Chapter 19

PRE-RAPHAELITISM (1851-1853)

The _Times_, in May 1851, missed "those works of inspiration," as Ruskin had at last taught people to call Turner's pictures. But the acknowledged mouthpiece of public opinion found consolation in castigating a school of young artists who had "unfortunately become notorious by addicting themselves to an antiquated style and an affected simplicity in painting.... We can extend no toleration to a mere servile imitation of the cramped style, false perspective, and crude colour of remote antiquity. We want not to see what Fuseli termed drapery 'snapped instead of folded'; faces bloated into apoplexy, or extenuated into skeletons; colour borrowed from the jars in a druggist's shop, and expression forced into caricature.... That morbid infatuation which sacrifices truth, beauty, and genuine feeling to mere eccentricity deserves no quarter at the hands of the public."

Ruskin knew nothing personally of these young innovators, and had not at first sight wholly approved of the apparently Puseyite tendency of Rossetti's "Ecce Ancilla Domini," Millais' "Carpenter's Shop," and Holman Hunt's "Early Christian Missionary," exhibited the year before. All these months he had been closely kept to his "Sheepfolds" and "Stones of Venice"; but now he was correcting the proofs of "Modern Painters," vol. i., as thus:

"Chapter the last, section 21: _The duty and after privileges of all students_.... Go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thoughts but how best to penetrate her meaning, and remember her instruction; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing; believing all things to be right and good, and rejoicing always in the truth."

And at Coventry Patmore's request he went to the Academy to look at the pictures in question. Yes; the faces were ugly: Millais' "Mariana" was a piece of idolatrous Papistry, and there was a mistake in the perspective. Collins' "Convent Thoughts"--more Popery; but very careful--"the tadpole too small for its age"; but what studies of plants! And there was his own "Alisma Plantago," which he had been drawing for "Stones of Venice" (vol. i., plate 7) and describing: "The lines through its body, which are of peculiar beauty, mark the different expansions of its fibres, and are, I think, exactly the same as those which would be traced by the currents of a river entering a lake of the shape of the leaf, at the end where the stalk is, and passing out at its point." Curvature was one of the special subjects of Ruskin, the one he found most neglected by ordinary artists. The "Alisma" was a test of observation and draughtsmanship. He had never seen it so thoroughly or so well drawn, and heartily wished the study were his.

Looking again at the other works of the school, he found that the one mistake in the "Mariana" was the only error in perspective in the whole series of pictures; which could not be said of any twelve works, containing architecture, by popular artists in the exhibition; and that, as studies both of drapery and of every other minor detail, there had been nothing in art so earnest or so complete as these pictures since the days of Albert Dürer.

He went home, and wrote his verdict in a letter to _The Times_ (May 9, 1851). Next day he asked the price of Hunt's "Two Gentlemen of Verona," and Millais' "Return of the Dove." On the 13th his letter appeared in _The Times_, and on the 26th he wrote again, pointing out beauties, and indications of power in conception, and observation of Nature, and handling, where at first he, like the rest of the public, had been repelled by the wilful ugliness of the faces. Meanwhile the Pre-Raphaelites wrote to tell him that they were neither Papists nor Puseyites. The day after his second letter was published he received an ill-spelt missive, anonymously abusing them. This was the sort of thing to interest his love of poetical justice. He made the acquaintance of several of the Brethren. "Charley" Collins, as his friends affectionately called him, was the son of a respected R.A., and the brother of Wilkie Collins; himself afterwards the author of a delightful book of travel in France, "A Cruise upon Wheels." Millais turned out to be the most gifted, charming and handsome of young artists. Holman Hunt was already a Ruskin-reader, and a seeker after truth, serious and earnest in his religious nature as in his painting.

The Pre-Raphaelites were not, originally, Ruskin's pupils, nor was their movement, directly, of his creation. But it was the outcome of a general tendency which he, more than any man, had helped to set in motion; and it was the fulfilment, though in a way he had not expected, of his wishes.

His attraction to Pre-Raphaelitism was none the less real because it was sudden, and brought about partly by personal influence. And in re-arranging his art-theory to take them in, he had before his mind rather what he hoped they would become than what they were. For a time, his influence over them was great; their first three years were their own; their next three years were practically his; and some of them, the weaker brethren, leaned upon him until they lost the command of their own powers. No artist can afford to use another man's eyes; still less, another man's brain and heart. Ruskin, great as an exponent, was in no sense a master of artists; and if he cheered on the men, who, he believed, were the best of the time, it did not follow that he should be saddled with the responsibility of directing them.

The famous pamphlet on "Pre-Raphaelitism" of August, 1851, showed that the same motives of Sincerity impelled both the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren and Turner and, in a degree, men so different as Prout, old Hunt, and Lewis. All these were opposed to the Academical School who worked by rule of thumb; and they differed among one another only in differences of physical power and moral aim. Which was all perfectly true, and much truer than the cheap criticism which could not see beyond superficial differences, or the fossil theories of the old school. But Pre-Raphaelitism was an unstable compound, liable to explode upon the experimenter, and its component parts to return to their old antithesis of crude naturalism on the one hand, and affectation of piety or poetry or antiquarianism, on the other. And _that_ their new champion did not then foresee. All he knew was that, just when he was sadly leaving the scene, Turner gone and night coming on, new lights arose. It was really far more noteworthy that Millais and Rossetti and Hunt were _men of genius_, than that the "principles" they tried to illustrate were sound, and that Ruskin divined their power, and generously applauded them.

Immediately after finishing the pamphlet on "Pre-Raphaelitism," he left for the Continent with his wife and friends, the Rev. and Mrs. Daniel Moore; spent a fortnight in his beloved Savoy, with the Pritchards; and then crossed the Alps with Charles Newton. On the 1st of September he was at Venice, for a final spell of labour on the palaces and churches. After spending a week with Rawdon Brown he settled at Casa Wetzler, Campo Sta. Maria Zobenigo, and during the autumn and winter not only worked extremely hard at his architecture, but went with his wife into Austrian and Italian society and saw many distinguished visitors. One of them, whom he lectured on the shortcomings of the Renaissance, was Dean Milman. "I am amused at your mode of ciceronizing the Dean of St. Paul's," wrote his father, who kept up the usual close correspondence, and made himself useful in looking up books of reference and consulting authorities like Mr. James Fergusson--for these chapters of easy eloquence were not written without a world of pains. The engravers and the business department of the new publications also required his co-operation, for they were now becoming large ventures. During the three and a half years preceding the summer of 1851 Ruskin seems to have spent £1,680 of profits from his books, making by his writings at this period only about a third of his annual outlay; so that the estimated cost of these great illustrated volumes, some £1,200, was a matter of anxiety to his father, who, together with the publisher, deprecated large plates and technical details, and expressed some impatience to see results from this visit to Venice. He looked eagerly for every new chapter or drawing as it was sent home for criticism. Some passages, such as the description of the Calle San Moise ("Stones of Venice," II. iv,) were unfavourably received by him. Another time he says, "You have a very great difficulty now in writing any more, which is to write up to yourself": or again,--"Smith reports slow sale of 'Stones of Venice' (vol. I.) and 'Pre-Raphaelitism.' The times are sorely against you. The Exhibition has impoverished the country, and literature of a saleable character seems chiefly confined to shilling books in green paper, to be had at railway stations. Smith will have an account against us." He always sent adverse press-notices, on the principle that it was good for John: and every little discouragement or annoyance was discussed in full.

The most serious news, threatening complete interruption of the work rapidly progressing in spite of all, was of Turner's death (December 19, 1851). Old Mr. Ruskin heard of it on the 21st, a "dismal day" to him, spent in sad contemplation of the pictures his son had taught him to love. Soon it came out that John Ruskin was one of the executors named in the will, with a legacy of _£20_ for a mourning ring:--"Nobody can say you were paid to praise," says his father. It was gossipped that he was expected to write Turner's biography--"five years' work for you," says the old man, full of plans for gathering material. But when one scandal after another reached his ears, he changed his tone, and suggested dropping personal details, and giving a "Life of his Art," in the intended third and final volume of "Modern Painters." Something of the sort was done in the Edinburgh Lectures and at the close of vol. v. of "Modern Painters": and the official life was left to Walter Thornbury, with which Mr. Ruskin perhaps did not wish to interfere. But he collected a mass of then unpublished material about Turner, which goes far to prove that the kindly view he took of the strange man's morbid and unhappy life was not without justification. At the time, so many legal complications developed that Ruskin was advised to resign his executorship; later on he was able to fulfil its duties as he conceived them, in arranging Turner's sketches for the National Gallery.

Others of his old artist-friends were now passing away. Early in January Mr. J.J. Ruskin called on William Hunt and found him feeble: "I like the little Elshie," he says, nicknaming him after the Black Dwarf, for Hunt was somewhat deformed:

"He is softened and humanized. There is a gentleness and a greater _bonhomie_--less reserve. I had sent him 'Pre-Raphaelitism.' He had marked it very much with pencil. He greatly likes your notice of people not keeping to their last. So many clever artists, he says, have been ruined by not acting on your principles. I got a piece of advice from Hunt,--never to commission a picture. He could not have done my pigeon so well had he felt he was doing it for anybody."

The pigeon was a drawing he had just bought; in later years at Brantwood.

In February 1852 a dinner-party was given to celebrate in his absence John Ruskin's thirty-third birthday.

"On Monday, 9th, we had Oldfield (Newton was in Wales), Harrison, George Richmond, Tom, Dr. Grant, and Samuel Prout. The latter I never saw in such spirits, and he went away much satisfied. Yesterday at church we were told that he came home very happy, ascended to his painting-room, and in a quarter of an hour from his leaving our cheerful house was a corpse, from apoplexy. He never spoke after the fit came on. He had always wished for a sudden death."

Next year, in November, 1853, he tells of a visit paid, by John's request, to W.H. Deverell, the young Pre-Raphaelite, whom he found "in squalor and sickness--with his Bible open--and not long to live--while Howard abuses his picture at Liverpool."

Early in 1852 Charles Newton was going to Greece on a voyage of discovery, and wanted John Ruskin to go with him. But the parents would not hear of his adventuring himself at sea "in those engine-vessels." So Newton went alone, and "dug up loads of Phoenician antiquities." One cannot help regretting that Ruskin lost this opportunity of familiarizing himself with the early Greek art which, twenty years later he tried to expound. For the time he was well enough employed on the "Stones of Venice." He tells the story of this ten months' stay in a letter to his venerable friend Rogers the poet, dated June 23 (1852).

"I was out of health and out of heart when I first got here. There came much painful news from home, and then such a determined course of bad weather, and every other kind of annoyance, that I never was in a temper fit to write to anyone: the worst of it was that I lost all _feeling_ of Venice, and this was the reason both of my not writing to you and of my thinking of you so often. For whenever I found myself getting utterly hard and indifferent I used to read over a little bit of the 'Venice' in the 'Italy' and it put me always into the right tone of thought again, and for this I cannot be enough grateful to you. For though I believe that in the summer, when Venice is indeed lovely, when pomegranate blossoms hang over every garden-wall, and green sunlight shoots through every wave, custom will not destroy, or even weaken, the impression conveyed at first; it is far otherwise in the length and bitterness of the Venetian winters. Fighting with frosty winds at every turn of the canals takes away all the old feelings of peace and stillness; the protracted cold makes the dash of the water on the walls a sound of simple discomfort, and some wild and dark day in February one starts to find oneself actually balancing in one's mind the relative advantages of land and water carriage, comparing the Canal with Piccadilly, and even hesitating whether for the rest of one's life one would rather have a gondola within call or a hansom."

He then goes on to lament the decay of Venice, the idleness and dissipation of the populace, the lottery gambling; and to forebode the "destruction of old buildings and erection of new" changing the place "into a modern town--a bad imitation of Paris." Better than that he thinks would be utter neglect; St. Mark's Place would again be, what it was in the early ages, a green field, and the front of the Ducal Palace and the marble shafts of St. Mark's would be rooted in wild violets and wreathed with vines:

"She will be beautiful again then, and I could almost wish that the time might come quickly, were it not that so many noble pictures must be destroyed first.... I love Venetian pictures more and more, and wonder at them every day with greater wonder; compared with all other paintings they are so easy, so instinctive, so natural; everything that the men of other schools did by rule and called composition, done here by instinct and only called truth.

"I don't know when I have envied anybody more than I did the other day the directors and clerks of the Zecca. There they sit at inky deal desks, counting out rolls of money, and curiously weighing the irregular and battered coinage of which Venice boasts; and just over their heads, occupying the place which in a London countinghouse would be occupied by a commercial almanack, a glorious Bonifazio--'Solomon and the Queen of Sheba'; and in a less honourable corner three _old_ directors of the Zecca, very mercantile-looking men indeed, counting money also, like the living ones, only a little _more_ living, painted by Tintoret; not to speak of the scattered Palma Vecchios, and a lovely Benedetto Diana which no one ever looks at. I wonder when the European mind will again awake to the great fact that a noble picture was not painted to be _hung_, but to be _seen_? I only saw these by accident, having been detained in Venice by soma obliging person who abstracted some [of his wife's jewels] and brought me thereby into various relations with the respectable body of people who live at the wrong end of the Bridge of Sighs--the police, whom, in spite of traditions of terror, I would very willingly have changed for some of those their predecessors whom you have honoured by a note in the 'Italy.' The present police appear to act on exactly contrary principles; yours found the purse and banished the loser; these _don't_ find the jewels, and won't let me go away. I am afraid no punishment is appointed in Venetian law for people who steal _time_."

Mr. Ruskin returned to England in July, 1852, and settled next door to his old home on Herne Hill. He said he could not live any more in Park Street, with a dead brick wall opposite his windows. And so, under the roof where he wrote the first volume of "Modern Painters," he finished "Stones of Venice." These latter volumes give an account of St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace and other ancient buildings; a complete catalogue of Tintoret's pictures--the list he had begun in 1845; and a history of the successive styles of architecture, Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance, interweaving illustrations of the human life and character that made the art what it was.

The kernel of the work was the chapter on the Nature of Gothic; in which he showed, more distinctly than in the "Seven Lamps," and connected with a wider range of thought, suggested by Pre-Raphaelitism, the doctrine that art cannot be produced except by artists; that architecture, in so far as it is an art, does not mean mechanical execution, by unintelligent workmen, from the vapid working-drawings of an architect's office; and, just as Socrates postponed the day of justice until philosophers should be kings and kings philosophers, so Ruskin postponed the reign of art until workmen should be artists, and artists workmen.