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Cambridge Library Collection - Works of John Ruskin #3
The Works of John Ruskin, Volume 3: Modern Painters I
The influence of John Ruskin (1819–1900), both on his own time and on artistic and social developments in the twentieth century, cannot be over-stated. He changed Victorian perceptions of art, and was the main influence behind 'Gothic revival' architecture. As a social critic, he argued for the improvement of the condition of the poor, and against the increasing mechanisation of work in factories, which he believed was dull and soul-destroying. The thirty-nine volumes of the Library Edition of his works, published between 1903 and 1912, are themselves a remarkable achievement, in which his books and essays - almost all highly illustrated - are given a biographical and critical context in extended introductory essays and in the 'Minor Ruskiniana' - extracts from letters, articles and reminiscences both by and about Ruskin. This third volume contains Volume 1 of Modern Painters.
- GenresArtNonfiction
792 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1873
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About the author
John Ruskin
3,772 books480 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art historian, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
Ruskin was heavily engaged by the work of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc which he taught to all his pupils including William Morris, notably Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionary, which he considered as "the only book of any value on architecture". Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.
Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J.M.W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s, he championed the Pre-Raphaelites, who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art historian, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
Ruskin was heavily engaged by the work of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc which he taught to all his pupils including William Morris, notably Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionary, which he considered as "the only book of any value on architecture". Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.
Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J.M.W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s, he championed the Pre-Raphaelites, who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
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February 9, 2024
The first volume of John Ruskin modern painters was written in 1843. When approaching such an iconic work, it is always worth remembering the historical context. This text was published fourteen years before the first Pre-Raphaelite exhibition and more than thirty years before Impressionism emerged. Turner was at the height of his powers and, just for the record, it was the year Courbet painted his Desperate Man. Delacroix still could look forward to another thirty years of life. The year of revolution, 1848, was still five years distant. All of this, in my humble opinion, makes Ruskin’s achievement and position even more remarkable.
Europe had, of course, undergone a century of scientific advance, technological innovation, and economic transformation. By the 1840s, the idea of progress was already deep rooted. The past had surely been surpassed by the present. This generality might in some way explain Ruskin’s position. Human beings were by then more aware of the complexity of the world, more knowledgeable about its past and present. The artist’s duty was to make this superior knowledge about Creation more easily understood by his audience, and, when something fell short of this goal, it was also the duty of critics like Ruskin to point out the shortcomings. “Such skies are happily beyond the reach of criticism, for he who tells you nothing cannot tell you a falsehood.” The artist’s position should be that of the greater seer by virtue of his greater knowledge and greater powers of observation. An artwork, he postulated, should address all five of the areas, power, imitation, truth, beauty and relation, to communicate the wholeness of Creation.
But it has also to be remembered that the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species was still sixteen years in the future. The universe that Ruskin perceived and inhabited was very much the creation of a Christian God, and thus represented perfection in and of itself. For Ruskin, the artist’s main job was to observe this creation, understand its nature and communicate it. That was not to say that copying nature was worthy act. Interpretation was always necessary, because like any observer, the artist could not appreciate all things at a single glance. Time was needed to study the effects of movement of changes of light, and so, in order to render God’s creation more faithfully, this element of changed impression, changed perception over time must play part. The simple copy was not faithful to reality, because it did not reflect the complexity or subtlety of God’s work, especially in the area of time. And, above all cliché and repetition were things that marked out lack of artistry: “…like all home inventions, they exhibit, perpetual resemblances and repetitions…” Originality was everything that any self-described artist ought to be able to claim: “If, on the contrary, there be nothing of this freshness achieved, if there be neither purpose nor fidelity in what is done, if it be an envious, or powerless imitation of other men’s labours, if it be a display of mere manual, dexterity, or curious manufacture, or if, in any other mode, it shows itself as having its origin in vanity, -Cast it out.” And indeed without originality, there is no artistry. “We yet admit not his greatness, until he has broken away from all his models, and struck forth versification, arrangement, and treatment of his own.”
The book’s form is curious for a modern reader. Ruskin embarks on what appears to be a survey, a catalogue of techniques and genres. He looks repeatedly at water, skies, foliage, mountains and hills. He talks of rivers, fields, countryside, trees and rock, citing examples of success in representation of these things alongside those judged to fall short. Poor Claude and Poussin come in for some pretty damning judgment, their efforts often dismissed as repetitious, unfaithful to reality, made-up and copied.
Ruskin does refer to photography as it currently existed as Daguerreotype. He generally dismissed it as non-artistic because of its inability to interpret. He seemed to want more in a picture than mere reflection of reality, though he advised very strongly against making it up. Though this might appear to rule out imagination, for Ruskin the act of observing was the same as the use of imagination. But observation was the key and faithfulness to creation remained the goal.
The idea of progress was clearly paramount. At times, the text seems to be more of a hero worship of JMW Turner than a survey of contemporary painters. He lambastes the “old masters” as visual ignoramuses, regularly comparing their paltry efforts with contemporary sophistication. Leonardo da Vinci’s rendition of rocks and caves in the background to the Virgin of the Rocks is devastating.
He finds Turner, by simple virtue of having more and more up-to-date knowledge of the world, the best painter that ever lived. Contemporary painters, in general, could therefore paint reality more truthfully. Their work had the potential to be better than what had gone before, but this was not automatic: it depended on the skill of the painter. “But as far as we have gone at present, and with respect only to the material truth, which is all that we have been able to investigate, the conclusion to which we must be led, is as clear as it is inevitable; that modern artists, as a body, are far more just and full in their views of materials, things than any landscape painters whose works are extant - but that J. M. W. Turner is the only man who has ever given an entire transcript of the whole system of nature, and is, in this point of view, the only perfect landscape painter whom the world has ever seen.”
Reading modern painters today, however, reminds a 21st-century reader, how far we have come in the intervening 200 years in our understanding of what art is, and what might be its function. Apparently gone is the idea that the universe belongs to God and the goal is to communicate its complexities. Now, it seems, the individual, complete with internalized emotional responses and impressions is now at the centre of our universe. For Ruskin, the artist’s goal was anonymity, not individuality. The only worthwhile and rewarding product was judged according to its faithfulness to God’s creation, to an existence higher than the human. “The artist has done nothing till he has cancelled himself – the art is imperfect which is visible – the feelings are but feebly touched, if they permit us to reason on the methods of their excitement.”
Europe had, of course, undergone a century of scientific advance, technological innovation, and economic transformation. By the 1840s, the idea of progress was already deep rooted. The past had surely been surpassed by the present. This generality might in some way explain Ruskin’s position. Human beings were by then more aware of the complexity of the world, more knowledgeable about its past and present. The artist’s duty was to make this superior knowledge about Creation more easily understood by his audience, and, when something fell short of this goal, it was also the duty of critics like Ruskin to point out the shortcomings. “Such skies are happily beyond the reach of criticism, for he who tells you nothing cannot tell you a falsehood.” The artist’s position should be that of the greater seer by virtue of his greater knowledge and greater powers of observation. An artwork, he postulated, should address all five of the areas, power, imitation, truth, beauty and relation, to communicate the wholeness of Creation.
But it has also to be remembered that the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species was still sixteen years in the future. The universe that Ruskin perceived and inhabited was very much the creation of a Christian God, and thus represented perfection in and of itself. For Ruskin, the artist’s main job was to observe this creation, understand its nature and communicate it. That was not to say that copying nature was worthy act. Interpretation was always necessary, because like any observer, the artist could not appreciate all things at a single glance. Time was needed to study the effects of movement of changes of light, and so, in order to render God’s creation more faithfully, this element of changed impression, changed perception over time must play part. The simple copy was not faithful to reality, because it did not reflect the complexity or subtlety of God’s work, especially in the area of time. And, above all cliché and repetition were things that marked out lack of artistry: “…like all home inventions, they exhibit, perpetual resemblances and repetitions…” Originality was everything that any self-described artist ought to be able to claim: “If, on the contrary, there be nothing of this freshness achieved, if there be neither purpose nor fidelity in what is done, if it be an envious, or powerless imitation of other men’s labours, if it be a display of mere manual, dexterity, or curious manufacture, or if, in any other mode, it shows itself as having its origin in vanity, -Cast it out.” And indeed without originality, there is no artistry. “We yet admit not his greatness, until he has broken away from all his models, and struck forth versification, arrangement, and treatment of his own.”
The book’s form is curious for a modern reader. Ruskin embarks on what appears to be a survey, a catalogue of techniques and genres. He looks repeatedly at water, skies, foliage, mountains and hills. He talks of rivers, fields, countryside, trees and rock, citing examples of success in representation of these things alongside those judged to fall short. Poor Claude and Poussin come in for some pretty damning judgment, their efforts often dismissed as repetitious, unfaithful to reality, made-up and copied.
Ruskin does refer to photography as it currently existed as Daguerreotype. He generally dismissed it as non-artistic because of its inability to interpret. He seemed to want more in a picture than mere reflection of reality, though he advised very strongly against making it up. Though this might appear to rule out imagination, for Ruskin the act of observing was the same as the use of imagination. But observation was the key and faithfulness to creation remained the goal.
The idea of progress was clearly paramount. At times, the text seems to be more of a hero worship of JMW Turner than a survey of contemporary painters. He lambastes the “old masters” as visual ignoramuses, regularly comparing their paltry efforts with contemporary sophistication. Leonardo da Vinci’s rendition of rocks and caves in the background to the Virgin of the Rocks is devastating.
He finds Turner, by simple virtue of having more and more up-to-date knowledge of the world, the best painter that ever lived. Contemporary painters, in general, could therefore paint reality more truthfully. Their work had the potential to be better than what had gone before, but this was not automatic: it depended on the skill of the painter. “But as far as we have gone at present, and with respect only to the material truth, which is all that we have been able to investigate, the conclusion to which we must be led, is as clear as it is inevitable; that modern artists, as a body, are far more just and full in their views of materials, things than any landscape painters whose works are extant - but that J. M. W. Turner is the only man who has ever given an entire transcript of the whole system of nature, and is, in this point of view, the only perfect landscape painter whom the world has ever seen.”
Reading modern painters today, however, reminds a 21st-century reader, how far we have come in the intervening 200 years in our understanding of what art is, and what might be its function. Apparently gone is the idea that the universe belongs to God and the goal is to communicate its complexities. Now, it seems, the individual, complete with internalized emotional responses and impressions is now at the centre of our universe. For Ruskin, the artist’s goal was anonymity, not individuality. The only worthwhile and rewarding product was judged according to its faithfulness to God’s creation, to an existence higher than the human. “The artist has done nothing till he has cancelled himself – the art is imperfect which is visible – the feelings are but feebly touched, if they permit us to reason on the methods of their excitement.”
March 20, 2025
In 1736, the seventeen-year-old John Ruskin wrote an angry letter to the editor of Blackwood’s Magazine, protesting a negative review of some of J.M.W. Turner’s paintings. (Ruskin seems to have been obsessed with Turner’s paintings since he began copying his works when he was thirteen.) It was never sent (it’s included as an appendix to this edition of the book), but over the next seven years Ruskin expanded it into this more than six-hundred page treatise (not counting the editorial matter in the present edition) on “truth in art”, first published anonymously in 1743. It was revised several times; the edition I read from 1903 reprints the last edition supervised by Ruskin (1872), but gives the earlier version texts in footnotes or endnotes to the relevant chapters. Over time, he also added four more volumes.
Written between the ages of seventeen and twenty four, the first edition had all the strengths and all the faults of youth; on the one hand, a freshness and passionate enthusiasm for his subject matter, on the other a tendency to stridency of polemic and dogmatism in his own opinions. Given its origins, it has a near-hagiographic admiration for Turner and is somewhat unfair to everyone else. Subsequent editions toned down the faults somewhat, but Ruskin later more or less repudiated it as it stands and intended to rewrite it completely, which he never did.
The book is very organized; it is divided into Parts, which are subdivided into Sections, which are divided into Chapters, which are divided into numbered subheadings. Part I, Of General Principles, summarizes his theory of art; it is of course entirely representationalist, and actually limited almost entirely (at least in this first volume) to landscape painting. At times, it is obviously a kind of dialogue with the last book I read, Reynold’s Discourses on Art. (Ruskin later as a Professor lectured on the Discourses.)The first chapter is an introduction explaining his reasons for writing it; the second chapter is a very general account of his theory; the third through seventh chapters describe the hierarchy of “ideas” which he considers can be expressed in art: “Of Ideas of Power”, which are essentially the technical merits of execution, and which he considers the least important, although necessary, aspect of art; “Of Ideas of Imitation”, that is “mere imitation” or “illusion or deception” which he considers a lower form of art, and does not treat further except incidentally in contrasting it with the higher idea of truth; “Of Ideas of Truth”, that is imitation of the true nature of the subject, which is still not the highest goal of art, and which will occupy the rest of this first volume; “Of Ideas of Beauty”, which is higher; and “Of Ideas of Relation”, the highest goal, which is essentially the message the artist is intending to express by his painting. These last two ideas are left for later volumes. Section II goes in more depth into Ideas of Power, explaining the major “excellencies” to be looked for in an artist’s technical accomplishment considered without reference to the higher ideas.
Part II is titled “Of Truth”, and makes up most of the volume. Section I consists of two general chapters, four chapters giving a hierarchy of types of truth and which of them he considers more or less important, and a long final chapter applying his theories to specific painters, and explaining why they are all inferior to Turner in all respects. I should mention here his peculiar use of the terms “the ancients” and “the old masters”, by both of which he means neither the art of Classical Antiquity nor the Renaissance masters, but only the landscape painters of the seventeenth century, such as Claude, Nicholas and Gaston Poussin, and his particular bête noir, Salvator Rosa; by “the Moderns” he means the contemporary English landscape artists of the early nineteenth century, and he is always thinking particularly of Turner. Section II is entitled “Of General Truths” and contains chapters on Truth in Tones, in Colour, of Chiaroscuro, and two on Truth in Space (how to suggest distance); all of these have bad examples from the “ancients” and good examples from the “moderns”, mainly of course from Turner.
Section III is about the Truth of Sky, i.e. how to paint clouds (five chapters); Section IV is about the Truth of Earth, or how to paint mountains and hills, and rocks (four chapters); Section V is about the Truth of Water, or how to paint lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and the sea (three chapters); Section VI has one chapter about the Truth of Vegetation, essentially about how to paint trees and foliage, and two chapters of conclusions (one on the Truth of Turner and one on the criticism of art).
In addition to Ruskin’s text, the book I read has a long introduction, copious notes, and an Appendix containing various letters and other texts relevant to the volume.
This was Ruskin’s earliest and most popular work. It is an extremely interesting study, which should be read by anyone interested in the representational art (especially landscape painting) of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, or in the philosophy of art. I plan to continue reading Ruskin chronologically, with volume two, the three volumes of The Stones of Venice, and then the last three volumes of this.
Written between the ages of seventeen and twenty four, the first edition had all the strengths and all the faults of youth; on the one hand, a freshness and passionate enthusiasm for his subject matter, on the other a tendency to stridency of polemic and dogmatism in his own opinions. Given its origins, it has a near-hagiographic admiration for Turner and is somewhat unfair to everyone else. Subsequent editions toned down the faults somewhat, but Ruskin later more or less repudiated it as it stands and intended to rewrite it completely, which he never did.
The book is very organized; it is divided into Parts, which are subdivided into Sections, which are divided into Chapters, which are divided into numbered subheadings. Part I, Of General Principles, summarizes his theory of art; it is of course entirely representationalist, and actually limited almost entirely (at least in this first volume) to landscape painting. At times, it is obviously a kind of dialogue with the last book I read, Reynold’s Discourses on Art. (Ruskin later as a Professor lectured on the Discourses.)The first chapter is an introduction explaining his reasons for writing it; the second chapter is a very general account of his theory; the third through seventh chapters describe the hierarchy of “ideas” which he considers can be expressed in art: “Of Ideas of Power”, which are essentially the technical merits of execution, and which he considers the least important, although necessary, aspect of art; “Of Ideas of Imitation”, that is “mere imitation” or “illusion or deception” which he considers a lower form of art, and does not treat further except incidentally in contrasting it with the higher idea of truth; “Of Ideas of Truth”, that is imitation of the true nature of the subject, which is still not the highest goal of art, and which will occupy the rest of this first volume; “Of Ideas of Beauty”, which is higher; and “Of Ideas of Relation”, the highest goal, which is essentially the message the artist is intending to express by his painting. These last two ideas are left for later volumes. Section II goes in more depth into Ideas of Power, explaining the major “excellencies” to be looked for in an artist’s technical accomplishment considered without reference to the higher ideas.
Part II is titled “Of Truth”, and makes up most of the volume. Section I consists of two general chapters, four chapters giving a hierarchy of types of truth and which of them he considers more or less important, and a long final chapter applying his theories to specific painters, and explaining why they are all inferior to Turner in all respects. I should mention here his peculiar use of the terms “the ancients” and “the old masters”, by both of which he means neither the art of Classical Antiquity nor the Renaissance masters, but only the landscape painters of the seventeenth century, such as Claude, Nicholas and Gaston Poussin, and his particular bête noir, Salvator Rosa; by “the Moderns” he means the contemporary English landscape artists of the early nineteenth century, and he is always thinking particularly of Turner. Section II is entitled “Of General Truths” and contains chapters on Truth in Tones, in Colour, of Chiaroscuro, and two on Truth in Space (how to suggest distance); all of these have bad examples from the “ancients” and good examples from the “moderns”, mainly of course from Turner.
Section III is about the Truth of Sky, i.e. how to paint clouds (five chapters); Section IV is about the Truth of Earth, or how to paint mountains and hills, and rocks (four chapters); Section V is about the Truth of Water, or how to paint lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and the sea (three chapters); Section VI has one chapter about the Truth of Vegetation, essentially about how to paint trees and foliage, and two chapters of conclusions (one on the Truth of Turner and one on the criticism of art).
In addition to Ruskin’s text, the book I read has a long introduction, copious notes, and an Appendix containing various letters and other texts relevant to the volume.
This was Ruskin’s earliest and most popular work. It is an extremely interesting study, which should be read by anyone interested in the representational art (especially landscape painting) of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, or in the philosophy of art. I plan to continue reading Ruskin chronologically, with volume two, the three volumes of The Stones of Venice, and then the last three volumes of this.
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January 20, 2020Supreme! Re the aesthetics of the sky....no one else comes
a millimeter closer than far,far away.
Jack Borden
a millimeter closer than far,far away.
Jack Borden
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December 9, 2023Areopagus
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