RUSKIN’S “MODERN PAINTERS.”
In a note-book of 1848, we read of Ruskin’s first work:—One of the most extraordinary and delightful books of the day, is Modern Painters, by a “Graduate of Oxford;” in which the author admits and vindicates his direct opposition to the general opinion, in placing Turner and other modern landscape painters above those of the seventeenth century—Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Canaletto, Hobbima, &c.
Yet, this remarkable book has been strangely treated by what is called the literary world. The larger reviews have taken little or no notice of it; and those periodicals which are considered to represent the literature of the fine arts, and to watch over their progress and interests, almost without an exception, have treated it with the most marked injustice, and the most shameful derision. Yet, in spite of all this neglect and maltreatment, the work has found its way into the minds and hearts of men. This is better shown by the first volume having reached a third edition, than by any of the most elaborate patronage from the press.
A writer in the North British Review, waxing eloquently wroth at this reception of a work of unquestionably high genius by the critics, observed:—“The national treatment is in this case a good index to the national mind and feeling; so that it is not to be wondered at, that such productions as Charles Lamb’s Essays on the Genius of Hogarth, and on the Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the productions of Modern Art—Hazlitt’s Works on Art—those of Sir Charles Bell and his brother John,—should rarely occur, and be not much regarded, and little understood, when they do, in a country where Hogarth was looked upon by the majority as a caricaturist fully as coarse as clever,—where Wilkie’s ‘Distraining for Rent’ could get no purchaser, because it was an unpleasant subject,—where to this day Turner is better known as being unintelligible and untrue, than as being more truthful, more thoughtful, than any painter of inanimate nature, ancient or modern,—where Maclise is accounted worthy to illustrate Shakspeare, and embody Macbeth and Hamlet, as having a kindred genius,—and where it was reserved to a few young, self-relying, unknown Scottish artists, (students of the Royal Scottish Academy,) to purchase Etty’s three pictures of Judith, the Combat, and the Lion-like Men of Moab, at a price which, though perilous to themselves, was equally disgraceful to the public who had disregarded them, and inadequate to the deserving of their gifted producer.”