The Works of John Ruskin (Volume 3) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the correct appreciation of it. To supply the information which is necessary for both these reasons is the main object of the introduction to this, as to the later volumes of the work. Ruskin was only twenty-four when the first volume of Modern Painter appeared, but the germ of the book dates back to a much earlier time. Modem Painters was the work of an " Oxford Graduate "; the essay which contained its germ was written in the week before he matriculated. In October 1836, as already explained (Vol. I. p. xxxiii.), he had written a reply to a criticism in BladcicoocTs Magazine of Turner's pictures exhibited in that year. In those pictures?"Juliet and her Nurse,1" " Rome from Mount Aventine," and " Mercury and Argus "?Turner had developed the characteristics of his later manner " with his best skill and enthusiasm. . . . His freak in placing Juliet at Venice, instead of Verona, and the mysteries of lamp-light and rockets with which he had disguised Venice herself, gave occasion to an article in BlackwoocTs Magaznif of sufficiently telling ribaldry, expressing, with some force, and extreme discourtesy, the feelings of the pupils of Sir George Beaumont at the appearance of these unaccredited views of Nature. The review," continues Ruskin, "raised me to the height of black anger in which I have remained pretty nearly ever since; and having by that time some confidence in my power of words, and?not merely judgment, but sincere experiencf ?of the charm of Turner's work, I wrote an answer to Blackwood, 01 which I wish I could now find any fragment."1 Ruskin's intention was to send the paper to Blackwood, but his father thought it right to ask Turner's consent to the publication. Turner's reply is given i PrcEterita? Instead of returning the MS. for publication, he asked leave to send ...