John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskinwas the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth8 February 1819
I tell you (dogmatically, if you like to call it so, knowing it well) a square inch of man's engraving is worth all the photographs that were ever dipped in acid... Believe me, photography can do against line engraving just what Madame Tussaud's wax-work can do against sculpture. That and no more. (1865)
There is but one question ultimately to be asked respecting every line you draw, Is it right or wrong? If right, it most assuredly is not a "free" line, but an intensely continent, restrained and considered line; and the action of the hand in laying it is just as decisive, and just as "free" as the hand of a first-rate surgeon in a critical incision.
Expression, sentiment, truth to nature, are essential: but all those are not enough. I never care to look at a picture again, if it be ill composed; and if well composed I can hardly leave off looking at it.
And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay?
Which of us?is to do the hard and dirty work for the restand for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay?
People are always expecting to get peace in heaven: but you know whatever peace they get there will be ready-made. Whatever making of peace they can be blest for, must be on the earth here.
Butforme, theAlps and their peoplewerealikebeautiful in their snow, and their humanity; and I wanted, neither for them nor myself, sight of any thrones in heaven but the rocks, or of any spirits in heaven but the clouds.
He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace. And the men who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth they, and they only.
Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect in its own bad way.
That which is required in order to the attainment of accurate conclusions respecting the essence of the Beautiful is nothing morethan earnest, loving, and unselfish attention to our impressions of it.
It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things; and that is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration. Alas! we shall do nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight.
If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. God's work only may express that, but ours may never have that sentence written upon it, Behold it was very good.
Variety is a positive requisite even in the character of our food.
He who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed.