DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0136
124 JOHN RUSKIN.
there could hardly be a more candid declaration (it was
too candid to be altogether understood) that genius was
not to be looked for. The author of Pre-Raphaelitism
says in effect that what is to be demanded of a multi-
tude of painters (who can be no more than workmen,
and ought to be good workmen) is a trustworthy and
useful record of contemporary things having an un-
pictorial interest. He says farther on :—
“ Many people have found fault with me for not
‘ teaching people how to arrange masses ’; for not
‘ attributing sufficient importance to composition.’
Alas ! I attribute far more importance to it than they
do—so much importance that I should just as soon
think of sittting down to teach a man how to write a
Divina Commedia or King Lear, as how to ‘compose,’
in the true sense, a single building or picture.”
Such a comparison doubtless goes too far, or rather
goes wrong, as demonstrations borrowed from each
other by the arts must always do; for certainly there
are things to be taught to a painter that have no
counterpart in any things possible to teach to a poet.
But I quote the passage in sign of the curious conten-
tion—it reappears in the first Slade lectures—that the
majority of painters would do well to content them-
selves with pictures that are hardly pictures. Nothing
more humiliating was ever said of modern art; it was
so humiliating that no one would consent to under-
stand it; it was indeed too humiliating to be just.
there could hardly be a more candid declaration (it was
too candid to be altogether understood) that genius was
not to be looked for. The author of Pre-Raphaelitism
says in effect that what is to be demanded of a multi-
tude of painters (who can be no more than workmen,
and ought to be good workmen) is a trustworthy and
useful record of contemporary things having an un-
pictorial interest. He says farther on :—
“ Many people have found fault with me for not
‘ teaching people how to arrange masses ’; for not
‘ attributing sufficient importance to composition.’
Alas ! I attribute far more importance to it than they
do—so much importance that I should just as soon
think of sittting down to teach a man how to write a
Divina Commedia or King Lear, as how to ‘compose,’
in the true sense, a single building or picture.”
Such a comparison doubtless goes too far, or rather
goes wrong, as demonstrations borrowed from each
other by the arts must always do; for certainly there
are things to be taught to a painter that have no
counterpart in any things possible to teach to a poet.
But I quote the passage in sign of the curious conten-
tion—it reappears in the first Slade lectures—that the
majority of painters would do well to content them-
selves with pictures that are hardly pictures. Nothing
more humiliating was ever said of modern art; it was
so humiliating that no one would consent to under-
stand it; it was indeed too humiliating to be just.