EASTLAKE’S HISTORY OF OIL-PAINTING 253

3. It is evident that so long as incapability could shield itself under the first of these creeds, or presumption vindicate itself by the second; so long as the feeble painter could lay his faults on his palette and his panel; and the self-conceited painter, from the assumed identity of materials proceed to infer equality of power-(for we believe that in most instances those who deny the evil of our present methods will deny also the weakness of our present works)-little good could be expected from the teaching of the abstract principles of the art; and less, if possible, from the example of any mechanical qualities, however admirable, whose means might be supposed irrecoverable on the one hand, or indeterminate on the other, or of any excellence conceived to have been either summoned by an incantation, or struck out by an accident. And of late, among our leading masters, the loss has not been merely of the system of the ancients, but of all system whatsoever; the greater number paint as if the virtue of oil pigment were its opacity, or as if its power depended on its polish; of the rest, no two agree in use or choice of materials; not many are consistent even in their own practice; and the most zealous and earnest, therefore the most discontented, reaching impatiently and desperately after better things, purchase the momentary satisfaction of their feelings by the sacrifice of security of surface and durability of hue. The walls of our galleries are for the most part divided between pictures whose dead coating of consistent paint, laid on with a heavy hand and a cold heart, secures for them the stability of dulness and the safety of mediocrity; and pictures whose reckless and experimental brilliancy, unequal in its result as lawless in its means, is as evanescent as the dust of an insect’s wing, and presents in its chief perfections so many subjects of future regret.¹

4. But if these evils now continue, it can only be through

¹ [In later writings Ruskin often emphasised the need of more definite and consistent school-teaching in British art; see, for instance, The Cestus of Aglaia, § 4, and The Art of England, §§ 193, 194; and compare his evidence before the Royal Academy Commission in 1863 (in On the Old Road, 1899, vol. ii. § 174, and reprinted in a later volume of this edition.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]