The Poetry of Architecture. Volume 1 or 2 volumes (Ruskin Vault, 10D) 'Gift of the Fellows, 1965'

Description of MA 2389 (1) (MDW, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 15 February 1999):

On sheet pasted onto recto of front endpaper sheet:

MA 2389 [pencil]

[Then in Wedderburn's hand, in ink]

Ruskin MS.

2. MS. of parts of Modern Painters. Vol. 1.

3. The draft of the letter <to> on the "National Gallery"

(Times Jan 7. 1847) . p.38

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CHECK:

Board of Trade export license no. 9A/3189/1964 enclosed: consignor is Winifred A. Myers (Autographs) Ltd, 80 New Bond Street, London W1; consignee is PML. Description is 'One Ruskin M.S. (as her catalogue slip enclosed - Purchased at Sotheby's 16/12/64', to which is added in capital letters: 'NOT OF GREAT NATIONAL IMPORTANCE AND NO COPIES NECESSARY'. Value is £240. By Order of the Board of Trade, E.J. Cornell, Controller, Export Licensing Branch, with Initials of Authorised Officer [? - not EJC].

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Cook and Wedderburn commentary (1.680-81)

The MSS. of portions of this volume, to which the editors have had access, and which (so far as they are aware) are alone extant, are as follow:—

(I.) The Brantwood MS. contained in the second of the two MS. books of The Poetry of Architecture. The Modern Painters MSS. occupy sixty to seventy pages of this book, and consist of two drafts, (a) and (b)—probably the earliest made by the author—of this volume as first designed by him.

(a) The first draft of all proceeds only a very short way. The following is the text of it:—

"The ends of all landscape painting are, properly speaking, two. The first, to set before the spectator a true and accurate representation of objects. The second, to convey into the mind of the spectator the peculiar impression those objects made on the mind of the painter himself. Artists, as they aim at one or other of these ends, may be divided into the painters of facts, and the painters of emotion—two great classes, to one or other of which all landscape painters may be referred.

"The painters of facts have again two distinct ends. The one, to delight by accuracy of imitation; the other, to delight by the beauty of the represented objects. Both these ends are usually, in some degree, aimed at in the same picture; but those artists who excel most in imitation are apt to select only such subjects as may best display their power, and gradually to lose all sense and desire of intrinsic beauty, or any other desirable attribute, in the subject itself. While the painters of beauty, assisting the natural attractions of their subject by all the expedients of art, verge gradually in aim upon the painters of emotion.

"Of the purely imitative aim and manner, we may adduce as examples the pot and kettle part of the Dutch school; the minute labour of Gerard Dow and Ostade, to reach the perfect lustre of brass-pans and particular scarlet of ripe carrots; the inconceivable consumption of sight and time upon the chiselling (not merely the decoration, but even the rough traces of the stone-mason’s mallet) in the stone tablets with which they often support the elbows of their Dutch beauties;— and, in higher art, the laboured tears of Carlo Dolci’s Mater Dolorosas; the rustling damasks of Paul Veronese; the separate hairs and glancing jewels of some of the heads of Rembrandt; and—last, but not least— certain hats and sticks, kid gloves and satin slippers, on which our own Landseer has lately spent as much labour as, had it been applied as it is in the Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner, might have touched the hearts of half the world.

"In all these cases, be it observed, it is not his subject which the artist wishes to display, his only endeavour to please is by the manifestation of his own power of simple imitation. We are not intended to do obeisance to raw carrots, nor to be overpowered with a sense of sublimity in the extended orbit of a frying-pan; nor had Landseer any tyrannical and worse than Gessler-like intention of making the world bow before not even the presence, but the effigy of Prince Albert’s hat. In all cases we are expected to derive pleasure and bestow praise as we perceive the perfection of mere imitation. And the pleasure is felt and praise given by no small portion of the world, and in no small degree. I do not mean merely by the uneducated and childish, not merely by the great portion of the public who chase flies, dewdrops, lace and satin through an exhibition; but by many who call themselves connoisseurs, who exclaim at a figure as its greatest praise, that it seems to be coming out of the canvas, and measure the merit of a Crucifixion by the corpse colour of the wounded flesh.

"Nor do I deny that some of this praise is deserved by the imitative painter. Great industry, long practice, and perfect knowledge of all that is mechanical, of all that can be really taught, in art, are necessary to his success. And as a mechanic, as a clever workman, he is deserving of high praise,—of the same kind of praise which we bestow on a tapestry-worker or a turner, or any kind of artificer who is ready and dextrous with both eyes and fingers, but of no other kind, and of no more praise than these."

(b) Here the first draft (a) ends, and the essay is begun again, from a somewhat different point of departure, in draft (b). Chapter I. of this, after a short exordium on imitation in art, makes the following initial classification of the subject—namely, the two great ends of landscape painting, (1) the representation of facts, (2) of thoughts. This is the distinction afterwards drawn in pt. ii. sec. i. ch. i.; the draft has the passage there given about the artist as the spectator’s "conveyance, not companion; horse, not friend" (see above, p. 133 n., and the rest of the chapter closely follows the chapter just mentioned, having, however, an additional paragraph at the end which shows the comparatively modest proportions on which Modern Painters was then designed:—

"In the second part of the work I shall endeavour, as far as I think I understand them, to explain the qualities and powers of his [Turner’s] mind, and to institute such a comparison as the subject admits of between these and the faculties of the men who have until now been considered the Fathers of Landscape Art."

Chapter II. in the draft (of which chapter there are two versions) is substantially the same as chapter ii. in the text.

*

Note: This transcript has been checked against Wedderburn's typescript (Lancaster T22): for notes on that see T22.doc.

Textual notation:

r = recto

v = verso

fol. 17r '33' /

fol. 17v '34' /

MW