Blackwood's Magazine, July 1853
(Go to Summary of review by John Eagles, 'The Fine
Arts and the Public Taste', Blackwood's, July 1853, pp. 89-104.)
There began to be a great talking about the Fine Arts. It
was a tempting time for ambitious ignorance. If the knowing had failed to
instruct, why should not others try their hand? There was little difficulty
in setting about it.... If possible, be 'a graduate' and be sure to repeat
the title upon every occasion... this gives a notoriety - is equivalent
to walking about with a bachelor's hood, or perhaps may equally imply the
attainment of Master of Arts - a very suggestive title for one who constitutes
himself the only true legitimate master and professor of all the Fine Arts.
The 'graduate', setting up for the sole enlightener of the world, naturally
took a great fancy to 'lamps', of which he boasted to have the very best
assortment of new ones. He would exchange with the public the new for old,
with the laudable intent and desire to break the old to pieces, as things
that could enlighten the dark world of taste no longer. (p.92)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It is rather provoking to have our young Ruskinised moderns
looking contemptuously upon us as old fools, because we did and do believe
that Gaspar Poussin and Claude were landscape-painters. (p.93)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Yet this is the self-constituted arbiter elegantiarum,
who has too long had listeners or readers - writes bombastical confusion
on what he knows nothing about, and misleads people by the ears. (p.99)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Her face, instead of being lovely, is plain to a degree;
and if it be true he had a certain model, this is really inexcusable, and
is a proof that Mr. Millais has no perception of beauty whatever. Indeed,
Mr Ruskin in one passage inconsistently enough allows this, and yet makes
the beauty of nature to be the field of his labours. The face, far from
pale, is blotched with red, and the shadows stippled in with bilious brownish
green. Instead of the eye dimmed even with a tear, it looks defiance, as
if she had contested at some previous time the matter with the jailer, and
looks a triumph, as much as to say, 'I've won, and so pay me'... You would
doubt before you would accept a certificate of her belonging to a temperance
society. (p.100)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
There is to be a general, a national patronage of the Fine
Arts, and of every art. I hope the fostering will be judicious, and that
no Academy will be Ruskinised into pre-Raphaelitism. (p.104)
CW
Close