BO OK S . 1 RIISKIN'S MODERN PAINTERS. * AFTER seventeen years of labour
and five years of incubation upon this last of five ponderous volumes, the author reveals some con- fessions which are as startling for their naivete as they are per- plexing, by the latitude of opinion and the indulgence required in any effbrt to conic at a just estimate of the writer as a coun- sellor in art. We learn now something of the sources of that acrimony and perverseness which have throughout tinged the work; 'although never obscuring the descriptive eloquence and the thoughtful tone that will always make Mr. Ruskin 's book as ne- cessary and enjoyable in art as Pascal's " Thoughts " are in the affairs of life.
It appears Mr. Ruskin was stung by a magazine article upon Turner, and determined to show that 4a all 1 the critics of the great landscape painter "were wrong, false, and base." He "knew not how little might come of the business, or whether he was fit for it ; but here was the lie full set in front of him, and there was
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no way round it but only over i" It was not to write a syste- matic work upon the principles of art but to defend a painter severely criticised. It was not for conscience' sake, or indeed for any definite hope or exact purpose, but we are told, somewhat mysteriously, "of necessity." The odd mixture of a chivalrous boldness with the impulse of an almost feminine wilfulness is thus noticeable at the outset and becomes the apology for much writing and thinking which has little to do with art—many di- gressions, to use the writer's own words, "respecting social ques- tions which had for him an interest tenfold greater than the work he had been forced into undertaking." It is this leaning which Juts biaied and warped the author's views in Modern Painters, The Stones of Venice, and The Seven Lamps of Architecture,— to search after and to find out a secret root of human passion in every work of art. Nay, such is the intensity of this impulse that, in the whole animate nature, he imagines the working of a will. Trees are to him "building plants" that will not live on the ground, but work hard with solemn forethought all their life. Branehes and buds are their children, and have their peculiar dis- positions ; and to exemplify this extremely fanciful notion, not very different by the way. from the ancient idea of Pantheism, we are shown two most minute and elaborate engravings of the Dryad's Toil and the Dryad's Waywardness—the Dryad, be it known, is poetic for Oak. Speaking of leaves in the same way— "they guide themselves by the sense of each other's remote pre- sence and by a watchful penetration of leafy purpose in the far. future. And this peculiar character exists in all the structures thus developed, that they are always visibly the result of a voli- tion on the part of the leaf, resisting an external force or fate,'to which it is never passively subjected." But how if it should turn out that crystals and rocks are impelled by the same force ?—this pretty fancy must then yield to a truer line and plummet. It is not that we object so much to the fanciful nomenclature, but that this way of looking at nature is a feeble and narrow one, inevit- ably leading to reticent and obscure technicalities most pernicious to true art. The broader and sublime aspects of nature are not to be seized by this niggling fashion of the band, nor can they be felt and comprehended by the inculcating of such a method of ob- servation. There is some consolation and hope that the author may see the error of his ways, in his confession of utter failure on the part of himself, skilled draughtsman as he is, and his staff of chosen artists to represent accurately the commonest objects in nature—the cloud flocks, the hawthorn twigs, the bending boughs. Not even Turner's objects can be imitated, for we find that " Many experiments were made in hope of expressing Turner's peculiar execution and touch by facsimile. They cost time and strength, and for the present have failed; many elaborate draw- ings having been at last thrown aside." There is something positively humiliating and pitiable in this wasteful bestowment of devoted labour ; and this feeling is not lessened when we hear from Mr. Ruskin another sigh over his abandoned section on the sea—a subject he gives up in despair because a mathematical difficulty lies at the beginning of all demonstration of facts res- pecting the curves of the waves. The work then is not completed even now. The great " vegetation question," however, which we must explain, does not with Mr. Ruskin mean the general face of natural landscape, but the microscopic anatomy of trees, had to be made out as best might be ; and, thus, as the botanist can- not explain the origin of wood, we are spared a chapter on that knotty point, and treated to two upon the bud and the leaf which would do credit to any botanical work. Interesting as all this in reference to the structure of plants is, it cannot be supposed that it will have any good. influence upon art or artists. Even if we could reduce all beauty to archaic forms it would not be desirable to encourage artists in this kind of study, for already our school has suffered from theoretical art and run into the opposite error of imitative painting ; and if these dissections under the micro- scope are to be taught as favourable to art-study we shall enter upon a saturnine period of even greater depression of the ideal faculty. We might as well try to teach eloquence by the study of the primitive sounds of speech. As to Mr. Ruskin 'a laws for tree forms, of deflection, succession, and resilience, they are em- braced, and far better expressed even for artist comprehension, • Modern Painters. By John Ruskin, M.A. Volume V. (completing the Work.) Published by Smith, Elder, and Co. by the old law of uniformity and diversity ; and we suspect all genuine painters of nature are perfectly alive to every character- istic difference and variety in vegetable life without giving a thought to these laws, while at the same time they occupy a higher and more advantageous standpoint from which to paint. Let us see in what manner Mr. Ruskin would enforce his views in practice. In answer to an imaginary objection from a young artist friend to the proposed painting of leaves as they grow, he says—" If you can paint one leaf, you can paint the world. These Pre-raphaelite laws which you think so light, 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 ! Above named Titian has done it : Correggio moreover, and Giorgione and Leonardo very nearly, trying hard. Holbein three or four times, in precious pieces, highest wrought. Ra- phael, it may be in one or two crowns of Muse or Sibyl. If any- one else in later times we have to consider." To take one of these painters, Raphael, whose works, like those of Shakespeare are for all time, and of whom it may be said he could paint the World— Mr. Ruskin doubts if • he can be said to have painted leaves well. In the next section, however, he becomes sensible of having been carried a little too far in favour of leaf-drawing, and remembers the study of the human figure,—so we read this recantation which might be called a contradiction. " All the Italian designers drew leaves thoroughly well, though not quite so fondly as Cor- reggio " : 'and in another place the trees of Raphael and Veronese are pronounced " exquisitely ornamental arrangements of small perfect leaves ; see the background of the Parnassus in Volpato's plate ; yet very lovely however." Lastly come Turner's leaves, in reference to which is repeated the opinion that " a single dusty roll of Turner's brush is more truly expressive of the infinitude of foliage than the niggling of Hobbima could have rendered his canvass if he had worked on it till doomsday ; " but in place of any drawing of the great man's foliage, it is described as so dex- terous and so keenly cunning, that to copy it is impossible. An attempt is made, however, in a small engraving from a corner of one of his drawings of Richmond in the Yorkshire series, in which we are told to observe "the mingled definitiveness and mystery of Turner's work as opposed to the mechanism of the Dutch on the one side, and the conventional severity of the Italians on the other." Regarding this example of leafage, which must surely be an ill chosen one, with an unprejudiced eye, it ap- pears to resemble no familiar English foliage so closely as it does a bank of cactus. That it sufficiently resembled the herbage of the place to satisfy Turner there is not a doubt ; it comports and har- monizes with the composition of his drawing also, but we must protest against its being considered as exact leaf-drawing. Tur- ner painted with a profound knowledge of objects, and a grand idea of scenery, and effects, but in the whole round of his works there is no sign of that kind of minute study, and perception of recondite qualities, which Mr. Ruskin would attribute to him and desire to see cultivated by our modern painters. Turner's style was certainly not an imitative one ; it was rather creative and original. The liberty of treatment he took in the composi- tion of his pictures as well as the peculiar method of execution he adopted, showed a mastery not to be governed by any formulas and dogmas, and a genius too impatient to be beguiled with the subtleties of (esthetics. A primitive artist would set himself to imitate all the beautiful objects around him, but the time would come when the ray of general beauty would strike his mind's eye ; he would perceive perfect beauty opposed and heightened by de- fects and deformities ; he makes a choice in his imitation. Be- coming more thoughtful and profound, he conceives a beauty more beautiful than the reality, as Raphael in speaking of his " Galatwa " said—" I work after ascertain idea that I have in my mind. I know not if this idea has any excellence, but I strive to realize it." This it was that inspired " Phidias," and created all the greatest achievements of art. It would be as impossible to deny the possession of that innate sense of right we call conscience, as to say we have not an intuitive sense of the beautiful. We could. imagine a very conscientious man becoming so enamoured with truth as to become the slave of realities—so fascinated with the portraiture of his goddess as to be blind to all other beauties—so absorbed in diving to the bottom of the casket as not to notice the beautiful Pandora. Mr. Ruskin asks to be forgiven for his former admiration of Rubens, and pleads as an excuse for his blindness to the qualities of Venetian art, the too great influence of Raphael and Angelico over him. " These oscillations of temper and pro- gressions of discovery ought not to diminish the reader's con- fidence in the book " he says in a penitent and philosophical vein, for " let him be assured of this that unless important changes are occurring in his opinions continually, all his life long, not one of these opinions can be on any questionable subject true." Under these circumstances then, it is possible that a sixth volume may contain a codicil which would override old opinions, and so for the present it will be better not to burn our Winekelmami and Hegel. But we cannot leave the subject of " leaf beauty," much as we may differ from the writer as to the principles he adopts, without giving some example of the peculiar point of view frd, which Mr. Ruskin regards his "leaf monuments." " To conclu then we find that the beauty of these buildings of the leaves co sists, from the first step of it to the last in its showing the perfect fellowsllip, and a single aim uniting them and circumstances of serious distress, trial, and pleasure. Witho the fellowship, no beauty ; without the steady purpose, beauty ; without trouble and death, no beauty ; without individu pleasure, freedom, and caprice, so far as may be consistent with the universal good, no beauty. Tree-loveliness might be thus lost or killed in many ways. Discordance would kill it—of one leaf with another ; disobedience would kill it—of any leaf to the ruling law ; indulgence would kill it, and the doing away with pain ; or slavish symmetry would kill it, and the doing away with delight. And this is so, down to the smallest atom and beginning of life ; so soon as there is life at all, there are these four conditions of it—harmony, obedience, distress, and delightsome equality." As to the disposition of trees, Mr. Ruskin says, lamenting Turner's contempt for the pine, " into whose spirit he could not enter," as he did into that of the glacier and the sea- " he refused its magnificent erectness. Magnificent ! nay, sometimes almost terrible. Other trees, tufting crag or hill, yield to the form and sway of the ground, clothe it with soft compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its flatterers, partly its comforters. But the pine rises in serene resistance, self-contained: nor can I ever, without awe, stay long under a great Alpine cliff, far from all house or work of men, looking up to its companies of pine as they stand on the inaccessible juts and perilous ledges of the enormous wall in quiet multitudes, each like the shadow of the one beside it—upright, fixed, spectral as troops of ghosts standing on the walls of Hades not knowing each other—dumb for ever. You cannot reach them, cannot cry to them; those trees never heard human voice ; they are far above all sound but of the winds. No foot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs. All comfortless they stand between the two eternities of the Vacancy and the Rock ; yet with such iron will, that the rook itself looks bent and shattered beside them—fragile, weak, inconsistent compared to their dark energy of delicate life and monotony of enchanted pride :—unnumbered, unconquerable." Allowing a certain indulgence to the idiosyncrasy of the writer, we can heartily admire the poetic fancy of this description of pine-scenery without being over scrupulous as to the meaning of "the monotony of enchanted pride." In the same spirit, we must accept Mr. Ruskin's comparison of trees to communities of people, in which Englishmen will stare to see themselves figure as the aspen- " strong trunked enough when put to proof and very good for making cart-wheels of, but shaking pale with epidemic panic at every breeze," and the more allowable and appropriate remarks on lichens—" the earth's first mercy and its last gift, the weavers of the tapestry of the hills, the nest of the wild bird, the pillow of the wearied child, the humble and pensive watch by the head stone."
" Cloud beauty" is considered as a separate part of the work. On this subject, Mr. Ruskin adds nothing of importance to those general characteristics of clouds which he had pointed out in the early part of his work. " What has conclusively been discovered or observed about clouds" he does not profess to know, but proceeds to suggest certain puzzling questions for the meteorologists, not for the painters. Such as how it is that clouds float ; what clouds are, whether masses of bubbles or foam, or globules, suspended like balloons at the height in the air where the equipoise would be exact. Of the air we know, except by courtesy, nothing ; why the sky is blue and the clouds of many colours is equally a matter of conjecture with the question " by what hands is the incense of the sea built up into domes of marble?" and all are confessed at last to be inscrutable, leading " away into high mathematics where Mr. Ruskin cannot follow them, and partly into theories concerning eleotricity and infinite space, where, he supposes, at present no one can follow them." We naturally ask the use of all these speculations—the answer is mystery ; Mr. Ruskin enjoys mystery and infinitude, so do most people ; but the attempts to explain are not so enjoyable. The diagrams for showing rectilinear and curvilinear cloud-perspective may have some little value, and the beautiful engravings of cloud flocks are excellent as typical forms of cloud ; but, as we were compelled to say of the delicate drawings of leaves and branches, they will not teach so well as a walk in the fields, and it was not by this method that Turner studied, as Mr. Ruskin himself is perfectly assured. We are also met with the confession of inability to draw the clouds, and especially the clouds of Turner, as they ought to be drawn, so that we are reduced again to the point of incapability in a contest with nature—a terminus, in fact, which all ordinary mortals foresaw from the first. Rain clouds, or poetically, " The Angel of the Sea," is the last upon clouds, and gives ample scope for Mr. Ruskin's fancy and the display of his erudition, from the book of Job to Hesiod and Aristophanes; all most interesting though so discursive, especially when describing the tossing of clouds in the air by the storm as like the action of a haymaking machine, he cannot resist condemning the use of all inventions of the kind as worse than Medusa cloud and turning men effectively into stone, " destroying the pleasures of rural labour and deteriorating the national mind." We turn from this touch of sentimental sorrow over the rustic purity of shepherds and shepherdesses, in which we must confess our incredulity, to the following curious classification of intellect and art with the various conditions of the earth's surface— Wood-lands, 'th shrewd intellect and no art ; Sand-lands, with high intellect
d religious art ; Vine-lands, with highest intellect and perfect ; Field-lands, with high intellect and material art ; _Moss- ds, with shrewd intellect and no art.
he two remaining parts of the volume refer to "Ideas 'of ation," under the heads of " invention formal " and " inven- spiritual," and will be mere conveniently discussed in a orate article.
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