254 PRÆTERITA-II

his house,-he gave an open day each week, and to me the run of his rooms at any time,-was, to the general student, inestimable, and, for me, the means of writing Modern Painters.

12. It is, I think, noteworthy that, although first attracted to Turner by the mountain truth in Rogers’s Italy,-when I saw the drawings, it was almost wholly the pure artistic quality that fascinated me, whatever the subject; so that I was not in the least hindered by the beauty of Mr. Windus’s Llanberis or Melrose from being quite happy when my father at last gave me, not for a beginning of Turner collection, but for a specimen of Turner’s work, which was all-as it was supposed-I should ever need or aspire to possess, the “Richmond Bridge, Surrey.”¹

The triumphant talk between us over it, when we brought it home, consisted, as I remember, greatly in commendation of the quantity of Turnerian subject and character which this single specimen united:-“it had trees, architecture, water, a lovely sky, and a clustered bouquet of brilliant figures.”²

And verily the Surrey Richmond remained for at least two years our only Turner possession, and the second we bought, the “Gosport,”³ which came home when Gordon was staying with us, had still none of the delicate beauty of Turner except in its sky; nor were either my father or I the least offended by the ill-made bonnets of the lady-passengers in the cutter, nor by the helmsman’s head being put on the wrong way.

¹ [No. 33 in Ruskin’s Exhibition of 1878: see Vol. XIII. pp. 436, 603.]

² [The MS. has an additional passage here:-

“Which makes it evident that already both my father and I had seen, and reconciled ourselves to, the clustered absurdities of the figures in the Academy pictures of that Turner period. This came partly of our both being so fond of Rubens; but I never could understand how my father so easily forgave the bad drawing for the sake of the brilliant colour. On the other hand, his love of strength and visible stroke in the brush prevented him from ever appreciating the finest passages of the stippled drawings-nor for a long time did I enough reverence them myself. However it was, the Surrey Richmond remained...”

For Ruskin’s discussion of the figures in Turner’s landscapes, see Vol. XIII. p. 151.]

³ [No. 37 in the Exhibition: see ibid., pp. 439, 600.]

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