The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1900-03-04
John Ruskin.-His Strength and His
Weakness.

4 u
born February 8, 1870 and only lately
passed away, have little to do. To the
average man of today Ruskin's life does
not appeal over amrch--it hardly seems
normal or qnite healthy. With its main
facts and clements they who care fer
Ruskin, the writer, are sufficiently ia
niliar; they know of his early home, that
Of wealthy wine merchant who went
IN for Shakespeare and water colorS; of
his education at Oxford; his taking TO art
criticism by accident; of his giving his
Wife to Milais, a stroke of generosity
like enough to get HIM misunderstood by
the less self abnegatlve, and of his futile
attempt to live up TO his own theory of
how a member of society should conduct
himself. With those who do not care
for kuskin it is quite useless to deal.
We are, | take it, mainly concerned
with what John Ruskin did, and with
what he attempted. Whether reasonably
or unreasonably, the world judges men
not less by what they undertake than by
what they accomplish. Napoleon Buona-
parte said to himself 81 win break the
power of England" He did not do it.
The world puts down that failure in
every estimate of Napoleon. Ruskin said
to himself: Il will reform art and later
Il will reform mankind" Whether he
succeeded or failed must be the main
rule IN a Judgment of hinl-according to
the worlds method.
Ruskin's influence has projected into
three very different spheres of human :ac-
tivity-Art, Literature and Economics.
His influeTfce o1lxart- and economies was
direct; his Influence ON letters incidental
and even unfntentional. Letters took up
merely the recoil of the ideas, solid
enough If dognatism goes for anything.
that SRtrskin hurled at the bastions of
what he2issdd. to be Pharisaism in art
and economics. Yet was, letters not less
affected than the Others.
RuSkin was an eyangel, with all an
evangel's conviction that he could not
be mistaken. This characteristic was
thc% root both of his success and
his failure-he needed it 10 brace
him for the effort necessary TO ACCOM-
pish even a 1.-THE of what he attempted;
by it he was blinded to certain forces,
infinitely more potent than any individ-
ual, that would have aided him NIGHTLY
had he but acted in the same direction
with Them, With this premise we may
proceed to consider the first task Ruskin
set hilnself-the reformation of art.
HIS DEFENCE OF TURNER. 81.
That RuSkin's influence ON art was
wholly for the better is hardly questioned
nowadays. He was, in a measure, to
art what Wordsworth was to poetry,
Luther TO the religion of Christianity,
Bacon TO science, and Napoleon to the
tactics of war He found art not only
concerning itself with limitations but as
was Inevitable accentuating the defects
OF what it copied. 1t was h2dged and
bound with rules as arbitrary and as
sitting as the old dramatic unities. Rus
KIN Lnshackled IT; not that he was/a cres-
tor i'll art. He was not. Such was the
state of art when Ruskin found it,. hut
not Of all artists. There were some
VINO insisted org going to the forests fdr
their trees instead of to the pictures of
other men. These Ruskin champloned
and defended with wealth Of language,
an acuteness Of analysis, and warmth
of enthusiasm that in the end won the
world of art to his way of thinking. Rus
kin, be it remembered, did not teach
Turner to paint a landscape; he taught
others that Turner painted landscapes
somewhat as they should be; that he
painted them better than artists whom
his fellow painters busted themselves in
initiating Then going from the partc-
Mar to the general, embracing sculpture
and architecture as we'll as painting. he
eXpounded theory and method that
was not alone of untold benefit to those
in whose behalf he wrote, but to others
who should come after and to the thou
sands who paint no pictures, but who
Get from Ruskin's books some concep-
ton. however crude, OF what the primer
pies of true art are: and to yet other
thousands, who seldom see picture Il
which Ruskin would not shudder, he has
given the rover to feel the beauty of the
leafless tree on the far hill top. against
the violet canvas of the sunset.
OUT OF TOUCH WITH HIS AGE.
tAntl then, when lie had succeeded thus
far, Ruskin failed, and failed through mis-
eyansel temperament. He forgot that
no man may paint landscape as it is.
bat only as he sees it. and even more that
he. must of necessity see it not alone lng
the light of the sun that falls on IT, but
m the light Of the age i'm which he lives.
This Ruskin would not permit him to do.
|, dc would have it that the painter must
FI5iint the landscape as the sunlight re-
Z tealed it to- him. but that other light
must come not from England, but from
Italy. He would have the artist go to
nature for his materials and to Italy for
his inspiration. In other words he was
not willing to concede' that art, like lit
erature, must be an repression of its age
if lit would endure. He refused to believe
. that under all the gross commercialism
Of England, the cummercialism that he
hated alike for its ugliness and its lnjus-
tice. there. lay dormant the potential ele-
nents, of an art not less noble than that
OF Italy and that it was the business OF
the English artist to body them forth
nav more, that if the English artist fail
cd To do so he was after all but an imi-
rator, and his reward would be oblivion,
rot immortality. You say this is but 4
theort teal objection? True encael-hu
RusSin was mainly Il teacher of tne the
.ly of art. ard by his theory he must
ard or fa'l That do not misrepresant
Ruskill's attitude in this particular allow
inc to point out that he declares III n
q scusSion of sculpture that the use c4
the word taste" as expressing an appre-
ciasiom Of art shows that modern edulA-
"a asst, art as giving "Only Il kind
Of pleasure analogous TO that derived