
The pleasure we derive from this fallacy is legitimate when the passion in which it originates is strong, and has an adequate cause. But the mental condition which admits of this fallacy is of a lower order than that in which, while the emotions are strong, the intellect is yet strong enough to assert its rule against them; and ‘the whole man stands in an iron glow, white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in nowise evaporating; even if he melts, losing none of his weight’. Thus the poets who delight in this fallacy are chiefly of the second order – the reflective and perceptive – such as Wordsworth, Keats, and Tennyson; while the creative poets, for example, Shakspeare, Homer, and Dante, use it sparingly.
Next follows one of the most delightful and suggestive chapters in the volume, on ‘Classical Landscape’, or the way in which the Greeks looked at external nature. Take a specimen on the details of the Homeric landscape: –
As far as I recollect, without a single exception, every Homeric landscape, intended to be beautiful, is composed of a fountain, a meadow, and a shady grove. This ideal is very interestingly marked, as intended for a perfect one, in the fifth book of the Odyssey; when Mercury himself stops for a moment, though on a message, to look at a landscape, ‘which even an immortal might be gladdened to behold’. This landscape consists of a cave covered with a running vine, all blooming into grapes, and surrounded by a grove of alder, poplar, and sweet-smelling cypress. Four fountains of white (foaming) water, springing in succession (mark the orderliness), and close to one another, flow away in different directions, through a meadow full of violets and parsley (parsley, to mark its moisture, being elsewhere called ‘marsh-nourished’, and associated with the lotus); the air is perfumed not only by these violets and by the sweet cypress, but by Calypso’s fire of finely chopped cedar wood, which sends a smoke, as of incense, through the island; Calypso herself is singing; and finally, upon the trees are resting, or roosting, owls, hawks, and ‘long-tongued sea-crows’. Whether these last are considered as a part of the ideal landscape, as marine singing-birds, I know not; but the approval of Mercury appears to be elicited chiefly by the fountains and violet meadow.
Now the notable things in this description are, first, the evident subservience of the whole landscape to human comfort, to the foot, the taste, or the smell; and secondly, that throughout the passage there is not a single figurative word expressive of the things being in any wise other than plain grass, fruit, or flower. I have used the term ‘spring’ of the fountains, because, without doubt, Homer means that they sprang forth brightly, having their source at the foot of the rocks (as copious fountains nearly always have); but Homer does not say ‘spring’, he says simply flow, and uses only one word for ‘growing softly’, or ‘richly’, of the tall trees, the vine, and the violets. There is, however, some expression of sympathy with the sea-birds; he speaks of them in precisely the same terms, as in other places of naval nations, saying they ‘have care of the works of the sea’.
If we glance through the references to pleasant landscape which occur in other parts of the Odyssey, we shall always be struck by this quiet subjection of their every feature to human service, and by the excessive similarity in the scenes. Perhaps the spot intended, after this, to be most perfect, may be the garden of Alcinous, where the principal ideas are, still more definitely, order, symmetry, and fruitfulness; the beds being duly ranged between rows of vines, which, as well as the pear, apple, and fig-trees, bear fruit continually, some grapes being yet sour, while others are getting black; there are plenty of ‘orderly square beds of herbs’, chiefly leeks, and two fountains, one running through the garden, and one under the pavement of the palace to a reservoir for the citizens. Ulysses, pausing to contemplate this scene, is described nearly in the same terms as Mercury, pausing to contemplate the wilder meadow; and it is interesting to observe, that, in spite of all Homer’s love of symmetry, the god’s admiration is excited by the free fountains, wild violets, and wandering vine; but the mortal’s, by the vines in rows, the leeks in beds, and the fountains in pipes.10
The mediæval feeling for landscape is less utilitarian than the Greek. Everything is pleasurable and horticultural – the knights and ladies sing and make love in pleasaunces and rose-gardens. There is a more sentimental enjoyment in external nature; but, added to this, there is a new respect for mountains, as places where a solemn presence is to be felt, and spiritual good obtained. As Homer is the grand authority for Greek landscape, so is Dante for the mediæval; and Mr Ruskin gives an elaborate study of the landscape in the Divina Commedia. To the love of brilliancy shown in mediæval landscape, is contrasted the love of clouds in the modern, ‘so that if a general and characteristic name were needed for modern landscape art, none better could be found than “the service of clouds” ’. But here again Mr Ruskin seeks for the spirit of landscape first of all in literature; and he expects to surprise his readers by selecting Scott as the typical poet, and greatest literary man of his age. He, very justly, we think, places Creative literature such as Scott’s, above Sentimental literature, even when this is of as high a character as in some passages of Byron or Tennyson.
To invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens; which to do requires a colossal intellect; but to describe a separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that noble emotion for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of somebody sitting on the other side of the table… I unhesitatingly receive as a greater manifestation of power the right invention of a few sentences spoken by Pleydell and Mannering across their supper-table, than the most tender and passionate melodies of the self-examining verse.11
This appreciation of Scott’s power puts us in such excellent humour, that we are not inclined to quarrel with Mr Ruskin about another judgement of his, to which we cannot see our way, in spite of the arguments he adduces. According to him Scott was eminently sad, sadder than Byron. On the other hand, he shows that this sadness did not lead Scott into the pathetic fallacy: the bird, the brook, the flower, and the cornfield, kept their gladsomeness for him, not withstanding his own melancholy. But the more we look into Mr Ruskin’s volume, the more we want to quote or to question; so, remembering that we have other books to tell the reader about, we must shut this very seductive one, and content ourselves with merely mentioning the chapters on the ‘Moral of Landscape’, and on the ‘Teachers of Turner’, which occupy the remaining pages; the latter preparing the way for the special consideration of Turner, which is to follow in the fourth volume. If the matter of this book had arrested us less, we should, perhaps, have laid more stress on the illustrations, some of which are very beautiful: for example, a view of the Apennines by sunset, and a group of leaves and grasses, from the author’s own pencil.