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Background to Modern Painters: The Tradition and the Turner Controversy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Van Akin Burd
Van Akin Burd*
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Cortland, N. Y.
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Extract

Among the surprising omissions from Rus-kin's autobiography Praeterita is any substantial analysis of the critical debate over the art of J. M. W. Turner which led Ruskin to write Modern Painters in 1843. The autobiography merely tells us that in 1836, when Ruskin was just seventeen years old, he had been aroused to a pitch of “black anger” by a review in Blackwood's of Turner's pictures, and that he had remained in this mood “pretty nearly ever since.” This ribald review, Ruskin adds, expressed “the feelings of the pupils of Sir George Beaumont at the appearance of these unaccredited views of Nature.” We learn only from his correspondence that it was a similar review in 1842 which made him resolve to write a pamphlet that would “blow the critics out of the water.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 74 , Issue 3 , June 1959 , pp. 254 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1959

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References

1 Works of John Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (London, 1903–12), xxxv, 217.

2 Ruskin's letter to the Rev. Osborne Gordon, 10 March 1844 (Works of Ruskin, iii, 666).

3 The Farington Diaries, ed. James Greig, 8 vols. (New York, 1923–28)—hereafter cited as Diaries.

4 Discourses on Art, ed. Elder Olson, University Classics (Chicago, 1945), p. 119—hereafter cited as Discourses in my text.

5 Liber Veritatis, or a Collection of Two Hundred Prints after the Original Designs of Claude le Lorrain, executed by Richard Earlom, 3 vols. (London, 1777–1819).

6 The Instrument, dated 10 Dec. 1767, in J. E. Hodgson, The Royal Academy and Its Members, 1768–1830 (New York, 1905), p. 348.

7 Lectures on Painting by the Royal Academicians, Barry, Opie, and Fuseli, ed. Ralph N. Wornum (London, 1848), p. 77—hereafter cited as Lectures in my text.

8 Lectures on the History and Principles of Painting (London, 1833), p. 253.

9 A Course of Lectures on Painting Delivered at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (London, 1848), p. 199.

10 C. R. Leslie, Autobiographical Recollections, ed. Tom Taylor (Boston, 1860), i, 157.

11 “Address to the Students of the Royal Academy,” Library of the Fine Arts, i (March 1831), 95.

12 E. G. Halton, “The Life and Art of Samuel Prout,” The Studio (1915), p. 18.

13 R. H. Wilenski, English Painting (London, 1833), p. 207.

14 Journals and Correspondence of Lady Eastlake, ed. C. E. Smith (London, 1895), i, 27.

15 Anna E. (Kempe) Stothard Bray, Life of Thomas Stolhard (London, 1851), p. 64.

16 A. Cunningham, Life of Sir David Wilkie (London, 1843), ii, 90.

17 Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. P. P. Howe (London, 1930–34), xii, 94.

18 Wilkie in a letter to Sir George Beaumont, 14 Feb. 1823 (Cunningham, ii, 98).

19 C. R. Leslie, A Handbook for Painters (London, 1855), p. 50.

20 Life of J. M. W. Turner (Oxford, 1939), p. 221.

21 C. R. Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of Constable, Everyman ed. (London [1911]), p. 5.

22 Ibid., pp. 99–100.

23 Leslie, Handbook for Painters, p. 50.

24 Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of Constable, p. 100.

25 Cunningham, ii, 397.

26 Diaries, iii, 180; 3 May 1803.

27 Diaries, vii, 118; 21 Oct. 1812.

28 Diaries, iii, 180; 5 April 1806.

29 Diaries, ii, 94; 29 April 1803.

30 Diaries, viii, 5; 5 June 1815.

31 Life of Turner, p. 194.

32 Diaries, vii, 165; 8 April 1813.

33 A Catalogue Raisonée [sic] of the Pictures Now Exhibiting at the British Institution (W. Smith & Co., King Street, Seven Dials [London, 1815]), pp. 66–68. The title page of the copy at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, is penciled “by R. Smirke Esq 1815.” Hilda F. Finberg has another copy formerly owned by Turner's patron, John Sheepshanks. From early notations in this volume, A. J. Finberg (Life of Turner, p. 226) thought it possible that Sir A. W. Callcott, R.A. (1779–1844) was one of the authors. Greig (Diaries, viii, 8, n.) attributes the pamphlet to Robert (later Sir Robert) Smirke, R.A. (1781–1867). The catalogue is very rare.

34 Diaries, viii, 8, 11; 10 and 21 June 1815.

35 Margaret Oliphant, Annals of a Publishing House: William Blackwood and His Sons (Edinburgh, 1897), ii, 285.

36 Athenaeum, 12 Jan. 1833, p. 26. Titles of art reviews in the periodicals will not be cited.

37 Walter Thornbury, Life of J. M. W. Turner, 2nd ed. (London, 1904), p. 337.

38 Liber Veritatis, i, 6.

39 Works of Ruskin, iii, xxiv. The issues cited were both dated 14 May 1842. The identity of the reviewers has not been established. Leslie A. Marchand in his study of the marked files of the Athenaeum observes that Thomas K. Hervey is given as the author of the Royal Academy review in the issue of 21 May 1842—the issue following that of 14 May (The Athenaeum, A Mirror of Victorian Culture, Chapel Hill, 1941, p. 347). Hervey (1797–1859) succeeded C. W. Dilke as editor of the Athenaeum in 1846.

40 Works of Hazlitt, xvi, 186 (see n. 17, above). All references in this paragraph are to the Works.

41 Marchand identifies some of the authors of the art criticism in the Athenaeum after 1830. Under the editorship of Charles W. Dilke from 1830 to 1846, Allan Cunningham worked as art editor from 1830 to 1840, and George Darley from 1834 to 1846. Cunningham will be cited as the author of one of the hostile reviews of Turner; Darley apparently did not write on the exhibitions at the Royal Academy but he may have contributed to the reviews of 7 and 14 May 1842 (see Claude C. Abbott, Life and Letters of George Darley, London, 1928, p. 189). Other reviewers include John Hamilton Reynolds, who wrote for the Athenaeum from 1830 to 1838 and reviewed the exhibitions of 1830 and 1831 (Marchand, The Athenaeum, p. 57, n.); Dilke; possibly T. K. Hervey who followed Dilke as editor; and Henry F. Chorley who has been reported as the principal art reviewer for the Athenaeum from 1836 to 1841 (Henry G. Hewlett, Henry Fothergill Chorley, London, 1873, i, 138, n.). Marchand says of Chorley that he probably mirrored the average opinion of the majority of his readers (p. 193).

42 Marchand (p. 174) identifies the reviewer as the poet, John Hamilton Reynolds (1796–1852).

43 Marchand (p. 179) identifies the reviewer as Allan Cunningham (1784–1842).

44 Marchand (p. 316) identifies the reviewers as John H. Reynolds and the editor of the Athenaeum, C. W. Dilke.

45 Marchand (p. 187) identifies the reviewer as Henry F. Chorley (1802–72).

46 “Preface to the First Edition,” Modern Painters, I, Works, iii, 3.

47 Cited from sheets in manuscripts intended for use in The Stones of Venice, Works, xi, xvii-xxi.