MODERN PAINTERS, by John Ruskin (5 vols., 1843, 1846, 1856, 1860), was begun in order to vindicate the landscape painting of J. M. W. Turner against adverse criticism.
For this purpose Ruskin set forth systemati cally and extensively what he conceived to be the wsthetics of visual art — not of landscape painting only, but of painting in general and sculpture as well, with lengthy illustrations from their supposed analogues in literature— the whole in an elaborate a priori analysis of the "Ideas Conveyed by Art" and of the several "Faculties" which produce or appreciate them. Incidental to the defense of Turner, however, come appraisals of other painters, and refuta tions of critics, which confuse the theoretical treatment; this, as the work goes on, becomes more and more arbitrary, digressive, desultory, and wilful, at the same time that it retires more and more from the reader's attention; until, though formally preserved throughout, it has lost, long before the end, all effectiveness as an organization of the subject.
The key to 'Modern Painters' lies much less in its systematic structure than in its theory— pervasive across all divisions and subdivisions, and persistent throughout Ruskin's 17 years of conscientious modification of opinion by study— concerning the general relation of man and art to nature. The notion that art can improve upon nature seemed to Ruskin pre sumptuous—a part of the pagan and Renaissance tendency to magnify man and his works. His own faith taught that man is de praved and fallen, and that there is no good in him. Hence Ruskin would minimize man's function in art; he is definitely opposed to human tradition, and is ready, with Words worth, to throw away the books and discard the schools. Greatness in art, moreover, com monly assumed to be an effect of human powers, is nothing of the sort; it is a divine gift. "Composition," "imagination," *idealiza tion," and the like— which rearrange actuality to the ends of art — are not achievable by any amount of conscious effort ; given humble labor, these things may, perhaps, he added unto it by God; they are a grace vouchsafed to the elect. Such is the evangelical tinge given by Ruskin to the ancient theory of the artist's divine inspiration, and to the modern preoccu pation with the functioning of the subcon scious. This Calvinism as regards man is
supplemented, as regards nature, by that strange "natural religion"— Platonistic rather than Platonic — which so fascinated impulsive hearts in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Na ture, never having fallen, is sinless, pure and perfect ; nature is the copy of a divine pattern; let man, then, follow nature; for Marking the belated arrival in art criticism of the naturalistic revolt against the human istic tradition of the Renaissance, 'Modern Painters' is to the criticism of painting very much what Wordsworth's 'Prefaces' and many of his poems— which Ruskin quotes continually — are to the criticism of poetry.
So understood, it becomes, historically, a document in that romantic anti-humanistic "return to nature" which, for thoughtful per sons of the newer generation, was ended by the publication of Darwin's 'Origin of Species' in 1859. We know now that nature is perfectly wasteful and unintelligent, perfectly cruel and unmoral, that her beauties cover up a million festering murders; and that to the human de mand for ethical values her answer is silence. Moreover, even could nature be held to be a copy of divine ideas, many modern readers would yet believe, with the Aristotelian aesthet ics of classicism and the Renaissance, that art, embodying human concepts of perfection, can shape things actually nearer to their ideal than they ever occur in nature. But Ruskin had grown up in the old °natural religion," and he never shook it off, though he long survived Darwin's exposure of nature's ways. His books are probably the last great monument to the belief — which Butler, Paley, Words worth, Emerson, and the Bridgewater Treatises illustrate in various modes — that nature, be ing the copy of a divine archetype, is always right; that all her phenomena are intended by God to teach man something; hence, that she is full of symbols, providential adaptations, and final causes, is analogous to morals and re ligion, exists for man's ethical discipline, and is his monitress and preceptress, ever lessoning him for his good. The worship of nature is with Ruskin literally a part of religion; and he feels that the whole duty of art is to praise God by recording nature's works with the utmost possible fidelity to their supposed ethical ends.