DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0212
200
JOHN RUSKIN.
its will upon the canvas as easily as the wind strikes it
on the sea. He rejoices in all abstract beauty and
rhythm and melody of design.”
But the beauty is to serve by likeness to nature. This
££ likeness ” seems to be rather a strain of the idea of
“ use.” And in fact to prove this curious contention
Ruskin is obliged to place portrait at a height, as has
already been said, that he had seemed to deny it. But
in the course of this argument is a brilliant page on the
cause of the dishonour of portraiture in Greek art:—
££ The progressive course of Greek art was in subduing
monstrous conceptions to natural ones; it did this by
general laws; it reached absolute truth of generic
human form, and if this ethical force had remained,
would have advanced into healthy portraiture. But at
the moment of change the national life ended in
Greece; and portraiture, there, meant insult to her
religion, and flattery to her tyrants. And her skill
perished, not because she became true in sight, but
because she became vile in heart.”
But these moralities and portraitures are but obscure
glories of art in use (as to which the reader may be
half-convinced, or may hold that they are concerned
rather with the sense of words than with principles of
art) compared with the kinds of plain and obvious
utility to which, in the beginning of this course, as in
the pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism, Ruskin commends
the services of painters.
“What we especially need at present for educational
purposes is to know, not the anatomy of plants, but
JOHN RUSKIN.
its will upon the canvas as easily as the wind strikes it
on the sea. He rejoices in all abstract beauty and
rhythm and melody of design.”
But the beauty is to serve by likeness to nature. This
££ likeness ” seems to be rather a strain of the idea of
“ use.” And in fact to prove this curious contention
Ruskin is obliged to place portrait at a height, as has
already been said, that he had seemed to deny it. But
in the course of this argument is a brilliant page on the
cause of the dishonour of portraiture in Greek art:—
££ The progressive course of Greek art was in subduing
monstrous conceptions to natural ones; it did this by
general laws; it reached absolute truth of generic
human form, and if this ethical force had remained,
would have advanced into healthy portraiture. But at
the moment of change the national life ended in
Greece; and portraiture, there, meant insult to her
religion, and flattery to her tyrants. And her skill
perished, not because she became true in sight, but
because she became vile in heart.”
But these moralities and portraitures are but obscure
glories of art in use (as to which the reader may be
half-convinced, or may hold that they are concerned
rather with the sense of words than with principles of
art) compared with the kinds of plain and obvious
utility to which, in the beginning of this course, as in
the pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism, Ruskin commends
the services of painters.
“What we especially need at present for educational
purposes is to know, not the anatomy of plants, but