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Summary arthistory
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- University Of Glasgow
Summary of 5 pages for the course POLITIC5014P Postgrad Dissertation at University of Glasgow (arthistory)
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Ruskin on TurnerIntroduction
The work which we proposed to ourselves, towards the close of the last volume,
as first to be undertaken in this, was the examination of those peculiarities of
system in which Turner either stood alone, even in the modern school, or was a
distinguished representative of modern, as opposed to ancient, practice.
And the most interesting of these subjects of inquiry, with which, therefore, it
may be best to begin, is the precise form under which he has admitted into his
work the modern feeling of the picturesque, which, so far as it consists in a
delight in ruin, is perhaps the most suspicious and questionable of all the
characters distinctively belonging to our temper, and art.
It is especially so, because it never appears, even in the slightest measure,
until the days of the decline of art in the seventeenth century. The love of
neatness and precision, as opposed to all disorder, maintains itself down to
Raphael's childhood without the slightest interference of any other feeling; and
it is not until Claude's time, and owing in great part to his influence, that
the new feeling distinctly establishes itself.
Picturesque
How far he was right in doing this; or how far the moderns are right in carrying
the principle to greater excess, and seeking always for poverty-stricken
rusticity or pensive ruin, we must now endeavour to ascertain.
The essence of picturesque character has been already defined* to be a sublimity
not inherent in the nature of the thing, but caused by something external to it;
as the ruggedness of a cottage roof possesses something of a mountain aspect,
not belonging to the cottage as such. And this sublimity may be either in mere
external ruggedness, and other visible character, or it may lie deeper, in an
expression of sorrow and old age, attributes which are both sublime; not a
dominant expression, but one mingled with such familiar and common characters as
prevent the object from becoming perfectly pathetic in its sorrow, or perfectly
venerable in its age.
For instance, I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I have always
in first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in England, at the foot of
the old tower of Calais church. The large neglect, the noble unsightliness of
it; the record of its years written so visibly, yet without sign of weakness or
decay; its stern wasteness and gloom, eaten away by the Channel winds, and
overgrown with the bitter sea grasses; its slates and tiles all shaken and rent,
and yet not falling; its desert of brickwork full of bolts, and holes, and ugly
fissures, and yet strong, like a bare brown rock; its carelessness of what any
one thinks or feels about it, putting forth no claim, having no beauty or
desirableness, pride, nor grace; yet neither asking for pity; not, as ruins are,
useless and piteous, feebly or fondly garrulous of better days; but usefill
still, going through its own daily work, as some old fisherman beaten grey by
storm, yet drawing his daily nets: so it stands, with no complaint about its
past youth, in blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering
human souls together underneath it; the sound of its bells for prayer still
rolling through its rents; and the grey peak of it seen far across the sea,
principal of the three that rise above the waste of surfy sand and hillocked
shore, the lighthouse for life, and the belfry for labour, and this for
patience and praise.
Old Tower
I cannot tell the half of the strange pleasures and thoughts that come about me
at the sight of that old tower; for, in some sort, it is the epitome of all that
makes the Continent of Europe interesting, as opposed to new countries; and,
above all, it completely expresses that agedness in the midst of active life
which binds the old and the new into harmony. We, in England, have our new
street, our new inn, our green shaven lawn, and our piece of ruin emergent from
, it, a mere specimen of the Middle Ages put on a bit of velvet carpet to be
shown, which, but for its size, might as well be on a museum shelf at once,
under cover. But, on the Continent, the links are unbroken between the past and
present, and, in such use as they can serve for, the grey-headed wrecks are
suffered to stay with men; while, in unbroken line, the generations of spared
buildings are seen succeeding each in its place. And thus in its largeness, in
its permitted evidence of slow decline, in its poverty, in its absence of all
pretence, of all show and care for outside aspect, that Calais tower has an
infinite of symbolism in it, all the more striking because usually seen in
contrast with English scenes expressive of feelings the exact reverse of these.
And I am sorry to say that the opposition is most distinct in that noble
carelessness as to what people think of it. Once, on coming from the Continent,
almost the first inscription I saw in my native English was this:
"To Let, a Genteel House, up this road."
And it struck me forcibly, for I had not come across the idea of gentility,
among the upper limestones of the Alps, for seven months; nor do I think that
the Continental nations in general have the idea. They would have advertised a
"pretty" house, or a "large" one, or a "convenient" one; but they could not, by
any use of the terms afforded by their several languages, have got at the
English "genteel." Consider, a little, all the meanness that there is in that
epithet, and then see, when next you cross the Channel, how scornful of it that
Calais spire will look.
Old fashioned versus contemporary
Of which spire the largeness and age are also opposed exactly to the chief
appearances of modern England, as one feels them on first returning to it; that
marvellous smallness both of houses and scenery, so that a ploughman in the
valley has his head on a level with the tops of all the hills in the
neighbourhood; and a house is organized into complete establishment, parlour,
kitchen, and all, with a knocker to its door, and a garret window to its roof,
and a bow to its second story,* on a scale of 12 feet wide by 15 high, so that
three such at least would go into the granary of an ordinary Swiss cottage: and
also our serenity of perfection, our peace of conceit, everything being done
that vulgar minds can conceive as wanting to be done; the spirit of well-
principled housemaids everywhere, exerting itself for perpetual propriety and
renovation, so that nothing is old, but only "old-fashioned," and contemporary,
as it were, in date and impressiveness only with last year's bonnets. Abroad, a
building of the eighth or tenth century stands ruinous in the open street; the
children play round it, the peasants heap their corn in it, the buildings of
yesterday nestle about it, and fit their new stones into its rents, and tremble
in sympathy as it trembles. No one wonders at it, or thinks of it as separate,
and of another time; we feel the ancient world to be a real thing, and one with
the new: antiquity is no dream; it is rather the children playing about the old
stones that are the dream. But all is continuous; and the words, "from
generation to generation," understandable there. Whereas here we have a living
present, consisting merely of what is "fashionable " and "oldfashioned"; and a
past, of which there are no vestiges; a past which peasant or citizen can no
more conceive; all equally far away; Queen Elizabeth as old as Queen Boadicea,
and both incredible. At Verona we look out of Can Grande's window to his tomb;
and if he does not stand beside us, we feel only that he is in the grave instead
of the chamber, not that he is old, but that he might have been beside us last
night. But in England the dead are dead to purpose. One cannot believe they ever
were alive, or anything else than what they are now names in school-books.
Then that spirit of trimness. The smooth paving stones; the scraped, hard, even,
rutless roads; the neat gates and plates, and essence of border and order, and
spikiness and spruceness. Abroad, a country-house has some confession of human
weakness and human fates about it. There are the old grand gates still, which
the mob pressed sore against at the Revolution, and the strained hinges have
never gone so well since; and the broken greyhound on the pillar still broken
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