LECTURES ON LANDSCAPE

DELIVERED AT OXFORD

IN LENT TERM, 1871. 

Library Edition

THE COMPLETE WORKS

OF

JOHN RUSKIN

CROWN OF WILD OLIVETIME AND TIDEQUEEN OF THE AIRLECTURES ON ART AND LANDSCAPEARATRA PENTELICI

NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATIONNEW YORK CHICAGO

[Illustration: BRANTWOOD

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH]

PREFATORY NOTE. 

_These Lectures on Landscape were given at Oxford on January 20, February 9, and February 23, 1871. They were not public Lectures, likeProfessor Ruskin's other courses, but addressed only to undergraduateswho had joined his class. They were illustrated by pictures from hiscollection, of which several are here reproduced, and by others whichmay be seen in the Oxford University Galleries or in the RuskinDrawing School. _

_W. G. C. _

CONTENTS. 

 PAGE

LECTURE I. 

OUTLINE 1

LECTURE II. 

LIGHT AND SHADE 16

LECTURE III. 

COLOR 32

LIST OF PLATES

 Page

Vesuvius in Eruption, by J. M. W. Turner 2

Near Blair Athol, by J. M. W. Turner 19

Dumblane Abbey, by J. M. W. Turner 20

Madonna and Child, by Filippo Lippi 33

The Lady with the Brooch, by Sir Joshua Reynolds 35

Æsacus and Hesperie, by J. M. W. Turner 45

Mill near Grande Chartreuse, by J. M. W. Turner 47

L'Aiguillette; Valley of Cluses, by J. M. W. Turner 48

LECTURES ON LANDSCAPE. 

I. 

OUTLINE. 

1. In my inaugural lecture, [1] I stated that while holding thisprofessorship I should direct you, in your practical exercises, chiefly to natural history and landscape. And having in the course ofthe past year laid the foundational elements of art sufficientlybefore you, I will invite you, now, to enter on real work with me; andaccordingly I propose during this and the following term to give youwhat practical leading I can in elementary study of landscape, and ofa branch of natural history which will form a kind of center for allthe rest--Ichthyology. 

[Footnote 1: "Lectures on Art, 1870, " § 23. ]

In the outset I must shortly state to you the position which landscapepainting and animal painting hold towards the higher branches of art. 

2. Landscape painting is the thoughtful and passionate representationof the physical conditions appointed for human existence. It imitatesthe aspects, and records the phenomena, of the visible things whichare dangerous or beneficial to men; and displays the human methods ofdealing with these, and of enjoying them or suffering from them, whichare either exemplary or deserving of sympathetic contemplation. Animalpainting investigates the laws of greater and less nobility ofcharacter in organic form, as comparative anatomy examines those ofgreater and less development in organic structure; and the functionof animal painting is to bring into notice the minor and unthought ofconditions of power or beauty, as that of physiology is to ascertainthe minor conditions of adaptation. 

3. Questions as to the purpose of arrangements or the use of theorgans of an animal are, however, no less within the province of thepainter than of the physiologist, and are indeed more likely tocommend themselves to you through drawing than dissection. For as youdissect an animal you generally assume its form to be necessary andonly examine how it is constructed; but in drawing the outer formitself attentively you are led necessarily to consider the mode oflife for which it is disposed, and therefore to be struck by anyawkwardness or apparent uselessness in its parts. After sketching oneday several heads of birds it became a vital matter of interest to meto know the use of the bony process on the head of the hornbill; buton asking a great physiologist, I found that it appeared to him anabsurd question, and was certainly an unanswerable one. 

4. I have limited, you have just heard, landscape painting to therepresentation of phenomena relating to human life. You will scarcelybe disposed to admit the propriety of such a limitation; and you willstill less be likely to conceive its necessary strictness andseverity, unless I convince you of it by somewhat detailed examples. 

Here are two landscapes by Turner in his greatest time--Vesuvius inrepose, Vesuvius in eruption. 

One is a beautiful harmony of cool color; and the other of hot, andthey are both exquisitely designed in ornamental lines. But they arenot painted for those qualities. They are painted because the state ofthe scene in one case is full of delight to men; and in the other ofpain and danger. And it is not Turner's object at all to exhibit orillustrate natural phenomena, however interesting in themselves. 

[Illustration: VESUVIUS IN ERUPTION. 

From the painting by Turner. ]

He does not want to paint blue mist in order to teach you the natureof evaporation; nor this lava stream, to explain to you the operationof gravity on ponderous and viscous materials. He paints the bluemist, because it brings life and joy to men, and the lava streambecause it is death to them. 

5. Again here are two sea-pieces by Turner of the sameperiod--photographs from them at least. One is a calm on the shore atScarborough; the other the wreck of an Indiaman. 

These also are each painted with exquisitely artistic purpose: thefirst in opposition of local black to diffused sunshine; the second inthe decorative grouping of white spots on a dark ground. Thatdecorative purpose of dappling, or [Greek: poikilia], is as studiouslyand deliciously carried out by Turner with the Dædalus side of him, inthe inlaying of these white spots on the Indiaman's deck, as if hewere working a precious toy in ebony and ivory. But Turner did notpaint either of the sea-pieces for the sake of these decorousarrangements; neither did he paint the Scarborough as a professor ofphysical science, to show you the level of low tide on the Yorkshirecoast; nor the Indiaman to show you the force of impact in a liquidmass of sea-water of given momentum. He painted this to show you thedaily course of quiet human work and happiness, and that, to enableyou to conceive something of uttermost human misery--both ordered bythe power of the great deep. 

6. You may easily--you must, perhaps, for a little time--suspect me ofexaggeration in this statement. It is so natural to suppose that themain interest of landscape is essentially in rocks and water and sky;and that figures are to be put, like the salt and mustard to a dish, only to give it a flavor. 

Put all that out of your heads at once. The interest of a landscapeconsists wholly in its relation either to figures present--or tofigures past--or to human powers conceived. The most splendid drawingof the chain of the Alps, irrespective of their relation to humanity, is no more a true landscape than a painting of this bit of stone. For, as natural philosophers, there is no bigness or littleness to you. This stone is just as interesting to you, or ought to be--as if it wasa million times as big. There is no more sublimity--_per se_--inground sloped at an angle of forty-five, than in ground level; nor ina perpendicular fracture of a rock, than in a horizontal one. The onlything that makes the one more interesting to you in a landscape thanthe other, is that you could tumble over the perpendicularfracture--and couldn't tumble over the other. A cloud, looked at as acloud only, is no more a subject for painting than so much feculencein dirty water. It is merely dirty air, or at best a chemical solutionill made. That it is worthy of being painted at all depends upon itsbeing the means of nourishment and chastisement to men, or thedwelling place of imaginary gods. There's a bit of blue sky and cloudby Turner--one of the loveliest ever painted by human hand. But, as amere pattern of blue and white, he had better have painted a jay'swing: this was only painted by him--and is, in reality, only pleasantto you--because it signifies the coming of a gleam of sweet sunshinein windy weather; and the wind is worth thinking of only because itfills the sails of ships, and the sun because it warms the sailors. 

7. Now, it is most important that you should convince yourselves ofand fully enter into this truth, because all the difficulty inchoosing subject arises from mistakes about it. I daresay some of youwho are fond of sketching have gone out often in the most beautifulcountry, and yet with the feeling that there was no good subject to befound in it. That always arises from your not having sympathy enoughwith its vital character, and looking for physical picturesquenessinstead. On the contrary, there are crude efforts at landscape-painting, made continually upon the most splendid physical phenomena, inAmerica, and other countries without any history. It is not of theslightest use. Niagara, or the North Pole and the Aurora Borealis, won't make a landscape; but a ditch at Iffley will, if you havehumanity in you--enough in you to interpret the feelings of hedgersand ditchers, and frogs. 

8. Next, here is one of the most beautiful landscapes ever painted, the best I have next to the Greta and Tees. 

The subject physically is a mere bank of grass above a stream withsome wych-elms and willows. A level-topped bank; the water has cut itsway down through the soft alluvion of an elevated plain to thelimestone rock at the bottom. 

Had this scene been in America, no mortal could have made a landscapeof it. It is nothing but a grass bank with some not very pretty treesscattered over it, wholly without grouping. The stream at the bottomis rocky indeed, but its rocks are mean, flat, and of a dull yellowcolor. The sky is gray and shapeless. There's absolutely nothing topaint anywhere of essential landscape subject, as commonly understood. 

Now see what the landscape consists in, which I have told you is oneof the most beautiful ever painted by man. There's first a little bitof it left nearly wild, not quite wild; there's a cart and rider'strack through it among the copse; and then, standing simply on thewild moss-troopers' ground, the scattered ruins of a great abbey, seenso dimly, that they seem to be fading out of sight, in color as intime. 

These two things together, the wild copse wood and the ruin, take youback into the life of the fourteenth century. The one is theborder-riders' kingdom; the other that of peace which has strivenagainst border-riding--how vainly! Both these are remains of the past. But the outhouses and refectory of the abbey have been turned into afarmhouse, and that is inhabited, and in front of it the Mistress isfeeding her chickens. You see the country is perfectly quiet andinnocent, for there is no trace of a fence anywhere; the cattle havestrayed down to the riverside, it being a hot day; and some rest inthe shade and two in the water. 

They could not have done so at their ease had the river not beenhumanized. Only a little bit of its stony bed is left; a mill weir, thrown across, stays the water in a perfectly clear and deliciouspool; to show how clear it is, Turner has put the only piece ofplaying color in all the picture into the reflections in this. One cowis white, another white and red, evidently as clean as morning dewcan wash their sides. They could not have been so in a country wherethere was the least coal smoke; so Turner has put a wreath ofperfectly white smoke through the trees; and lest that should not beenough to show you they burnt wood, he has made his foreground of apiece of copse just lopped, with the new fagots standing up againstit; and this still not being enough to give you the idea of perfectcleanliness, he has covered the stones of the river-bed with whiteclothes laid out to dry; and that not being enough yet, for theriver-bed might be clean though nothing else was, he has put aquantity more hanging over the abbey walls. 

9. _Only natural phenomena in their direct relation tohumanity_--these are to be your subjects in landscape. Rocks and waterand air may no more be painted for their own sakes, than the armorcarved without the warrior. 

But, secondly. I said landscape is to be a _passionate representation_of these things. It must be done, that is to say, with strength anddepth of soul. This is indeed to some extent merely the particularapplication of a principle that has no exception. If you are withoutstrong passions, you cannot be a painter at all. The laying of paintby an insensitive person, whatever it endeavors to represent, is notpainting, but daubing or plastering; and that, observe, irrespectiveof the boldness or minuteness of the work. An insensitive person willdaub with a camel's hair-brush and ultramarine; and a passionate onewill paint with mortar and a trowel. 

10. But far more than common passion is necessary to paint landscape. The physical conditions there are so numerous, and the spiritual onesso occult, that you are sure to be overpowered by the materialism, unless your sentiment is strong. No man is naturally likely to thinkfirst of anatomy in painting a pretty woman; but he is very apt to doso in painting a mountain. No man of ordinary sense will take pleasurein features that have no meaning, but he may easily take it in heath, woods or waterfalls, that have no expression. So that it needs muchgreater strength of heart and intellect to paint landscape thanfigure: many commonplace persons, bred in good schools, have paintedthe figure pleasantly or even well; but none but the strongest--JohnBellini, Titian, Velasquez, Tintoret, Mantegna, Sandro Botticelli, Carpaccio and Turner--have ever painted a fragment of good landscape. In missal painting exquisite figure-drawing is frequent, and landscapebackgrounds in late works are elaborate; but I only know thoroughlygood landscape in one book; and I have examined--I speakdeliberately--thousands. 

11. For one thing, the passion is necessary for the mere quantity ofdesign. In good art, whether painting or sculpture, I have again andagain told you every touch is necessary and beautifully intended. Nowit falls within the compass of ordinary application to place rightlyall the folds of drapery or gleams of light on a chain, or ornamentsin a pattern; but when it comes to placing every leaf in a tree, thepainter gets tired. Here, for instance, is a little bit of SandroBotticelli background; I have purposefully sketched it in theslightest way, that you might see how the entire value of it dependson thoughtful placing. There is no texture aimed at, no completion, scarcely any variety of light and shade; but by mere care in theplacing the thing is beautiful. Well, every leaf, every cloud, everytouch is placed with the same care in great work; and when this isdone as by John Bellini in the picture of Peter Martyr, [2] or as itwas by Titian in the great Peter Martyr, with every leaf in a wood hegets tired. I know no other such landscape in the world as that is, oras that was. 

[Footnote 2: National Gallery, No. 812. ]

12. Perhaps you think on such conditions you never can paint landscapeat all. Well, great landscape certainly not; but pleasant and usefullandscape, yes; provided only the passion you bring to it be true andpure. The degree of it you cannot command; the genuineness of it youcan--yes, and the depth of source also. Tintoret's passion may be likethe Reichenbach, and yours only like a little dripping Holywell, butboth equally from deep springs. 

13. But though the virtue of all painting (and similarly of sculptureand every other art) is in passion, I must not have you begin byworking passionately. The discipline of youth, in all its work, is incooling and curbing itself, as the discipline of age is in warming andurging itself; you know the Bacchic chorus of old men in Plato's_Laws_. To the end of life, indeed, the strength of a man's finestnature is shown in due continence; but that is because the finestnatures remain young to the death: and for you the first thing youhave to do in art (as in life) is to be quiet and firm--quiet, aboveeverything; and modest, with this most essential modesty, that youmust like the landscape you are going to draw better than you expectto like your drawing of it, however well it may succeed. If you wouldnot rather have the real thing than your sketch of it, you are not ina right state of mind for sketching at all. If you only think of thescene, "what a nice sketch this will make!" be assured you will nevermake a nice sketch of it. You may think you have produced a beautifulwork; nay, perhaps the public and many fair judges will agree withyou; but I tell you positively, there will be no enduring value inwhat you have thus done. Whereas if you think of the scene, "Ah, if Icould only get some shadow or scrawl of this to carry away with me, how glad I should be!"--then whatever you do will be, according toyour strength, good and progressive: it may be feeble, or muchfaultful, but it will be vital and essentially precious. 

14. Now, it is not possible for you to command this state of mind, oranything like it, in yourselves at once. Nay, in all probability youreyes are so satiated by the false popular art surrounding us now onall sides, that you cannot see the delicate reality though you try;but even though you may not care for the truth, you can act as if youdid, and tell it. 

Now, therefore, observe this following quite plain direction. Wheneveryou set yourself to draw anything, consider only how best you may givea person who has not seen the place, a true idea of it. Use any meansin your power to do that, and don't think of the person for whom youare drawing as a connoisseur, but as a person of ordinary sense andfeeling. Don't get artist-like qualities for him: but first give himthe pleasant sensation of being at the place, then show him how theland lies, how the water runs, how the wind blows, and so on. Alwaysthink of the public as Molière of his old woman; you have done nothingreally great or good if you can't please her. 

15. Now beginning wisely, so as to lose no time or labor, you willlearn to paint all the conditions of quiet light and sky, before youattempt those of variable light and cloud. Do not trouble yourselveswith or allow yourselves to be tempted by any effects that arebrilliant or tremendous; except only that from the beginning Irecommend you to watch always for sunrise; to keep a little diary ofthe manner of it, and to have beside your window a small sketch-book, with pencil cut over night, and colors moist. The one indulgence whichI would have you allow yourselves in fast coloring, for some time, isthe endeavor to secure some record at the instant of the colors ofmorning clouds; while, if they are merely white or gray or blue, youmust get an outline of them with pencil. You will soon feel by thismeans what are the real difficulties to be encountered in alllandscape coloring, and your eyes will be educated to quantity andharmonious action of forms. 

But for the rest--learn to paint everything in the quietest andsimplest light. First outline your whole subject completely, withdelicate sharp pencil line. If you don't get more than that, let youroutline be a finished and lovely diagram of the whole. 

16. All the objects are then to be painted of their proper colors, matching them as nearly as you can, in the manner that a missal ispainted, filling the outlined shapes neatly up to their junctions;reënforcing afterwards when necessary, but as little as possible; but, above all, knowing precisely what the light is, and where it is. [3]

[Footnote 3: Make a note of these points:

1. Date, time of day, temperature, direction and force of wind. 

2. Roughly, by compass, the direction in which you are looking; andangle of the light with respect to it. 

3. Angle subtended by picture, and distance of nearest object in it. ]

17. I have brought two old-fashioned colored engravings, [4] which area precise type of the style I want you to begin with. Finished fromcorner to corner, as well as the painter easily could; everything doneto good purpose, nothing for vain glory; nothing in haste oraffectation, nothing in feverish or morbid excitement. The observationis accurate; the sentiment, though childish, deep and pure; and theeffect of light, for common work, quite curiously harmonious anddeceptive. 

[Footnote 4: From a "Picturesque Tour from Geneva to Milan" ... Engraved from designs by J. Lory of Neufchâtel. London: Published byR. Ackermann, at his Repository of Arts, 1820. ]

They are, in spite of their weaknesses, absolutely the only landscapesI could show you which give you a real idea of the places, or whichput your minds into the tone which, if you were happy and at ease, they would take in the air and light of Italy. 

I dwell on the necessity of completion especially, because I have lostmuch time myself from my sympathy with the feverish intensity of theminds of the great engravers; and from always fastening on one or twopoints of my subject and neglecting the rest. 

18. We have seen, then, that every subject is to be taken up first inits terminal lines, then in its light and shade, then in its color. 

First of the terminal lines of landscape, or of drawing in outline. 

I think the examples of shell outline in your copying series mustalready have made you feel the exact nature of a pure outline, thedifficulty of it, and the value. 

But we have now to deal with limits of a more subtle kind. 

The outline of any simple solid form, even though it may have complexparts, represents an actual limit, accurately to be followed. Theoutline of a cup, of a shell, or of an animal's limb, has adeterminable course, which your pen or pencil line either coincideswith or does not. You can say of that line, either it is wrong orright; if right, it is in a measure suggestive, and nobly suggestiveof the character of the object. But the greater number of objects in alandscape either have outlines so complex that no pencil could followthem (as trees in middle distance), or they have no actual outline atall, but a gradated and softened edge; as, for the most part, clouds, foam, and the like. And even in things which have determinate form, the outline of that form is usually quite incapable of expressingtheir real character. 

[Illustration]

19. Here is the most ordinary component of a foreground for instance, a pleasantly colored stone. Any of its pure outlines are not onlywithout beauty, but absolutely powerless to give you any notion of itscharacter, although that character is in itself so interesting, thathere Turner has made a picture of little more than a heap of suchstones, with blue water to oppose their color. In consequence of thesedifficulties and insufficiencies, most landscape-painters have beentempted to neglect outline altogether, and think only of effects oflight or color on masses more or less obscurely defined. They havethus gradually lost their sense of organic form, their precision ofhand, and their respect for limiting law; in a word, for all thesafeguards and severe dignities of their art. And landscape-paintinghas, therefore, more in consequence of this one error than of anyother, become weak, frivolous, and justly despised. 

20. Now, if any of you have chanced to notice at the end of my "Queenof the Air, " my saying that in landscape Turner must be your onlyguide, you perhaps have thought I said so because of his great powerin melting colors or in massing light and shade. Not so. I have alwayssaid he is the only great landscape-painter, and to be your onlyguide, because he is the only landscape-painter who can draw anoutline. 

His finished works perhaps appear to you more vague than any othermaster's: no man loses his outlines more constantly. You will besurprised to know that his frankness in losing depends on hiscertainty of finding if he chooses; and that, while all otherlandscape-painters study from Nature in shade or in color, Turneralways sketched with the point. 

"Always, " of course, is a wide word. In your copying series I have puta sketch by Turner in color from Nature; some few others of the kindexist, in the National Gallery and elsewhere. But, as a rule, from hisboyhood to the last day of his life, he sketched only with the finepencil point, and always the outline, more if he had time, but atleast the outline, of every scene that interested him; and in general, outline so subtle and elaborate as to be inexhaustible in examinationand uncopiable for delicacy. 

Here is a sketch of an English park scene which represents the averagecharacter of a study from Nature by Turner; and here the sketch fromNature of Dumblane Abbey for the _Liber Studiorum_, which shows youwhat he took from Nature, when he had time only to get what was mostprecious to him. 

21. The first thing, therefore, you have to learn in landscape, is tooutline; and therefore we must now know precisely what an outline is, how it ought to be represented; and this it will be right to definein quite general terms applicable to all subjects. 

We saw in the fifth Lecture[5] that every visible thing consisted ofspaces of color, terminated either by sharp or gradated limits. Whenever they are sharp, the line of separation, followed by the pointof your drawing instrument, is the proper outline of your subject, whether it represents the limits of flat spaces or of solid forms. 

[Footnote 5: "Lectures on Art, 1870, " § 130. ]

22. For instance, here is a drawing by Holbein of a lady in a darkdress, with bars of black velvet round her arm. Her form is seeneverywhere defined against the light by a perfectly sharp linear limitwhich Holbein can accurately draw with his pen; the patches of velvetare also distinguished from the rest of her dress by a linear limit, which he follows with his pen just as decisively. Here, therefore, isyour first great law. Wherever you see one space of colordistinguished from another by a sharp limit, you are to draw thatlimit firmly; and that is your outline. 

23. Also, observe that as your representing this limit by a dark lineis a conventionalism, and just as much a conventionalism when the lineis subtle as when it is thick, the great masters accept and declarethat conventionalism with perfect frankness, and use bold and decisiveoutline, if any. 

Also, observe, that though, when you are master of your art, you maymodify your outline by making it dark in some parts, light in others, and even sometimes thick and sometimes slender, a scientificallyaccurate outline is perfectly equal throughout; and in your firstpractice I wish you to use always a pen with a blunt point, which willmake no hair stroke under any conditions. So that using black ink andonly one movement of the pen, not returning to thicken your line, youshall either have your line there, or not there; and that you may notbe able to gradate or change it, in any way or degree whatsoever. 

24. Now the first question respecting it is: what place is your thickline to have with respect to the limit which it represents--outsideof it, or inside, or over it? Theoretically, it is to be over it; thetrue limit falling all the way along the center of your thick line. The contest of Apelles with Protogenes consisted in striking this truelimit within each other's lines, more and more finely. And you mayalways consider your pen line as representing the first incision forsculpture, the true limit being the sharp center of the incision. 

But, practically, when you are outlining a light object definedagainst a dark one, the line must go outside of it; and when a darkobject against a light one, inside of it. 

In this drawing of Holbein's, the hand being seen against the light, the outline goes inside the contour of the fingers. 

25. Secondly. And this is of great importance. It will happenconstantly that forms are entirely distinct from each other andseparated by true limits, which are yet invisible, or nearly so, tothe eye. I place, for instance, one of these eggs in front of theother, and probably to most of you the separation in the light isindiscernible. Is it then to be outlined? In practically combiningoutline with accomplished light and shade there are cases of this kindin which the outline may with advantage, or even must for truth ofeffect, be omitted. But the facts of the solid form are of so vitalimportance, and the perfect command of them so necessary to thedignity and intelligibility of the work, that the greatest artists, even for their finished drawings, like to limit every solid form by afine line, whether its contour be visible to the eye or not. 

26. An outline thus perfectly made with absolute decision, and with awash of one color above it, is the most masterly of all methods oflight and shade study, with limited time, when the forms of theobjects to be drawn are clear and unaffected by mist. But without anywash of color, such an outline is the most valuable of all means forobtaining such memoranda of any scene as may explain to anotherperson, or record for yourself, what is most important in itsfeatures. 

27. Choose, then, a subject that interests you; and so far as failureof time or materials compels you to finish one part, or express onecharacter, rather than another, of course dwell on the features thatinterest you most. But beyond this, forget, or even somewhat repressyourself, and make it your first object to give a true idea of theplace to other people. You are not to endeavor to express your ownfeelings about it; if anything, err on the side of concealing them. What is best is not to think of yourself at all, but to state asplainly and simply as you can the whole truth of the thing. What youthink unimportant in it may to another person be the most touchingpart of it: what you think beautiful may be in truth commonplace andof small value. Quietly complete each part to the best of your power, endeavoring to maintain a steady and dutiful energy, and the tranquilpleasure of a workman. 

II. 

LIGHT AND SHADE. 

28. In my last Lecture I laid before you evidence that the greatnessof the master whom I wished you to follow as your only guide inlandscape depended primarily on his studying from Nature always withthe point; that is to say, in pencil or pen outline. To-day I wish toshow you that his preëminence depends secondarily on his perfectrendering of form and distance by light and shade, before he admits athought of color. 

I say "before" however--observe carefully--only with reference to theconstruction of any given picture, not with reference to the order inwhich he learnt his mechanical processes. From the beginning, heworked out of doors with the point, but indoors with the brush; andattains perfect skill in washing flat color long before he attainsanything like skill in delineation of form. 

29. Here, for instance, is a drawing, when he was twelve or thirteenyears old, of Dover Castle and the Dover Coach; in which the futurelove of mystery is exhibited by his studiously showing the way inwhich the dust rises about the wheels; and an interest in drunkensailors, which materially affected his marine studies, shown not lessin the occupants of the hind seat. But what I want you to observe isthat, though the trees, coach, horses, and sailors are drawn as anyschoolboy would draw them, the sky is washed in so smoothly that fewwater-color painters of our day would lightly accept a challenge tomatch it. 

And, therefore, it is, among many other reasons, that I put the brushinto your hands from the first, and try you with a wash in lampblack, before you enter my working class. But, as regards the composition ofhis picture, the drawing is always first with Turner, the colorsecond. 

30. Drawing: that is to say, the expression by gradation of light, either of form or space. Again I thus give you a statement whollyadverse to the vulgar opinion of him. You will find that statementearly in the first volume of "Modern Painters, " and repeated nowthrough all my works these twenty-five years, in vain. Nobody willbelieve that the main virtue of Turner is in his drawing. I say "themain virtue of Turner. " Splendid though he be as a colorist, he is notunrivaled in color; nay, in some qualities of color he has been farsurpassed by the Venetians. But no one has ever touched him inexquisiteness of gradation; and no one in landscape in perfectrendering of organic form. 

31. I showed you in this drawing, at last Lecture, how truly he hadmatched the color of the iron-stained rocks in the bed of the Ticino;and any of you who care for color at all cannot but take more or lesspleasure in the black and greens and warm browns opposed throughout. But the essential value of the work is not in these. It is, first, inthe expression of enormous scale of mountain and space of air, bygradations of shade in these colors, whatever they may be; and, secondly, in the perfect rounding and cleaving of the masses alike ofmountain and stone. I showed you one of the stones themselves, as anexample of uninteresting outline. If I were to ask you to paint it, though its color is pleasant enough, you would still find ituninteresting and coarse compared to that of a flower, or a bird. Butif I can engage you in an endeavor to draw its true forms in light andshade, you will most assuredly find it not only interesting, but insome points quite beyond the most subtle skill you can give to it. 

32. You have heard me state to you, several times, that all themasters who valued accurate form and modeling found the readiest wayof obtaining the facts they required to be firm pen outline, completedby a wash of neutral tint. This method is indeed rarely used byRaphael or Michael Angelo in the drawings they have left us, becausetheir studies are nearly all tentative--experiments in composition, inwhich the imperfect or careless pen outline suggested all theyrequired, and was capable of easy change without confusing the eye. But the masters who knew precisely before they laid touch on paperwhat they were going to do--and this may be, observe, either becausethey are less or greater than the men who change; less, in merelydrawing some natural object without attempt at composition, or greaterin knowing absolutely beforehand the composition they intend; it maybe, even so, that what they intend, though better known, is not sogood:--but at all events, in this anticipating power Tintoret, Holbeinand Turner stand, I think, alone as draughtsmen; Tintoret rarelysketching at all, but painting straight at the first blow, whileHolbein and Turner sketch indeed, but it is as with a pen of iron anda point of diamond. 

33. You will find in your educational series[6] many drawingsillustrative of the method; but I have enlarged here the part that isexecuted with the pen, out of this smaller drawing, that you may seewith what fearless strength Holbein delineates even the most delicatefolds of the veil on the head, and of the light muslin on theshoulders, giving them delicacy, not by the thinness of his line, butby its exquisite veracity. 

[Footnote 6: At the Ruskin Drawing School, Oxford. ]

The eye will endure with patience, or even linger with pleasure, onany line that is right, however coarse; while the faintest or finestthat is wrong will be forcibly destructive. And again and again I haveto recommend you to draw always as if you were engraving, and as ifthe line could not be changed. 

34. The method used by Turner in the _Liber Studiorum_ is preciselyanalogous to that of Holbein. The lines of these etchings are totrees, rocks, or buildings, absolutely what these of Holbein are; notsuggestions of contingent grace, but determinations of the limits offuture form. You will see the explanatory office of such lines byplacing this outline over my drawing of the stone, until the linescoincide with the limits of the shadow. You will find that itintensifies and explains the forms which otherwise would have escapednotice, and that a perfectly gradated wash of neutral tint with anoutline of this kind is all that is necessary for grammaticalstatement of forms. It is all that the great colorists need for theirstudies; they would think it wasted time to go farther; but, if youhave no eye for color, you may go farther in another manner, withenjoyment. 

35. Now to go back to Turner. 

The _first_ great object of the _Liber Studiorum_, for which Irequested you in my sixth Lecture[7] to make constant use of it, isthe delineation of solid form by outline and shadow. But a yet moreimportant purpose in each of the designs in that book is theexpression of such landscape powers and character as have especialrelation to the pleasures and pain of human life--but especially thepain. And it is in this respect that I desired you (Sect. 172) to beassured, not merely of their superiority, but of their absolutedifference in kind from photography, as works of disciplined design. 

[Footnote 7: "Lectures on Art, 1870, " § 170. ]

[Illustration: NEAR BLAIR ATHOL. 

From the painting by Turner. ]

36. I do not know whether any of you were interested enough in thelittle note in my catalogue on this view near Blair Athol, to look forthe scene itself during your summer rambles. If any did, and found it, I am nearly certain their impression would be only that of an extremewonder how Turner could have made so little of so beautiful a spot. The projecting rock, when I saw it last in 1857, and I am certain, when Turner saw it, was covered with lichens having as many colors asa painted window. The stream--or rather powerful and deep Highlandriver, the Tilt--foamed and eddied magnificently through the narrowedchannel; and the wild vegetation in the rock crannies was a finishedarabesque of living sculpture, of which this study of mine, made onanother stream, in Glenfinlas, only a few miles away, will give you afair idea. Turner has absolutely stripped the rock of its beautifullichens to bare slate, with one quartz vein running up through it; hehas quieted the river into a commonplace stream; he has given, of allthe rich vegetation, only one cluster of quite uninteresting leavesand a clump of birches with ragged trunks. Yet, observe, I have toldyou of it, he has put into one scene the spirit of Scotland. 

[Illustration: DUMBLANE ABBEY. 

From the painting by Turner. ]

37. Similarly, those of you who in your long vacations have everstayed near Dumblane will be, I think, disappointed in no small degreeby this study of the abbey, for which I showed you the sketch at lastLecture. You probably know that the oval window in its west end is oneof the prettiest pieces of rough thirteenth-century carving in thekingdom; I used it for a chief example in my lectures at Edinburgh;and you know that the lancet windows, in their fine proportion andrugged masonry, would alone form a study of ruined Gothic masonry ofexquisite interest. 

Yet you find Turner representing the lancet window by a few bare ovallines like the hoop of a barrel; and indicating the rest of thestructure by a monotonous and thin piece of outline, of which I wasasked by one of yourselves last term, and quite naturally and rightly, how Turner came to draw it so slightly--or, we may even say, so badly. 

38. Whenever you find Turner stopping short, or apparently failing inthis way, especially when he does the contrary of what any of us wouldhave been nearly sure to do, then is the time to look for your mainlesson from him. You recollect those quiet words of the strongest ofall Shakespeare's heroes, when any one else would have had his swordout in an instant:

 "Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them ... Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it Without a prompter. "[8]

[Footnote 8: "Othello, " I. 2. ]

Now you must always watch keenly what Turner's _cue_ is. You will seehis hand go to his hilt fast enough, when it comes. Dumblane Abbey isa pretty piece of building enough, it is true; but the virtue of thewhole scene, and meaning, is not in the masonry of it. There ismuch better masonry and much more wonderful ruin of it elsewhere;Dumblane Abbey--tower and aisles and all--would go under one of thearches of buildings such as there are in the world. Look at whatTurner will do when his cue is masonry, --in the Coliseum. What theexecution of that drawing is you may judge by looking with amagnifying glass at the ivy and battlements in this, when, also, hiscue is masonry. What then can he mean by not so much as indicating onepebble or joint in the walls of Dumblane?

[Illustration]

39. I was sending out the other day, to a friend in America, a chosengroup of the _Liber Studiorum_ to form a nucleus for an artcollection at Boston. And I warned my friend at once to guard hispublic against the sore disappointment their first sight of these somuch celebrated works would be to them. "You will have to make themunderstand, " I wrote to him, "that their first lesson will be inobserving not what Turner has done, but what he has not done. Theseare not finished pictures, but studies; endeavors, that is to say, toget the utmost result possible with the simplest means; they areessentially thoughtful, and have each their fixed purpose, to whicheverything else is sacrificed; and that purpose is alwaysimaginative--to get at the heart of the thing, not at its outside. "

40. Now, it is true, there are beautiful lichens at Blair Athol, andgood building at Dumblane; but there are lovely lichens all over thecold regions of the world, and there is far more interestingarchitecture in other countries than in Scotland. The essentialcharacter of Scotland is that of a wild and thinly inhabited rockycountry, not sublimely mountainous, but beautiful in low rock andlight streamlet everywhere; with sweet copsewood and rudely growingtrees. This wild land possesses a subdued and imperfect school ofarchitecture, and has an infinitely tragic feudal, pastoral, and civichistory. And in the events of that history a deep tenderness ofsentiment is mingled with a cruel and barren rigidity of habitualcharacter, accurately corresponding to the conditions of climate andearth. 

41. Now I want you especially to notice, with respect to these things, Turner's introduction of the ugly square tower high up on the left. Your first instinct would be to exclaim, "How unlucky that was thereat all! Why, at least, could not Turner have kept it out of sight?" Hehas quite gratuitously brought it into sight; gratuitously drawnfirmly the three lines of stiff drip-stone which mark its squarenessand blankness. It is precisely that blank vacancy of decoration, andsetting of the meager angles against wind and war, which he wants toforce on your notice, that he may take you thoroughly out of Italy andGreece, and put you wholly into a barbarous and frost-hardened land;that once having its gloom defined he may show you all the moreintensely what pastoral purity and innocence of life, and lovelinessof nature, are underneath the banks and braes of Doune, and by everybrooklet that feeds the Forth and Clyde. 

That is the main purpose of these two studies. How it is obtained byvarious incidents in the drawing of stones, and trees, and figures, Iwill show you another time. The chief element in both is the sadnessand depth of their effect of subdued though clear light in sky andstream. 

42. The sadness of their effect, I repeat. If you remember anything ofthe Lectures I gave you through last year, you must be graduallygetting accustomed to my definition of the Greek school in art, as oneessentially Chiaroscurist, as opposed to Gothic color; Realist, asopposed to Gothic imagination; and Despairing, as opposed to Gothichope. And you are prepared to recognize it by any one of these threeconditions. Only, observe, the chiaroscuro is simply the technicalresult of the two others: a Greek painter likes light and shade, first, because they enable him to realize form solidly, while color isflat; and secondly, because light and shade are melancholy, whilecolor is gay. 

So that the defect of color, and substitution of more or less gray orgloomy effects of rounded gradation, constantly express the twocharacters: first, Academic or Greek fleshliness and solidity asopposed to Gothic imagination; and secondly, of Greek tragic horrorand gloom as opposed to Gothic gladness. 

43. In the great French room in the Louvre, if you at all remember thegeneral character of the historical pictures, you will instantlyrecognize, in thinking generally of them, the rounded fleshly andsolid character in the drawing, the gray or greenish and brownishcolor, or defect of color, lurid and moonlight-like, and the gloomychoice of subjects, as the Deluge, the Field of Eylau, the Starvationon the Raft, and the Death of Endymion; always melancholy, and usuallyhorrible. 

The more recent pictures of the painter Gérôme unite all theseattributes in a singular degree; above all, the fleshliness andmaterialism which make his studies of the nude, in my judgment, altogether inadmissible into the rank of the fine arts. 

44. Now you observe that I never speak of this Greek school but with acertain dread. And yet I have told you that Turner belongs to it, thatall the strongest men in times of developed art belong to it; butthen, remember, so do all the basest. The learning of the Academy isindeed a splendid accessory to original power, in Velasquez, inTitian, or in Reynolds; but the whole world of art is full of a baselearning of the Academy, which, when fools possess, they become atenfold plague of fools. 

And again, a stern and more or less hopeless melancholy necessarily isunder-current in the minds of the greatest men of all ages, --of Homer, Aeschylus, Pindar, or Shakespeare. But an earthy, sensual, and weakdespondency is the attribute of the lowest mental and bodily disease;and the imbecilities and lassitudes which follow crime, both innations and individuals, can only find a last stimulus to their owndying sensation in the fascinated contemplation of completer death. 

45. Between these--the highest, and these--the basest, you have everyvariety and combination of strength and of mistake: the mass offoolish persons dividing themselves always between the two oppositelyand equally erroneous faiths, that genius may dispense with law, orthat law can create genius. Of the two, there is more excuse for, andless danger in the first than in the second mistake. Genius hassometimes done lovely things without knowledge and without discipline. But all the learning of the Academies has never yet drawn so much asone fair face, or ever set two pleasant colors side by side. 

46. Now there is one great Northern painter, of whom I have not spokentill now, probably to your surprise, Rubens; whose power is composedof so many elements, and whose character may be illustrated socompletely, and with it the various operation of the counter schools, by one of his pictures now open to your study, that I would press youto set aside one of your brightest Easter afternoons for the study ofthat one picture in the Exhibition of Old Masters, the so-called "Junoand Argus, " No. 387. 

So-called, I say; for it is not a picture either of Argus or of Juno, but the portrait of a Flemish lady "as Juno" (just as Rubens paintedhis family picture with his wife "as the Virgin" and himself "as St. George"): and a good anatomical study of a human body as Argus. In thedays of Rubens, you must remember, mythology was thought of as a mereempty form of compliment or fable, and the original meaning of itwholly forgotten. Rubens never dreamed that Argus is the night, orthat his eyes are stars; but with the absolutely literal and brutalpart of his Dutch nature supposes the head of Argus full of real eyesall over, and represents Hebe cutting them out with a bloody knife andputting one into the hand of the goddess, like an unseemly oyster. 

That conception of the action, and the loathsome sprawling of thetrunk of Argus under the chariot, are the essential contributions ofRubens' own Netherland personality. Then the rest of the treatment helearned from other schools, but adopted with splendid power. 

47. First, I think, you ought to be struck by having two largepeacocks painted with scarcely any color in them! They are nearlyblack, or black-green, peacocks. Now you know that Rubens is alwaysspoken of as a great colorist, _par excellence_ a colorist; and wouldyou not have expected that--before all things--the first thing hewould have seen in a peacock would have been gold and blue? He seesnothing of the kind. A peacock, to him, is essentially a dark bird;serpent-like in the writhing of the neck, cloud-like in the toss andwave of its plumes. He has dashed out the filaments of every featherwith magnificent drawing; he has not given you one bright gleam ofgreen or purple in all the two birds. 

Well, the reason of that is that Rubens is not _par excellence_ acolorist; nay, is not even a good colorist. He is a very second-rateand coarse colorist; and therefore his color catches the lower public, and gets talked about. But he is _par excellence_ a splendiddraughtsman of the Greek school; and no one else, except Tintoret, could have drawn with the same ease either the muscles of the deadbody or the plumes of the birds. 

48. Farther, that he never became a great colorist does not mean thathe could not, had he chosen. He was warped from color by his lowerGreek instincts, by his animal delight in coarse and violent forms andscenes--in fighting, in hunting, and in torments of martyrdom and ofhell: but he had the higher gift in him, if the flesh had not subduedit. There is one part of this picture which he learned how to do atVenice, the Iris, with the golden hair, in the chariot behind Juno. Inher he has put out his full power, under the teaching of Veronese andTitian; and he has all the splendid Northern-Gothic, Reynolds orGainsborough play of feature with Venetian color. Scarcely anythingmore beautiful than that head, or more masterly than the compositionof it, with the inlaid pattern of Juno's robe below, exists in the artof any country. _Si sic omnia!_--but I know nothing else equal to itthroughout the entire works of Rubens. 

49. See, then, how the picture divides itself. In the fleshlybaseness, brutality and stupidity of its main conception, is the Dutchpart of it; that is Rubens' own. In the noble drawing of the dead bodyand of the birds you have the Phidias-Greek part of it, brought downto Rubens through Michael Angelo. In the embroidery of Juno's robe youhave the Dædalus-Greek part of it, brought down to Rubens throughVeronese. In the head of Iris you have the pure Northern-Gothic partof it, brought down to Rubens through Giorgione and Titian. 

50. Now, though--even if we had given ten minutes of digression--thelessons in this picture would have been well worth it, I have not, intaking you to it, gone out of my own way. There is a special point forus to observe in those dark peacocks. If you look at the notes on theVenetian pictures in the end of my "Stones of Venice, " you will findit especially dwelt upon as singular that Tintoret, in his picture of"The Nativity, " has a peacock without any color in it. And the reasonof it is also that Tintoret belongs, with the full half of his mind, as Rubens does, to the Greek school. But the two men reach the samepoint by opposite paths. Tintoret begins with what Venice taught him, and adopted what Athens could teach: but Rubens begins with Athens, and adopts from Venice. Now if you will look back to my fifthLecture[9] you will find it said that the colorists can always adoptas much chiaroscuro as suits them, and so become perfect; but thechiaroscurists cannot, on their part, adopt color, except partially. And accordingly, whenever Tintoret chooses, he can laugh Rubens toscorn in management of light and shade; but Rubens only here andthere--as far as I know myself, only this once--touches Tintoret orGiorgione in color. 

[Footnote 9: "Lectures on Art" (the Inaugural Course, 1870), § 138. ]

51. But now observe farther. The Greek chiaroscuro, I have just toldyou, is by one body of men pursued academically, as a means ofexpressing form; by another, tragically, as a mystery of light andshade, corresponding to--and forming part of--the joy and sorrow oflife. You may, of course, find the two purposes mingled: but pureformal chiaroscuro--Marc Antonio's and Leonardo's--is inconsistentwith color, and though it is thoroughly necessary as an exercise, itis only as a correcting and guarding one, never as a basis of art. 

52. Let me be sure, now, that you thoroughly understand the relationof formal shade to color. Here is an egg; here, a green cluster ofleaves; here, a bunch of black grapes. In formal chiaroscuro, allthese are to be considered as white, and drawn as if they were carvedin marble. In the engraving of "Melancholy, " what I meant by tellingyou it was in formal chiaroscuro was that the ball is white, theleaves are white, the dress is white; you can't tell what color any ofthese stand for. On the contrary, to a colorist the first questionabout everything is its color. Is this a white thing, a green thing, or a blue thing? down must go my touch of white, green, or dark bluefirst of all; if afterwards I can make them look round, or like fruitand leaves, it's all very well; but if I can't, blue or green they atleast shall be. 

53. Now here you have exactly the thing done by the two masters we arespeaking of. Here is a copy of Turner's vignette of "Martigny. " Thisis wholly a design of the colored school. Here is a bit of vine in theforeground with purple grapes; the grapes, so far from being drawn asround, are struck in with angular flat spots; but they are vividlypurple spots, their whole vitality and use in the design is in theirTyrian nature. Here, on the contrary, is Dürer's "Flight into Egypt, "with grapes and palm fruit above. Both are white; but both engraved soas to look thoroughly round. 

54. All the other great chiaroscurists whom I named to you--Reynolds, Velasquez, and Titian--approached their shadow also on the safeside--from Venice: they always think of color first. But Turner had towork his way out of the dark Greek school up to Venice; he alwaysthinks of his shadow first; and it held him in some degree fatally tothe end. Those pictures which you all laughed at were not what youfancied, mad endeavors for color; they were agonizing Greek efforts toget light. He could have got color easily enough if he had rested inthat; which I will show you in next Lecture. Still, he so nearly madehimself a Venetian that, as opposed to the Dutch academicalchiaroscurists, he is to be considered a Venetian altogether. And nowI will show you, in a very simple subject, the exact opposition of thetwo schools. 

55. Here is a study of swans, from a Dutch book of academicalinstruction in Rubens' time. It is a good and valuable book in manyways, and you are going to have some copies set you from it. But as atype of academical chiaroscuro it will give you most valuable lessonson the other side--of warning. 

Here, then, is the academical Dutchman's notion of a swan. He haslaboriously engraved every feather, and has rounded the bird into aball; and has thought to himself that never swan has been so engravedbefore. But he has never with his Dutch eyes perceived two points in aswan which are vital to it: first, that it is white; and, secondly, that it is graceful. He has above all things missed the proportion, and necessarily therefore the bend of its neck. 

56. Now take the colorist's view of the matter. To him the first mainfacts about the swan are that it is a white thing with black spots. Turner takes one brush in his right hand, with a little white in it;another in his left hand, with a little lampblack. He takes a piece ofbrown paper, works for about two minutes with his white brush, passesthe black to his right hand, and works half a minute with that, and, there you are!

You would like to be able to draw two swans in two minutes and a halfyourselves. Perhaps so, and I can show you how; but it will needtwenty years' work all day long. First, in the meantime, you must drawthem rightly, if it takes two hours instead of two minutes; and, aboveall, remember that they are black and white. 

57. But farther: you see how intensely Turner felt precisely what theFleming did not feel--the bend of the neck. Now this is not becauseTurner is a colorist, as opposed to the Fleming; but because he is apure and highly trained Greek, as opposed to the Fleming's low Greek. Both, so far as they are aiming at form, are now working in the Greekschool of Phidias; but Turner is true Greek, for he is thinking onlyof the truth about the swan; and De Wit is pseudo-Greek, for he isthinking not of the swan at all, but of his own Dutch self. And so hehas ended in making, with his essentially piggish nature, thissleeping swan's neck as nearly as possible like a leg of pork. 

That is the result of academical work, in the hands of a vulgarperson. 

58. And now I will ask you to look carefully at three more pictures inthe London Exhibition. 

The first, "The Nativity, " by Sandro Botticelli. [10] It is an earlywork by him; but a quite perfect example of what the masters of thepure Greek school did in Florence. 

[Footnote 10: Now in the National Gallery, No. 1034. ]

One of the Greek main characters, you know, is to be [Greek:aprosôpos], faceless. If you look first at the faces in this pictureyou will find them ugly--often without expression, always ill orcarelessly drawn. The entire purpose of the picture is a mysticsymbolism by motion and chiaroscuro. By motion, first. There is a domeof burning clouds in the upper heaven. Twelve angels half float, halfdance, in a circle, round the lower vault of it. All their drapery isdrifted so as to make you feel the whirlwind of their motion. They areseen by gleams of silvery or fiery light, relieved against an equallylighted blue of inimitable depth and loveliness. 

It is impossible for you ever to see a more noble work of passionateGreek chiaroscuro--rejoicing in light. From this I should like you togo instantly to Rembrandt's "Portrait of a Burgomaster" (No. 77 in theExhibition of Old Masters). 

59. That is ignobly passionate chiaroscuro, rejoicing in darknessrather than light. 

You cannot see a finer work by Rembrandt. It has all his power ofrendering character, and the portrait is celebrated through the world. But it is entirely second-rate work. The character in the face is onlystriking to persons who like candle-light effects better thansunshine; any head by Titian has twice the character, and seen bydaylight instead of gas. The rest of the picture is as false in lightand shade as it is pretentious, made up chiefly of gleaming buttons inplaces where no light could possibly reach them; and of an embossedbelt on the shoulder, which people think finely painted because it isall over lumps of color, not one of which was necessary. That embossedexecution of Rembrandt's is just as much ignorant work as the embossedprojecting jewels of Carlo Crivelli; a real painter never loads (seethe Velasquez, No. 415 in the same exhibition). 

60. Finally, from the Rembrandt go to the little Cima (No. 93), "St. Mark. " Thus you have the Sandro Botticelli, of the noble Greek schoolin Florence; the Rembrandt, of the debased Greek school in Holland;and the Cima, of the pure color school of Venice. 

The Cima differs from the Rembrandt, by being lovely; from theBotticelli, by being simple and calm. The painter does not desire theexcitement of rapid movement, nor even the passion of beautiful light. But he hates darkness as he does death; and falsehood more thaneither. He has painted a noble human creature simply in cleardaylight; not in rapture, nor yet in agony. He is dressed neither in arainbow, nor bedraggled with blood. You are neither to be alarmed norentertained by anything that is likely to happen to him. You are notto be improved by the piety of his expression, nor disgusted by itstruculence. But there is more true mastery of light and shade, if youreye is subtle enough to see it, in the hollows and angles of thearchitecture and folds of the dress, than in all the etchings ofRembrandt put together. The unexciting color will not at first delightyou; but its charm will never fail; and from all the works ofvariously strained and obtrusive power with which it is surrounded, you will find that you never return to it but with a sense of reliefand of peace, which can only be given you by the tender skill which iswholly without pretense, without pride, and without error. 

III. 

COLOR. 

61. The distinctions between schools of art which I have so oftenasked you to observe are, you must be aware, founded only on theexcess of certain qualities in one group of painters over another, orthe difference in their tendencies; and not in the absolute possessionby one group, and absence in the rest, of any given skill. But thisimpossibility of drawing trenchant lines of parting need neverinterfere with the distinctness of our conception of the opponentprinciples which balance each other in great minds, or paralyze eachother in weak ones; and I cannot too often urge you to keep clearlyseparate in your thoughts the school which I have called[11] "ofCrystal, " because its distinctive virtue is seen unaided in the sharpseparations and prismatic harmonies of painted glass, and the other, the "School of Clay, " because its distinctive virtue is seen in thequalities of any fine work in uncolored terra cotta, and in everydrawing which represents them. 

[Footnote 11: "Lectures on Art, 1870, " § 185. ]

62. You know I sometimes speak of these generally as the Gothic andGreek schools, sometimes as the colorist and chiaroscurist. All theseoppositions are liable to infinite qualification and gradation, asbetween species of animals; and you must not be troubled, therefore, if sometimes momentary contradictions seem to arise in examiningspecial points. Nay, the modes of opposition in the greatest men areinlaid and complex; difficult to explain, though in themselves clear. Thus you know in your study of sculpture we saw that the essential aimof the Greek art was tranquil action; the chief aim of Gothic artwas passionate rest, a peace, an eternity of intense sentiment. As Igo into detail, I shall continually therefore have to oppose Gothicpassion to Greek temperance; yet Gothic rigidity, [Greek: stasis] of[Greek: ekstasis], to Greek action and [Greek: eleutheria]. You seehow doubly, how intimately, opposed the ideas are; yet how difficultto explain without apparent contradiction. 

63. Now, to-day, I must guard you carefully against a misapprehensionof this kind. I have told you that the Greeks as Greeks made real andmaterial what was before indefinite; they turned the clouds and thelightning of Mount Ithome into the human flesh and eagle upon theextended arm of the Messenian Zeus. And yet, being in all things setupon absolute veracity and realization, they perceive as they work andthink forward that to see in all things truly is to see in all thingsdimly and through hiding of cloud and fire. 

So that the schools of Crystal, visionary, passionate, and fantasticin purpose, are, in method, trenchantly formal and clear; and theschools of Clay, absolutely realistic, temperate, and simple inpurpose, are, in method, mysterious and soft; sometimes licentious, sometimes terrific, and always obscure. 

[Illustration: MADONNA AND CHILD. 

From the painting by Filippo Lippi. ]

64. Look once more at this Greek dancing-girl, which is from a terracotta, and therefore intensely of the school of Clay; look at herbeside this Madonna of Filippo Lippi's: Greek motion against Gothicabsolute quietness; Greek indifference--dancing careless--againstGothic passion, the mother's--what word can I use except frenzy oflove; Greek fleshliness against hungry wasting of the self-forgetfulbody; Greek softness of diffused shadow and ductile curve, againstGothic lucidity of color and acuteness of angle; and Greek simplicityand cold veracity against Gothic rapture of trusted vision. 

65. And now I may safely, I think, go into our work of to-day withoutconfusing you, except only in this. You will find me continuallyspeaking of four men--Titian, Holbein, Turner, and Tintoret--inalmost the same terms. They unite every quality; and sometimes youwill find me referring to them as colorists, sometimes aschiaroscurists. Only remember this, that Holbein and Turner are Greekchiaroscurists, nearly perfect by adopted color; Titian and Tintoretare essentially Gothic colorists, quite perfect by adoptedchiaroscuro. 

66. I used the word "prismatic" just now of the schools of Crystal, asbeing iridescent. By being studious of color they are studious ofdivision; and while the chiaroscurist devotes himself to therepresentation of degrees of force in one thing--unseparated light, the colorists have for their function the attainment of beauty byarrangement of the divisions of light. And therefore, primarily, theymust be able to divide; so that elementary exercises in color must bedirected, like first exercises in music, to the clear separation ofnotes; and the final perfections of color are those in which, ofinnumerable notes or hues, every one has a distinct office, and can befastened on by the eye, and approved, as fulfilling it. 

67. I do not doubt that it has often been matter of wonder among anyof you who had faith in my judgment, why I gave to the University, ascharacteristic of Turner's work, the simple and at first unattractivedrawings of the Loire series. My first and principal reason was thatthey enforced beyond all resistance, on any student who might attemptto copy them, this method of laying portions of distinct hue side byside. Some of the touches, indeed, when the tint has been mixed withmuch water, have been laid in little drops or ponds, so that thepigment might crystallize hard at the edge. And one of the chiefdelights which any one who really enjoys painting finds in that art asdistinct from sculpture is in this exquisite inlaying or joiner's workof it, the fitting of edge to edge with a manual skill preciselycorrespondent to the close application of crowded notes without theleast slur, in fine harp or piano playing. 

68. In many of the finest works of color on a large scale there iseven some admission of the quality given to a painted window by thedark lead bars between the pieces of glass. Both Tintoret andVeronese, when they paint on dark grounds, continually stop short withtheir tints just before they touch others, leaving the dark groundshowing between in a narrow bar. In the Paul Veronese in the NationalGallery, you will every here and there find pieces of outline, likethis of Holbein's; which you would suppose were drawn, as that is, with a brown pencil. But no! Look close, and you will find they arethe dark ground, _left_ between two tints brought close to each otherwithout touching. 

[Illustration: THE LADY WITH THE BROOCH. 

From the painting by Reynolds. ]

69. It follows also from this law of construction that any master whocan color can always do any pane of his window that he likes, separately from the rest. Thus, you see, here is one of Sir Joshua'sfirst sittings: the head is very nearly done with the first color; apiece of background is put in round it: his sitter has had a prettysilver brooch on, which Reynolds, having done as much as he chose tothe face for that time, paints quietly in its place below, leaving thedress between to be fitted in afterwards; and he puts a little patchof the yellow gown that is to be, at the side. And it follows alsofrom this law of construction that there must never be any hesitationor repentance in the direction of your lines of limit. So that notonly in the beautiful dexterity of the joiner's work, but in thenecessity of cutting out each piece of color at once and forever (for, though you can correct an erroneous junction of black and whitebecause the gray between has the nature of either, you cannot correctan erroneous junction of red and green which make a neutral betweenthem, if they overlap, that is neither red nor green): thus thepractice of color educates at once in neatness of hand anddistinctness of will; so that, as I wrote long ago in the third volumeof "Modern Painters, " you are always safe if you hold the hand of acolorist. 

70. I have brought you a little sketch to-day from the foreground of aVenetian picture, in which there is a bit that will show you thisprecision of method. It is the head of a parrot with a little flowerin his beak from a picture of Carpaccio's, one of his series of theLife of St. George. I could not get the curves of the leaves, and theyare patched and spoiled; but the parrot's head, however badly done, isput down with no more touches than the Venetian gave it, and it willshow you exactly his method. First, a thin, warm ground had been laidover the whole canvas, which Carpaccio wanted as an under-currentthrough all the color, just as there is an under-current of gray inthe Loire drawings. Then on this he strikes his parrot in vermilion, almost flat color; rounding a little only with a glaze of lake; butattending mainly to get the character of the bird by the pure outlineof its form, as if it were cut out of a piece of ruby glass. 

Then he comes to the beak of it. The brown ground beneath is left, forthe most part; one touch of black is put for the hollow; two delicatelines of dark gray define the outer curve; and one little quiveringtouch of white draws the inner edge of the mandible. There are justfour touches--fine as the finest penmanship--to do that beak; and yetyou will find that in the peculiar paroquettish mumbling and nibblingaction of it, and all the character in which this nibbling beakdiffers from the tearing beak of the eagle, it is impossible to gofarther or be more precise. And this is only an incident, remember, ina large picture. 

71. Let me notice, in passing, the infinite absurdity of ever hangingVenetian pictures above the line of sight. There are very few personsin the room who will be able to see the drawing of this bird's beakwithout a magnifying-glass; yet it is ten to one that in any moderngallery such a picture would be hung thirty feet from the ground. 

Here, again, is a little bit to show Carpaccio's execution. It is hissignature: only a little wall-lizard, holding the paper in its mouth, perfect; yet so small that you can scarcely see its feet, and that Icould not, with my finest-pointed brush, copy their stealthy action. 

72. And now, I think, the members of my class will more readilypardon the intensely irksome work I put them to, with the compassesand the ruler. Measurement and precision are, with me, before allthings; just because, though myself trained wholly in the chiaroscuroschools, I know the value of color; and I want you to begin with colorin the very outset, and to see everything as children would see it. For, believe me, the final philosophy of art can only ratify theiropinion that the beauty of a cock robin is to be red, and of agrass-plot to be green; and the best skill of art is in instantlyseizing on the manifold deliciousness of light, which you can onlyseize by precision of instantaneous touch. Of course, I cannot do somyself; yet in these sketches of mine, made for the sake of color, there is enough to show you the nature and the value of the method. They are two pieces of study of the color of marble architecture, thetints literally "edified, " and laid edge to edge as simply on thepaper as the stones are on the walls. 

73. But please note in them one thing especially. The testing rule Igave for good color in the "Elements of Drawing, " is that you make thewhite precious and the black conspicuous. Now you will see in thesestudies that the moment the white is inclosed properly, and harmonizedwith the other hues, it becomes somehow more precious and pearly thanthe white paper; and that I am not afraid to leave a whole field ofuntreated white paper all round it, being sure that even the littlediamonds in the round window will tell as jewels, if they are gradatedjustly. 

Again, there is not a touch of black in any shadow, however deep, ofthese two studies; so that, if I chose to put a piece of black nearthem, it would be conspicuous with a vengeance. 

But in this vignette, copied from Turner, you have the two principlesbrought out perfectly. You have the white of foaming water, ofbuildings and clouds, brought out brilliantly from a white ground; andthough part of the subject is in deep shadow the eye at once catchesthe one black point admitted in front. 

74. Well, the first reason that I gave you these Loire drawings wasthis of their infallible decision; the second was their extrememodesty in color. They are, beyond all other works that I knowexisting, dependent for their effect on low, subdued tones; theirfavorite choice in time of day being either dawn or twilight, and eventheir brightest sunsets produced chiefly out of gray paper. This last, the loveliest of all, gives the warmth of a summer twilight with atinge of color on the gray paper so slight that it may be a questionwith some of you whether any is there. And I must beg you to observe, and receive as a rule without any exception, that whether color be gayor sad the value of it depends never on violence, but always onsubtlety. It may be that a great colorist will use his utmost force ofcolor, as a singer his full power of voice; but, loud or low, thevirtue is in both cases always in refinement, never in loudness. Thewest window of Chartres is bedropped with crimson deeper than blood;but it is as soft as it is deep, and as quiet as the light of dawn. 

75. I say, "whether color be gay or sad. " It must, remember, be one orthe other. You know I told you that the pure Gothic school of colorwas entirety cheerful; that, as applied to landscape, it assumes thatall nature is lovely, and may be clearly seen; that destruction anddecay are accidents of our present state, never to be thought ofseriously, and, above all things, never to be painted; but thatwhatever is orderly, healthy, radiant, fruitful and beautiful, is tobe loved with all our hearts and painted with all our skill. 

76. I told you also that no complete system of art for either naturalhistory or landscape could be formed on this system; that the wrath ofa wild beast, and the tossing of a mountain torrent are equallyimpossible to a painter of the purist school; that in higher fields ofthought increasing knowledge means increasing sorrow, and every artwhich has complete sympathy with humanity must be chastened by thesight and oppressed by the memory of pain. But there is no reason whyyour system of study should be a complete one, if it be right andprofitable though incomplete. If you can find it in your hearts tofollow out only the Gothic thoughts of landscape, I deeply wish youwould, and for many reasons. 

77. First, it has never yet received due development; for at themoment when artistic skill and knowledge of effect became sufficientto complete its purposes, the Reformation destroyed the faith in whichthey might have been accomplished; for to the whole body of powerfuldraughtsmen the Reformation meant the Greek school and the shadow ofdeath. So that of exquisitely developed Gothic landscape you may countthe examples on the fingers of your hand: Van Eyck's "Adoration of theLamb" at Bruges; another little Van Eyck in the Louvre; the JohnBellini lately presented to the National Gallery;[12] another JohnBellini in Rome: and the "St. George" of Carpaccio at Venice, are allthat I can name myself of great works. But there exist some exquisite, though feebler, designs in missal painting; of which, in England, thelandscape and flowers in the Psalter of Henry the Sixth will serve youfor a sufficient type; the landscape in the Grimani missal at Venicebeing monumentally typical and perfect. 

[Footnote 12: No. 812. "Landscape, with the Death of St. PeterMartyr. "]

78. Now for your own practice in this, having first acquired the skillof exquisite delineation and laying of pure color, day by day you mustdraw some lovely natural form or flower or animal withoutobscurity--as in missal painting; choosing for study, in naturalscenes, only what is beautiful and strong in life. 

79. I fully anticipated, at the beginning of the Pre-Raphaelitemovement, that they would have carried forward this method of work;but they broke themselves to pieces by pursuing dramatic sensationinstead of beauty. So that to this day all the loveliest things in theworld remain unpainted; and although we have occasionally spasmodicefforts and fits of enthusiasm, and green meadows and apple-blossom tospare, it yet remains a fact that not in all this England, and stillless in France, have you a painter who has been able nobly to paintso much as a hedge of wild roses or a forest glade full of anemones orwood-sorrel. 

80. One reason of this has been the idea that such work was easy, onthe part of the young men who attempted it, and the total vulgarityand want of education in the great body of abler artists, renderingthem insensitive to qualities of fine delineation; the universal lawfor them being that they can draw a pig, but not a Venus. Forinstance, two landscape-painters of much reputation in England, andone of them in France also--David Cox and John Constable, represent aform of blunt and untrained faculty which in being very frank andsimple, apparently powerful, and needing no thought, intelligence ortrouble whatever to observe, and being wholly disorderly, slovenly andlicentious, and therein meeting with instant sympathy from thedisorderly public mind now resentful of every trammel and ignorant ofevery law--these two men, I say, represent in their intensity thequalities adverse to all accurate science or skill in landscape art;their work being the mere blundering of clever peasants, and deservingno name whatever in any school of true practice, but consummatelymischievous--first, in its easy satisfaction of the painter's ownself-complacencies, and then in the pretense of ability which blindsthe public to all the virtue of patience and to all the difficulty ofprecision. There is more real relation to the great schools of art, more fellowship with Bellini and Titian, in the humblest painter ofletters on village signboards than in men like these. 

Do not, therefore, think that the Gothic school is an easy one. Youmight more easily fill a house with pictures like Constable's fromgarret to cellar, than imitate one cluster of leaves by Van Eyck orGiotto; and among all the efforts that have been made to paint ourcommon wild-flowers, I have only once--and that in this very year, just in time to show it to you--seen the thing done rightly. 

81. But now observe: These flowers, beautiful as they are, are not ofthe Gothic school. The law of that school is that everything shall beseen clearly, or at least, only in such mist or faintness as shall bedelightful; and I have no doubt that the best introduction to it wouldbe the elementary practice of painting every study on a golden ground. This at once compels you to understand that the work is to beimaginative and decorative; that it represents beautiful things in theclearest way, but not under existing conditions; and that, in fact, you are producing jeweler's work, rather than pictures. Then thequalities of grace in design become paramount to every other; and youmay afterwards substitute clear sky for the golden background withoutdanger of loss or sacrifice of system: clear sky of golden light, ordeep and full blue, for the full blue of Titian is just as much apiece of conventional enameled background as if it were a plate ofgold; that depth of blue in relation to foreground objects beingwholly impossible. 

82. There is another immense advantage in this Byzantine and Gothicabstraction of decisive form, when it is joined with a faithful desireof whatever truth can be expressed on narrow conditions. It makes usobserve the vital points in which character consists, and educates theeye and mind in the habit of fastening and limiting themselves toessentials. In complete drawing, one is continually liable to be ledaside from the main points by picturesque accidents of light andshade; in Gothic drawing you must get the character, if at all, by akeenness of analysis which must be in constant exercise. 

83. And here I must beg of you very earnestly, once for all, to clearyour minds of any misapprehension of the nature of Gothic art, as ifit implied error and weakness, instead of severity. That a style isrestrained or severe does not mean that it is also erroneous. Muchmischief has been done--endless misapprehension induced in thismatter--by the blundering religious painters of Germany, who havebecome examples of the opposite error from our English painters of theConstable group. Our uneducated men work too bluntly to be ever in theright; but the Germans draw finely and resolutely wrong. Here is a"Riposo" of Overbeck's for instance, which the painter imagined to beelevated in style because he had drawn it without light and shade, andwith absolute decision: and so far, indeed, it is Gothic enough; butit is separated everlastingly from Gothic and from all other livingwork, because the painter was too vain to look at anything he had topaint, and drew every mass of his drapery in lines that were asimpossible as they were stiff, and stretched out the limbs of hisMadonna in actions as unlikely as they are uncomfortable. 

In all early Gothic art, indeed, you will find failure of this kind, especially distortion and rigidity, which are in many respectspainfully to be compared with the splendid repose of classic art. Butthe distortion is not Gothic; the intensity, the abstraction, theforce of character are, and the beauty of color. 

84. Here is a very imperfect, but illustrative border of flowers andanimals on a golden ground. The large letter contains, indeed, entirely feeble and ill-drawn figures: that is merely childish andfailing work of an inferior hand; it is not characteristic of Gothic, or any other school. But this peacock, being drawn with intensedelight in blue, on gold, and getting character of peacock in thegeneral sharp outline, instead of--as Rubens' peacocks--in blackshadow, is distinctively Gothic of fine style. 

85. I wish you therefore to begin your study of natural history andlandscape by discerning the simple outlines and the pleasant colors ofthings; and to rest in them as long as you can. But, observe, you canonly do this on one condition--that of striving also to create, inreality, the beauty which you seek in imagination. It will be whollyimpossible for you to retain the tranquillity of temper and felicityof faith necessary for noble purist painting, unless you are activelyengaged in promoting the felicity and peace of practical life. None ofthis bright Gothic art was ever done but either by faith in theattainableness of felicity in heaven, or under conditions of realorder and delicate loveliness on the earth. 

86. As long as I can possibly keep you among them, there you shallstay--among the almond and apple blossom. But if you go on into theveracities of the school of Clay, you will find there is something atthe roots of almond and apple trees, which is--This. You must look athim in the face--fight him--conquer him with what scathe you may: youneed not think to keep out of the way of him. There is Turner'sDragon; there is Michael Angelo's; there, a very little one ofCarpaccio's. Every soul of them had to understand the creature, andvery earnestly. 

87. Not that Michael Angelo understands his dragon as the others do. He was not enough a colorist either to catch the points of thecreature's aspect, or to feel the same hatred of them; but I confessmyself always amazed in looking at Michael Angelo's work here orelsewhere, at his total carelessness of anatomical character exceptonly in the human body. It is very easy to round a dragon's neck, ifthe only idea you have of it is that it is virtually no more than acoiled sausage; and, besides, anybody can round anything if you havefull scale from white high light to black shadow. 

88. But look here at Carpaccio, even in my copy. The colorist says, "First of all, as my delicious paroquet was ruby, so this nasty vipershall be black"; and then is the question, "Can I round him off, eventhough he is black, and make him slimy, and yet springy, and closedown--clotted like a pool of black blood on the earth--all the same?"Look at him beside Michael Angelo's, and then tell me the Venetianscan't draw! And also, Carpaccio does it with a touch, with one sweepof his brush; three minutes at the most allowed for all the beast;while Michael Angelo has been haggling at this dragon's neck for anhour. 

89. Then note also in Turner's that clinging to the earth--thespecialty of him--_il gran nemico_, "the great enemy, " Plutus. Hisclaws are like the Clefts of the Rock; his shoulders like itspinnacles; his belly deep into its every fissure--glued down--loadeddown; his bat's wings cannot lift him, they are rudimentary wingsonly. 

90. Before I tell you what he means himself, you must know what allthis smoke about him means. 

Nothing will be more precious to you, I think, in the practical studyof art, than the conviction, which will force itself on you more andmore every hour, of the way all things are bound together, little andgreat, in spirit and in matter. So that if you get once the right clueto any group of them, it will grasp the simplest, yet reach to thehighest truths. You know I have just been telling you how this schoolof materialism and clay involved itself at last in cloud and fire. Now, down to the least detail of method and subject, that will hold. 

91. Here is a perfect type, though not a complex one, of Gothiclandscape; the background gold, the trees drawn leaf by leaf, and fullgreen in color--no effect of light. Here is an equally typicalGreek-school landscape, by Wilson--lost wholly in golden mist; thetrees so slightly drawn that you don't know if they are trees ortowers, and no care for color whatever; perfectly deceptive andmarvelous effect of sunshine through the mist--"Apollo and thePython. " Now here is Raphael, exactly between the two--trees stilldrawn leaf by leaf, wholly formal; but beautiful mist coming graduallyinto the distance. Well, then, last, here is Turner's; Greek-school ofthe highest class; and you define his art, absolutely, as first thedisplaying intensely, and with the sternest intellect, of natural formas it is, and then the envelopment of it with cloud and fire. Only, there are two sorts of cloud and fire. He knows them both. There'sone, and there's another--the "Dudley" and the "Flint. " That's whatthe cloud and flame of the dragon mean: now, let me show you what thedragon means himself. 

92. I go back to another perfect landscape of the living Gothicschool. It is only a pencil outline, by Edward Burne-Jones, inillustration of the story of Psyche; it is the introduction of Psyche, after all her troubles, into heaven. 

Now in this of Burne-Jones, the landscape is clearly full of lighteverywhere, color or glass light: that is, the outline is preparedfor modification of color only. Every plant in the grass is setformally, grows perfectly, and may be realized completely. Exquisiteorder, and universal, with eternal life and light, this is the faithand effort of the schools of Crystal; and you may describe andcomplete their work quite literally by taking any verses of Chaucer inhis tender mood, and observing how he insists on the clearness andbrightness first, and then on the order. Thus, in Chaucer's "Dream":

 "Within an yle me thought I was, Where wall and yate was all of glasse, And so was closed round about That leavelesse none come in ne out, Uncouth and straunge to beholde, For every yate of fine golde A thousand fanes, aie turning, Entuned had, and briddes singing Divers, and on each fane a paire With open mouth again here; And of a sute were all the toures Subtily corven after floures, Of uncouth colors during aye That never been none seene in May. "

93. Next to this drawing of Psyche I place two of Turner's mostbeautiful classical landscapes. At once you are out of the opendaylight, either in sunshine admitted partially through tremblingleaves, or in the last rays of its setting, scarcely any more warm onthe darkness of the ilex wood. In both, the vegetation, thoughbeautiful, is absolutely wild and uncared for, as it seems, either byhuman or by higher powers, which, having appointed for it the laws ofits being, leave it to spring into such beauty as is consistent withdisease and alternate with decay. 

[Illustration: ÆSACUS AND HESPERIE. 

From the painting by Turner. ]

In the purest landscape, the _human_ subject is the immortality of thesoul by the faithfulness of love: in both the Turner landscapes it isthe death of the body by the impatience and error of love. The one isthe first glimpse of Hesperia to Æsacus:[13]

 "Aspicit Hesperien patria Cebrenida ripa, Injectos humeris siccantem sole capillos:"

in a few moments to lose her forever. The other is a mythologicalsubject of deeper meaning, the death of Procris. 

[Footnote 13: Ovid, "Metamorphoses, " XI. 769. ]

94. I just now referred to the landscape by John Bellini in theNational Gallery as one of the six best existing of the purist school, being wholly felicitous and enjoyable. In the foreground of it indeedis the martyrdom of Peter Martyr; but John Bellini looks upon that asan entirely cheerful and pleasing incident; it does not disturb oreven surprise him, much less displease in the slightest degree. 

Now, the next best landscape[14] to this, in the National Gallery, isa Florentine one on the edge of transition to the Greek feeling; andin that the distance is still beautiful, but misty, not clear; theflowers are still beautiful, but--intentionally--of the color ofblood; and in the foreground lies the dead body of Procris, whichdisturbs the poor painter greatly; and he has expressed his disturbedmind about it in the figure of a poor little brown--nearlyblack--Faun, or perhaps the god Faunus himself, who is much puzzled bythe death of Procris, and stoops over her, thinking it a woeful thingto find her pretty body lying there breathless, and all spotted withblood on the breast. 

[Footnote 14: (Of the Purist school. )]

95. You remember I told you how the earthly power that is necessary inart was shown by the flight of Dædalus to the [Greek: herpeton] Minos. Look for yourselves at the story of Procris as related to Minos in thefifteenth chapter of the third book of Apollodorus; and you will seewhy it is a Faun who is put to wonder at her, she having escaped byartifice from the Bestial power of Minos. Yet she is wholly anearth-nymph, and the son of Aurora must not only leave her, buthimself slay her; the myth of Semele desiring to see Zeus, and ofApollo and Coronis, and this having all the same main interest. Onceunderstand that, and you will see why Turner has put her death underthis deep shade of trees, the sun withdrawing his last ray; and why hehas put beside her the low type of an animal's pain, a dog licking itswounded paw. 

96. But now, I want you to understand Turner's depth of sympathyfarther still. In both these high mythical subjects the surroundingnature, though suffering, is still dignified and beautiful. Every linein which the master traces it, even where seemingly negligent, islovely, and set down with a meditative calmness which makes these twoetchings capable of being placed beside the most tranquil work ofHolbein or Dürer. In this "Cephalus" especially, note the extremeequality and serenity of every outline. But now here is a subject ofwhich you will wonder at first why Turner drew it at all. It has nobeauty whatsoever, no specialty of picturesqueness; and all its linesare cramped and poor. 

The crampness and the poverty are all intended. This is no longer tomake us think of the death of happy souls, but of the labor of unhappyones; at least, of the more or less limited, dullest, and--I must notsay homely, but--unhomely life of the neglected agricultural poor. 

It is a gleaner bringing down her one sheaf of corn to an oldwatermill, itself mossy and rent, scarcely able to get its stones toturn. An ill-bred dog stands, joyless, by the unfenced stream; twocountry boys lean, joyless, against a wall that is half broken down;and all about the steps down which the girl is bringing her sheaf, thebank of earth, flowerless and rugged, testifies only of its malignity;and in the black and sternly rugged etching--no longer graceful, buthard, and broken in every touch--the master insists upon the ancientcurse of the earth--"Thorns also and Thistles shall it bring forth tothee. "

97. And now you will see at once with what feeling Turner completes, in a more tender mood, this lovely subject of his Yorkshire stream, bygiving it the conditions of pastoral and agricultural life; the cattleby the pool, the milkmaid crossing the bridge with her pail on herhead, the mill with the old millstones, and its gleaming weir as hischief light led across behind the wild trees. 

[Illustration: MILL NEAR GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 

From the painting by Turner. ]

98. And not among our soft-flowing rivers only; but here among thetorrents of the Great Chartreuse, where another man would assuredlyhave drawn the monastery, Turner only draws their working mill. Andhere I am able to show you, fortunately, one of his works painted atthis time of his most earnest thought; when his imagination was stillfreshly filled with the Greek mythology, and he saw for the first timewith his own eyes the clouds come down upon the actual earth. 

[Illustration: L'AIGUILLETTE, VALLEY OF CLUSES. 

From the painting by Turner. ]

99. The scene is one which, in old times of Swiss traveling, you wouldall have known well; a little cascade which descends to the road fromGeneva to Chamouni, near the village of Maglans, from under asubordinate ridge of the Aiguille de Varens, known as the Aiguillette. You, none of you, probably, know the scene now; for your only objectis to get to Chamouni and up Mont Blanc and down again; but the Valleyof Cluse, if you knew it, is worth many Chamounis; and it impressedTurner profoundly. The facts of the spot are here given in mere andpure simplicity; a quite unpicturesque bridge, a few trees partlystunted and blasted by the violence of the torrent in storm at theirroots, a cottage with its mill-wheel--this has lately been pulled downto widen the road--and the brook shed from the rocks and finding itsway to join the Arve. The scene is absolutely Arcadian. All thetraditions of the Greek Hills, in their purity, were founded on suchrocks and shadows as these; and Turner has given you the birth of theShepherd Hermes on Cyllene, in its visible and solemn presence, thewhite cloud, Hermes Eriophoros forming out of heaven upon the Hills;the brook, distilled from it, as the type of human life, born of thecloud and vanishing into the cloud, led down by the haunting Hermesamong the ravines; and then, like the reflection of the cloud itself, the white sheep, with the dog of Argus guarding them, drinking fromthe stream. 

100. And now, do you see why I gave you, for the beginning of yourtypes of landscape thought, that "Junction of Tees and Greta" in theirmisty ravines; and this glen of the Greta above, in which Turner hasindeed done his best to paint the trees that live again after theirautumn--the twilight that will rise again with twilight of dawn--thestream that flows always, and the resting on the cliffs of theclouds that return if they vanish; but of human life, he says, a boyclimbing among the trees for his entangled kite, and these whitestones in the mountain churchyard, show forth all the strength and allthe end. 

101. You think that saying of the Greek school--Pindar's summary ofit, "[Greek: ti de tis; ti d'ou tis];"[15]--a sorrowful and degradinglesson. See at least, then, that you reach the level of suchdegradation. See that your lives be in nothing worse than a boy'sclimbing for his entangled kite. It will be well for you if you joinnot with those who instead of kites fly falcons; who instead ofobeying the last words of the great Cloud-Shepherd--to feed his sheep, live the lives--how much less than vanity!--of the war-wolf and thegier-eagle. Or, do you think it a dishonor to man to say to him thatDeath is but only Rest? See that when it draws near to you, you maylook to it, at least for sweetness of Rest; and that you recognize theLord of Death coming to you as a Shepherd gathering you into his Foldfor the night. 

[Footnote 15: Pyth. Viii. 95. (135. )]