Ruskin became became generally less interested and less enthusiastic about contemporary practice following the completion of Modern Painters V in 1860, as the focus of his interests began to change. R.H. Wilenski, restricts the usefulness of his contribution as a critic of contemporary art to a comparatively short period of time:
For sixteen years - from 1843 to 1859 - Ruskin, led by his understanding of certain aspects of contemporary creativity, was able to understand certain aspects of creativity in the past; and he used that and his other experience of the past as a means of serving the present ( Wilenski, John Ruskin, p. 245).
Following the death of Turner in 1851, Ruskin had commented on the direction of contemporary British art through his continuing visits to the various water-colour societies and the Royal academy, which inspired his series of Academy Notes (1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859 and 1875). He also made clear his contact and support for the emerging Pre-Raphaelites who he regarded as an important force in British art during the 1850s. Although he briefly returned to Academy Notes in 1875, he appears less interested in the world of contemprary art and his statements reveal disillusionment: 'The Royal Academy of England, in its annual publication, is now nothing more than a coloured Illustrated Times folded in saloons' ( Works, 14.263). He noted in the Preface:
It is now just twenty years since I wrote the first number of these notes, and fifteen since they were discontinued. I have no intention of renewing the series, unless occasionally, should accident detain me in London during the spring... Among various minor, but collectively sufficient, reasons for the cessation of the Notes, one of the chief was the exclamation of a young artist, moving in good society,-authentically, I doubt not, reported to me, - 'D- the fellow! why doesn't he back his friends?'... and thenceforward it seemed to me useless, so far as artists were concerned, to continue criticism which they would esteem dishonourable unless it was false.( Works, 14.261)