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.

(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.)

Paper read before the Metaphysical Society, May 11th, 1875.[23]

"A JOY FOR EVER";
(AND ITS PRICE IN THE MARKET):
BEING THE SUBSTANCE (WITH ADDITIONS) OF TWO LECTURES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART
Delivered at Manchester, July 10th and 13th, 1857.

BY JOHN RUSKIN

Note, p. 18.—"Fatherly authority."