Ruskin reflected on his early experiences of visits to the Old Water-Colour Society in the Preface to Notes on Prout and Hunt. He writes:
And I cannot but recollect with feelings of considerable refreshment, in these days of the deep, the lofty and the mysterious, what a simple company of connoisseurs we were, who crowded into happy meeting, on the first Mondays in Mays of long ago, in the bright large room of the Old Water-Colour Society, and discussed, with holiday gaiety, the unimposing merits of the favourites, from whose pencils we knew precisely what to expect, and by whom we were never either disappointed or surprised. Copley Fielding used to paint fishing-boats for us, in a fresh breeze, "Off Dover," "Off Ramsgate." "Off the Needles." -- off everywhere on the south coast where anybody had been last autumn; but we were always kept pleasantly in sight of land, and never saw so much as a gun fired in distress. Mr. Robson would occasionally paint a Bard, on a heathery crag in Wales: or, it might be a Lady of the Lake on a similar piece of Scottish foreground--"Benvenue in the distance." A little fighting at the time of Charles the First, was permitted to Mr. Cattermole; and Mr. Cristall would sometimes invite virtuous sympathy to attend the meeting of two lovers at a Wishing-gate or a Holy Well. But the farthest flights even of these poetical members of the Society were seldom beyond the confines of the British Islands; the vague dominions of the air, and vasty ones of the deep, were held to be practically unvoyageable by our un-Daedal pinions, and on the safe level of our native soil, the sturdy statistics of Mr. de Wint, and blunt pastorals of Mr. Cox, retrained within the limits of probability and sobriety alike the fancy of the idle and the ambition of the vain... It became, however, by common and tacit consent, Mr. Prout's privilege, and it remained his privilege exclusively, to introduce foreign elements of romance and amazement into this -- perhaps slightly fenny -- atmosphere of English common sense ( Works, 14.390)
In 1873, Ruskin was elected an honorary member, and said at the time 'Nothing ever pleased me more... It's very nice to think they give me credit for knowing something about art' ( Works, 14.73).