Modern Painters, Volume 4 (of 5)

by John Ruskin

Fig. 83.

§ 33. Not knowing accurately to what group of the Yorkshire limestones the rocks opposite the Abbey belonged, or their relation to the sandstones at the Strid, I wrote to ask my kind friend Professor Phillips, who instantly sent me a little geological sketch of the position of these "Yoredale Shales," adding this interesting note: "The black shales opposite the Abbey are curiously tinted at the surface, and are contorted. Most artists give them the appearance of solid massive rocks; nor is this altogether wrong, especially when the natural joints of the shale appear prominent after particular accidents; they should, however, never be made to resemble [i.e. in solidity] limestone or gritstone."

Now the Yoredale shales are members of the group of rocks which I have called slaty coherents, and correspond very closely to those portions of the Alpine slates described in Chap. X. § 4; their main character is continual separation into fine flakes, more or less of Dante's "iron-colored grain;" which, however, on a large scale, form those somewhat solid-looking masses to which Mr. Phillips alludes in his letter, and which he describes, in his recently published Geology, in the following general terms: "The shales of this tract are usually dark, close, and fissile, and traversed by extremely long straight joints, dividing the rock into rhomboidal prisms" (i.e. prisms of the shape c, [Fig. 83], in the section).

§ 34. Turner had, therefore, these four things to show:—1. Flaky division horizontally; 2. Division by rhomboidal joints; 3. Massy appearance occasionally, somewhat concealing the structure; 4. Local contortion of the beds. (See passage quoted of Mr. Phillips's letter).

Fig. 84.

Examine, then, the plate just given (12 A). The cleavage of the shales runs diagonally up from left to right; note especially how delicately it runs up through the foreground rock, and is insisted upon, just at the brow of it, in the angular step-like fragments; compare also the etching in the first volume. Then note the upright pillars in the distance, marked especially as rhomboidal by being drawn with the cleavage still sloping up on the returning side, as at a, [Fig. 83], not as at b, which would be their aspect if they were square; and then the indication of interruption in the structure at the brow of the main cliff, where, as well as on the nearer mass, exposure to the weather has rounded away the cleavages.

This projection, as before mentioned, does exist at the spot; and I believe is partly an indication of the contortion in the beds alluded to by Mr. Phillips; but no one but Turner would have fastened on it, as in anywise deserving special attention.

For the rest, no words are of any use to explain the subtle fidelity with which the minor roundings and cleavages have been expressed by him. Fidelity of this kind can only be estimated by workers: if the reader can himself draw a bit of natural precipice in Yoredale shale, and then copy a bit of the etching, he will find some measure of the difference between Turner's work and other people's, and not otherwise; although, without any such labor, he may at once perceive that there is a difference, and a wide one,—so wide, that I have literally nothing to compare the Turnerian work with in previous art. Here, however, [Fig. 84], is a rock of Claude's (Liber Veritatis, No. 91, on the left hand), which is something of the shape of Turner's, and professes to be crested in like manner with copse-wood. The reader may "compare" as much as he likes, or can, of it.

Fig. 85.

§ 35. In fact, as I said some time ago, the whole landscape of Claude was nothing but a more or less softened continuance of the old traditions of missal-painting, of which I gave examples in the previous volume. The general notion of rock which may be traced in the earliest work, as Figs. 1 and 2 in Plate 10 Vol. III. is of an upright mass cut out with an adze; as art advances, the painters begin to perceive horizontal stratification, and, as in all the four other examples of that plate, show something like true rendering of the fracture of rocks in vertical joints with superimposed projecting masses. They insist on this type, thinking it frowning or picturesque, and usually exhibit it to more advantage by putting a convent, hermitage, or castle on the projection of the crag. In the blue backgrounds of the missals the projection is often wildly extravagant; for instance, the MS. Additional, 11,696 Brit. Mus., has all its backgrounds composed of blue rocks with towers upon them, of which [Fig. 85] is a characteristic example (magnified in scale about one-third; but, I think, rather diminished in extravagance of projection). It is infinitely better drawn than Claude's rocks ever are, in the expression of cleavage; but certainly somewhat too bold in standing. Then, in more elaborate work, we get conditions of precipice like Fig. 3 in Plate 10, which, indeed, is not ill-drawn in many respects; and the book from which it is taken shows other evidences of a love of nature sufficiently rare at the period, though joined quaintly with love of the grotesque: for instance, the writer, giving an account of the natural productions of Saxony, illustrates his chapter with a view of the salt mines; he represents the brine-spring, conducted by a wooden trough from the rock into an evaporating-house where it is received in a pan, under which he has painted scarlet flames of fire with singular skill; and the rock out of which the brine flows is in its general cleavages the best I ever saw drawn by mediæval art. But it is carefully wrought to the resemblance of a grotesque human head.