On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2): A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and LiteratureRuskin, John
General
On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2): A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature
Ruskin, John
Art; Essays; Literature
188. Meantime, the other has been watching the change of the clouds, and
the march of the light along the mountain sides; he beholds the entire
scene in broad, soft masses of true gradation, and the very feebleness
of his sight is in some sort an advantage to him, in making him more
sensible of the aerial mystery of distance, and hiding from him the
multitudes of circumstances which it would have been impossible for him
to represent. But there is not one change in the casting of the jagged
shadows along the hollows of the hills, but it is fixed on his mind
forever; not a flake of spray has broken from the sea of cloud about
their bases, but he has watched it as it melts away, and could recall it
to its lost place in heaven by the slightest effort of his thoughts. Not
only so, but thousands and thousands of such images, of older scenes,
remain congregated in his mind, each mingling in new associations with
those now visibly passing before him, and these again confused with
other images of his own ceaseless, sleepless imagination, flashing by in
sudden troops. Fancy how his paper will be covered with stray symbols
and blots, and undecipherable shorthand:--as for his sitting down to
"draw from Nature," there was not one of the things which he wished to
represent, that stayed for so much as five seconds together: but none of
them escaped for all that: they are sealed up in that strange storehouse
of his; he may take one of them out perhaps, this day twenty years, and
paint it in his dark room, far away. Now, observe, you may tell both of
these men, when they are young, that they are to be honest, that they
have an important function, and that they are not to care what Raphael
did. This you may wholesomely impress on them both. But fancy the
exquisite absurdity of expecting either of them to possess any of the
qualities of the other.
189. I have supposed the feebleness of sight in the last, and of
invention in the first painter, that the contrast between them might be
more striking; but, with very slight modification, both the characters
are real. Grant to the first considerable inventive power, with
exquisite sense of color; and give to the second, in addition to all his
other faculties, the eye of an eagle; and the first is John Everett
Millais, the second Joseph Mallard William Turner.
They are among the few men who have defied all false teaching, and have
therefore, in great measure, done justice to the gifts with which they
were intrusted. They stand at opposite poles, marking culminating points
of art in both directions; between them, or in various relations to
them, we may class five or six more living artists who, in like manner,
have done justice to their powers. I trust that I may be pardoned for
naming them, in order that the reader may know how the strong innate
genius in each has been invariably accompanied with the same humility,
earnestness, and industry in study.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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