Ruskin visited Dusseldorf, Berlin, Dresden and Munich from May to October 1859 during a last trip to the Continent with his parents. His assessment of German art (see Ruskin and modern German art), was not changed. During the trip he noted the works of Cornelius and Hess and he told Clarkson Stanfield in a letter of 22 August [1859]:
I should have written again before now if I had not been in a state of sulkiness and suffering under German art... German landscape is, as you must well know... fit only for fire-screens and card-cases; but what I did not even suspect before going to Germany is that all their boasted figure -painters' work is as utterly abortive.... Of these, Kaulbach's are the most ludicrous, Cornelius' the most atrocious. Hess's the least excusable... ( Works, 7.liii)
On the same day he informed Lady Waterford:
I have been the greater part of the summer in Germany... partly to see one or two pictures which the world talks about at Dresden; and partly to see the German modern art which the Germans themselves and a section of the world with them also talk about... Of German art - I have no words to express the badness. I never before conceived the possibility of vanity so naive and ludicrous existing in grown up persons - They are merely spoiled old children - scrawling caricatures about the walls - and all their friends exclaiming what a wonderful thing Tommy did last. I dont mean that I knew any of them personally - I have no doubt that both Cornelius & Hess are amiable and well meaning men... It is in their work that it comes out - of touch destroying everything. I never saw painting so valueless - so ridiculous - or so offensive; and the admiration of such things by a sect of the European public is to me the most hopeless and depressing fact I have yet encountered in my work (see Surtees, Sublime and Instructive, pp. 31-2).
In a letter to George Richmond (1809-1896) of 15 July [1859] Ruskin noted: 'Never in my life have I yet been thrown into such a state of hopeless and depressing disgust by this journey in Germany. The intense egoism and ignorance of the modern German painter (in his work) is unspeakable in its offensiveness' ( Works, 36.309) and writing to Jane Carlyle on 23 November [1859] he added to this view in stating: 'I have been nearly crushed by the badness of German painting, & all that it signifies of worse evil' (see Cate, Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, p.82). Cook and Wedderburn sum up Ruskin's attitude to modern German art following the 1859 tour as follows:
Further notes and impressions on modern German art occur in Ruskin's diary... A few appreciative notices of the early German painters will be found; but in modern German art, whether painting or in sculpture, Ruskin could find nothing to admire. He was not sorry, we may expect, when his work in Germany was finished, and he was free to turn southwards once more. ( Works, 7.liv-lv)