INTRODUCTION xlvii

a view of suggesting the purchase to him. Mr. Hunt afterwards sent the picture to Liverpool Exhibition, where it obtained a £50 prize; and on the strength of this, and of Ruskin’s praise, it was purchased, says Hunt, by “a correspondent in Belfast-who had never seen the work, but was interested from what he had read of it-made me an offer of the sum I asked for the picture, 150 or 200 guineas (I forget which), to be paid £10 at the time monthly, with sixty guineas of the sum to be represented by a picture of Danby’s.” A letter from Ruskin to his father written at the time records the same transaction:-

“VENICE, January 19 [1852].-I got yesterday a letter from M‘Cracken of Belfast, saying that he hoped in a week to have Hunt’s Proteus and Valentine, for which he has given 100 guineas and a picture of young Danby’s. I pity poor Hunt for the bargain; but there was enclosed in the letter a very interesting critique on Hunt’s picture from a Liverpool paper, and an extract of a letter from himself, all excellent.”

To Hunt, Ruskin’s intervention was a godsend. His artistic prospects at the time were almost desperate. He had written a letter, but could not tell, he says, “where to find a penny for the stamp.” “In the midst of this came thunder out of a clear sky. It was a letter from Ruskin in the Times in our defence. The critic had, amongst other charges, accused our pictures of being false in linear perspective. This was open to demonstration. Ruskin challenged him to establish his case, and the cowardly creature skulked away, and was heard of no more.”¹

Ruskin’s offer to buy Millais’s “Dove” was made immediately, and before the letter appeared in the Times. The picture had, however, already been bought by his friend and first patron, Mr. Combe of Oxford,² to whom he wrote in great glee, describing Ruskin’s offer: “No doubt you have seen the violent abuse of my pictures in the Times, which I believe has sold itself to destroy us. That, however, is quite an absurd mistake of theirs, for, in spite of their denouncing my pictures as unworthy to hang on any walls, the famous critic, Mr. Ruskin, has written offering to purchase your picture.”³

¹ Contemporary Review, May 1886, pp. 747, 749.

² Thomas Combe (1797-1872), printer, connected with the Clarendon Press. On the death of his widow his collection of Pre-Raphaelite pictures went by his bequest to the Oxford University Galleries.

³ Life of Millais, i. 101.

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