Chapter 22

It is with a sense of relief we turn from the contemplation of the imperfect man to consider the nearly perfect artist. The meanness, the squalor, the degradation of his _morale_ and life are not discernible in his works. The affluence of beauty of some of these is indeed marvellous. But this fallen man had extraordinary gifts as a painter, and these he heightened and intensified by labour and industry the most ceaseless. It would be difficult to conceive any one endowed with a keener sensibility to colour, or with a more devotional love for its glories; it would be equally hard to estimate the enhancement of the worth of English art effected by the colour of Turner. It should be remembered that he appeared at a time when coldness of tone was almost a fashion in painting. The chilliness of the shadows of Lawrence and his followers was remarkable. Turner raised the chord of colour a whole octave, if it is permissible to say so, illustrating one art by the terms of another. Mr. Ruskin ascribes to him the discovery of the _scarlet shadow_. It was in truth less a new discovery than the re-awakening of an old one. The early masters were well aware of the value of warmth in this respect. Wilkie comments in his journal on the great picture of Correggio: 'And here I observe _hot shadows_ prevail, _not cold_, as some of us would have it. This he has to a fault, making parts of his figures look like red chalk drawings, but the sunny and dazzling effect of the whole may be attributed to this artifice.'[27] If we look for a prevalent tone in Turner's pictures--though a prevalent tone is always a vice in a painter, nature being without bias in the question of hue--we shall find it to be _yellow_, which he himself declared to be his favourite colour, and which occasioned those jokes about the 'mustard-pot' as a source of inspiration, to which art-students were at one time addicted. But, indeed, Turner's sense of all colour was very limitless. A Mrs. Austin once said to him, 'I find, Mr. Turner, that, in copying one of your works, touches of blue, red, and yellow appear all through the work.' He answered: 'Well, don't you see that yourself in nature, because, if you don't, Heaven help you!' Mr. Ruskin writes: 'Other painters had rendered the golden tones and blue tones of the sky; Titian especially the latter in perfection. But none had dared to paint--none seem to have seen--the scarlet and purple.' In representing the glare of sunlight, Turner surpassed even Claude. Cuyp hardly attempted this feat, his suns generally gleaming through a mist; though Turner standing before a splendid example of Cuyp, exclaimed: 'I would give a thousand pounds to have painted that' In atmospheric perspective he was perfect; but in linear faulty and ill grounded, although he had held the appointment of Professor of Perspective at the Academy for some years. The drawbacks to his pictures consist in their frequent sacrifice of truth to effect. From this cause he constantly failed to satisfy critics who were well acquainted with the scenes and subjects he attempted to represent. A tar said of his _Battle of Trafalgar_ at Greenwich: 'What a Trafalgar! it's a d----d deal more like a brick-field!' while Sir Thomas Hardy used to call it a 'street scene,' as the ships had more the effect of houses than men-of-war. Of the wreck of the _Minotaur_, Admiral Bowles complained 'that no ship or boat could live in such a sea.'

[27] In a letter to Phillips he adds, 'No one knew the value of this treatment better than Turner.'

To Turner's credit must be placed many acts of consideration for, and kindness towards, his brother artists. He has been known to displace one of his own pictures to make room for the work of a promising beginner. His love for art is the real redeeming point in his history. He was devoted to the Academy, which had recognised his genius at an early date, and was wholly conservative in his opinion upon all academic questions. Yet his zeal did not blind him. Haydon, whose life had been a gallant though almost fruitless struggle against the despotic exclusiveness of the Academy, drew back, we are told, in the midst of his exultation at a brief victory gained over his opponents, and said calmly: 'But Turner behaved well, and did me justice.'

Turner's biographer, with a scrupulousness that looks a little like timidity, has abstained steadily from all demur to the _dicta_ of Mr. Ruskin. Mr. Thornbury's volumes represent rather elaborations than contradictions of the Ruskin opinions, just as what are known as 'variations' in music are rather amplifications of, than departures from, the original theme. But we are by no means sure that Mr. Thornbury has strengthened the case in the painter's favour. We believe that, at the bar, the junior counsel has been sometimes found to injure the effect of his chief's advocacy, by entering into and disclosing matters of detail which had been purposely left untouched by him. Something of the same sort has happened in the present instance. Mr. Ruskin bade us worship his hero, classically screened in a cloud. Mr. Thornbury unveils the idol, and the too apparent deformity disclosed renders adoration no longer possible. Mr. Ruskin's five volumes of _Modern Painters_ will therefore probably still be considered to comprise the true 'Turneriad.' A more imposing monument to Turner's memory than is afforded by this book, with all its defects, can hardly be. For something like a quarter of a century Mr. Ruskin employed himself in examining and lauding the achievements of Turner. He did not complete his self-imposed task until the great painter had been dead some ten years.

It is really curious to go back to the beginning of this remarkable work.

In 1843 appeared the first volume of '_Modern Painters: their Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters_. By a Graduate of Oxford.' A further volume was issued three years afterwards, to accompany an extended and amended edition of the first. A ten years' pause, and third and fourth portions were given to the world. Then came 1860, and the final volume. Not, as the author avowed, that his subject was concluded, for 'he had been led by it into fields of infinite inquiry, where it was only possible to break off with such imperfect results as may at any given moment have been attained.' He stopped because he must stop at some time or other. The future art-writings of Mr. Ruskin will no longer bear the collective title of _Modern Painters_. Perhaps that is all that the 'finis' at the end of the fifth volume really amounts to.

In his fifth volume, Mr. Ruskin has narrated the history of the birth and growth of his book. He has ascribed to himself from his earliest years, 'the gift of taking pleasure in landscape.' This, he says, 'I assuredly possess in a greater degree than most men, it having been the ruling passion of my life, and the reason for the choice of its field of labour.' Certain articles in a review condemnatory of the pictures of Turner offended keenly so ardent an admirer of the king of landscape painters. Mr. Ruskin addressed a letter to the editor of the review, 'reprobating the matter and style of those critiques, and pointing out their dangerous tendency;' for 'he knew it to be demonstrable that Turner was right and true, and that his critics were wrong, false, and base.' The letter grew to be a book; the defence expanded into an attack. What began as a few comments upon a particular branch of painting ended in being the most elaborate English dissertation upon art, in its widest and weightiest significance. The title originally selected for the book was _Turner and the Ancients_; and it was not then proposed to refer in it to any other modern painter than Turner. But the design enlarged,--'The title was changed, and notes on other living painters inserted in the first volume, in deference to the advice of friends; probably wise, for unless the change had been made, the book might never have been read at all.' So writes the author in his last pages; and returning to his first love, it is hard to say whether from fickleness or from constancy he adds, 'So far as I am concerned, I regretted the change then, and regret it still.'

To this book, then, commenced almost without a plan, time subsequently gave form and pattern. At a certain period of his labour Mr. Ruskin paused to map out the future of his work, to define the limits of his undertaking. But in examining the concluding volume it will be seen that the waywardness of the beginning characterizes also the end. Time has taken away its gift; the scheme has fallen through; the book ends; but the design it had gathered to itself as it advanced, which had budded out from it unexpectedly as it were, remains in a large measure uncompleted. Over the boundaries he had himself imposed, his eloquent diffuseness long since surged: the book doubled its promised length; and now the author stays his hand, turns from his toil, and leaves unfinished and shapeless the long-expected 'section on the sea,' holding out but vague promise of his ever being able to accomplish, even in a separate work, his intentions in regard to that portion of his project.

It is almost of necessity that there should be deviation from the original planned economy of a work occupying more than a score of years; but Mr. Ruskin is more than ordinarily susceptible to vicissitude. It is part of his idiosyncrasy to start impulsively with an ill-digested project, and to run off the lines of his argument upon the slightest provocation and at the earliest opportunity. So that in his case time and his own temper have combined to exaggerate the vibration of his book. His manner of progression is very much what Mr. Assheton Smith's huntsman used to denominate 'zedding.' He cannot proceed straightforwardly. He must wander from the direct track; as a consequence, he is betrayed into all sorts of _culs de sac_, wrong turnings, and roundabout roads; and in the end, although much ground is gone over, very little advance is made. He is as the bee which does not make its final burglarious headlong plunge into the calyx until after a protracted course of circuitous buzzing and much prefatory waste of time: and this with all the insect's credit for industry. So over-perverse a traveller, so ultra-dilatory a bee as the author of _Modern Painters, must_ shorten his journey, _must_ leave much honey unfilched. He is as the army which commences in orderly retreat and ends in rabble-like riot and demoralization, gaining a place of safety at last, with the sacrifice of much baggage and treasure. So, as has been said, Mr. Ruskin flings away altogether a large division of his idea. In one place he writes,--

'I find it convenient in this volume, and I wish I had thought of the expedient before, whenever I get into a difficulty to leave the reader to work it out;' and in another we are stopped by such a half-indolent half-arrogant, 'No Thoroughfare' as this. He has been discoursing on the leaf,--then follows an inquiry into the conditions of the stem. Then he tells us:--

'I intended to have given a figure to show the results of the pressure of the weight of all the leafage on a great lateral bough in modifying its curves, the strength of timber being greatest where the leverage of the mass tells most. _But I find nobody ever reads things which it takes any trouble to understand, so that it is no use to write them._'

In a higher tone he had once announced the aim and principle of his book, claiming for it a difference from most books, and 'a chance of being in some respects better for the difference, in that it had not been written either for fame, or for money, or for conscience' sake, but of necessity.' 'I saw an injustice done and tried to remedy it. I heard a falsehood taught and was compelled to deny it. Nothing else was possible to me.' In that good time there was no question as to whether people would or would not take the trouble to understand. They were taught what the teacher deemed to be true, and the risk was on their own heads if they neglected the teaching. It was of use to write then, intelligibly or unintelligibly, truly and wholly; but this was before Mr. Ruskin had strayed very much from his road, or broken off, breathless and worn out, from a journey, doubled by aberrations, rendered wearisome by the most wilful wandering, and stopped at last,--not perfected.

In extenuation of the delay in the completion of the work, the author pleads his many employments during five years:--his book on the _Elements of Drawing_; his addresses at Manchester, and his examination, 'with more attention than they deserved,' of some of the theories of political economy referred to in those addresses; the Manchester Exhibition, 'chiefly in its magnificent Reynolds' constellation;' a visit to Scotland, to look at Dunblane and Jedburgh, and other favourite sites of Turner's; and the arrangement of the Turner drawings, the property of the nation, for the trustees of the National Gallery. To this last task Mr. Ruskin set himself with characteristic enthusiasm. In the lower room of the National Gallery, when he began his work, there were 'upwards of nineteen thousand pieces of paper drawn upon by Turner in one way or other,'--many on both sides, some with four, five, or six subjects on each side,--'some in chalk, which the touch of the finger would sweep away, others in ink rotted into holes, others eaten away by damp and mildew, and falling into dust at the edges, in cases and bags of fragile decay, others worm-eaten, some mouse-eaten, many torn halfway through, numbers doubled (quadrupled I should say) into four, being Turner's favourite mode of packing for travelling; nearly all rudely flattened out from the bundles in which Turner had finally rolled them up and squeezed them into his drawers in Queen Anne Street' In the edges of these flattened bundles lay the 'dust of thirty years' accumulation, black, dense, and sooty.' With two assistants, Mr. Ruskin was at work, all the autumn and winter of 1857, 'every day all day long, and often far into the night.' Then, by way of resting himself, Mr. Ruskin proceeded to hunt down Turner subjects along the course of the Rhine on the north of Switzerland. He crossed Lombardy afterwards, and found, unexpectedly, some good Paul Veroneses at Turin. He had been troubled by many questions respecting the 'real motives of Venetian work,' which he had planned to work out in the Louvre; but 'seeing that Turin was a good place wherein to keep out of people's way,' he settled there instead. 'With much consternation, but more delight,' he discovered that he 'had never got to the roots of the moral power of the Venetians;' that for this a stern course of study was required of him. The book was given up for the year.

'The winter was spent mainly in trying to get at the mind of Titian.' The issue necessitated his going in the spring to Berlin, 'to see,' as he tells us, 'Titian's portrait of Lavinia there, and to Dresden to see the Tribute Money, the elder Lavinia, and girl in white with the flag-fan. Another portrait at Dresden, of a lady in a dress of rose and gold, by me unheard of before, and one of an admiral at Munich, had like to have kept me in Germany all the summer.' How expositive is all this of the unstable fashion of Mr. Ruskin's temper and writings!

It is not to be marvelled at that the term 'Ruskinism' should be evolved from a system of opinions so impassioned and earnest, so thorough and deep-rooted, and, at the time at which they were first broached, so singular and courageous, as those of the author of _Modern Painters_. When Mr. Ruskin took up his pen, the 'old masters' were the religion, and the creed, and the idols, of the connoisseurs. It was of landscape he was particularly writing, but his fiery condemnation in one sentence of such names as 'Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Cuyp, Berghem, Both, Ruysdael, Hobbima, Teniers (in his landscapes), Paul Potter, Canaletti, and the various Van-Somethings and Back-Somethings, more especially and malignantly those who had libelled the sea,' carried dismay into the hearts of collectors, and he was denounced as guilty of an art sacrilege scarcely more marvellous for its impiety than its daring. His opinions, however, have passed through a burning fiery furnace of criticism, and have survived the ordeal. Earnestness is half success; and the truth that was the substratum of that earnestness has accomplished the rest. 'Ruskinism,' in its least invective and censorious form, has a host of followers and disciples. Take as its text the noble view of it contained in the following words descriptive of the book:--'It declares the perfectness and eternal beauty of the works of God, and tests all works of man by concurrence with or subjection to that.'

Time, that has given and changed the plan, has also been at work with certain of the judgments of the book. (It is with the fifth volume we are especially dealing,--for this may fairly be regarded as the 'summing up' of the divers opinions scattered through the earlier portions of the work.) The author of a book long in hand becomes himself the president of a court of appeal, in which his own earlier sentences are to be reversed or confirmed. It is one of the results of the heat and passion of first opinions that they seem to be harshly and cruelly framed when the time comes to tone down and qualify them; and the question arises, was it indispensable to be so savage,--was it absolutely necessary that what seemed to be the sword of justice should be wielded so angrily and without the slightest tempering of mercy? Still is there worth in the author's apology, 'that the oscillations of temper and progressions of discovery ought not to diminish the reader's confidence in the book;' 'that unless important changes are occurring in his opinions continually all his life long, not one of those opinions can be on any questionable subject true; all true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment, therefore of change. But their change is that of a tree, not of a cloud.'

So, then, come repentance and recantation. Mr. Ruskin's 'boy veneration for Rubens's physical art power,' and the 'strong expression of admiration for him, which to his great regret occur in the first volume,' are now solemnly withdrawn. Rubens is now only a 'healthy, worthy, kind-hearted, courtly-phrased animal.' But the fault lies as much at the door of the time, as at that of the man. The Reformation had come and gone. The reformers had cast out the errors, and rent in twain the fallacies of the Roman Catholic Church. Then came a standing still; a paralysis of religion. The Evangelicals despised the arts; effete and insincere Roman Catholicism had lost its hold on men. The painters sunk into rationalism; they became men of the world, 'with no belief in spiritual existence, no interests or affections beyond the grave.' They painted religious subjects, of course; these were duly supplied as per order, especially martyrdom; they liked the vigorous cruelty of them, and painted atrocities with gusto, deeming they were illustrating religion; and they painted 'virgins in blue,' and 'St. Johns in red,' as many as were wanted,--but all utterly cold, and soul-less, and irreverential. 'Happily,' remarks Mr. Ruskin, 'there is just this difference between the men of this modern period and the Florentines or Venetians, that whereas the latter never exert themselves fully except on a sacred subject, the Flemish and Dutch masters are always languid unless they are profane. Leonardo is only to be seen in the 'Cena'; Titian only in the 'Assumption'; but Rubens only in the 'Battle of the Amazons'; and Vandyck only at court; and he adds, his indignation mounting as he proceeds, 'absolutely now at last we find ourselves without sight of God in all the world!'

In another place Mr. Ruskin's old enemy, Salvator, receives more lenient treatment than of yore. True, he still regards him as a lost spirit, rendering Michelet's, 'Ce damné Salvator' tenderly as 'that condemned Salvator.' But Mr. Ruskin now perceives in him the 'last traces of spiritual life in the art of Europe, the last man to whom the thought of a spiritual existence presented itself as a conceivable reality. All succeeding men, however powerful,--Rembrandt, Rubens, Vandyck, Reynolds,--would have mocked at the idea of a spirit. They were men of the world, they are never in earnest, and they are never appalled. But Salvator was capable of pensiveness, of faith, and of fear.' 'He would have acknowledged religion had he seen any that was true, anything rather than that baseness which he did see.' 'If there is no other religion than this of popes and cardinals, let us to the robber's ambush and the dragon's den.' 'A little early sympathy, a word of true guidance, perhaps had saved him. What says he of himself? "Despiser of wealth and of death." Two grand scorns; but, oh! condemned Salvator, the question is not for man what he can scorn, but what he can love!' Again further on,--'In Salvator you have an awakened conscience and some spiritual power contending with evil, but conquered by it and brought into captivity to it.' Generally there is in this last volume a disposition to judge of the painter's art merits, especially in relation to his faculty of imitation, with more kindness and respect than in the earlier volumes.