Lectures on Landscape: Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871Ruskin, John
Philosophy
Lectures on Landscape: Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871
Ruskin, John
Landscape painting
33. You will find in your educational series[6] many drawings
illustrative of the method; but I have enlarged here the part that is
executed with the pen, out of this smaller drawing, that you may see
with what fearless strength Holbein delineates even the most delicate
folds of the veil on the head, and of the light muslin on the
shoulders, giving them delicacy, not by the thinness of his line, but
by its exquisite veracity.
[Footnote 6: At the Ruskin Drawing School, Oxford.]
The eye will endure with patience, or even linger with pleasure, on
any line that is right, however coarse; while the faintest or finest
that is wrong will be forcibly destructive. And again and again I have
to recommend you to draw always as if you were engraving, and as if
the line could not be changed.
34. The method used by Turner in the _Liber Studiorum_ is precisely
analogous to that of Holbein. The lines of these etchings are to
trees, rocks, or buildings, absolutely what these of Holbein are; not
suggestions of contingent grace, but determinations of the limits of
future form. You will see the explanatory office of such lines by
placing this outline over my drawing of the stone, until the lines
coincide with the limits of the shadow. You will find that it
intensifies and explains the forms which otherwise would have escaped
notice, and that a perfectly gradated wash of neutral tint with an
outline of this kind is all that is necessary for grammatical
statement of forms. It is all that the great colorists need for their
studies; they would think it wasted time to go farther; but, if you
have no eye for color, you may go farther in another manner, with
enjoyment.
35. Now to go back to Turner.
The _first_ great object of the _Liber Studiorum_, for which I
requested you in my sixth Lecture[7] to make constant use of it, is
the delineation of solid form by outline and shadow. But a yet more
important purpose in each of the designs in that book is the
expression of such landscape powers and character as have especial
relation to the pleasures and pain of human life--but especially the
pain. And it is in this respect that I desired you (Sect. 172) to be
assured, not merely of their superiority, but of their absolute
difference in kind from photography, as works of disciplined design.
[Footnote 7: "Lectures on Art, 1870," Sec. 170.]
[Illustration: NEAR BLAIR ATHOL.
From the painting by Turner.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account