LECTURE III

TURNER AND HIS WORKS¹

Delivered November 15, 1853

77. MY object this evening is not so much to give you any account of the works or the genius of the great painter whom we have so lately lost (which it would require rather a year than an hour to do), as to give you some idea of the position which his works hold with respect to the landscape of other periods, and of the general condition and prospects of the landscape art of the present day. I will not lose time in prefatory remarks, as I have little enough at any rate, but will enter abruptly on my subject.

78. You are all of you well aware that landscape seems hardly to have exercised any strong influence, as such, on any pagan nation or pagan artist. I have no time to enter into any details on this, of course, most intricate and difficult subject;² but I will only ask you to observe, that wherever natural scenery is alluded to by the ancients, it is either agriculturally, with the kind of feeling that a good Scotch farmer has; sensually, in the enjoyment of sun or shade, cool winds or sweet scents; fearfully, in a mere vulgar dread of rocks and desolate places, as compared with the comfort of cities; or, finally, superstitiously, in the personification or deification of natural powers, generally with much

¹ [The following was Ruskin’s Synopsis of the Lecture in the preliminary announcement:-

“Turner and his Works.

Progress of LANDSCAPE ART from the 13th to the 19th Century:-Its rise through three phases-GIOTTESQUE, LEONARDESQUE, and TITIANESQUE-and subsequent Fall. Its peculiar Position in the Modern Mind. Early training of TURNER:-Disadvantages to which he was exposed. Mistaken Ideas respecting his Works:-Their true Character and probable future Effect. Character of the Painter.”]

² [Ruskin returned to the discussion of it in Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xiii.]

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