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drawing the Dragon of Colchis. One hour he is much interested in a gust of wind blowing away an old woman’s cap; the next, he is painting the fifth plague of Egypt.¹ Every landscape painter before him had acquired distinction by confining his efforts to one class of subject. Hobbima painted oaks; Ruysdael, waterfalls and copses; Cuyp, river or meadow scenes in quiet afternoons; Salvator and Poussin, such kind of mountain scenery as people could conceive, who lived in towns in the seventeenth century. But I am well persuaded that if all the works of Turner, up to the year 1820, were divided into classes (as he has himself divided them in the Liber Studiorum), no preponderance could be assigned to one class over another. There is architecture, including a large number of formal “gentlemen’s seats,” I suppose drawings commissioned by the owners; then lowland pastoral scenery of every kind, including nearly all farming operations-ploughing, harrowing, hedging and ditching, felling trees, sheep-washing, and I know not what else; then all kinds of town life-courtyards of inns, starting of mail coaches, interiors of shops, house-buildings, fairs, elections, etc.; then all kinds of inner domestic life-interiors of rooms, studies of costumes, of still life, and heraldry, including multitudes of symbolical vignettes; then marine scenery of every kind, full of local incident; every kind of boat and method of fishing for particular fish, being specifically drawn, round the whole coast of England-pilchard fishing at St. Ives, whiting fishing at Margate, herring at Loch Fyne; and all kinds of shipping, including studies of every separate part of the vessels, and many marine battle pieces, two in particular of Trafalgar, both of high importance-one of the Victory after the battle, now

¹ [Ruskin is here referring to various drawings prepared for the Liber Studiorum. The Farm Yard is No. 507 in the National Gallery; the Dragon (Jason), No. 461; “the gust of wind blowing away an old woman’s cap” is in the “Yarmouth” in the England and Wales Series. On a proof in the Print Room of the British Museum is a note by Turner explaining to the engraver that the white spot in the drawing (which he had evidently not understood) is a “cap,” introduced to show the force of the wind. The Fifth Plague is No. 875. Turner’s own division of the subjects in the Liber was into “Historical, Pastoral, Elegant-Pastoral, Mountain, Marine, and Architectural.”]

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