{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_20019/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_20019","id":"gutenberg_20019","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20019","summary":null,"tags":["Art","Category: Art","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Landscape painting"],"text":"Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Linda Cantoni, and the\nOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLECTURES ON LANDSCAPE\n\nDELIVERED AT OXFORD\n\nIN LENT TERM, 1871.\n\n\nLibrary Edition\n\n\nTHE COMPLETE WORKS\n\nOF\n\nJOHN RUSKIN\n\n\nCROWN OF WILD OLIVE\nTIME AND TIDE\nQUEEN OF THE AIR\nLECTURES ON ART AND LANDSCAPE\nARATRA PENTELICI\n\nNATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION\nNEW YORK             CHICAGO\n\n\n[Illustration: BRANTWOOD\n\nFROM A PHOTOGRAPH]\n\n\n\n\nPREFATORY NOTE.\n\n\n_These Lectures on Landscape were given at Oxford on January 20,\nFebruary 9, and February 23, 1871. They were not public Lectures, like\nProfessor Ruskin's other courses, but addressed only to undergraduates\nwho had joined his class. They were illustrated by pictures from his\ncollection, of which several are here reproduced, and by others which\nmay be seen in the Oxford University Galleries or in the Ruskin\nDrawing School._\n\n_W.G.C._\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n                                                        PAGE\n\nLECTURE I.\n\nOUTLINE                                                    1\n\n\nLECTURE II.\n\nLIGHT AND SHADE                                           16\n\n\nLECTURE III.\n\nCOLOR                                                     32\n\n\n\n\nLIST OF PLATES\n\n\n                                                        Page\n\nVesuvius in Eruption, by J.M.W. Turner                     2\n\nNear Blair Athol, by J.M.W. Turner                        19\n\nDumblane Abbey, by J.M.W. Turner                          20\n\nMadonna and Child, by Filippo Lippi                       33\n\nThe Lady with the Brooch, by Sir Joshua Reynolds          35\n\nAEsacus and Hesperie, by J.M.W. Turner                     45\n\nMill near Grande Chartreuse, by J.M.W. Turner             47\n\nL'Aiguillette; Valley of Cluses, by J.M.W. Turner         48\n\n\n\n\nLECTURES ON LANDSCAPE.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\nOUTLINE.\n\n\n1. In my inaugural lecture,[1] I stated that while holding this\nprofessorship I should direct you, in your practical exercises,\nchiefly to natural history and landscape. And having in the course of\nthe past year laid the foundational elements of art sufficiently\nbefore you, I will invite you, now, to enter on real work with me; and\naccordingly I propose during this and the following term to give you\nwhat practical leading I can in elementary study of landscape, and of\na branch of natural history which will form a kind of center for all\nthe rest--Ichthyology.\n\n[Footnote 1: \"Lectures on Art, 1870,\" Sec. 23.]\n\nIn the outset I must shortly state to you the position which landscape\npainting and animal painting hold towards the higher branches of art.\n\n2. Landscape painting is the thoughtful and passionate representation\nof the physical conditions appointed for human existence. It imitates\nthe aspects, and records the phenomena, of the visible things which\nare dangerous or beneficial to men; and displays the human methods of\ndealing with these, and of enjoying them or suffering from them, which\nare either exemplary or deserving of sympathetic contemplation. Animal\npainting investigates the laws of greater and less nobility of\ncharacter in organic form, as comparative anatomy examines those of\ngreater and less development in organic structure; and the function\nof animal painting is to bring into notice the minor and unthought of\nconditions of power or beauty, as that of physiology is to ascertain\nthe minor conditions of adaptation.\n\n3. Questions as to the purpose of arrangements or the use of the\norgans of an animal are, however, no less within the province of the\npainter than of the physiologist, and are indeed more likely to\ncommend themselves to you through drawing than dissection. For as you\ndissect an animal you generally assume its form to be necessary and\nonly examine how it is constructed; but in drawing the outer form\nitself attentively you are led necessarily to consider the mode of\nlife for which it is disposed, and therefore to be struck by any\nawkwardness or apparent uselessness in its parts. After sketching one\nday several heads of birds it became a vital matter of interest to me\nto know the use of the bony process on the head of the hornbill; but\non asking a great physiologist, I found that it appeared to him an\nabsurd question, and was certainly an unanswerable one.\n\n4. I have limited, you have just heard, landscape painting to the\nrepresentation of phenomena relating to human life. You will scarcely\nbe disposed to admit the propriety of such a limitation; and you will\nstill less be likely to conceive its necessary strictness and\nseverity, unless I convince you of it by somewhat detailed examples.\n\nHere are two landscapes by Turner in his greatest time--Vesuvius in\nrepose, Vesuvius in eruption.\n\nOne is a beautiful harmony of cool color; and the other of hot, and\nthey are both exquisitely designed in ornamental lines. But they are\nnot painted for those qualities. They are painted because the state of\nthe scene in one case is full of delight to men; and in the other of\npain and danger. And it is not Turner's object at all to exhibit or\nillustrate natural phenomena, however interesting in themselves.\n\n[Illustration: VESUVIUS IN ERUPTION.\n\nFrom the painting by Turner.]\n\nHe does not want to paint blue mist in order to teach you the nature\nof evaporation; nor this lava stream, to explain to you the operation\nof gravity on ponderous and viscous materials. He paints the blue\nmist, because it brings life and joy to men, and the lava stream\nbecause it is death to them.\n\n5. Again here are two sea-pieces by Turner of the same\nperiod--photographs from them at least. One is a calm on the shore at\nScarborough; the other the wreck of an Indiaman.\n\nThese also are each painted with exquisitely artistic purpose: the\nfirst in opposition of local black to diffused sunshine; the second in\nthe decorative grouping of white spots on a dark ground. That\ndecorative purpose of dappling, or [Greek: poikilia], is as studiously\nand deliciously carried out by Turner with the Daedalus side of him, in\nthe inlaying of these white spots on the Indiaman's deck, as if he\nwere working a precious toy in ebony and ivory. But Turner did not\npaint either of the sea-pieces for the sake of these decorous\narrangements; neither did he paint the Scarborough as a professor of\nphysical science, to show you the level of low tide on the Yorkshire\ncoast; nor the Indiaman to show you the force of impact in a liquid\nmass of sea-water of given momentum. He painted this to show you the\ndaily course of quiet human work and happiness, and that, to enable\nyou to conceive something of uttermost human misery--both ordered by\nthe power of the great deep.\n\n6. You may easily--you must, perhaps, for a little time--suspect me of\nexaggeration in this statement. It is so natural to suppose that the\nmain interest of landscape is essentially in rocks and water and sky;\nand that figures are to be put, like the salt and mustard to a dish,\nonly to give it a flavor.\n\nPut all that out of your heads at once. The interest of a landscape\nconsists wholly in its relation either to figures present--or to\nfigures past--or to human powers conceived. The most splendid drawing\nof the chain of the Alps, irrespective of their relation to humanity,\nis no more a true landscape than a painting of this bit of stone. For,\nas natural philosophers, there is no bigness or littleness to you.\nThis stone is just as interesting to you, or ought to be--as if it was\na million times as big. There is no more sublimity--_per se_--in\nground sloped at an angle of forty-five, than in ground level; nor in\na perpendicular fracture of a rock, than in a horizontal one. The only\nthing that makes the one more interesting to you in a landscape than\nthe other, is that you could tumble over the perpendicular\nfracture--and couldn't tumble over the other. A cloud, looked at as a\ncloud only, is no more a subject for painting than so much feculence\nin dirty water. It is merely dirty air, or at best a chemical solution\nill made. That it is worthy of being painted at all depends upon its\nbeing the means of nourishment and chastisement to men, or the\ndwelling place of imaginary gods. There's a bit of blue sky and cloud\nby Turner--one of the loveliest ever painted by human hand. But, as a\nmere pattern of blue and white, he had better have painted a jay's\nwing: this was only painted by him--and is, in reality, only pleasant\nto you--because it signifies the coming of a gleam of sweet sunshine\nin windy weather; and the wind is worth thinking of only because it\nfills the sails of ships, and the sun because it warms the sailors.\n\n7. Now, it is most important that you should convince yourselves of\nand fully enter into this truth, because all the difficulty in\nchoosing subject arises from mistakes about it. I daresay some of you\nwho are fond of sketching have gone out often in the most beautiful\ncountry, and yet with the feeling that there was no good subject to be\nfound in it. That always arises from your not having sympathy enough\nwith its vital character, and looking for physical picturesqueness\ninstead. On the contrary, there are crude efforts at landscape-painting,\nmade continually upon the most splendid physical phenomena, in\nAmerica, and other countries without any history. It is not of the\nslightest use. Niagara, or the North Pole and the Aurora Borealis,\nwon't make a landscape; but a ditch at Iffley will, if you have\nhumanity in you--enough in you to interpret the feelings of hedgers\nand ditchers, and frogs.\n\n8. Next, here is one of the most beautiful landscapes ever painted,\nthe best I have next to the Greta and Tees.\n\nThe subject physically is a mere bank of grass above a stream with\nsome wych-elms and willows. A level-topped bank; the water has cut its\nway down through the soft alluvion of an elevated plain to the\nlimestone rock at the bottom.\n\nHad this scene been in America, no mortal could have made a landscape\nof it. It is nothing but a grass bank with some not very pretty trees\nscattered over it, wholly without grouping. The stream at the bottom\nis rocky indeed, but its rocks are mean, flat, and of a dull yellow\ncolor. The sky is gray and shapeless. There's absolutely nothing to\npaint anywhere of essential landscape subject, as commonly understood.\n\nNow see what the landscape consists in, which I have told you is one\nof the most beautiful ever painted by man. There's first a little bit\nof it left nearly wild, not quite wild; there's a cart and rider's\ntrack through it among the copse; and then, standing simply on the\nwild moss-troopers' ground, the scattered ruins of a great abbey, seen\nso dimly, that they seem to be fading out of sight, in color as in\ntime.\n\nThese two things together, the wild copse wood and the ruin, take you\nback into the life of the fourteenth century. The one is the\nborder-riders' kingdom; the other that of peace which has striven\nagainst border-riding--how vainly! Both these are remains of the past.\nBut the outhouses and refectory of the abbey have been turned into a\nfarmhouse, and that is inhabited, and in front of it the Mistress is\nfeeding her chickens. You see the country is perfectly quiet and\ninnocent, for there is no trace of a fence anywhere; the cattle have\nstrayed down to the riverside, it being a hot day; and some rest in\nthe shade and two in the water.\n\nThey could not have done so at their ease had the river not been\nhumanized. Only a little bit of its stony bed is left; a mill weir,\nthrown across, stays the water in a perfectly clear and delicious\npool; to show how clear it is, Turner has put the only piece of\nplaying color in all the picture into the reflections in this. One cow\nis white, another white and red, evidently as clean as morning dew\ncan wash their sides. They could not have been so in a country where\nthere was the least coal smoke; so Turner has put a wreath of\nperfectly white smoke through the trees; and lest that should not be\nenough to show you they burnt wood, he has made his foreground of a\npiece of copse just lopped, with the new fagots standing up against\nit; and this still not being enough to give you the idea of perfect\ncleanliness, he has covered the stones of the river-bed with white\nclothes laid out to dry; and that not being enough yet, for the\nriver-bed might be clean though nothing else was, he has put a\nquantity more hanging over the abbey walls.\n\n9. _Only natural phenomena in their direct relation to\nhumanity_--these are to be your subjects in landscape. Rocks and water\nand air may no more be painted for their own sakes, than the armor\ncarved without the warrior.\n\nBut, secondly. I said landscape is to be a _passionate representation_\nof these things. It must be done, that is to say, with strength and\ndepth of soul. This is indeed to some extent merely the particular\napplication of a principle that has no exception. If you are without\nstrong passions, you cannot be a painter at all. The laying of paint\nby an insensitive person, whatever it endeavors to represent, is not\npainting, but daubing or plastering; and that, observe, irrespective\nof the boldness or minuteness of the work. An insensitive person will\ndaub with a camel's hair-brush and ultramarine; and a passionate one\nwill paint with mortar and a trowel.\n\n10. But far more than common passion is necessary to paint landscape.\nThe physical conditions there are so numerous, and the spiritual ones\nso occult, that you are sure to be overpowered by the materialism,\nunless your sentiment is strong. No man is naturally likely to think\nfirst of anatomy in painting a pretty woman; but he is very apt to do\nso in painting a mountain. No man of ordinary sense will take pleasure\nin features that have no meaning, but he may easily take it in heath,\nwoods or waterfalls, that have no expression. So that it needs much\ngreater strength of heart and intellect to paint landscape than\nfigure: many commonplace persons, bred in good schools, have painted\nthe figure pleasantly or even well; but none but the strongest--John\nBellini, Titian, Velasquez, Tintoret, Mantegna, Sandro Botticelli,\nCarpaccio and Turner--have ever painted a fragment of good landscape.\nIn missal painting exquisite figure-drawing is frequent, and landscape\nbackgrounds in late works are elaborate; but I only know thoroughly\ngood landscape in one book; and I have examined--I speak\ndeliberately--thousands.\n\n11. For one thing, the passion is necessary for the mere quantity of\ndesign. In good art, whether painting or sculpture, I have again and\nagain told you every touch is necessary and beautifully intended. Now\nit falls within the compass of ordinary application to place rightly\nall the folds of drapery or gleams of light on a chain, or ornaments\nin a pattern; but when it comes to placing every leaf in a tree, the\npainter gets tired. Here, for instance, is a little bit of Sandro\nBotticelli background; I have purposefully sketched it in the\nslightest way, that you might see how the entire value of it depends\non thoughtful placing. There is no texture aimed at, no completion,\nscarcely any variety of light and shade; but by mere care in the\nplacing the thing is beautiful. Well, every leaf, every cloud, every\ntouch is placed with the same care in great work; and when this is\ndone as by John Bellini in the picture of Peter Martyr,[2] or as it\nwas by Titian in the great Peter Martyr, with every leaf in a wood he\ngets tired. I know no other such landscape in the world as that is, or\nas that was.\n\n[Footnote 2: National Gallery, No. 812.]\n\n12. Perhaps you think on such conditions you never can paint landscape\nat all. Well, great landscape certainly not; but pleasant and useful\nlandscape, yes; provided only the passion you bring to it be true and\npure. The degree of it you cannot command; the genuineness of it you\ncan--yes, and the depth of source also. Tintoret's passion may be like\nthe Reichenbach, and yours only like a little dripping Holywell, but\nboth equally from deep springs.\n\n13. But though the virtue of all painting (and similarly of sculpture\nand every other art) is in passion, I must not have you begin by\nworking passionately. The discipline of youth, in all its work, is in\ncooling and curbing itself, as the discipline of age is in warming and\nurging itself; you know the Bacchic chorus of old men in Plato's\n_Laws_. To the end of life, indeed, the strength of a man's finest\nnature is shown in due continence; but that is because the finest\nnatures remain young to the death: and for you the first thing you\nhave to do in art (as in life) is to be quiet and firm--quiet, above\neverything; and modest, with this most essential modesty, that you\nmust like the landscape you are going to draw better than you expect\nto like your drawing of it, however well it may succeed. If you would\nnot rather have the real thing than your sketch of it, you are not in\na right state of mind for sketching at all. If you only think of the\nscene, \"what a nice sketch this will make!\" be assured you will never\nmake a nice sketch of it. You may think you have produced a beautiful\nwork; nay, perhaps the public and many fair judges will agree with\nyou; but I tell you positively, there will be no enduring value in\nwhat you have thus done. Whereas if you think of the scene, \"Ah, if I\ncould only get some shadow or scrawl of this to carry away with me,\nhow glad I should be!\"--then whatever you do will be, according to\nyour strength, good and progressive: it may be feeble, or much\nfaultful, but it will be vital and essentially precious.\n\n14. Now, it is not possible for you to command this state of mind, or\nanything like it, in yourselves at once. Nay, in all probability your\neyes are so satiated by the false popular art surrounding us now on\nall sides, that you cannot see the delicate reality though you try;\nbut even though you may not care for the truth, you can act as if you\ndid, and tell it.\n\nNow, therefore, observe this following quite plain direction. Whenever\nyou set yourself to draw anything, consider only how best you may give\na person who has not seen the place, a true idea of it. Use any means\nin your power to do that, and don't think of the person for whom you\nare drawing as a connoisseur, but as a person of ordinary sense and\nfeeling. Don't get artist-like qualities for him: but first give him\nthe pleasant sensation of being at the place, then show him how the\nland lies, how the water runs, how the wind blows, and so on. Always\nthink of the public as Moliere of his old woman; you have done nothing\nreally great or good if you can't please her.\n\n15. Now beginning wisely, so as to lose no time or labor, you will\nlearn to paint all the conditions of quiet light and sky, before you\nattempt those of variable light and cloud. Do not trouble yourselves\nwith or allow yourselves to be tempted by any effects that are\nbrilliant or tremendous; except only that from the beginning I\nrecommend you to watch always for sunrise; to keep a little diary of\nthe manner of it, and to have beside your window a small sketch-book,\nwith pencil cut over night, and colors moist. The one indulgence which\nI would have you allow yourselves in fast coloring, for some time, is\nthe endeavor to secure some record at the instant of the colors of\nmorning clouds; while, if they are merely white or gray or blue, you\nmust get an outline of them with pencil. You will soon feel by this\nmeans what are the real difficulties to be encountered in all\nlandscape coloring, and your eyes will be educated to quantity and\nharmonious action of forms.\n\nBut for the rest--learn to paint everything in the quietest and\nsimplest light. First outline your whole subject completely, with\ndelicate sharp pencil line. If you don't get more than that, let your\noutline be a finished and lovely diagram of the whole.\n\n16. All the objects are then to be painted of their proper colors,\nmatching them as nearly as you can, in the manner that a missal is\npainted, filling the outlined shapes neatly up to their junctions;\nreenforcing afterwards when necessary, but as little as possible; but,\nabove all, knowing precisely what the light is, and where it is.[3]\n\n[Footnote 3: Make a note of these points:\n\n1. Date, time of day, temperature, direction and force of wind.\n\n2. Roughly, by compass, the direction in which you are looking; and\nangle of the light with respect to it.\n\n3. Angle subtended by picture, and distance of nearest object in it.]\n\n17. I have brought two old-fashioned colored engravings,[4] which are\na precise type of the style I want you to begin with. Finished from\ncorner to corner, as well as the painter easily could; everything done\nto good purpose, nothing for vain glory; nothing in haste or\naffectation, nothing in feverish or morbid excitement. The observation\nis accurate; the sentiment, though childish, deep and pure; and the\neffect of light, for common work, quite curiously harmonious and\ndeceptive.\n\n[Footnote 4: From a \"Picturesque Tour from Geneva to Milan\" ...\nengraved from designs by J. Lory of Neufchatel. London: Published by\nR. Ackermann, at his Repository of Arts, 1820.]\n\nThey are, in spite of their weaknesses, absolutely the only landscapes\nI could show you which give you a real idea of the places, or which\nput your minds into the tone which, if you were happy and at ease,\nthey would take in the air and light of Italy.\n\nI dwell on the necessity of completion especially, because I have lost\nmuch time myself from my sympathy with the feverish intensity of the\nminds of the great engravers; and from always fastening on one or two\npoints of my subject and neglecting the rest.\n\n18. We have seen, then, that every subject is to be taken up first in\nits terminal lines, then in its light and shade, then in its color.\n\nFirst of the terminal lines of landscape, or of drawing in outline.\n\nI think the examples of shell outline in your copying series must\nalready have made you feel the exact nature of a pure outline, the\ndifficulty of it, and the value.\n\nBut we have now to deal with limits of a more subtle kind.\n\nThe outline of any simple solid form, even though it may have complex\nparts, represents an actual limit, accurately to be followed. The\noutline of a cup, of a shell, or of an animal's limb, has a\ndeterminable course, which your pen or pencil line either coincides\nwith or does not. You can say of that line, either it is wrong or\nright; if right, it is in a measure suggestive, and nobly suggestive\nof the character of the object. But the greater number of objects in a\nlandscape either have outlines so complex that no pencil could follow\nthem (as trees in middle distance), or they have no actual outline at\nall, but a gradated and softened edge; as, for the most part, clouds,\nfoam, and the like. And even in things which have determinate form,\nthe outline of that form is usually quite incapable of expressing\ntheir real character.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n19. Here is the most ordinary component of a foreground for instance,\na pleasantly colored stone. Any of its pure outlines are not only\nwithout beauty, but absolutely powerless to give you any notion of its\ncharacter, although that character is in itself so interesting, that\nhere Turner has made a picture of little more than a heap of such\nstones, with blue water to oppose their color. In consequence of these\ndifficulties and insufficiencies, most landscape-painters have been\ntempted to neglect outline altogether, and think only of effects of\nlight or color on masses more or less obscurely defined. They have\nthus gradually lost their sense of organic form, their precision of\nhand, and their respect for limiting law; in a word, for all the\nsafeguards and severe dignities of their art. And landscape-painting\nhas, therefore, more in consequence of this one error than of any\nother, become weak, frivolous, and justly despised.\n\n20. Now, if any of you have chanced to notice at the end of my \"Queen\nof the Air,\" my saying that in landscape Turner must be your only\nguide, you perhaps have thought I said so because of his great power\nin melting colors or in massing light and shade. Not so. I have always\nsaid he is the only great landscape-painter, and to be your only\nguide, because he is the only landscape-painter who can draw an\noutline.\n\nHis finished works perhaps appear to you more vague than any other\nmaster's: no man loses his outlines more constantly. You will be\nsurprised to know that his frankness in losing depends on his\ncertainty of finding if he chooses; and that, while all other\nlandscape-painters study from Nature in shade or in color, Turner\nalways sketched with the point.\n\n\"Always,\" of course, is a wide word. In your copying series I have put\na sketch by Turner in color from Nature; some few others of the kind\nexist, in the National Gallery and elsewhere. But, as a rule, from his\nboyhood to the last day of his life, he sketched only with the fine\npencil point, and always the outline, more if he had time, but at\nleast the outline, of every scene that interested him; and in general,\noutline so subtle and elaborate as to be inexhaustible in examination\nand uncopiable for delicacy.\n\nHere is a sketch of an English park scene which represents the average\ncharacter of a study from Nature by Turner; and here the sketch from\nNature of Dumblane Abbey for the _Liber Studiorum_, which shows you\nwhat he took from Nature, when he had time only to get what was most\nprecious to him.\n\n21. The first thing, therefore, you have to learn in landscape, is to\noutline; and therefore we must now know precisely what an outline is,\nhow it ought to be represented; and this it will be right to define\nin quite general terms applicable to all subjects.\n\nWe saw in the fifth Lecture[5] that every visible thing consisted of\nspaces of color, terminated either by sharp or gradated limits.\nWhenever they are sharp, the line of separation, followed by the point\nof your drawing instrument, is the proper outline of your subject,\nwhether it represents the limits of flat spaces or of solid forms.\n\n[Footnote 5: \"Lectures on Art, 1870,\" Sec. 130.]\n\n22. For instance, here is a drawing by Holbein of a lady in a dark\ndress, with bars of black velvet round her arm. Her form is seen\neverywhere defined against the light by a perfectly sharp linear limit\nwhich Holbein can accurately draw with his pen; the patches of velvet\nare also distinguished from the rest of her dress by a linear limit,\nwhich he follows with his pen just as decisively. Here, therefore, is\nyour first great law. Wherever you see one space of color\ndistinguished from another by a sharp limit, you are to draw that\nlimit firmly; and that is your outline.\n\n23. Also, observe that as your representing this limit by a dark line\nis a conventionalism, and just as much a conventionalism when the line\nis subtle as when it is thick, the great masters accept and declare\nthat conventionalism with perfect frankness, and use bold and decisive\noutline, if any.\n\nAlso, observe, that though, when you are master of your art, you may\nmodify your outline by making it dark in some parts, light in others,\nand even sometimes thick and sometimes slender, a scientifically\naccurate outline is perfectly equal throughout; and in your first\npractice I wish you to use always a pen with a blunt point, which will\nmake no hair stroke under any conditions. So that using black ink and\nonly one movement of the pen, not returning to thicken your line, you\nshall either have your line there, or not there; and that you may not\nbe able to gradate or change it, in any way or degree whatsoever.\n\n24. Now the first question respecting it is: what place is your thick\nline to have with respect to the limit which it represents--outside\nof it, or inside, or over it? Theoretically, it is to be over it; the\ntrue limit falling all the way along the center of your thick line.\nThe contest of Apelles with Protogenes consisted in striking this true\nlimit within each other's lines, more and more finely. And you may\nalways consider your pen line as representing the first incision for\nsculpture, the true limit being the sharp center of the incision.\n\nBut, practically, when you are outlining a light object defined\nagainst a dark one, the line must go outside of it; and when a dark\nobject against a light one, inside of it.\n\nIn this drawing of Holbein's, the hand being seen against the light,\nthe outline goes inside the contour of the fingers.\n\n25. Secondly. And this is of great importance. It will happen\nconstantly that forms are entirely distinct from each other and\nseparated by true limits, which are yet invisible, or nearly so, to\nthe eye. I place, for instance, one of these eggs in front of the\nother, and probably to most of you the separation in the light is\nindiscernible. Is it then to be outlined? In practically combining\noutline with accomplished light and shade there are cases of this kind\nin which the outline may with advantage, or even must for truth of\neffect, be omitted. But the facts of the solid form are of so vital\nimportance, and the perfect command of them so necessary to the\ndignity and intelligibility of the work, that the greatest artists,\neven for their finished drawings, like to limit every solid form by a\nfine line, whether its contour be visible to the eye or not.\n\n26. An outline thus perfectly made with absolute decision, and with a\nwash of one color above it, is the most masterly of all methods of\nlight and shade study, with limited time, when the forms of the\nobjects to be drawn are clear and unaffected by mist. But without any\nwash of color, such an outline is the most valuable of all means for\nobtaining such memoranda of any scene as may explain to another\nperson, or record for yourself, what is most important in its\nfeatures.\n\n27. Choose, then, a subject that interests you; and so far as failure\nof time or materials compels you to finish one part, or express one\ncharacter, rather than another, of course dwell on the features that\ninterest you most. But beyond this, forget, or even somewhat repress\nyourself, and make it your first object to give a true idea of the\nplace to other people. You are not to endeavor to express your own\nfeelings about it; if anything, err on the side of concealing them.\nWhat is best is not to think of yourself at all, but to state as\nplainly and simply as you can the whole truth of the thing. What you\nthink unimportant in it may to another person be the most touching\npart of it: what you think beautiful may be in truth commonplace and\nof small value. Quietly complete each part to the best of your power,\nendeavoring to maintain a steady and dutiful energy, and the tranquil\npleasure of a workman.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nLIGHT AND SHADE.\n\n\n28. In my last Lecture I laid before you evidence that the greatness\nof the master whom I wished you to follow as your only guide in\nlandscape depended primarily on his studying from Nature always with\nthe point; that is to say, in pencil or pen outline. To-day I wish to\nshow you that his preeminence depends secondarily on his perfect\nrendering of form and distance by light and shade, before he admits a\nthought of color.\n\nI say \"before\" however--observe carefully--only with reference to the\nconstruction of any given picture, not with reference to the order in\nwhich he learnt his mechanical processes. From the beginning, he\nworked out of doors with the point, but indoors with the brush; and\nattains perfect skill in washing flat color long before he attains\nanything like skill in delineation of form.\n\n29. Here, for instance, is a drawing, when he was twelve or thirteen\nyears old, of Dover Castle and the Dover Coach; in which the future\nlove of mystery is exhibited by his studiously showing the way in\nwhich the dust rises about the wheels; and an interest in drunken\nsailors, which materially affected his marine studies, shown not less\nin the occupants of the hind seat. But what I want you to observe is\nthat, though the trees, coach, horses, and sailors are drawn as any\nschoolboy would draw them, the sky is washed in so smoothly that few\nwater-color painters of our day would lightly accept a challenge to\nmatch it.\n\nAnd, therefore, it is, among many other reasons, that I put the brush\ninto your hands from the first, and try you with a wash in lampblack,\nbefore you enter my working class. But, as regards the composition of\nhis picture, the drawing is always first with Turner, the color\nsecond.\n\n30. Drawing: that is to say, the expression by gradation of light,\neither of form or space. Again I thus give you a statement wholly\nadverse to the vulgar opinion of him. You will find that statement\nearly in the first volume of \"Modern Painters,\" and repeated now\nthrough all my works these twenty-five years, in vain. Nobody will\nbelieve that the main virtue of Turner is in his drawing. I say \"the\nmain virtue of Turner.\" Splendid though he be as a colorist, he is not\nunrivaled in color; nay, in some qualities of color he has been far\nsurpassed by the Venetians. But no one has ever touched him in\nexquisiteness of gradation; and no one in landscape in perfect\nrendering of organic form.\n\n31. I showed you in this drawing, at last Lecture, how truly he had\nmatched the color of the iron-stained rocks in the bed of the Ticino;\nand any of you who care for color at all cannot but take more or less\npleasure in the black and greens and warm browns opposed throughout.\nBut the essential value of the work is not in these. It is, first, in\nthe expression of enormous scale of mountain and space of air, by\ngradations of shade in these colors, whatever they may be; and,\nsecondly, in the perfect rounding and cleaving of the masses alike of\nmountain and stone. I showed you one of the stones themselves, as an\nexample of uninteresting outline. If I were to ask you to paint it,\nthough its color is pleasant enough, you would still find it\nuninteresting and coarse compared to that of a flower, or a bird. But\nif I can engage you in an endeavor to draw its true forms in light and\nshade, you will most assuredly find it not only interesting, but in\nsome points quite beyond the most subtle skill you can give to it.\n\n32. You have heard me state to you, several times, that all the\nmasters who valued accurate form and modeling found the readiest way\nof obtaining the facts they required to be firm pen outline, completed\nby a wash of neutral tint. This method is indeed rarely used by\nRaphael or Michael Angelo in the drawings they have left us, because\ntheir studies are nearly all tentative--experiments in composition, in\nwhich the imperfect or careless pen outline suggested all they\nrequired, and was capable of easy change without confusing the eye.\nBut the masters who knew precisely before they laid touch on paper\nwhat they were going to do--and this may be, observe, either because\nthey are less or greater than the men who change; less, in merely\ndrawing some natural object without attempt at composition, or greater\nin knowing absolutely beforehand the composition they intend; it may\nbe, even so, that what they intend, though better known, is not so\ngood:--but at all events, in this anticipating power Tintoret, Holbein\nand Turner stand, I think, alone as draughtsmen; Tintoret rarely\nsketching at all, but painting straight at the first blow, while\nHolbein and Turner sketch indeed, but it is as with a pen of iron and\na point of diamond.\n\n33. You will find in your educational series[6] many drawings\nillustrative of the method; but I have enlarged here the part that is\nexecuted with the pen, out of this smaller drawing, that you may see\nwith what fearless strength Holbein delineates even the most delicate\nfolds of the veil on the head, and of the light muslin on the\nshoulders, giving them delicacy, not by the thinness of his line, but\nby its exquisite veracity.\n\n[Footnote 6: At the Ruskin Drawing School, Oxford.]\n\nThe eye will endure with patience, or even linger with pleasure, on\nany line that is right, however coarse; while the faintest or finest\nthat is wrong will be forcibly destructive. And again and again I have\nto recommend you to draw always as if you were engraving, and as if\nthe line could not be changed.\n\n34. The method used by Turner in the _Liber Studiorum_ is precisely\nanalogous to that of Holbein. The lines of these etchings are to\ntrees, rocks, or buildings, absolutely what these of Holbein are; not\nsuggestions of contingent grace, but determinations of the limits of\nfuture form. You will see the explanatory office of such lines by\nplacing this outline over my drawing of the stone, until the lines\ncoincide with the limits of the shadow. You will find that it\nintensifies and explains the forms which otherwise would have escaped\nnotice, and that a perfectly gradated wash of neutral tint with an\noutline of this kind is all that is necessary for grammatical\nstatement of forms. It is all that the great colorists need for their\nstudies; they would think it wasted time to go farther; but, if you\nhave no eye for color, you may go farther in another manner, with\nenjoyment.\n\n35. Now to go back to Turner.\n\nThe _first_ great object of the _Liber Studiorum_, for which I\nrequested you in my sixth Lecture[7] to make constant use of it, is\nthe delineation of solid form by outline and shadow. But a yet more\nimportant purpose in each of the designs in that book is the\nexpression of such landscape powers and character as have especial\nrelation to the pleasures and pain of human life--but especially the\npain. And it is in this respect that I desired you (Sect. 172) to be\nassured, not merely of their superiority, but of their absolute\ndifference in kind from photography, as works of disciplined design.\n\n[Footnote 7: \"Lectures on Art, 1870,\" Sec. 170.]\n\n[Illustration: NEAR BLAIR ATHOL.\n\nFrom the painting by Turner.]\n\n36. I do not know whether any of you were interested enough in the\nlittle note in my catalogue on this view near Blair Athol, to look for\nthe scene itself during your summer rambles. If any did, and found it,\nI am nearly certain their impression would be only that of an extreme\nwonder how Turner could have made so little of so beautiful a spot.\nThe projecting rock, when I saw it last in 1857, and I am certain,\nwhen Turner saw it, was covered with lichens having as many colors as\na painted window. The stream--or rather powerful and deep Highland\nriver, the Tilt--foamed and eddied magnificently through the narrowed\nchannel; and the wild vegetation in the rock crannies was a finished\narabesque of living sculpture, of which this study of mine, made on\nanother stream, in Glenfinlas, only a few miles away, will give you a\nfair idea. Turner has absolutely stripped the rock of its beautiful\nlichens to bare slate, with one quartz vein running up through it; he\nhas quieted the river into a commonplace stream; he has given, of all\nthe rich vegetation, only one cluster of quite uninteresting leaves\nand a clump of birches with ragged trunks. Yet, observe, I have told\nyou of it, he has put into one scene the spirit of Scotland.\n\n[Illustration: DUMBLANE ABBEY.\n\nFrom the painting by Turner.]\n\n37. Similarly, those of you who in your long vacations have ever\nstayed near Dumblane will be, I think, disappointed in no small degree\nby this study of the abbey, for which I showed you the sketch at last\nLecture. You probably know that the oval window in its west end is one\nof the prettiest pieces of rough thirteenth-century carving in the\nkingdom; I used it for a chief example in my lectures at Edinburgh;\nand you know that the lancet windows, in their fine proportion and\nrugged masonry, would alone form a study of ruined Gothic masonry of\nexquisite interest.\n\nYet you find Turner representing the lancet window by a few bare oval\nlines like the hoop of a barrel; and indicating the rest of the\nstructure by a monotonous and thin piece of outline, of which I was\nasked by one of yourselves last term, and quite naturally and rightly,\nhow Turner came to draw it so slightly--or, we may even say, so badly.\n\n38. Whenever you find Turner stopping short, or apparently failing in\nthis way, especially when he does the contrary of what any of us would\nhave been nearly sure to do, then is the time to look for your main\nlesson from him. You recollect those quiet words of the strongest of\nall Shakespeare's heroes, when any one else would have had his sword\nout in an instant:\n\n     \"Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them ...\n     Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it\n     Without a prompter.\"[8]\n\n[Footnote 8: \"Othello,\" I. 2.]\n\nNow you must always watch keenly what Turner's _cue_ is. You will see\nhis hand go to his hilt fast enough, when it comes. Dumblane Abbey is\na pretty piece of building enough, it is true; but the virtue of the\nwhole scene, and meaning, is not in the masonry of it. There is\nmuch better masonry and much more wonderful ruin of it elsewhere;\nDumblane Abbey--tower and aisles and all--would go under one of the\narches of buildings such as there are in the world. Look at what\nTurner will do when his cue is masonry,--in the Coliseum. What the\nexecution of that drawing is you may judge by looking with a\nmagnifying glass at the ivy and battlements in this, when, also, his\ncue is masonry. What then can he mean by not so much as indicating one\npebble or joint in the walls of Dumblane?\n\n[Illustration]\n\n39. I was sending out the other day, to a friend in America, a chosen\ngroup of the _Liber Studiorum_ to form a nucleus for an art\ncollection at Boston. And I warned my friend at once to guard his\npublic against the sore disappointment their first sight of these so\nmuch celebrated works would be to them. \"You will have to make them\nunderstand,\" I wrote to him, \"that their first lesson will be in\nobserving not what Turner has done, but what he has not done. These\nare not finished pictures, but studies; endeavors, that is to say, to\nget the utmost result possible with the simplest means; they are\nessentially thoughtful, and have each their fixed purpose, to which\neverything else is sacrificed; and that purpose is always\nimaginative--to get at the heart of the thing, not at its outside.\"\n\n40. Now, it is true, there are beautiful lichens at Blair Athol, and\ngood building at Dumblane; but there are lovely lichens all over the\ncold regions of the world, and there is far more interesting\narchitecture in other countries than in Scotland. The essential\ncharacter of Scotland is that of a wild and thinly inhabited rocky\ncountry, not sublimely mountainous, but beautiful in low rock and\nlight streamlet everywhere; with sweet copsewood and rudely growing\ntrees. This wild land possesses a subdued and imperfect school of\narchitecture, and has an infinitely tragic feudal, pastoral, and civic\nhistory. And in the events of that history a deep tenderness of\nsentiment is mingled with a cruel and barren rigidity of habitual\ncharacter, accurately corresponding to the conditions of climate and\nearth.\n\n41. Now I want you especially to notice, with respect to these things,\nTurner's introduction of the ugly square tower high up on the left.\nYour first instinct would be to exclaim, \"How unlucky that was there\nat all! Why, at least, could not Turner have kept it out of sight?\" He\nhas quite gratuitously brought it into sight; gratuitously drawn\nfirmly the three lines of stiff drip-stone which mark its squareness\nand blankness. It is precisely that blank vacancy of decoration, and\nsetting of the meager angles against wind and war, which he wants to\nforce on your notice, that he may take you thoroughly out of Italy and\nGreece, and put you wholly into a barbarous and frost-hardened land;\nthat once having its gloom defined he may show you all the more\nintensely what pastoral purity and innocence of life, and loveliness\nof nature, are underneath the banks and braes of Doune, and by every\nbrooklet that feeds the Forth and Clyde.\n\nThat is the main purpose of these two studies. How it is obtained by\nvarious incidents in the drawing of stones, and trees, and figures, I\nwill show you another time. The chief element in both is the sadness\nand depth of their effect of subdued though clear light in sky and\nstream.\n\n42. The sadness of their effect, I repeat. If you remember anything of\nthe Lectures I gave you through last year, you must be gradually\ngetting accustomed to my definition of the Greek school in art, as one\nessentially Chiaroscurist, as opposed to Gothic color; Realist, as\nopposed to Gothic imagination; and Despairing, as opposed to Gothic\nhope. And you are prepared to recognize it by any one of these three\nconditions. Only, observe, the chiaroscuro is simply the technical\nresult of the two others: a Greek painter likes light and shade,\nfirst, because they enable him to realize form solidly, while color is\nflat; and secondly, because light and shade are melancholy, while\ncolor is gay.\n\nSo that the defect of color, and substitution of more or less gray or\ngloomy effects of rounded gradation, constantly express the two\ncharacters: first, Academic or Greek fleshliness and solidity as\nopposed to Gothic imagination; and secondly, of Greek tragic horror\nand gloom as opposed to Gothic gladness.\n\n43. In the great French room in the Louvre, if you at all remember the\ngeneral character of the historical pictures, you will instantly\nrecognize, in thinking generally of them, the rounded fleshly and\nsolid character in the drawing, the gray or greenish and brownish\ncolor, or defect of color, lurid and moonlight-like, and the gloomy\nchoice of subjects, as the Deluge, the Field of Eylau, the Starvation\non the Raft, and the Death of Endymion; always melancholy, and usually\nhorrible.\n\nThe more recent pictures of the painter Gerome unite all these\nattributes in a singular degree; above all, the fleshliness and\nmaterialism which make his studies of the nude, in my judgment,\naltogether inadmissible into the rank of the fine arts.\n\n44. Now you observe that I never speak of this Greek school but with a\ncertain dread. And yet I have told you that Turner belongs to it, that\nall the strongest men in times of developed art belong to it; but\nthen, remember, so do all the basest. The learning of the Academy is\nindeed a splendid accessory to original power, in Velasquez, in\nTitian, or in Reynolds; but the whole world of art is full of a base\nlearning of the Academy, which, when fools possess, they become a\ntenfold plague of fools.\n\nAnd again, a stern and more or less hopeless melancholy necessarily is\nunder-current in the minds of the greatest men of all ages,--of Homer,\nAeschylus, Pindar, or Shakespeare. But an earthy, sensual, and weak\ndespondency is the attribute of the lowest mental and bodily disease;\nand the imbecilities and lassitudes which follow crime, both in\nnations and individuals, can only find a last stimulus to their own\ndying sensation in the fascinated contemplation of completer death.\n\n45. Between these--the highest, and these--the basest, you have every\nvariety and combination of strength and of mistake: the mass of\nfoolish persons dividing themselves always between the two oppositely\nand equally erroneous faiths, that genius may dispense with law, or\nthat law can create genius. Of the two, there is more excuse for, and\nless danger in the first than in the second mistake. Genius has\nsometimes done lovely things without knowledge and without discipline.\nBut all the learning of the Academies has never yet drawn so much as\none fair face, or ever set two pleasant colors side by side.\n\n46. Now there is one great Northern painter, of whom I have not spoken\ntill now, probably to your surprise, Rubens; whose power is composed\nof so many elements, and whose character may be illustrated so\ncompletely, and with it the various operation of the counter schools,\nby one of his pictures now open to your study, that I would press you\nto set aside one of your brightest Easter afternoons for the study of\nthat one picture in the Exhibition of Old Masters, the so-called \"Juno\nand Argus,\" No. 387.\n\nSo-called, I say; for it is not a picture either of Argus or of Juno,\nbut the portrait of a Flemish lady \"as Juno\" (just as Rubens painted\nhis family picture with his wife \"as the Virgin\" and himself \"as St.\nGeorge\"): and a good anatomical study of a human body as Argus. In the\ndays of Rubens, you must remember, mythology was thought of as a mere\nempty form of compliment or fable, and the original meaning of it\nwholly forgotten. Rubens never dreamed that Argus is the night, or\nthat his eyes are stars; but with the absolutely literal and brutal\npart of his Dutch nature supposes the head of Argus full of real eyes\nall over, and represents Hebe cutting them out with a bloody knife and\nputting one into the hand of the goddess, like an unseemly oyster.\n\nThat conception of the action, and the loathsome sprawling of the\ntrunk of Argus under the chariot, are the essential contributions of\nRubens' own Netherland personality. Then the rest of the treatment he\nlearned from other schools, but adopted with splendid power.\n\n47. First, I think, you ought to be struck by having two large\npeacocks painted with scarcely any color in them! They are nearly\nblack, or black-green, peacocks. Now you know that Rubens is always\nspoken of as a great colorist, _par excellence_ a colorist; and would\nyou not have expected that--before all things--the first thing he\nwould have seen in a peacock would have been gold and blue? He sees\nnothing of the kind. A peacock, to him, is essentially a dark bird;\nserpent-like in the writhing of the neck, cloud-like in the toss and\nwave of its plumes. He has dashed out the filaments of every feather\nwith magnificent drawing; he has not given you one bright gleam of\ngreen or purple in all the two birds.\n\nWell, the reason of that is that Rubens is not _par excellence_ a\ncolorist; nay, is not even a good colorist. He is a very second-rate\nand coarse colorist; and therefore his color catches the lower public,\nand gets talked about. But he is _par excellence_ a splendid\ndraughtsman of the Greek school; and no one else, except Tintoret,\ncould have drawn with the same ease either the muscles of the dead\nbody or the plumes of the birds.\n\n48. Farther, that he never became a great colorist does not mean that\nhe could not, had he chosen. He was warped from color by his lower\nGreek instincts, by his animal delight in coarse and violent forms and\nscenes--in fighting, in hunting, and in torments of martyrdom and of\nhell: but he had the higher gift in him, if the flesh had not subdued\nit. There is one part of this picture which he learned how to do at\nVenice, the Iris, with the golden hair, in the chariot behind Juno. In\nher he has put out his full power, under the teaching of Veronese and\nTitian; and he has all the splendid Northern-Gothic, Reynolds or\nGainsborough play of feature with Venetian color. Scarcely anything\nmore beautiful than that head, or more masterly than the composition\nof it, with the inlaid pattern of Juno's robe below, exists in the art\nof any country. _Si sic omnia!_--but I know nothing else equal to it\nthroughout the entire works of Rubens.\n\n49. See, then, how the picture divides itself. In the fleshly\nbaseness, brutality and stupidity of its main conception, is the Dutch\npart of it; that is Rubens' own. In the noble drawing of the dead body\nand of the birds you have the Phidias-Greek part of it, brought down\nto Rubens through Michael Angelo. In the embroidery of Juno's robe you\nhave the Daedalus-Greek part of it, brought down to Rubens through\nVeronese. In the head of Iris you have the pure Northern-Gothic part\nof it, brought down to Rubens through Giorgione and Titian.\n\n50. Now, though--even if we had given ten minutes of digression--the\nlessons in this picture would have been well worth it, I have not, in\ntaking you to it, gone out of my own way. There is a special point for\nus to observe in those dark peacocks. If you look at the notes on the\nVenetian pictures in the end of my \"Stones of Venice,\" you will find\nit especially dwelt upon as singular that Tintoret, in his picture of\n\"The Nativity,\" has a peacock without any color in it. And the reason\nof it is also that Tintoret belongs, with the full half of his mind,\nas Rubens does, to the Greek school. But the two men reach the same\npoint by opposite paths. Tintoret begins with what Venice taught him,\nand adopted what Athens could teach: but Rubens begins with Athens,\nand adopts from Venice. Now if you will look back to my fifth\nLecture[9] you will find it said that the colorists can always adopt\nas much chiaroscuro as suits them, and so become perfect; but the\nchiaroscurists cannot, on their part, adopt color, except partially.\nAnd accordingly, whenever Tintoret chooses, he can laugh Rubens to\nscorn in management of light and shade; but Rubens only here and\nthere--as far as I know myself, only this once--touches Tintoret or\nGiorgione in color.\n\n[Footnote 9: \"Lectures on Art\" (the Inaugural Course, 1870), Sec. 138.]\n\n51. But now observe farther. The Greek chiaroscuro, I have just told\nyou, is by one body of men pursued academically, as a means of\nexpressing form; by another, tragically, as a mystery of light and\nshade, corresponding to--and forming part of--the joy and sorrow of\nlife. You may, of course, find the two purposes mingled: but pure\nformal chiaroscuro--Marc Antonio's and Leonardo's--is inconsistent\nwith color, and though it is thoroughly necessary as an exercise, it\nis only as a correcting and guarding one, never as a basis of art.\n\n52. Let me be sure, now, that you thoroughly understand the relation\nof formal shade to color. Here is an egg; here, a green cluster of\nleaves; here, a bunch of black grapes. In formal chiaroscuro, all\nthese are to be considered as white, and drawn as if they were carved\nin marble. In the engraving of \"Melancholy,\" what I meant by telling\nyou it was in formal chiaroscuro was that the ball is white, the\nleaves are white, the dress is white; you can't tell what color any of\nthese stand for. On the contrary, to a colorist the first question\nabout everything is its color. Is this a white thing, a green thing,\nor a blue thing? down must go my touch of white, green, or dark blue\nfirst of all; if afterwards I can make them look round, or like fruit\nand leaves, it's all very well; but if I can't, blue or green they at\nleast shall be.\n\n53. Now here you have exactly the thing done by the two masters we are\nspeaking of. Here is a copy of Turner's vignette of \"Martigny.\" This\nis wholly a design of the colored school. Here is a bit of vine in the\nforeground with purple grapes; the grapes, so far from being drawn as\nround, are struck in with angular flat spots; but they are vividly\npurple spots, their whole vitality and use in the design is in their\nTyrian nature. Here, on the contrary, is Duerer's \"Flight into Egypt,\"\nwith grapes and palm fruit above. Both are white; but both engraved so\nas to look thoroughly round.\n\n54. All the other great chiaroscurists whom I named to you--Reynolds,\nVelasquez, and Titian--approached their shadow also on the safe\nside--from Venice: they always think of color first. But Turner had to\nwork his way out of the dark Greek school up to Venice; he always\nthinks of his shadow first; and it held him in some degree fatally to\nthe end. Those pictures which you all laughed at were not what you\nfancied, mad endeavors for color; they were agonizing Greek efforts to\nget light. He could have got color easily enough if he had rested in\nthat; which I will show you in next Lecture. Still, he so nearly made\nhimself a Venetian that, as opposed to the Dutch academical\nchiaroscurists, he is to be considered a Venetian altogether. And now\nI will show you, in a very simple subject, the exact opposition of the\ntwo schools.\n\n55. Here is a study of swans, from a Dutch book of academical\ninstruction in Rubens' time. It is a good and valuable book in many\nways, and you are going to have some copies set you from it. But as a\ntype of academical chiaroscuro it will give you most valuable lessons\non the other side--of warning.\n\nHere, then, is the academical Dutchman's notion of a swan. He has\nlaboriously engraved every feather, and has rounded the bird into a\nball; and has thought to himself that never swan has been so engraved\nbefore. But he has never with his Dutch eyes perceived two points in a\nswan which are vital to it: first, that it is white; and, secondly,\nthat it is graceful. He has above all things missed the proportion,\nand necessarily therefore the bend of its neck.\n\n56. Now take the colorist's view of the matter. To him the first main\nfacts about the swan are that it is a white thing with black spots.\nTurner takes one brush in his right hand, with a little white in it;\nanother in his left hand, with a little lampblack. He takes a piece of\nbrown paper, works for about two minutes with his white brush, passes\nthe black to his right hand, and works half a minute with that, and,\nthere you are!\n\nYou would like to be able to draw two swans in two minutes and a half\nyourselves. Perhaps so, and I can show you how; but it will need\ntwenty years' work all day long. First, in the meantime, you must draw\nthem rightly, if it takes two hours instead of two minutes; and, above\nall, remember that they are black and white.\n\n57. But farther: you see how intensely Turner felt precisely what the\nFleming did not feel--the bend of the neck. Now this is not because\nTurner is a colorist, as opposed to the Fleming; but because he is a\npure and highly trained Greek, as opposed to the Fleming's low Greek.\nBoth, so far as they are aiming at form, are now working in the Greek\nschool of Phidias; but Turner is true Greek, for he is thinking only\nof the truth about the swan; and De Wit is pseudo-Greek, for he is\nthinking not of the swan at all, but of his own Dutch self. And so he\nhas ended in making, with his essentially piggish nature, this\nsleeping swan's neck as nearly as possible like a leg of pork.\n\nThat is the result of academical work, in the hands of a vulgar\nperson.\n\n58. And now I will ask you to look carefully at three more pictures in\nthe London Exhibition.\n\nThe first, \"The Nativity,\" by Sandro Botticelli.[10] It is an early\nwork by him; but a quite perfect example of what the masters of the\npure Greek school did in Florence.\n\n[Footnote 10: Now in the National Gallery, No. 1034.]\n\nOne of the Greek main characters, you know, is to be [Greek:\naprosopos], faceless. If you look first at the faces in this picture\nyou will find them ugly--often without expression, always ill or\ncarelessly drawn. The entire purpose of the picture is a mystic\nsymbolism by motion and chiaroscuro. By motion, first. There is a dome\nof burning clouds in the upper heaven. Twelve angels half float, half\ndance, in a circle, round the lower vault of it. All their drapery is\ndrifted so as to make you feel the whirlwind of their motion. They are\nseen by gleams of silvery or fiery light, relieved against an equally\nlighted blue of inimitable depth and loveliness.\n\nIt is impossible for you ever to see a more noble work of passionate\nGreek chiaroscuro--rejoicing in light. From this I should like you to\ngo instantly to Rembrandt's \"Portrait of a Burgomaster\" (No. 77 in the\nExhibition of Old Masters).\n\n59. That is ignobly passionate chiaroscuro, rejoicing in darkness\nrather than light.\n\nYou cannot see a finer work by Rembrandt. It has all his power of\nrendering character, and the portrait is celebrated through the world.\nBut it is entirely second-rate work. The character in the face is only\nstriking to persons who like candle-light effects better than\nsunshine; any head by Titian has twice the character, and seen by\ndaylight instead of gas. The rest of the picture is as false in light\nand shade as it is pretentious, made up chiefly of gleaming buttons in\nplaces where no light could possibly reach them; and of an embossed\nbelt on the shoulder, which people think finely painted because it is\nall over lumps of color, not one of which was necessary. That embossed\nexecution of Rembrandt's is just as much ignorant work as the embossed\nprojecting jewels of Carlo Crivelli; a real painter never loads (see\nthe Velasquez, No. 415 in the same exhibition).\n\n60. Finally, from the Rembrandt go to the little Cima (No. 93), \"St.\nMark.\" Thus you have the Sandro Botticelli, of the noble Greek school\nin Florence; the Rembrandt, of the debased Greek school in Holland;\nand the Cima, of the pure color school of Venice.\n\nThe Cima differs from the Rembrandt, by being lovely; from the\nBotticelli, by being simple and calm. The painter does not desire the\nexcitement of rapid movement, nor even the passion of beautiful light.\nBut he hates darkness as he does death; and falsehood more than\neither. He has painted a noble human creature simply in clear\ndaylight; not in rapture, nor yet in agony. He is dressed neither in a\nrainbow, nor bedraggled with blood. You are neither to be alarmed nor\nentertained by anything that is likely to happen to him. You are not\nto be improved by the piety of his expression, nor disgusted by its\ntruculence. But there is more true mastery of light and shade, if your\neye is subtle enough to see it, in the hollows and angles of the\narchitecture and folds of the dress, than in all the etchings of\nRembrandt put together. The unexciting color will not at first delight\nyou; but its charm will never fail; and from all the works of\nvariously strained and obtrusive power with which it is surrounded,\nyou will find that you never return to it but with a sense of relief\nand of peace, which can only be given you by the tender skill which is\nwholly without pretense, without pride, and without error.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nCOLOR.\n\n\n61. The distinctions between schools of art which I have so often\nasked you to observe are, you must be aware, founded only on the\nexcess of certain qualities in one group of painters over another, or\nthe difference in their tendencies; and not in the absolute possession\nby one group, and absence in the rest, of any given skill. But this\nimpossibility of drawing trenchant lines of parting need never\ninterfere with the distinctness of our conception of the opponent\nprinciples which balance each other in great minds, or paralyze each\nother in weak ones; and I cannot too often urge you to keep clearly\nseparate in your thoughts the school which I have called[11] \"of\nCrystal,\" because its distinctive virtue is seen unaided in the sharp\nseparations and prismatic harmonies of painted glass, and the other,\nthe \"School of Clay,\" because its distinctive virtue is seen in the\nqualities of any fine work in uncolored terra cotta, and in every\ndrawing which represents them.\n\n[Footnote 11: \"Lectures on Art, 1870,\" Sec. 185.]\n\n62. You know I sometimes speak of these generally as the Gothic and\nGreek schools, sometimes as the colorist and chiaroscurist. All these\noppositions are liable to infinite qualification and gradation, as\nbetween species of animals; and you must not be troubled, therefore,\nif sometimes momentary contradictions seem to arise in examining\nspecial points. Nay, the modes of opposition in the greatest men are\ninlaid and complex; difficult to explain, though in themselves clear.\nThus you know in your study of sculpture we saw that the essential aim\nof the Greek art was tranquil action; the chief aim of Gothic art\nwas passionate rest, a peace, an eternity of intense sentiment. As I\ngo into detail, I shall continually therefore have to oppose Gothic\npassion to Greek temperance; yet Gothic rigidity, [Greek: stasis] of\n[Greek: ekstasis], to Greek action and [Greek: eleutheria]. You see\nhow doubly, how intimately, opposed the ideas are; yet how difficult\nto explain without apparent contradiction.\n\n63. Now, to-day, I must guard you carefully against a misapprehension\nof this kind. I have told you that the Greeks as Greeks made real and\nmaterial what was before indefinite; they turned the clouds and the\nlightning of Mount Ithome into the human flesh and eagle upon the\nextended arm of the Messenian Zeus. And yet, being in all things set\nupon absolute veracity and realization, they perceive as they work and\nthink forward that to see in all things truly is to see in all things\ndimly and through hiding of cloud and fire.\n\nSo that the schools of Crystal, visionary, passionate, and fantastic\nin purpose, are, in method, trenchantly formal and clear; and the\nschools of Clay, absolutely realistic, temperate, and simple in\npurpose, are, in method, mysterious and soft; sometimes licentious,\nsometimes terrific, and always obscure.\n\n[Illustration: MADONNA AND CHILD.\n\nFrom the painting by Filippo Lippi.]\n\n64. Look once more at this Greek dancing-girl, which is from a terra\ncotta, and therefore intensely of the school of Clay; look at her\nbeside this Madonna of Filippo Lippi's: Greek motion against Gothic\nabsolute quietness; Greek indifference--dancing careless--against\nGothic passion, the mother's--what word can I use except frenzy of\nlove; Greek fleshliness against hungry wasting of the self-forgetful\nbody; Greek softness of diffused shadow and ductile curve, against\nGothic lucidity of color and acuteness of angle; and Greek simplicity\nand cold veracity against Gothic rapture of trusted vision.\n\n65. And now I may safely, I think, go into our work of to-day without\nconfusing you, except only in this. You will find me continually\nspeaking of four men--Titian, Holbein, Turner, and Tintoret--in\nalmost the same terms. They unite every quality; and sometimes you\nwill find me referring to them as colorists, sometimes as\nchiaroscurists. Only remember this, that Holbein and Turner are Greek\nchiaroscurists, nearly perfect by adopted color; Titian and Tintoret\nare essentially Gothic colorists, quite perfect by adopted\nchiaroscuro.\n\n66. I used the word \"prismatic\" just now of the schools of Crystal, as\nbeing iridescent. By being studious of color they are studious of\ndivision; and while the chiaroscurist devotes himself to the\nrepresentation of degrees of force in one thing--unseparated light,\nthe colorists have for their function the attainment of beauty by\narrangement of the divisions of light. And therefore, primarily, they\nmust be able to divide; so that elementary exercises in color must be\ndirected, like first exercises in music, to the clear separation of\nnotes; and the final perfections of color are those in which, of\ninnumerable notes or hues, every one has a distinct office, and can be\nfastened on by the eye, and approved, as fulfilling it.\n\n67. I do not doubt that it has often been matter of wonder among any\nof you who had faith in my judgment, why I gave to the University, as\ncharacteristic of Turner's work, the simple and at first unattractive\ndrawings of the Loire series. My first and principal reason was that\nthey enforced beyond all resistance, on any student who might attempt\nto copy them, this method of laying portions of distinct hue side by\nside. Some of the touches, indeed, when the tint has been mixed with\nmuch water, have been laid in little drops or ponds, so that the\npigment might crystallize hard at the edge. And one of the chief\ndelights which any one who really enjoys painting finds in that art as\ndistinct from sculpture is in this exquisite inlaying or joiner's work\nof it, the fitting of edge to edge with a manual skill precisely\ncorrespondent to the close application of crowded notes without the\nleast slur, in fine harp or piano playing.\n\n68. In many of the finest works of color on a large scale there is\neven some admission of the quality given to a painted window by the\ndark lead bars between the pieces of glass. Both Tintoret and\nVeronese, when they paint on dark grounds, continually stop short with\ntheir tints just before they touch others, leaving the dark ground\nshowing between in a narrow bar. In the Paul Veronese in the National\nGallery, you will every here and there find pieces of outline, like\nthis of Holbein's; which you would suppose were drawn, as that is,\nwith a brown pencil. But no! Look close, and you will find they are\nthe dark ground, _left_ between two tints brought close to each other\nwithout touching.\n\n[Illustration: THE LADY WITH THE BROOCH.\n\nFrom the painting by Reynolds.]\n\n69. It follows also from this law of construction that any master who\ncan color can always do any pane of his window that he likes,\nseparately from the rest. Thus, you see, here is one of Sir Joshua's\nfirst sittings: the head is very nearly done with the first color; a\npiece of background is put in round it: his sitter has had a pretty\nsilver brooch on, which Reynolds, having done as much as he chose to\nthe face for that time, paints quietly in its place below, leaving the\ndress between to be fitted in afterwards; and he puts a little patch\nof the yellow gown that is to be, at the side. And it follows also\nfrom this law of construction that there must never be any hesitation\nor repentance in the direction of your lines of limit. So that not\nonly in the beautiful dexterity of the joiner's work, but in the\nnecessity of cutting out each piece of color at once and forever (for,\nthough you can correct an erroneous junction of black and white\nbecause the gray between has the nature of either, you cannot correct\nan erroneous junction of red and green which make a neutral between\nthem, if they overlap, that is neither red nor green): thus the\npractice of color educates at once in neatness of hand and\ndistinctness of will; so that, as I wrote long ago in the third volume\nof \"Modern Painters,\" you are always safe if you hold the hand of a\ncolorist.\n\n70. I have brought you a little sketch to-day from the foreground of a\nVenetian picture, in which there is a bit that will show you this\nprecision of method. It is the head of a parrot with a little flower\nin his beak from a picture of Carpaccio's, one of his series of the\nLife of St. George. I could not get the curves of the leaves, and they\nare patched and spoiled; but the parrot's head, however badly done, is\nput down with no more touches than the Venetian gave it, and it will\nshow you exactly his method. First, a thin, warm ground had been laid\nover the whole canvas, which Carpaccio wanted as an under-current\nthrough all the color, just as there is an under-current of gray in\nthe Loire drawings. Then on this he strikes his parrot in vermilion,\nalmost flat color; rounding a little only with a glaze of lake; but\nattending mainly to get the character of the bird by the pure outline\nof its form, as if it were cut out of a piece of ruby glass.\n\nThen he comes to the beak of it. The brown ground beneath is left, for\nthe most part; one touch of black is put for the hollow; two delicate\nlines of dark gray define the outer curve; and one little quivering\ntouch of white draws the inner edge of the mandible. There are just\nfour touches--fine as the finest penmanship--to do that beak; and yet\nyou will find that in the peculiar paroquettish mumbling and nibbling\naction of it, and all the character in which this nibbling beak\ndiffers from the tearing beak of the eagle, it is impossible to go\nfarther or be more precise. And this is only an incident, remember, in\na large picture.\n\n71. Let me notice, in passing, the infinite absurdity of ever hanging\nVenetian pictures above the line of sight. There are very few persons\nin the room who will be able to see the drawing of this bird's beak\nwithout a magnifying-glass; yet it is ten to one that in any modern\ngallery such a picture would be hung thirty feet from the ground.\n\nHere, again, is a little bit to show Carpaccio's execution. It is his\nsignature: only a little wall-lizard, holding the paper in its mouth,\nperfect; yet so small that you can scarcely see its feet, and that I\ncould not, with my finest-pointed brush, copy their stealthy action.\n\n72. And now, I think, the members of my class will more readily\npardon the intensely irksome work I put them to, with the compasses\nand the ruler. Measurement and precision are, with me, before all\nthings; just because, though myself trained wholly in the chiaroscuro\nschools, I know the value of color; and I want you to begin with color\nin the very outset, and to see everything as children would see it.\nFor, believe me, the final philosophy of art can only ratify their\nopinion that the beauty of a cock robin is to be red, and of a\ngrass-plot to be green; and the best skill of art is in instantly\nseizing on the manifold deliciousness of light, which you can only\nseize by precision of instantaneous touch. Of course, I cannot do so\nmyself; yet in these sketches of mine, made for the sake of color,\nthere is enough to show you the nature and the value of the method.\nThey are two pieces of study of the color of marble architecture, the\ntints literally \"edified,\" and laid edge to edge as simply on the\npaper as the stones are on the walls.\n\n73. But please note in them one thing especially. The testing rule I\ngave for good color in the \"Elements of Drawing,\" is that you make the\nwhite precious and the black conspicuous. Now you will see in these\nstudies that the moment the white is inclosed properly, and harmonized\nwith the other hues, it becomes somehow more precious and pearly than\nthe white paper; and that I am not afraid to leave a whole field of\nuntreated white paper all round it, being sure that even the little\ndiamonds in the round window will tell as jewels, if they are gradated\njustly.\n\nAgain, there is not a touch of black in any shadow, however deep, of\nthese two studies; so that, if I chose to put a piece of black near\nthem, it would be conspicuous with a vengeance.\n\nBut in this vignette, copied from Turner, you have the two principles\nbrought out perfectly. You have the white of foaming water, of\nbuildings and clouds, brought out brilliantly from a white ground; and\nthough part of the subject is in deep shadow the eye at once catches\nthe one black point admitted in front.\n\n74. Well, the first reason that I gave you these Loire drawings was\nthis of their infallible decision; the second was their extreme\nmodesty in color. They are, beyond all other works that I know\nexisting, dependent for their effect on low, subdued tones; their\nfavorite choice in time of day being either dawn or twilight, and even\ntheir brightest sunsets produced chiefly out of gray paper. This last,\nthe loveliest of all, gives the warmth of a summer twilight with a\ntinge of color on the gray paper so slight that it may be a question\nwith some of you whether any is there. And I must beg you to observe,\nand receive as a rule without any exception, that whether color be gay\nor sad the value of it depends never on violence, but always on\nsubtlety. It may be that a great colorist will use his utmost force of\ncolor, as a singer his full power of voice; but, loud or low, the\nvirtue is in both cases always in refinement, never in loudness. The\nwest window of Chartres is bedropped with crimson deeper than blood;\nbut it is as soft as it is deep, and as quiet as the light of dawn.\n\n75. I say, \"whether color be gay or sad.\" It must, remember, be one or\nthe other. You know I told you that the pure Gothic school of color\nwas entirety cheerful; that, as applied to landscape, it assumes that\nall nature is lovely, and may be clearly seen; that destruction and\ndecay are accidents of our present state, never to be thought of\nseriously, and, above all things, never to be painted; but that\nwhatever is orderly, healthy, radiant, fruitful and beautiful, is to\nbe loved with all our hearts and painted with all our skill.\n\n76. I told you also that no complete system of art for either natural\nhistory or landscape could be formed on this system; that the wrath of\na wild beast, and the tossing of a mountain torrent are equally\nimpossible to a painter of the purist school; that in higher fields of\nthought increasing knowledge means increasing sorrow, and every art\nwhich has complete sympathy with humanity must be chastened by the\nsight and oppressed by the memory of pain. But there is no reason why\nyour system of study should be a complete one, if it be right and\nprofitable though incomplete. If you can find it in your hearts to\nfollow out only the Gothic thoughts of landscape, I deeply wish you\nwould, and for many reasons.\n\n77. First, it has never yet received due development; for at the\nmoment when artistic skill and knowledge of effect became sufficient\nto complete its purposes, the Reformation destroyed the faith in which\nthey might have been accomplished; for to the whole body of powerful\ndraughtsmen the Reformation meant the Greek school and the shadow of\ndeath. So that of exquisitely developed Gothic landscape you may count\nthe examples on the fingers of your hand: Van Eyck's \"Adoration of the\nLamb\" at Bruges; another little Van Eyck in the Louvre; the John\nBellini lately presented to the National Gallery;[12] another John\nBellini in Rome: and the \"St. George\" of Carpaccio at Venice, are all\nthat I can name myself of great works. But there exist some exquisite,\nthough feebler, designs in missal painting; of which, in England, the\nlandscape and flowers in the Psalter of Henry the Sixth will serve you\nfor a sufficient type; the landscape in the Grimani missal at Venice\nbeing monumentally typical and perfect.\n\n[Footnote 12: No. 812. \"Landscape, with the Death of St. Peter\nMartyr.\"]\n\n78. Now for your own practice in this, having first acquired the skill\nof exquisite delineation and laying of pure color, day by day you must\ndraw some lovely natural form or flower or animal without\nobscurity--as in missal painting; choosing for study, in natural\nscenes, only what is beautiful and strong in life.\n\n79. I fully anticipated, at the beginning of the Pre-Raphaelite\nmovement, that they would have carried forward this method of work;\nbut they broke themselves to pieces by pursuing dramatic sensation\ninstead of beauty. So that to this day all the loveliest things in the\nworld remain unpainted; and although we have occasionally spasmodic\nefforts and fits of enthusiasm, and green meadows and apple-blossom to\nspare, it yet remains a fact that not in all this England, and still\nless in France, have you a painter who has been able nobly to paint\nso much as a hedge of wild roses or a forest glade full of anemones or\nwood-sorrel.\n\n80. One reason of this has been the idea that such work was easy, on\nthe part of the young men who attempted it, and the total vulgarity\nand want of education in the great body of abler artists, rendering\nthem insensitive to qualities of fine delineation; the universal law\nfor them being that they can draw a pig, but not a Venus. For\ninstance, two landscape-painters of much reputation in England, and\none of them in France also--David Cox and John Constable, represent a\nform of blunt and untrained faculty which in being very frank and\nsimple, apparently powerful, and needing no thought, intelligence or\ntrouble whatever to observe, and being wholly disorderly, slovenly and\nlicentious, and therein meeting with instant sympathy from the\ndisorderly public mind now resentful of every trammel and ignorant of\nevery law--these two men, I say, represent in their intensity the\nqualities adverse to all accurate science or skill in landscape art;\ntheir work being the mere blundering of clever peasants, and deserving\nno name whatever in any school of true practice, but consummately\nmischievous--first, in its easy satisfaction of the painter's own\nself-complacencies, and then in the pretense of ability which blinds\nthe public to all the virtue of patience and to all the difficulty of\nprecision. There is more real relation to the great schools of art,\nmore fellowship with Bellini and Titian, in the humblest painter of\nletters on village signboards than in men like these.\n\nDo not, therefore, think that the Gothic school is an easy one. You\nmight more easily fill a house with pictures like Constable's from\ngarret to cellar, than imitate one cluster of leaves by Van Eyck or\nGiotto; and among all the efforts that have been made to paint our\ncommon wild-flowers, I have only once--and that in this very year,\njust in time to show it to you--seen the thing done rightly.\n\n81. But now observe: These flowers, beautiful as they are, are not of\nthe Gothic school. The law of that school is that everything shall be\nseen clearly, or at least, only in such mist or faintness as shall be\ndelightful; and I have no doubt that the best introduction to it would\nbe the elementary practice of painting every study on a golden ground.\nThis at once compels you to understand that the work is to be\nimaginative and decorative; that it represents beautiful things in the\nclearest way, but not under existing conditions; and that, in fact,\nyou are producing jeweler's work, rather than pictures. Then the\nqualities of grace in design become paramount to every other; and you\nmay afterwards substitute clear sky for the golden background without\ndanger of loss or sacrifice of system: clear sky of golden light, or\ndeep and full blue, for the full blue of Titian is just as much a\npiece of conventional enameled background as if it were a plate of\ngold; that depth of blue in relation to foreground objects being\nwholly impossible.\n\n82. There is another immense advantage in this Byzantine and Gothic\nabstraction of decisive form, when it is joined with a faithful desire\nof whatever truth can be expressed on narrow conditions. It makes us\nobserve the vital points in which character consists, and educates the\neye and mind in the habit of fastening and limiting themselves to\nessentials. In complete drawing, one is continually liable to be led\naside from the main points by picturesque accidents of light and\nshade; in Gothic drawing you must get the character, if at all, by a\nkeenness of analysis which must be in constant exercise.\n\n83. And here I must beg of you very earnestly, once for all, to clear\nyour minds of any misapprehension of the nature of Gothic art, as if\nit implied error and weakness, instead of severity. That a style is\nrestrained or severe does not mean that it is also erroneous. Much\nmischief has been done--endless misapprehension induced in this\nmatter--by the blundering religious painters of Germany, who have\nbecome examples of the opposite error from our English painters of the\nConstable group. Our uneducated men work too bluntly to be ever in the\nright; but the Germans draw finely and resolutely wrong. Here is a\n\"Riposo\" of Overbeck's for instance, which the painter imagined to be\nelevated in style because he had drawn it without light and shade, and\nwith absolute decision: and so far, indeed, it is Gothic enough; but\nit is separated everlastingly from Gothic and from all other living\nwork, because the painter was too vain to look at anything he had to\npaint, and drew every mass of his drapery in lines that were as\nimpossible as they were stiff, and stretched out the limbs of his\nMadonna in actions as unlikely as they are uncomfortable.\n\nIn all early Gothic art, indeed, you will find failure of this kind,\nespecially distortion and rigidity, which are in many respects\npainfully to be compared with the splendid repose of classic art. But\nthe distortion is not Gothic; the intensity, the abstraction, the\nforce of character are, and the beauty of color.\n\n84. Here is a very imperfect, but illustrative border of flowers and\nanimals on a golden ground. The large letter contains, indeed,\nentirely feeble and ill-drawn figures: that is merely childish and\nfailing work of an inferior hand; it is not characteristic of Gothic,\nor any other school. But this peacock, being drawn with intense\ndelight in blue, on gold, and getting character of peacock in the\ngeneral sharp outline, instead of--as Rubens' peacocks--in black\nshadow, is distinctively Gothic of fine style.\n\n85. I wish you therefore to begin your study of natural history and\nlandscape by discerning the simple outlines and the pleasant colors of\nthings; and to rest in them as long as you can. But, observe, you can\nonly do this on one condition--that of striving also to create, in\nreality, the beauty which you seek in imagination. It will be wholly\nimpossible for you to retain the tranquillity of temper and felicity\nof faith necessary for noble purist painting, unless you are actively\nengaged in promoting the felicity and peace of practical life. None of\nthis bright Gothic art was ever done but either by faith in the\nattainableness of felicity in heaven, or under conditions of real\norder and delicate loveliness on the earth.\n\n86. As long as I can possibly keep you among them, there you shall\nstay--among the almond and apple blossom. But if you go on into the\nveracities of the school of Clay, you will find there is something at\nthe roots of almond and apple trees, which is--This. You must look at\nhim in the face--fight him--conquer him with what scathe you may: you\nneed not think to keep out of the way of him. There is Turner's\nDragon; there is Michael Angelo's; there, a very little one of\nCarpaccio's. Every soul of them had to understand the creature, and\nvery earnestly.\n\n87. Not that Michael Angelo understands his dragon as the others do.\nHe was not enough a colorist either to catch the points of the\ncreature's aspect, or to feel the same hatred of them; but I confess\nmyself always amazed in looking at Michael Angelo's work here or\nelsewhere, at his total carelessness of anatomical character except\nonly in the human body. It is very easy to round a dragon's neck, if\nthe only idea you have of it is that it is virtually no more than a\ncoiled sausage; and, besides, anybody can round anything if you have\nfull scale from white high light to black shadow.\n\n88. But look here at Carpaccio, even in my copy. The colorist says,\n\"First of all, as my delicious paroquet was ruby, so this nasty viper\nshall be black\"; and then is the question, \"Can I round him off, even\nthough he is black, and make him slimy, and yet springy, and close\ndown--clotted like a pool of black blood on the earth--all the same?\"\nLook at him beside Michael Angelo's, and then tell me the Venetians\ncan't draw! And also, Carpaccio does it with a touch, with one sweep\nof his brush; three minutes at the most allowed for all the beast;\nwhile Michael Angelo has been haggling at this dragon's neck for an\nhour.\n\n89. Then note also in Turner's that clinging to the earth--the\nspecialty of him--_il gran nemico_, \"the great enemy,\" Plutus. His\nclaws are like the Clefts of the Rock; his shoulders like its\npinnacles; his belly deep into its every fissure--glued down--loaded\ndown; his bat's wings cannot lift him, they are rudimentary wings\nonly.\n\n90. Before I tell you what he means himself, you must know what all\nthis smoke about him means.\n\nNothing will be more precious to you, I think, in the practical study\nof art, than the conviction, which will force itself on you more and\nmore every hour, of the way all things are bound together, little and\ngreat, in spirit and in matter. So that if you get once the right clue\nto any group of them, it will grasp the simplest, yet reach to the\nhighest truths. You know I have just been telling you how this school\nof materialism and clay involved itself at last in cloud and fire.\nNow, down to the least detail of method and subject, that will hold.\n\n91. Here is a perfect type, though not a complex one, of Gothic\nlandscape; the background gold, the trees drawn leaf by leaf, and full\ngreen in color--no effect of light. Here is an equally typical\nGreek-school landscape, by Wilson--lost wholly in golden mist; the\ntrees so slightly drawn that you don't know if they are trees or\ntowers, and no care for color whatever; perfectly deceptive and\nmarvelous effect of sunshine through the mist--\"Apollo and the\nPython.\" Now here is Raphael, exactly between the two--trees still\ndrawn leaf by leaf, wholly formal; but beautiful mist coming gradually\ninto the distance. Well, then, last, here is Turner's; Greek-school of\nthe highest class; and you define his art, absolutely, as first the\ndisplaying intensely, and with the sternest intellect, of natural form\nas it is, and then the envelopment of it with cloud and fire. Only,\nthere are two sorts of cloud and fire. He knows them both. There's\none, and there's another--the \"Dudley\" and the \"Flint.\" That's what\nthe cloud and flame of the dragon mean: now, let me show you what the\ndragon means himself.\n\n92. I go back to another perfect landscape of the living Gothic\nschool. It is only a pencil outline, by Edward Burne-Jones, in\nillustration of the story of Psyche; it is the introduction of Psyche,\nafter all her troubles, into heaven.\n\nNow in this of Burne-Jones, the landscape is clearly full of light\neverywhere, color or glass light: that is, the outline is prepared\nfor modification of color only. Every plant in the grass is set\nformally, grows perfectly, and may be realized completely. Exquisite\norder, and universal, with eternal life and light, this is the faith\nand effort of the schools of Crystal; and you may describe and\ncomplete their work quite literally by taking any verses of Chaucer in\nhis tender mood, and observing how he insists on the clearness and\nbrightness first, and then on the order. Thus, in Chaucer's \"Dream\":\n\n     \"Within an yle me thought I was,\n     Where wall and yate was all of glasse,\n     And so was closed round about\n     That leavelesse none come in ne out,\n     Uncouth and straunge to beholde,\n     For every yate of fine golde\n     A thousand fanes, aie turning,\n     Entuned had, and briddes singing\n     Divers, and on each fane a paire\n     With open mouth again here;\n     And of a sute were all the toures\n     Subtily corven after floures,\n     Of uncouth colors during aye\n     That never been none seene in May.\"\n\n93. Next to this drawing of Psyche I place two of Turner's most\nbeautiful classical landscapes. At once you are out of the open\ndaylight, either in sunshine admitted partially through trembling\nleaves, or in the last rays of its setting, scarcely any more warm on\nthe darkness of the ilex wood. In both, the vegetation, though\nbeautiful, is absolutely wild and uncared for, as it seems, either by\nhuman or by higher powers, which, having appointed for it the laws of\nits being, leave it to spring into such beauty as is consistent with\ndisease and alternate with decay.\n\n[Illustration: AESACUS AND HESPERIE.\n\nFrom the painting by Turner.]\n\nIn the purest landscape, the _human_ subject is the immortality of the\nsoul by the faithfulness of love: in both the Turner landscapes it is\nthe death of the body by the impatience and error of love. The one is\nthe first glimpse of Hesperia to AEsacus:[13]\n\n     \"Aspicit Hesperien patria Cebrenida ripa,\n     Injectos humeris siccantem sole capillos:\"\n\nin a few moments to lose her forever. The other is a mythological\nsubject of deeper meaning, the death of Procris.\n\n[Footnote 13: Ovid, \"Metamorphoses,\" XI. 769.]\n\n94. I just now referred to the landscape by John Bellini in the\nNational Gallery as one of the six best existing of the purist school,\nbeing wholly felicitous and enjoyable. In the foreground of it indeed\nis the martyrdom of Peter Martyr; but John Bellini looks upon that as\nan entirely cheerful and pleasing incident; it does not disturb or\neven surprise him, much less displease in the slightest degree.\n\nNow, the next best landscape[14] to this, in the National Gallery, is\na Florentine one on the edge of transition to the Greek feeling; and\nin that the distance is still beautiful, but misty, not clear; the\nflowers are still beautiful, but--intentionally--of the color of\nblood; and in the foreground lies the dead body of Procris, which\ndisturbs the poor painter greatly; and he has expressed his disturbed\nmind about it in the figure of a poor little brown--nearly\nblack--Faun, or perhaps the god Faunus himself, who is much puzzled by\nthe death of Procris, and stoops over her, thinking it a woeful thing\nto find her pretty body lying there breathless, and all spotted with\nblood on the breast.\n\n[Footnote 14: (Of the Purist school.)]\n\n95. You remember I told you how the earthly power that is necessary in\nart was shown by the flight of Daedalus to the [Greek: herpeton] Minos.\nLook for yourselves at the story of Procris as related to Minos in the\nfifteenth chapter of the third book of Apollodorus; and you will see\nwhy it is a Faun who is put to wonder at her, she having escaped by\nartifice from the Bestial power of Minos. Yet she is wholly an\nearth-nymph, and the son of Aurora must not only leave her, but\nhimself slay her; the myth of Semele desiring to see Zeus, and of\nApollo and Coronis, and this having all the same main interest. Once\nunderstand that, and you will see why Turner has put her death under\nthis deep shade of trees, the sun withdrawing his last ray; and why he\nhas put beside her the low type of an animal's pain, a dog licking its\nwounded paw.\n\n96. But now, I want you to understand Turner's depth of sympathy\nfarther still. In both these high mythical subjects the surrounding\nnature, though suffering, is still dignified and beautiful. Every line\nin which the master traces it, even where seemingly negligent, is\nlovely, and set down with a meditative calmness which makes these two\netchings capable of being placed beside the most tranquil work of\nHolbein or Duerer. In this \"Cephalus\" especially, note the extreme\nequality and serenity of every outline. But now here is a subject of\nwhich you will wonder at first why Turner drew it at all. It has no\nbeauty whatsoever, no specialty of picturesqueness; and all its lines\nare cramped and poor.\n\nThe crampness and the poverty are all intended. This is no longer to\nmake us think of the death of happy souls, but of the labor of unhappy\nones; at least, of the more or less limited, dullest, and--I must not\nsay homely, but--unhomely life of the neglected agricultural poor.\n\nIt is a gleaner bringing down her one sheaf of corn to an old\nwatermill, itself mossy and rent, scarcely able to get its stones to\nturn. An ill-bred dog stands, joyless, by the unfenced stream; two\ncountry boys lean, joyless, against a wall that is half broken down;\nand all about the steps down which the girl is bringing her sheaf, the\nbank of earth, flowerless and rugged, testifies only of its malignity;\nand in the black and sternly rugged etching--no longer graceful, but\nhard, and broken in every touch--the master insists upon the ancient\ncurse of the earth--\"Thorns also and Thistles shall it bring forth to\nthee.\"\n\n97. And now you will see at once with what feeling Turner completes,\nin a more tender mood, this lovely subject of his Yorkshire stream, by\ngiving it the conditions of pastoral and agricultural life; the cattle\nby the pool, the milkmaid crossing the bridge with her pail on her\nhead, the mill with the old millstones, and its gleaming weir as his\nchief light led across behind the wild trees.\n\n[Illustration: MILL NEAR GRANDE CHARTREUSE.\n\nFrom the painting by Turner.]\n\n98. And not among our soft-flowing rivers only; but here among the\ntorrents of the Great Chartreuse, where another man would assuredly\nhave drawn the monastery, Turner only draws their working mill. And\nhere I am able to show you, fortunately, one of his works painted at\nthis time of his most earnest thought; when his imagination was still\nfreshly filled with the Greek mythology, and he saw for the first time\nwith his own eyes the clouds come down upon the actual earth.\n\n[Illustration: L'AIGUILLETTE, VALLEY OF CLUSES.\n\nFrom the painting by Turner.]\n\n99. The scene is one which, in old times of Swiss traveling, you would\nall have known well; a little cascade which descends to the road from\nGeneva to Chamouni, near the village of Maglans, from under a\nsubordinate ridge of the Aiguille de Varens, known as the Aiguillette.\nYou, none of you, probably, know the scene now; for your only object\nis to get to Chamouni and up Mont Blanc and down again; but the Valley\nof Cluse, if you knew it, is worth many Chamounis; and it impressed\nTurner profoundly. The facts of the spot are here given in mere and\npure simplicity; a quite unpicturesque bridge, a few trees partly\nstunted and blasted by the violence of the torrent in storm at their\nroots, a cottage with its mill-wheel--this has lately been pulled down\nto widen the road--and the brook shed from the rocks and finding its\nway to join the Arve. The scene is absolutely Arcadian. All the\ntraditions of the Greek Hills, in their purity, were founded on such\nrocks and shadows as these; and Turner has given you the birth of the\nShepherd Hermes on Cyllene, in its visible and solemn presence, the\nwhite cloud, Hermes Eriophoros forming out of heaven upon the Hills;\nthe brook, distilled from it, as the type of human life, born of the\ncloud and vanishing into the cloud, led down by the haunting Hermes\namong the ravines; and then, like the reflection of the cloud itself,\nthe white sheep, with the dog of Argus guarding them, drinking from\nthe stream.\n\n100. And now, do you see why I gave you, for the beginning of your\ntypes of landscape thought, that \"Junction of Tees and Greta\" in their\nmisty ravines; and this glen of the Greta above, in which Turner has\nindeed done his best to paint the trees that live again after their\nautumn--the twilight that will rise again with twilight of dawn--the\nstream that flows always, and the resting on the cliffs of the\nclouds that return if they vanish; but of human life, he says, a boy\nclimbing among the trees for his entangled kite, and these white\nstones in the mountain churchyard, show forth all the strength and all\nthe end.\n\n101. You think that saying of the Greek school--Pindar's summary of\nit, \"[Greek: ti de tis; ti d'ou tis];\"[15]--a sorrowful and degrading\nlesson. See at least, then, that you reach the level of such\ndegradation. See that your lives be in nothing worse than a boy's\nclimbing for his entangled kite. It will be well for you if you join\nnot with those who instead of kites fly falcons; who instead of\nobeying the last words of the great Cloud-Shepherd--to feed his sheep,\nlive the lives--how much less than vanity!--of the war-wolf and the\ngier-eagle. Or, do you think it a dishonor to man to say to him that\nDeath is but only Rest? See that when it draws near to you, you may\nlook to it, at least for sweetness of Rest; and that you recognize the\nLord of Death coming to you as a Shepherd gathering you into his Fold\nfor the night.\n\n[Footnote 15: Pyth. viii. 95. (135.)]","title":"Lectures on Landscape: Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":17349}