RUSKIN. 



409 



Of this body he was a mem'ber for ten years, being also 

 its president pro tern., when he died by his own haud at 

 Nacogdoches, Texas, July 29, 1856. 



HUSKtN, JOHN, the most eminent English art critic, 

 was bowi in London. Feb. 8, 1819. His father was a 

 London wine-merchant, who accumulated an ample 

 fortune, which John, his only son, inherited. 'I he 

 elder Ruskin was a man of considerable culture, with 

 much love for and taste in art, which artistic sense 

 early manifested itself in his son. He was in the habit 

 of making commercial journeys throughout England, 

 often taking his son with him, and in these excursions 

 spent much time in seeking attractive scenery, tadying 

 fine architecture, and visiting notable collections of 

 paintings, pointing out their excellencies, and doing his 

 utmost to cultivate the intense love of nature and art 

 which these teachings awakened in the boy. To the 

 teaching of his mother, a strict Evangelical, Ruskin 

 owed the strongly religious tendency of his mind, and 

 also his love of literature, which she took every pains 

 to develop. These careful instructions of his parents 

 in art. literature, and uiorais went far to develop in 

 early life his naturally artistic and devout inclinations, 

 and laid the foundations of his later career. He re- 

 marks, concerning his early love of nature : " In such 

 journeyiiigs, whenever they brought me near hills, and 

 in all mountain ground and scenery, I had a pleasure 

 as early as 1 can remember, and continuing until I was 

 eighteen or twenty, infinitely greater than any which 

 has been since possible to me in anything. . . . Al- 

 though there was no definite religious sentiment min- 

 gled with it, there was a continual perception of sanc- 

 tity in the whole of nature, ... an indefinable thrill 

 Biich as we sometimes imagine to indicate the presence 

 of a disembodied spirit He spent much of his 

 time in communion with nature, having no inclination 

 for playmates, and describes, in a poem written at 9 

 years of age, the effect produced on him by a striking 

 natural scene. His early literary inclination, indeed, 

 was towards poetry, and he continued to write verses 

 till his thirtieth year, but never excelled in this direc- 

 tion. His poems manifest fine imaginative and warmly 

 sympathetic powers, but are deficient in the equally 

 necessary qualities of form and expression. 



In 1833 Ruskin entered college at Christ Church, 

 Oxford, whence he graduated in 1842. While at Ox- 

 ford he won the Newdigate prize (1839) by a poem 

 entitled Salsette and Klephanta, describing the dawn 

 of Christianity in Hindustan. During the same period 

 he wrote, at the age of Id, some articles on geology, 

 which were followed by a scries of anonymous articles 

 on "The Poetry of Architecture. " Ilis artistic studies 

 while at college, in connection with his life-long study 

 of nature, led him to the conception that art, as then 

 cultivated in England, had been led aside from nature 

 by blind dependence on classic models. To this was 

 added the conception that the landscape paintings of 

 Turner, which he had deeply studied, indicated^ the 

 opening of a new and natural school of art ; that this 

 great painter had been treated with gross injustice by 

 his contemporaries, and that he formed the proper 

 model for the correction of (lie vitiated public taste. 

 These views, adopted with impassioned earm 

 were to some extent incorrect. The powers of Turner 

 had been appreciated by many, and for that purpose 

 he cannot justly be said to have needed such a [irophet 

 as Ruskin. To defend his favorite painter against his 

 critics the young enthusiast began a review article, 

 which the native fluency of his pen quickly expanded 

 to a volume. This was published in 1843 under the 

 title, Modern Pnhiterx : their Superiority in the Art of 

 Landscape Puiiitinrj to all the Ancient Matters. By a 

 Griiiliiate of Orfuril. 



This anonymous work created an immediate and im- 

 mense sensation in art circles, and among lovers of liter- 

 ature in general. While devoted largely to an ardent 

 advocacy of the artistic rnerite of Turner's paintings, 

 with a fervent espousal of the claims of this artist to 

 VOL. IV.-2 A 



high consideration, It broadened out into a general 

 criticism of modern art methods, and displayed a 

 knowledge of the subject, and a deep study and intense 

 appreciation of the beauties of nature, couched in a 

 rich and flowing style, which could not fail to attract 

 widespread attention. The work, indeed, did not be- 

 come an authority with critics and connoisseurs, but its 

 rhetorical brilliancy of style and eloquent descriptions 

 gained it a host of admirers, while the summary manner 

 in which it set aside the distinguished masters of the 

 past in favor of Turner stirred the world of art to its 

 depths. The hollowness of much that had been gen- 

 erally accepted was laid bare, and at one stroke it was 

 made evident that a new departure must be made. As 

 Wordsworth had inaugurated the era of naturalism in 

 poetry, so Turner, under Ruskin's championship, was 

 about to do so in art. 



The publication of this initial volume was followed 

 by several years of residence abroad, during which 

 Ruskin devoted himself to the study of art in Italy, 

 and especially in Venice, and greatly enlarged that wide 

 knowledge of the subject which is manifest in all his 

 writing's. The first fruits of this extended study was a 

 second volume of Modern Painters, entitled Of the Im- 

 OfftnattM and Theoretic Faculties, in which he gives 

 an elaborate critical survey of the works of the old 

 masters, who arc compared with the modern English 

 landscape painters, much to the advantage of the latter. 

 These volumes displayed acute analysis of the elements 

 of truth in painting, with abundant examples drawn 

 from ancient and modern art, that went far to cause a 

 complete revolution in the creed of artists, and to send 

 the devotees of the brush to nature for their inspira- 

 tion. At intervals during the succeeding years three 

 more volumes of Modern Painters appeared, the third 

 being entitled Of Many Tilings; the fourth, Of 

 Mountain Bemity ; and the fifth, published in ISfiO, 

 Of Leaf Beauty, of Cloud Jieanty, of Ideas of Re- 

 lation, etc. The author continued his study of the 

 several elements of landscape art and his fervid cham- 

 pionship of Turner, writing with a lucidity and brill- 

 iancy of style that went far to atone for many defects 

 of his literary work. 



During the publication of these volumes his art 

 studies in Italy led to other works of great literary 

 merit and artistic value. In 1849 appeared The Seven 

 Lamps of ArcJiitectnre, these lamps indicating the 

 character that good architecture should possess, the 

 spirit in which it should be produced, and the moral 

 perfection it should illustrate. Then followed his elo- 

 quently written Stones of Venice (3 vols., 18">l-53), 

 which for poetical richness and vividness of expression 

 forms one of the prose masterpieces of the century. 

 In this, the era of development of Gothic architecture 

 in Venice is upheld as that of domestic faith and 

 national virtue ; that of Renaissance architecture as a 

 period of domestic corruption and national vice. Sev- 

 eral minor works on art subjects appeared in this era 

 of Ruskin's life, including a pamphlet on Pre-Ra- 



story for children. The king of the Golden River. 

 Of these works, The Elements of Drawing is one of 

 the most practically useful that has appeared from his 

 pen. and while not altogether safe in its teachings is 

 of the greatest value as a sketcher's companion. 



Modern Painters has been characterized by an able 

 writer as "undoubtedly the greatest critical treatise 

 ever written on art," and to a degree on literature and 

 nature. Ruskin is unquestionably at the head of 

 English writers on art, despite his conceits and idio- 

 syncracies, and his lack of philosophical generalization. 

 No other English writer compares with him for extent 

 of knowledge in this field of study, or for vividness and 

 value of art criticism. The skill, erudition, zeal, hon- 

 esty of purpose, and emotional earnestness displayed 

 in his works are worthy of all praise, and though his 



