Essays

by John Ruskin

by John Ruskin

1. In my inaugural lecture, [1] I stated that while holding this professorship I should direct you, in your practical exercises, chiefly to natural history and landscape.

28. In my last Lecture I laid before you evidence that the greatness of the master whom I wished you to follow as your only guide in landscape depended primarily on his studying from Nature always with the point; that is to say, in pencil or pen outline. To-day I wish to show you that his preëminence depends secondarily on his perfect rendering of form and distance by light and shade, before he admits a thought of color.

61. The distinctions between schools of art which I have so often asked you to observe are, you must be aware, founded only on the excess of certain qualities in one group of painters over another, or the difference in their tendencies; and not in the absolute possession by one group, and absence in the rest, of any given skill.

Oct. 14th, 1873.[22]

166. It is to be remembered that the giving of prizes can only be justified on the ground of their being the reward of superior diligence and more obedient attention to the directions of the teacher. They must never be supposed, because practically they never can become, indications of superior genius; unless in so far as genius is likely to be diligent and obedient, beyond the strength and temper of the dull.

A Lecture delivered at Manchester, July 10, 1857.

Continuation of the previous Lecture; delivered July 13, 1857.

61. The heads of our subject which remain for our consideration this evening are, you will remember, the accumulation and the distribution of works of art. Our complete inquiry fell into four divisions—first, how to get our genius; then, how to apply our genius; then, how to accumulate its results; and lastly, how to distribute them. We considered, last evening, how to discover and apply it;—we have to-night to examine the modes of its preservation and distribution.

(Read for the author before the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science in the autumn of 1858; and printed in the Transactions of the Society for that year, pp. 311-16.)