Edward Tyas Cook

“ His economic heresies, which had already begun to appear in his lectures, had somewhat weakened the bond of intellectual sympathy between him and his father; his emancipation from protestant orthodoxy, that between him and his mother. He remained to the end a most dutiful and affectionate son, but his inclinations turned to solitude. His health and spirits were alike broken, and sombre thoughts crowded in upon him. Another influence which tended to divert Ruskin from art and natural history was his friendship with Carlyle. ”

“ But 'in the main aim and principle of the book there is,' says Ruskin, 'no variation from its first syllable to its last. It declares the perfectness and eternal beauty of the work of God; and tests all work of man by concurrence with, or subjection to that.' In its immediate purpose—the defence of Turner—'Modern Painters' is 'the most triumphant vindication of the kind ever published.' It has been called also 'the only book in the language which treats to any purpose of what is called æsthetics' (Mr. Leslie Stephen in National Review, April 1900) . ”

“ In the main his strength as an economic writer lies where also lies his strength as an aesthetic writer—namely, in his penetrating power of vision. To break down the walls which in a complicated social system hide from men's eyes the actual and ultimate facts was Ruskin's mission. Carlyle called Ruskin's economical essays 'fierce lightning bolts,' and in very truth 'his impeachments (of the existing order) flash on the perceptive sense as lightning on the eye.' His was one of the principal forces of the time in quickening the sympathies and elevating the moral standards of the community. ”

“ Every principle of painting which I have stated is traced to some vital or spiritual fact, and in my works on architecture the preference accorded finally to one school over another is founded on a comparison of their influences on the life of the workman, a question by all other writers on architecture wholly forgotten or despised.' But how was this question to be pushed into the front, and brought into vital relation with the arts? ”

“ Among the Alps he made several attempts to buy land from various communes with a view to instituting agricultural experiments. The peasant holders thought he must have discovered a secret gold mine and declined to sell. 'The loneliness is very very great,' he wrote from Mornex to Mr. Charles Eliot Norton (whom he had met at Geneva in 1856, and who became one of his dearest friends) , 'and the peace in which I am at present is only as if I had buried myself in a tuft of grass on a battlefield wet with blood.' It was in this mood that Ruskin devoted himself to economic studies. ”

“ Ruskin's influence has been considerably spread by Ruskin societies, unions, and guilds in various parts of the country. In Oxford a hall for working men is called by his name, and in Tennessee a Utopian settlement.
Under the double strain of his work at Oxford and of that of St. George's guild Ruskin's health broke down. During all this period he was also largely engaged in writing letters to the press on polemical subjects and in a polemical temper. He was like the living conscience of the modern world, and felt acutely the wrongs and wrongdoings of others. ”

“ To strangers who sought his help he would often write the most painstaking letters of counsel and encouragement. He was at his best when showing to a sympathetic friend his collections of pictures and drawings, his precious stones and minerals, his manuscripts and missals at Denmark Hill or Brantwood, for he took the keenest delight in sharing his treasures and his pleasures with others. ”

“ Ruskin's æsthetic criticism was coloured throughout by moral considerations. 'Yes,' said his father, after one of Ruskin's lectures on art, 'he should have been a bishop.' And Ruskin himself had proclaimed the moral basis of his artistic criticism. 'In these books of mine,' he wrote in 'Modern Painters,' 'their distinctive character, as essays on art, is their bringing everything to a root in human passion or human hope. ”

“ Faults which had not been absent from Ruskin's earlier books on art are conspicuous in his economic writings. Long ago, on the appearance of the first volume of 'Modern Painters,' Samuel Prout had pointed out the danger of exaggeration and discourtesy in controversy. In his books on economics Ruskin's petulance and contemptuous sarcasms had not always the justification of better knowledge. ”

“ In later years Turner, George Richmond, and Samuel Prout formed the constant dinner-party invited by the father to celebrate his son's birthday. The atmosphere in which young Ruskin lived and moved was thus at once puritanical and artistic.
An important part of his education was a summer tour with his parents. His father was in the habit of travelling once a year for orders, and on these journeys he combined pleasure with business. ”

“ The young author was not lured by praise into hurried production ; nor was the success of the first volume of 'Modern Painters' a decisive point in his career. He was still giving much of his best effort to drawing, with steadily increasing skill, and to the geological and mineralogical studies, in which to the end he keenly delighted. He set to work to continue his studies in art, but it was still an open question which was to be the main work of his life. In 1844 he went with his parents to Switzerland, and studied mountains at Chamouni and Zermatt. ”

“ Ruskin is probably the only man who has described the same scenes with so large a measure of success in prose and verse and drawing. (For illustrated articles on Ruskin as an artist, see Scribner, December 1898; Studio, March 1900.)
With the completion of 'Modern Painters' begins a new period in Ruskin's literary life. He was then forty, and had finished the work by which he is popularly known as a writer of art. He now embarked on a new career. The title of his Manchester lectures in 1857, 'The Political Economy of Art,' was significant. Economics were henceforth to take the place of art. ”

“ Ruskin never cared to assert his own artistic gifts, and no adequate exhibition of his drawings was held in his lifetime. In 1878 he exhibited a few of his own landscapes along with his Turners at the Fine Art Society, and he was an occasional exhibitor at the Old Water-colour Society, of which he was elected an honorary member in 1873. Some of his drawings are in public collections—the St. George's Museum at Sheffield and the Ruskin Drawing School at Oxford. A loan exhibition was held at the Fine Art Society's rooms in February 1901. He was an artist of real though restricted talent. ”

“ He was, as he says himself, deficient in power of invention and design. (A painted window at the east end of Sir Gilbert Scott's church at Camberwell was designed partly by Ruskin, and he designed a window for the Oxford Museum.) He had no skill in the representation of the human form, though he could copy the figure well (e.g. his copy of Carpaccio's St. George at Sheffield) . But his architectural drawings are incomparable in their kind, and some of his landscapes are as good as Turner's. The amount of his artistic production is astonishing, when we consider it as only a by-work of his life. ”

“ Next year he went abroad without his parents, but attended by a valet and Couttet the guide. At Macugnaga, where he spent some weeks, he devoted himself to close study of Shakespeare, 'which led me into fruitful thought, out of the till then passive sensation of merely artistic or naturalist life.' Other writers to whom Ruskin professed himself mainly indebted were Dante, George Herbert, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. From Macugnaga he went to Pisa, Lucca, and Venice, and to this tour he attributes a turning point in his life and work. ”

“ I am quite sure that people who work out subjects thoroughly are disagreeable wretches. One only feels as one should when one doesn't know much about the matter.' The 'Stones of Venice' and volume ii. of ' Modern Painters 'gave an impetus to many art movements of the day. Such were the Arundel Society, which, largely under the direction of his friend Mr. Edmund Oldfield, did much to preserve records of the wall paintings of Italy ; and the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, which may be said to have taken as its motto Ruskin's words, 'Do not let us talk of restoration ”

“ At the rate at which he was working he might hope to paint the whole dress m ten years ; but it was a lesson as to examining well what one drew before drawing it.' Ruskin's diaries and letters show that he took the same minute labour in recording natural facts and impressions of places and pictures. Some illustration of his geological studies in Switzerland is given in the 'Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,' 1858. Nearly all serious reading was done, he says, abroad ; the heaviest box in the boot being always full of dictionaries. ”

“ To many schools and colleges he presented cabinets of minerals or drawings. In some forms of philanthropy he was a pioneer. He established a model tea shop. He organised, for the relief of the unemployed, gangs of street cleaners. He was the first to give Miss Octavia Hill the means of managing house property on the principle of helping the tenants to help themselves. He shared as well as gave. He thought no trouble too great to encourage a pupil or befriend the fallen.
With the last decade of Ruskin's active life (1870–80) his career entered on a new phase. ”

“ But he was never a very strong man, and he taxed to the uttermost by constant mental strain such strength as he possessed. In April 1842, having recovered his health, Ruskin went up to Oxford, and was given an honorary double-fourth. He graduated B.A. in 1842 and M.A. in 1843. He was deeply sensitive of 'the ineffable charm' of Oxford and loved the university dearly. ”

“ He had previously revoked a bequest of his remaining Turners and other treasures to the university.
Ruskin now retired into seclusion at Brantwood. His cousin, Mrs. Severn, with her husband and family, lived with him. To her he was deeply attached; she tended him in his illness and saved him from all preventable irritations. His brain attacks were intermittent, and at intervals during the next five years he did a good deal of miscellaneous literary work. He introduced to the public the sketches of Tuscan life in pen and pencil by his American friend, Miss Francesca Alexander. ”

“ His taste was as exact in art as in sherries, and he 'never allowed me to look for an instant' (says his son) 'at a bad picture.' He had been a pupil in the landscape class of Alexander Is'asmyth [q. v.] at Edinburgh, was fond of sketching, and delighted in reading poetry aloud, in buying drawings of architecture and landscape, and in entertaining artists at dinner. ”

“ Ruskin also wrote to Millais offering to buy 'The Return of the Dove to the Ark.' To a new edition of 'Modern Painters' in this year he added a note of strong praise of pre-Raphaelitism. In August he issued a pamphlet entitled 'Pre-Raphaelitism,' in which he again defended Millais and Mr. Holman Hunt against the critics, and instituted a comparison between the former painter and Turner, finding in both alike the same sincerity of purpose. Ruskin's intervention on behalf of the pre-Raphaelites was a turning-point in their fortunes. ”

“ He established first an organ for his propaganda. This was 'Fors Clavigera,' a monthly letter 'to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain.' It is one of the curiosities of literature. Its discursiveness, its garrulity, its petulance are amazing. On reading it one is not inclined to dispute what Ruskin somewhere says of himself, that he was 'an impetuous and weakly communicative person.' Some of the eccentricity of his monthly miscellany was due to the gradual approach of a morbid irritability of the brain. But 'Fors' is full of passionate intensity ”

“ An evangelical puritan of the strictest sect, she held strong notions on the sinfulness even of toys, and in after years it is said that the pictures in her husband's house were turned with their faces to the wall on Sunday. With no playfellows, and no toys beyond a single box of bricks, the child's faculties were concentrated from his earliest years on the observation of nature and inanimate things. ”

“ He declined the honour, on the ground that architects were among the worst offenders (Ruskin Union Journal, March 1900) . 'Stones of Venice,' which was fully illustrated by the author, and supplemented by a series of 'Examples of Venetian Architecture,' drawn on a larger scale, cost him an infinity of labour, of which he has left several records in his letters. 'I went through so much hard, dry, mechanical toil at Venice,' he writes to Norton, 'that I quite lost, before I left it, the charm of the place. Analysis is an abominable business. ”

“ But gradually Ruskin's work made itself felt especially for its insistence upon the importance of the biological factor in all economic questions; and his writings have powerfully contributed to that recasting of economic doctrine which is still in progress. He insisted (1) 'that political economy can furnish sound laws of national life and work only when it respects the dignity and moral destiny of man ”

“ He went down from Oxford and for nearly two years was dragged about in search of health, through Switzerland and Italy and to Leamington (where he derived great benefit from Dr. Jephson's treatment) . Memorials of these travels are given in Ruskin's 'Letters to Dale' (1893) . In a few years Ruskin out-grew his tendency to consumption. He was fond of walking and of climbing among the Alps ; and in after years of rowing, as also of manual exercise. He retained far into old age evidences of unabated vigour in hair still thick and brown ”