Although Ruskin engaged with French culture throughout his life and was an admirer of the country's architecture and literature, he was not an admirer of French painting. Ruskin's broad attitude is summarised in the notes that he was writing for a planned continuation of The Laws of Fesole (1877-78), transcribed in Cook and Wedderburn 's Library Edition. Ruskin argues that the 'four great schools' of art are Italian, Spanish, Flemish and English. Of the absence of France from this list, Ruskin notes that
The French, properly speaking, have no school except of decorative art. In painted glass and illuminations they were once unrivalled; but they lost all power of progress in the fourteenth century, and have never produced a single great painter. Watteau, their best, is still a mere room decorator; their heroic attempts (David, La Roche, etc.) are merely clever stage scenery, not paintings; their religious work (Le Sueur) pure abortion and nuisance; their modern genre (Gérome, Meissonier) first-rate in minor qualities, but for the most part extremely minor ones, and in the power of the rest, blameable more than notable ( Works, 15.497)
Elsewhere Ruskin was critical of the sensuality of French painting. His most detailed engagement with 'modern' French painting is in his Academy notes of 1857-9 and 1875. The opening paragraph of the notes on the 1857 exhibition reveal Ruskin's lack of real engagement with French painting of the period:
I do not like to speak much of the French Exhibition, because there are characters in the work of every nation which need to be long and specially studied before a foreigner can do justice to them; and I have not yet been able to give serious study to the French modern school( Works, 14.141)