by John Ruskin
PREFACE.
I must pray the readers of the following Lectures to remember that theduty at present laid on me at Oxford is of an exceptionally complexcharacter. Directly, it is to awaken the interest of my pupils in astudy which they have hitherto found unattractive, and imagined to beuseless; but more imperatively, it is to define the principles by whichthe study itself should be guided; and to vindicate their securityagainst the doubts with which frequent discussion has lately encumbereda subject which all think themselves competent to discuss. Thepossibility of such vindication is, of course, implied in the originalconsent of the universities to the establishment of Art Professorships.Nothing can be made an element of education of which it is impossible todetermine whether it is ill done or well; and the clear assertion thatthere is a canon law in formative Art is, at this time, a more importantfunction of each University than the instruction of its younger membersin any branch of practical skill. It matters comparatively littlewhether few or many of our students learn to draw; but it matters muchthat all who learn should be taught with accuracy. And the number whomay be justifiably advised to give any part of the time they spend atcollege to the study of painting or sculpture ought to depend, andfinally _must_ depend, on their being certified that painting andsculpture, no less than language or than reasoning, have grammar andmethod,--that they permit a recognizable distinction between scholarshipand ignorance, and enforce a constant distinction between Right andWrong.
This opening course of Lectures on Sculpture is therefore restricted tothe statement, not only of first principles, but of those which wereillustrated by the practice of one school, and by that practice in itssimplest branch, the analysis of which could be certified by easilyaccessible examples, and aided by the indisputable evidence ofphotography.[105]
The exclusion of the terminal Lecture of the course from the series nowpublished, is in order to mark more definitely this limitation of mysubject; but in other respects the Lectures have been amplified inarranging them for the press, and the portions of them trusted at thetime to extempore delivery, (not through indolence, but becauseexplanations of detail are always most intelligible when most familiar,)have been in substance to the best of my power set down, and in what Isaid too imperfectly, completed.
In one essential particular I have felt it necessary to write what Iwould not have spoken. I had intended to make no reference, in myUniversity Lectures, to existing schools of Art, except in cases whereit might be necessary to point out some undervalued excellence. Theobjects specified in the eleventh paragraph of my inaugural Lecture,might, I hoped, have been accomplished without reference to any worksdeserving of blame; but the Exhibition of the Royal Academy in thepresent year showed me a necessity of departing from my originalintention. The task of impartial criticism[106] is now, unhappily, nolonger to rescue modest skill from neglect; but to withstand the errorsof insolent genius, and abate the influence of plausible mediocrity.
The Exhibition of 1871 was very notable in this important particular,that it embraced some representation of the modern schools of nearlyevery country in Europe; and I am well assured that looking back upon itafter the excitement of that singular interest has passed away, everythoughtful judge of Art will confirm my assertion, that it contained nota single picture of accomplished merit; while it contained many thatwere disgraceful to Art, and some that were disgraceful to humanity.
It becomes, under such circumstances, my inevitable duty to speak of theexisting conditions of Art with plainness enough to guard the youthswhose judgments I am entrusted to form, from being misled, either bytheir own naturally vivid interest in what represents, howeverunworthily, the scenes and persons of their own day, or by the cunninglydevised, and, without doubt, powerful allurements of Art which has longsince confessed itself to have no other object than to allure. I have,therefore, added to the second of these Lectures such illustration ofthe motives and course of modern industry as naturally arose out of itssubject, and shall continue in future to make similar applications;rarely, indeed, permitting myself, in the Lectures actually read beforethe University, to introduce subjects of instant, and therefore tooexciting, interest; but completing the addresses which I prepare forpublication in these, and in any other particulars which may render themmore widely serviceable.
The present course of Lectures will be followed, if I am able to fulfilthe design of them, by one of a like elementary character onArchitecture; and that by a third series on Christian Sculpture: but, inthe meantime, my effort is to direct the attention of the residentstudents to Natural History, and to the higher branches of idealLandscape: and it will be, I trust, accepted as sufficient reason forthe delay which has occurred in preparing the following sheets for thepress, that I have not only been interrupted by a dangerous illness, butengaged, in what remained to me of the summer, in an endeavour todeduce, from the overwhelming complexity of modern classification in theNatural Sciences, some forms capable of easier reference by Artstudents, to whom the anatomy of brutal and floral nature is often noless important than that of the human body.
The preparation of examples for manual practice, and the arrangement ofstandards for reference, both in Painting and Sculpture, had to becarried on meanwhile, as I was able. For what has already been done, thereader is referred to the _Catalogue of the Educational Series_,published at the end of the Spring Term; of what remains to be done Iwill make no anticipatory statement, being content to have ascribed tome rather the fault of narrowness in design, than of extravagance inexpectation.
DENMARK HILL,
_25th November, 1871._
FOOTNOTES:
[105] Photography cannot exhibit the character of large and finishedsculpture; but its audacity of shadow is in perfect harmony with themore roughly picturesque treatment necessary in coins. For the renderingof all such frank relief, and for the better explanation of formsdisturbed by the lustre of metal or polished stone, the method employedin the plates of this volume will be found, I believe, satisfactory.Casts are first taken from the coins, in white plaster; these arephotographed, and the photograph printed by the heliotype process ofMessrs. Edwards and Kidd. Plate XII. is exceptional, being a puremezzotint engraving of the old school, excellently carried through by myassistant, Mr. Allen, who was taught, as a personal favour to myself, bymy friend, and Turner's fellow-worker, Thomas Lupton. Plate IV. wasintended to be a photograph from the superb vase in the British Museum,No. 564 in Mr. Newton's Catalogue; but its variety of colour defiedphotography, and after the sheets had gone to press I was compelled toreduce Le Normand's plate of it, which is unsatisfactory, but answers myimmediate purpose.
The enlarged photographs for use in the Lecture Room were made for mewith most successful skill by Sergeant Spackman, of South Kensington;and the help throughout rendered to me by Mr. Burgess is acknowledged inthe course of the Lectures; though with thanks which must remaininadequate lest they should become tedious; for Mr. Burgess drew thesubjects of Plates III., X., and XIII.; drew and engraved every woodcutin the book; and printed all the plates with his own hand.
[106] A pamphlet by the Earl of Southesk, "_Britain's Art Paradise_,"(Edmonston and Douglas, Edinburgh) contains an entirely admirablecriticism of the most faultful pictures of the 1871 Exhibition. It is tobe regretted that Lord Southesk speaks only to condemn; but indeed, inmy own three days' review of the rooms, I found nothing deserving ofnotice otherwise, except Mr. Hook's always pleasant sketches from fisherlife, and Mr. Pettie's graceful and powerful, though too slightlypainted, study from _Henry VI_.
ARATRA PENTELICI.