Blackwood's Magazine, September 1851
(Go to Summary of review, 'Mr Ruskin's Works, Blackwood's
Magazine, September 1851, pp. 326-48.)
As we have already intimated, we do not hold Mr Ruskin to
be a safe guide in matters of art, and the present volume demonstrates that
he is no safe guide in matters of philosophy... He is not, therefore, one
of those men who can ever become an authority to be appealed to by the less
instructed in any of the fine arts, or on any topic whatever... it is utterly
impossible to attach any weight to his opinion (p.326).
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In all Mr. Ruskin's works, and in almost every page of them,
whether on painting, or architecture, or philosophy, or ecclesiastical controversy,
two characteristics invariably prevail: an extreme dogmatism, and a passion
for singularity. Every man who thinks earnestly would convert all the world
to his own opinions; but while Mr. Ruskin would convert all the world to
his own tastes as well as opinions, he manifests the greatest repugnance
to think for a moment like any one else... He is as bent on unity in matters
of taste as others are on unity in matters of religion; and he sets the
example by diverging, wherever he can, from the tastes of others. (pp. 326-27)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
But his dogmatism amounts to a disease, when, turning from
his own novelties, he can speak in the flippant intolerant manner that he
does of the national and now time-honoured Church of Scotland. (p.327)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
One need not be a utilitarian philosopher - or what Mr.
Ruskin describes as such - to smile at the lofty position on which he puts
the landscape-painter, and the egregious and impossible demands he makes
upon the art itself. And with the condemnation and opprobrium with which
he overwhelms the luckless artist who has offended him is quite as violent.
The bough of a tree... in a landscape of Poussin's, calls forth this terrible
denunciation:-
This
latter is a representation of an orna
mental group of elephants' tusks,
with feathers tied to the ends
of them. Not the wildest imagination could
ever conjure up in it
the remotest resemblance to the bough of a tree.
It might be
the claws of a witch-the talons of an eagle-the horns of
a fiend;
but it is a full assemblage of every conceivable falsehood which
can
be told respecting foliage-a piece of work so barbarous in every
way,
that one glance at it ought to prove the complete charlatanism
and trickery
of the whole system of the old landscape painters.
For I will depart
for once from my usual plan, of abstaining from
all assertion of a thing's
being beautiful or otherwise; I will say
here, at once, that such drawing
as this is as ugly as it is childish,
and as painful as it is false;
and that the man who could tolerate,
much more, who could deliberately
set down such a thing on his
canvass, had neither eye nor feeling for
one single attribute or
excellence of God's works. He might have drawn
the other stem
in excusable ignorance, or under some false impression
of being
able to improve upon nature ; but thisis conclusive and unpar-
donable[.]
Go to
the passage in Modern Painters I
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The great redeeming quality of Mr. Ruskin... is his love of
nature. Here lies the charm of his works; to this may be traced whatever
virtue is in them, or whatever utility they may possess. They will send
the painter more than ever to the study of nature, and perhaps they will
have a still more beneficial effect on the art, by sending the critic of
painting to the same school... the critic of the picture-gallery is often
one who goes from picture to picture, and very little from nature to the
painting... He ought to have studied nature, and to have loved the study,
or he can never estimate, and never feel, that truth of effect which is
the great aim of the artists. Mr. Ruskin's works will help
to shame out of the field all such half-informed and conventional criticism,
there mere connoisseurship of the picture gallery. (p.329)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He very justly scouts the absurd idea that trees and rocks
and clouds are, under any circumstance, to be generalised. (p.329)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The imitations of the landscape-painter are not a 'language'
which he uses; they are not mere 'signs', analagous to those which the poet
or the orator employs. There is no analogy betwen them. Let us analyse our
impressions as we stand before the artist's landscape, not thinking of the
artist, or his dexterity, but simply absorbed in the pleasure which he procures
us - we do not find ourselves reverting, in imagination, to other trees
or other rivers than those he has depicted. We certainly do not believe
them to be real trees, but neither are they mere signs, or a language to
recall such objects; but what there is of tree there we enjoy. (p.332)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Surveying Mr. Ruskin's works on art, with the knowledge we
have here acquired of his intellectual character and philosophical theory,
we are at no loss to comprehend that mixture of shrewd and penetrating remark,
of bold and well-placed censure, and of utter nonsense in the shape of general
principles, with which they abound. (p.347)
CW
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