management of the distance most ingenious, and the painting of the foreground, with the single exception of Mr. Mulready's, above noticed, unquestionably the best in the room. I have before had occasion to notice a picture by this artist, "A Hayfield in a Shower," exhibited in the British Institution in 1847, and this year (1848) in the Scottish Academy, whose sky, in qualities of rainy, shattered, transparent grey, I have seldom seen equalled; nor the mist of its distance, expressive alike of previous heat and present beat of rain. I look with much interest for other works by this painter.2 § 8. A hurried visit to Scotland in the spring of this year, while it enables the writer to acknowledge the ardour and genius manifested in very many of the works exhibited in the Scottish Academy, cannot be considered as furnishing him with sufficient grounds for specific criticism. He cannot, however, err in testifying his concurrence in the opinion expressed to him by several of the most distinguished members of that Academy, respecting the singular merit of the works of Mr. H. Drummond. A cabinet picture of "Banditti on the Watch" appeared to him one of the most masterly, unaffected, and sterling pieces of quiet painting he has ever seen from the hand of a living artist; and the other works of Mr. Drummond were alike remarkable for their manly and earnest finish, and their sweetness of feeling. 3 [The following is the note of 1846 referred to above (p. 333 n.) which appeared in ed. 1 :—] "It is painful to trace upon the walls of the Exhibitions lately opened in London, the universal evidence of the mode of study deprecated in this passage; and to observe the various kinds of wreck which are taking place in consequence with many of our most promising artists. In the British Institution I saw only three pictures in which there was evidence of desire and effort to render a loved passage of Nature faithfully. These were, first, 1 [i.e. in the Addenda of ed. 1; see below, p. 342.] 2 [William Edward Dighton did not live to fulfil his early promise; he died in 1853 at the age of 31. He was a pupil of William Müller and afterwards of Frederick Goodall.] 3 [So in all eds. ; but "H. Drummond" should be "James Drummond" (1816-1877), Academician, and afterwards curator of the Scottish National Gallery. The picture referred to above was exhibited under the title “ A Mountain Pass.”] 4 [i.e., sec. ii. ch. iii. § 33, p. 288 above.] a hayfield in a shower (I cannot, at this moment, refer to the painter's name);1 with a wooden bridge and a single figure in the foreground, whose sky, in rainy, shattered, transparent grey, I have seldon seen equalled, and whose distance and foreground were alike carefully studied, the one obscure with the dusty vapour rising out of the heat of the shower, the other rich in broad and luxuriant leafage; (the foaming water on the left was, however, too cold and false in its reflections). The second was a sky of Lauder's, evidently taken straight from nature (which, with the peculiar judgment frequent in hanging committees, was placed at the top of the central room), but which was in great measure destroyed by the intrusion of a lay figure and dramatic sea; the third a forest study by Linnell. Among the various failures, I am sorry to have to note the prominent one of Turner's; a strange example of the way in which the greatest men may at times lose themselves, from causes it is impossible to trace. Happily, this picture cannot be construed into a sign of generally declining power, for I have seen three drawings executed at the same period, in which the artist's mind appears at its full force. Nothing, however, could be more unfortunate than the central portion of the picture in the Institution, a heavy mass of hot colour being employed in the principal shade, and a strange meaningless green spread over the delicate hues of the distance, while the shadows on the right were executed with pure and crude blue, such as I believe cannot be shown in any other work whatsoever of the great painter. I am also sorry to have to warn so good a painter as Mr. Goodall of his being altogether on a wrong road; the false chiaroscuro, exaggerated and impossible aerial perspective, and morbid prettiness and polish of complexions, in his large picture, are means of attracting vulgar notice which he certainly does not need, and which, if he continues to employ them, must end, and that speedily, in his sinking irrecoverably beneath the rank which it was the hope of all lovers of English art to see him attain and hold.5 6 "One more picture I must mention, as a refreshing and earnest study of truth, yet unexhibited, but which will appear in the Royal Academy; a seashore by Collins, where the sun, just risen and struggling through gaps of threatening cloud, is answered by the green, dark, transparent sea, with a broad flake of expanding fire. I have never seen the oppression of sunlight in clear, lurid, rainy atmosphere more perfectly or faithfully rendered, and the various portions of reflected and scattered light are all studied with equal truth and solemn feeling." 1 [By W. E. Dighton; see above, § 7, p. 340.] [James Eckford Lauder (1812-1869), a member of the Royal Scottish Academy.] 3 ["A Spring Wood Scene," exhibited at the Old Masters in 1883 as "The Fallen Monarch" (No. 57). For Linnell, see above, p. 333.] 4 [Turner's picture in the British Institution of 1847 was "Queen Mab's Cave," now No. 548 in the National Gallery; for notes on it, see Popular Handbook, 6th ed., ii. 221.] [Mr. F. Goodall's principal picture in the British Institution of 1846 was "The Brittany Conscript Leaving Home." For another reference to Mr. Goodall's work at this time, see preceding vol., p. 326 n.; for later references, see Academy Notes, 1859 and 1875.] [In the Academy of 1846 Collins exhibited "Hall Sands, Devon" (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum), and "Early Morning."] EPILOGUE (1883) § 1. THE above short pieces of criticism on contemporary art, first given, I believe, only in the second edition of Modern Painters, have become now extremely curious to myself, in connection with points of my personal history, of which some account may perhaps lead to a more indulgent retrospect of this book; and further illustrate others written at or near this time, as well as some of my drawings and manuscripts which may be thought worth preservation hereafter. 1841. I must set down a few fastening dates. In the winter of 1840, and spring of 1841, I was at Rome, Naples, and Venice, making a series of pencil sketches, partly in imitation of Prout, partly of David Roberts. I had not the smallest notion of writing about art at that time3 (many people, myself included, thought I was dying, and should never write about anything). These sketches, though full of weaknesses and vulgarities, have also much good in them; two are placed at Oxford as records of Venice, of which one was used to paint from by Prout himself; and all of them are of historical interest in their accuracy of representation. Sketching only in this way from nature, I was trying to make water-colour drawings and vignettes in imitation of Turner; which were extremely absurd and weak. 1 [Not so. They were reprinted in all the subsequent editions.] 5 2 [For the winter of 1840-1841, see Vol. I. pp. xxxviii.-xli., and Præterita, ii. ch. iii.] [But see the Letter to a College Friend of Feb. 12, 1841: Vol. I. p. 434.] 4 [The two drawings are Nos. 64 and 65 in the Reference Series. No. 65 (“Casa Contarini Fasan") is given opposite p. 212 in Vol. III. No. 64 ("Court of the Ducal Palace") is given here in this volume, facing p. 40. For other drawings made on the same tour see Plates 13-19 in Vol. I.] 5 [As, for instance, the drawing of Amboise: in Vol. II. between pp. 170–171.] § 2. 1842. In the spring of this year, I made, by mere accident, my first drawing of leafage in natural growth—a few ivy leaves round a stump in the hedge of the Norwood road, under Tulse Hill: there is a brick built terrace of fashionable dwelling-houses now, where the hedge used to be. I never (in my drawings, however much in my writings) imitated anybody any more after that one sketch was made; but entered at once on the course of study which enabled me afterwards to understand Pre-Raphaelitism.1 Few drawings, however, made in that year, now remain in my possession. A book of plant studies, given to Mr. C. E. Norton, represents the usual manner of them very perfectly. One or two studies of light and shade, and a few of trees, I still possess, and may have occasion to engrave.2 § 3. In the same spring, Turner first showed his Swiss sketches, and offered to realize ten of them. The Splügen drawing, of which the story is told at page 74 of my Turner notes,* and which was bought for me by my friends on my recovery from illness in 1878, was made at that time, and shown with the sketches. My admiration of it afterwards directed mainly all my mountain - studies † and geological researches. I obtained in the same year the drawings of Coblentz and Lucerne town, which directed me into new lines of thought with respect to colour; so that it was a kind of birth-year to me, in all ways at once. In its autumn I was again on the Continent-chiefly at Chamouni ;—then, returning in the full enthusiasm and rush of sap in the too 3 * Published by the Fine Art Society, 1878.4 † Not into imitation of the drawing itself, but to investigation of the mountain forms which it illustrated. [For this incident, see Vol. III. p. xxi.; and Præterita, ii. ch. iv. §§ 74, 77, and see the Plate, No. 25, in Vol. II.] 2 [See, for drawings of 1842, Plate 25 and the frontispiece in Vol. II.] [See the Epilogue to the "Turner notes" of 1878; and for the Coblentz, No. 62 in the "Notes. The drawing is published in vol. ii. of Turner and Ruskin; the Lucerne Town in vol. i. of that work.] [P. 74 in the later editions of that pamphlet. The reference is to the Epilogue.] literally sapling and stripling mind of me, wrote the first volume of Modern Painters.1 2 Next year (1843) Turner painted for me the Goldau and Dazio Grande; drawings which have become to me, now, very curious symbols of his life, and of mine. 4. In 1844 I went back to Chamouni, and worked in entirely right and profitable ways. A drawing of Mont Blanc with the aiguilles (Charmoz to Midi), from above Les Tines, mostly pencil, on dark grey, but with a piece of rock coloured in the foreground,* represents my power at this time sufficiently.* 5 In 1845, the first volume of Modern Painters having already begun to make its mark, I thought it necessary to look more carefully at some of the pictures at Florence and Venice before proceeding with the essay. My father could not spare time to go with me; so he asked me to take my Chamouni guide, Joseph Couttet, by way of pro-papa. He was a tutor, and domestic Pope's legate, of perfect fidelity and good sense: a good practical physician also; I never had occasion to call in any other; and he always after that time travelled with me when my father and mother could not, (my mother never left my father,) until Couttet's death in 1875. He was nearly fifty when, in 1845, he met me at Geneva in early April; and we travelled leisurely through Lower Savoy and Provence to Fréjus. It was starlight, after a long day's drive, as we came down towards the sea over the southern moors of wild myrtle; and I recollect teasing old Joseph considerably by humming "com' è gentil "" all the way." * Now in the possession of Mrs. John Simon. 1 [See Vol. III. p. xxvii.] 2 [Nos. 65 and 58 in the Notes on his Drawings by Turner. engraved for the fourth volume of Modern Painters, Plate 50.] Goldau was [For extracts from his diary at Chamouni in 1844, see Vol. III. pp. xxv.-xxvii.] date, however, is 1842.] 6 [For Couttet, see above, Introduction, p. xxv.] "Com' è gentil la notte," serenade in Donizetti's Don Pasquale.] 7 [For the itinerary, see above, Introduction, p. xxiv. Ruskin made the stage from Digne to Draguignan in a day, which was prolonged owing to a break down in his |