III. TURNER AND HIS WORKS 127

99. Now, what Turner did in contest with Claude, he did with every other then-known master of landscape, each in his turn. He challenged, and vanquished, each in his own peculiar field, Vandevelde on the sea, Salvator among rocks, and Cuyp on Lowland rivers; and, having done this, set himself to paint the natural scenery of skies, mountains, and lakes, which, until his time, had never been so much as attempted.

He thus, in the extent of his sphere, far surpassed even Titian and Leonardo, the great men of the earlier schools. In their foreground work neither Titian nor Leonardo could be excelled; but Titian and Leonardo were thoroughly conventional in all but their foregrounds. Turner was equally great in all the elements of landscape, and it is on him, and on his daring additions to the received schemes of landscape art, that all modern landscape has been founded. You will never meet any truly great living landscape painter who will not at once frankly confess his obligations to Turner, not, observe, as having copied him, but as having been led by Turner to look in nature for what he would otherwise either not have discerned, or discerning, not have dared to represent.

100. Turner, therefore, was the first man who presented us with the type of perfect landscape art: and the richness

publication, to prepare two mezzotint engravings with the care requisite for this purpose; and the portion of the Lecture relating to these examples is therefore omitted. It is, however, in the power of every reader to procure one or more plates of each series; and to judge for himself whether the conclusion of Turner’s superiority, which is assumed in the next sentence of the text, be a just one or not.1

¹ [The two drawings prepared by Ruskin are here reproduced by photogravure (Plate XIII.). The MS. of the omitted portion of the lecture is, however, imperfect; he began writing a few notes, and then decided, it would seem, to extemporise his remarks, suggested by a comparison of the two drawings. They are enlargements of some of the foliage from Claude’s Liber Veritatis (No. 140, vol. ii., “Angel Comforting Hagar”), and Turner’s Liber Studiorum (No. 83: “Stork and Aqueduct”) respectively. He exhibited the two plates at the same time, “in order that you may be sure I have copied them fairly.” “You ask me,” he said, “is this a fair specimen of Claude? Yes, perfectly. Claude is indeed often more graceful;” but, he seems to have continued, he is never more truthful. Then followed a comparison of the two drawings in that respect-a comparison, we may suppose, such as is worked out in Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. ix., where fig. 7 in Plate 2 is taken from the same piece of Claude.]

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