David Roberts 'was a friend of the family and sometimes joined the dinner -party with which Ruskin's father celebrated his son's birthday'( Works, 3.223). In Praeterita Ruskin described the impact made by the work of David Roberts upon his own developing practice as a young draughtsman, for in 1840, Roberts had exhibited his pictures of the Holy Land:
They were the first studies ever made conscientiously by an English (sic) painter, not to exhibit his own skill or make capital out of his subjects, but to give true portraiture of scenes of historical and religious interest. They were faithful and laborious beyond any outlines from nature I had ever seen, and I felt also that their severely restricted method was within reach of my own skill, and applicable to my own purposes... He taught me, of absolute good, the use of the fine point instead of the blunt one; attention and indefatigable correctness in detail; and the simplest means of expressing ordinary light and shade on grey ground, flat wash for the full shadows and heightening of the graduated lights by warm white
Ruskin was to use the technique during the winter and spring of 1841 when he was in Italy.
In Academy Notes, 1855 ( Works, 14.28) Ruskin attacked David Roberts 's picture, Rome:
Mr. Roberts was once in the habit of painting carefully-finished cabinet pictures, which were well composed (in the common sense), and fairly executed in the details. Had he continued these, painting more and more, instead of less and less from nature, he might by this time have been a serviceable painter. Is it altogether too late to warn him that he is fast becoming nothing more than an Academician?
Cook and Wedderburn note that' sometimes Ruskin spoke with arrogance' ( Works, 14.xxix) in his art criticism and draw attention to a passage in Frith, My Autobiography and Reminiscences Vol 1 p.128 in which he appears to make a reference to Ruskin 'the great art critic' and his friendship with David Roberts:
In the exercise of his high calling, friendship for a painter was not permitted to bias the critic's judgment of his pictures; and though David Roberts R.A., was the intimate personal friend of the critic, his works found so little favour with the brilliant writer, that in one of the annual notices of the Exhibition they received a very savage castigation. Feeling, perhaps, that Roberts might find it difficult to reconcile an attempt to do him a serious injury with the usual interpretation of the term friendship, the critic wrote a private note to the artist, explaining his action on the hypothesis of a self-imposed duty to the public, and concluded his note by the expression of a hope that severe criticism would not interfere with the sincere feeling of friendship which the writer hoped would always exist, etc., etc., To this Roberts replied that the first time he met the critic he would give him a sound thrashing; and he ventured to "hope that a broken head would not interfere with the sincere feeling of friendship which he hoped would always exist," etc., etc.
Ruskin's probable reference to this also appeared in print:
I deeply regret having been forced to speak again of this picture, because... I have great personal regard for Mr. Roberts; but it may be well to state at once, that whenever I blame a painting, I do so as gently as is consistent with just explanation of its principal defects. I never say half of what I could say in its disfavour; and it will be found that when once I have felt it my duty to attack a picture, the worst policy which the friends of the artist can possibly adopt will be to defend it. ( Works, 14.35)
Roberts was seen by Ruskin to be a skillful draughtsman especially within the field of architectural studies in that he knew 'so much perspective as would enable him to draw a Gothic arch to scale at a given angle and distance' ( Works, 15.17). However, Ruskin noted that he 'drew all the steeples in Europe without ever succeeding in making one of them look as if a jackdaw could fly round it, or a bell swing in it ( Works, 30.lxvii). Ruskin believed David Roberts to be 'utterly destitute of imagination, and incapable of colour' ( Works, 14.301). His final assessment is contained in Praeterita:
Absolutely careful and faithful... David Roberts was, though in his own restricted terms; fastening on the constant aspect of any place, and drawing that in grey shade, and so much of what might pass for light as enough showed magnitude, distance, and grace of detail. He was like a kind of grey mirror: he gave the greatness and richness of things, and such height and space, and standing of wall and rock, as one saw to be true: and with unwearied industry, both in Egypt and Spain, brought home records of which the value is now forgotten in the perfect detail of photography, and sensational realism of light which Holman Hunt first showed to be possible. ( Works, 35.404)