The Life of John RuskinCollingwood, W. G. (William Gershom)
Philosophy
The Life of John Ruskin
Collingwood, W. G. (William Gershom)
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Ruskin, John, 1819-1900
"Chapter the last, section 21: _The duty and after privileges of
all students_.... Go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk
with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thoughts but
how best to penetrate her meaning, and remember her instruction;
rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing;
believing all things to be right and good, and rejoicing always in
the truth."
And at Coventry Patmore's request he went to the Academy to look at the
pictures in question. Yes; the faces were ugly: Millais' "Mariana" was a
piece of idolatrous Papistry, and there was a mistake in the
perspective. Collins' "Convent Thoughts"--more Popery; but very
careful--"the tadpole too small for its age"; but what studies of
plants! And there was his own "Alisma Plantago," which he had been
drawing for "Stones of Venice" (vol. i., plate 7) and describing: "The
lines through its body, which are of peculiar beauty, mark the different
expansions of its fibres, and are, I think, exactly the same as those
which would be traced by the currents of a river entering a lake of the
shape of the leaf, at the end where the stalk is, and passing out at its
point." Curvature was one of the special subjects of Ruskin, the one he
found most neglected by ordinary artists. The "Alisma" was a test of
observation and draughtsmanship. He had never seen it so thoroughly or
so well drawn, and heartily wished the study were his.
Looking again at the other works of the school, he found that the one
mistake in the "Mariana" was the only error in perspective in the whole
series of pictures; which could not be said of any twelve works,
containing architecture, by popular artists in the exhibition; and that,
as studies both of drapery and of every other minor detail, there had
been nothing in art so earnest or so complete as these pictures since
the days of Albert Dürer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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