The publication of Modern Painters II in April 1846 prompted renewed interest in Modern Painters I (the third edition appeared in September 1846). Following the lead of Fraser's Magazine, support for both Modern Painters I and II came from the Foreign Quarterly Review, July 1846, and the Church of England Quarterly, July 1846; these were joined during 1847 by the periodicals of dissent (see North British Review, February 1847, Ecclesiastic Review, April 1847, Prospective Review, May 1847, and British Quarterly Review, May 1847.) Taking the opportunity to accuse conservative critics of ignoring the work, these periodicals mounted a thorough-going attack on conventional aesthetics. Religion, politics and aesthetics come together as Ruskin, praised for his revolutionary ideas, was constructed as an iconoclastic figure whose challenge to authority in the realm of taste paralleled challenges to traditional sources of power in other spheres.
While these progressive critics welcomed Ruskin's insistence on fidelity to nature, conservative critics continued to defend their cultural capital in the shape of conventional aesthetics based on Reynolds's Discourses (1769-90) (see North American Review, January 1848, and Reviews of Modern Painters I, September 1851-December 1855).