Kitabı oku: «Arrows of the Chace, vol. 1/2», sayfa 8

[From “The Times,” January 20, 1876.]
THE FREDERICK WALKER EXHIBITION

Dear Mr. Marks:¹¹⁷ You ask me to say what I feel of Frederick Walker’s work, now seen in some collective mass, as far as anything can be seen in black-veiled London. You have long known my admiration of his genius, my delight in many passages of his art. These, while he lived, were all I cared to express. If you will have me speak of him now, I will speak the whole truth of what I feel—namely, that every soul in London interested in art ought to go to see that Exhibition, and, amid all the beauty and the sadness of it, very diligently to try and examine themselves as to the share they have had, in their own busy modern life, in arresting the power of this man at the point where it stayed. Very chief share they have had, assuredly. But he himself, in the liberal and radical temper of modern youth, has had his own part in casting down his strength, following wantonly or obstinately his own fancies wherever they led him. For instance, it being Nature’s opinion that sky should usually be blue, and it being Mr. Walker’s opinion that it should be the color of buff plaster, he resolutely makes it so, for his own isolated satisfaction, partly in affectation also, buff skies being considered by the public more sentimental than blue ones. Again, the laws of all good painting having been long ago determined by absolute masters, whose work cannot be bettered nor departed from—Titian having determined forever what oil-painting is, Angelico what tempera-painting is, Perugino what fresco-painting is, two hundred years of noble miniature-painting what minutest work on ivory is, and, in modern times, a score of entirely skillful and disciplined draughtsmen what pure water-color and pure body-color painting on paper are (Turner’s Yorkshire drawing of Hornby Castle, now at Kensington, and John Lewis’s “Encampment under Sinai,”¹¹⁸ being nameable at once as unsurpassable standards), here is Mr. Walker refusing to learn anything from any of those schools or masters, but inventing a semi-miniature, quarter fresco, quarter wash manner of his own—exquisitely clever, and reaching, under such clever management, delightfullest results here and there, but which betrays his genius into perpetual experiment instead of achievement, and his life into woeful vacillation between the good, old, quiet room of the Water-Color Society, and your labyrinthine magnificence at Burlington House.

Lastly, and in worst error, the libraries of England being full of true and noble books—her annals of true and noble history, and her traditions of beautiful and noble—in these scientific times I must say, I suppose, “mythology”—not religion—from all these elements of mental education and subjects of serviceable art, he turns recklessly away to enrich the advertisements of the circulating library, to sketch whatever pleases his fancy, barefooted, or in dainty boots, of modern beggary and fashion, and enforce, with laboriously symbolical pathos, his adherence to Justice Shallow’s sublime theology that “all shall die.”

That theology has indeed been preached by stronger men, again and again, from Horace’s days to our own, but never to so little purpose. “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” said wisely in his way, the Latin farmer: ate his beans and bacon in comfort, had his suppers of the gods on the fair earth, with his servants jesting round the table, and left eternal monuments of earthly wisdom and of cricket-song. “Let us labor and be just, for to-morrow we die, and after death the Judgment,” said Holbein and Durer, and left eternal monuments of upright human toil and honorable gloom of godly fear. “Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, for to-morrow we die, and shall be with God,” said Angelico and Giotto, and left eternal monuments of divinely-blazoned heraldry of Heaven. “Let us smoke pipes, make money, read bad novels, walk in bad air, and say sentimentally how sick we are in the afternoon, for to-morrow we die, and shall be made ourselves clay pipes,” says the modern world, and drags this poor bright painter down into the abyss with it, vainly clutching at a handful or two of scent and flowers in the May gardens.

Under which sorrowful terms, being told also by your grand Academicians that he should paint the nude, and, accordingly, wasting a year or two of his life in trying to paint schoolboys’ backs and legs without their shirts or breeches, and with such other magazine material as he can pick up of sick gypsies, faded gentlewomen, pretty girls disguised as paupers, and the red-roofed or gray remnants of old English villages and manor-house, last wrecks of the country’s peace and honor, remaining yet visible among the black ravages of its ruin, he supplies the demands of his temporary public, scarcely patient, even now that he has gone, to pause beside his delicate tulips or under his sharp-leaved willows, and repent for the passing tints and fallen petals of the life that might have been so precious, and, perhaps, in better days, prolonged.

That is the main moral of the Exhibition. Of the beauty of the drawings, accepting them for what they aim at being, there is little need that I should add anything to what has been already said rightly by the chief organs of the London Press. Nothing can go beyond them in subtlety of exhibited touch (to be distinguished, however, observe always from the serene completion of master’s work, disdaining the applause to be gained by its manifestation); their harmonies of amber-color and purple are full of exquisite beauty in their chosen key; their composition always graceful, often admirable, and the sympathy they express with all conditions of human life most kind and true; not without power of rendering character which would have been more recognized in an inferior artist, because it would have been less restrained by the love of beauty.

I might, perhaps, in my days of youth and good fortune, have written what the public would have called “eloquent passages” on the subjects of the Almshouse and the Old Gate;[121] being now myself old and decrepit (besides being much bothered with beggars, and in perpetual feud with parish officers), and having seen every building I cared for in the world ruined, I pass these two pictures somewhat hastily by, and try to enjoy myself a little in the cottage gardens. Only one of them, however,—No. 71,—has right sunshine in it, and that is a sort of walled paddock where I begin directly to feel uncomfortable about the lamb, lest, perchance, some front shop in the cottages belong to a butcher. If only it and I could get away to a bit of thymy hill-side, we should be so much happier, leaving the luminous—perhaps too ideally luminous—child to adorn the pathetic paddock. I am too shy to speak to either of those two beautiful ladies among the lilies (37, 67), and take refuge among the shy children before the “Chaplain’s Daughter” (20)—delightfullest, it seems to me, of the minor designs, and a piece of most true and wise satire. The sketches of the “Daughter of Heth” go far to tempt me to read the novel; and, ashamed of this weakness, I retreat resolutely to the side of the exemplary young girl knitting in the “Old Farm Garden” (33), and would instantly pick up her ball of worsted for her, but that I wouldn’t for the world disappoint the cat. No drawing in the room is more delicately completed than this unpretending subject, and the flower-painting in it, for instantaneous grace of creative touch, cannot be rivalled; it is worth all the Dutch flower-pieces in the world.

Much instructed, and more humiliated, by passage after passage of its rapidly-grouped color, I get finally away into the comfortable corner beside the salmon-fishers and the mushrooms; and the last-named drawing, despise me who may, keeps me till I’ve no more time to stay, for it entirely beats my dear old William Hunt in the simplicity of its execution, and rivals him in the subtlest truth.

I say nothing of the “Fishmonger’s Stalls” (952), though there are qualities of the same kind in these also, for they somewhat provoke me by their waste of time—the labor spent on one of them would have painted twenty instructive studies of fish of their real size. And it is well for artists in general to observe that when they do condescend to paint still life carefully—whether fruit, fungi, or fish—it must at least be of the real size. The portrait of a man or woman is only justifiably made small that it may be portable, and nobody wants to carry about the miniature of a cod; and if the reader will waste five minutes of his season in London in the National Gallery, he may see in the hand of Perugino’s Tobias a fish worth all these on the boards together.

Some blame of the same kind attaches to the marvellous drawing No. 68. It is all very well for a young artist to show how much work he can put into an inch, but very painful for an old gentleman of fifty-seven to have to make out all the groups through a magnifying-glass. I could say something malicious about the boat, in consequence of the effect of this exertion on my temper, but will not, and leave with unqualified praise the remainder of the lesser drawings to the attention which each will variously reward.

Nor, in what I have already, it may be thought, too bluntly said, ought the friends of the noble artist to feel that I am unkind. It is because I know his real power more deeply than any of the admirers who give him indiscriminate applause, that I think it right distinctly to mark the causes which prevented his reaching heights they did not conceive, and ended by placing one more tablet in the street of tombs, which the passionate folly and uninstructed confusion of modern English society prolong into dark perspective above the graves of its youth.

I am, dear Marks, always very faithfully yours,

J. Ruskin.

VI.
ARCHITECTURE

[From “The Oxford Museum,” by H. W. Acland and J. Ruskin. 1859. pp. 44-56.]
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND THE OXFORD MUSEUM. ¹¹⁹

Dear Acland: I have been very anxious, since I last heard from you, respecting the progress of the works at the Museum, as I thought I could trace in your expressions some doubt of an entirely satisfactory issue.

Entirely satisfactory very few issues are, or can be; and when the enterprise, as in this instance, involves the development of many new and progressive principles, we must always be prepared for a due measure of disappointment,—due partly to human weakness, and partly to what the ancients would have called fate,—and we may, perhaps, most wisely call the law of trial, which forbids any great good being usually accomplished without various compensations and deductions, probably not a little humiliating.

Perhaps in writing to you what seems to me to be the bearing of matters respecting your Museum, I may be answering a few of the doubts of others, as well as fears of your own.

I am quite sure that when you first used your influence to advocate the claims of a Gothic design, you did so under the conviction, shared by all the seriously-purposed defenders of the Gothic style, that the essence and power of Gothic, properly so called, lay in its adaptability to all need; in that perfect and unlimited flexibility which would enable the architect to provide all that was required, in the simplest and most convenient way; and to give you the best offices, the best lecture-rooms, laboratories, and museums, which could be provided with the sum of money at his disposal.

So far as the architect has failed in doing this; so far as you find yourself, with the other professors, in anywise inconvenienced by forms of architecture; so far as pillars or piers come in your way, when you have to point, or vaults in the way of your voice, when you have to speak, or mullions in the way of your light, when you want to see—just so far the architect has failed in expressing his own principles, or those of pure Gothic art. I do not suppose that such failure has taken place to any considerable extent; but so far as it has taken place, it cannot in justice be laid to the score of the style, since precedent has shown sufficiently, that very uncomfortable and useless rooms may be provided in all other styles as well as in Gothic; and I think if, in a building arranged for many objects of various kinds, at a time when the practice of architecture has been somewhat confused by the inventions of modern science, and is hardly yet organized completely with respect to the new means at his disposal; if, under such circumstances, and with somewhat limited funds, you have yet obtained a building in all main points properly fulfilling its requirements, you have, I think, as much as could be hoped from the adoption of any style whatsoever.

But I am much more anxious about the decoration of the building; for I fear that it will be hurried in completion, and that, partly in haste and partly in mistimed economy, a great opportunity may be lost of advancing the best interest of architectural, and in that, of all other arts. For the principles of Gothic decoration, in themselves as simple and beautiful as those of Gothic construction, are far less understood, as yet, by the English public, and it is little likely that any effective measures can be taken to carry them out. You know as well as I, what those principles are; yet it may be convenient to you that I should here state them briefly as I accept them myself, and have reason to suppose they are accepted by the principal promoters of the Gothic revival.

I. The first principle of Gothic decoration is that a given quantity of good art will be more generally useful when exhibited on a large scale, and forming part of a connected system, than when it is small and separated. That is to say, a piece of sculpture or painting, of a certain allowed merit, will be more useful when seen on the front of a building, or at the end of a room, and therefore by many persons, than if it be so small as to be only capable of being seen by one or two at a time; and it will be more useful when so combined with other work as to produce that kind of impression usually termed “sublime,”—as it is felt on looking at any great series of fixed paintings, or at the front of a cathedral,—than if it be so separated as to excite only a special wonder or admiration, such as we feel for a jewel in a cabinet.

The paintings by Meissonier in the French Exhibition of this year were bought, I believe, before the Exhibition opened, for 250 guineas each. They each represented one figure, about six inches high—one, a student reading; the other, a courtier standing in a dress-coat. Neither of these paintings conveyed any information, or produced any emotion whatever, except that of surprise at their minute and dextrous execution. They will be placed by their possessors on the walls of small private apartments, where they will probably, once or twice a week, form the subject of five minutes’ conversation while people drink their coffee after dinner. The sum expended on these toys would have been amply sufficient to cover a large building with noble frescoes, appealing to every passer-by, and representing a large portion of the history of any given period. But the general tendency of the European patrons of art is to grudge all sums spent in a way thus calculated to confer benefit on the public, and to grudge none for minute treasures of which the principal advantage is that a lock and key can always render them invisible.

I have no hesitation in saying that an acquisitive selfishness, rejoicing somewhat even in the sensation of possessing what can NOT be seen by others, is at the root of this art-patronage. It is, of course, coupled with a sense of securer and more convenient investment in what may be easily protected and easily carried from place to place, than in large and immovable works; and also with a vulgar delight in the minute curiosities of productive art, rather than in the exercise of inventive genius, or the expression of great facts or emotions.

The first aim of the Gothic Revivalists is to counteract, as far as possible, this feeling on all its three grounds. We desire (A) to make art large and publicly beneficial, instead of small and privately engrossed or secluded; (B) to make art fixed instead of portable, associating it with local character and historical memory; (C) to make art expressive instead of curious, valuable for its suggestions and teachings, more than for the mode of its manufacture.

II. The second great principle of the Gothic Revivalists is that all art employed in decoration should be informative, conveying truthful statements about natural facts, if it conveys any statement. It may sometimes merely compose its decorations of mosaics, checkers, bosses, or other meaningless ornaments: but if it represents organic form (and in all important places it will represent it), it will give that form truthfully, with as much resemblance to nature as the necessary treatment of the piece of ornament in question will admit of.

This principle is more disputed than the first among the Gothic Revivalists themselves. I, however, hold it simply and entirely, believing that ornamentation is always, cæteris paribus, most valuable and beautiful when it is founded on the most extended knowledge of natural forms, and conveys continually such knowledge to the spectator.¹²⁰

III. The third great principle of the Gothic Revival is that all architectural ornamentation should be executed by the men who design it, and should be of various degrees of excellence, admitting, and therefore exciting, the intelligent co-operation of various classes of workmen; and that a great public edifice should be, in sculpture and painting, somewhat the same as a great chorus of music, in which, while, perhaps, there may be only one or two voices perfectly trained, and of perfect sweetness (the rest being in various degrees weaker and less cultivated), yet all being ruled in harmony, and each sustaining a part consistent with its strength, the body of sound is sublime, in spite of individual weaknesses.

The Museum at Oxford was, I know, intended by its designer to exhibit in its decoration the working of these three principles; but in the very fact of its doing so, it becomes exposed to chances of occasional failure, or even to serious discomfitures, such as would not at all have attended the adoption of an established mode of modern work. It is easy to carve capitals on models known for four thousand years, and impossible to fail in the application of mechanical methods and formalized rules. But it is not possible to appeal vigorously to new canons of judgment without the chance of giving offence; nor to summon into service the various phases of human temper and intelligence, without occasionally finding the tempers rough and the intelligence feeble. The Oxford Museum is, I believe, the first building in this country which has had its ornamentation, in any telling parts, trusted to the invention of the workman: the result is highly satisfactory, the projecting windows of the staircases being as beautiful in effect as anything I know in civil Gothic: but far more may be accomplished for the building if the completion of its carving be not hastened; many men of high artistic power might be brought to take an interest in it, and various lessons and suggestions given to the workmen which would materially advantage the final decoration of leading features. No very great Gothic building, so far as I know, was ever yet completed without some of this wise deliberation and fruitful patience.

I was in hopes from the beginning that the sculpture might have been rendered typically illustrative of the English Flora: how far this idea has been as yet carried out I do not know; but I know that it cannot be properly carried out without a careful examination of the available character of the principal genera, such as architects have not hitherto undertaken. The proposal which I heard advanced the other day, of adding a bold entrance-porch to the façade, appeared to me every way full of advantage, the blankness of the façade having been, to my mind, from the first, a serious fault in the design. If a subscription were opened for the purpose of erecting one, I should think there were few persons interested in modern art who would not be glad to join in forwarding such an object.

I think I could answer for some portions of the design being superintended by the best of our modern sculptors and painters; and I believe that, if so superintended, the porch might and would become the crowning beauty of the building, and make all the difference between its being only a satisfactory and meritorious work, or a most lovely and impressive one.

The interior decoration is a matter of much greater difficulty; perhaps you will allow me to defer the few words I have to say about it till I have time for another letter: which, however, I hope to find speedily.

Believe me, my dear Acland, ever affectionately yours,

J. Ruskin¹²¹