Library Edition
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN RUSKIN
| MODERN PAINTERS | |
| Volume IV— | OF MOUNTAIN BEAUTY |
| Volume V | OF LEAF BEAUTY OF CLOUD BEAUTY OF IDEAS OF RELATION |
NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
NEW YORK CHICAGO
MODERN PAINTERS.
VOLUME V.,
COMPLETING THE WORK AND CONTAINING
PARTS
VI. OF LEAF BEAUTY.—VII. OF CLOUD BEAUTY.
VIII. OF IDEAS OF RELATION.
1. OF INVENTION FORMAL.
IX. OF IDEAS OF RELATION.
2. OF INVENTION SPIRITUAL.
PREFACE.
The disproportion, between the length of time occupied inthe preparation of this volume, and the slightness of apparentresult, is so vexatious to me, and must seem so strange to thereader, that he will perhaps bear with my stating some of thematters which have employed or interrupted me between 1855and 1860. I needed rest after finishing the fourth volume, anddid little in the following summer. The winter of 1856 wasspent in writing the “Elements of Drawing,” for which I thoughtthere was immediate need; and in examining with more attentionthan they deserved some of the modern theories of politicaleconomy, to which there was necessarily reference in my addressesat Manchester. The Manchester Exhibition then gaveme some work, chiefly in its magnificent Reynolds’ constellation;and thence I went on into Scotland, to look at Dumblane andJedburgh, and some other favorite sites of Turner’s; which I hadnot all seen, when I received notice from Mr. Wornum that hehad obtained for me permission, from the Trustees of the NationalGallery, to arrange, as I thought best, the Turner drawingsbelonging to the nation; on which I returned to Londonimmediately.
In seven tin boxes in the lower room of the National GalleryI found upwards of nineteen thousand pieces of paper, drawnupon by Turner in one way or another. Many on both sides;some with four, five, or six subjects on each side (the pencil pointdigging spiritedly through from the foregrounds of the front intothe tender pieces of sky on the back); some in chalk, which thetouch of the finger would sweep away;1 others in ink, rottedinto holes; others (some splendid colored drawings among them)long eaten away by damp and mildew, and falling into dust at theedges, in capes and bays of fragile decay; others worm-eaten, somemouse-eaten, many torn half-way through; numbers doubled(quadrupled, I should say) up into four, being Turner’s favoritemode of packing for travelling; nearly all rudely flattened out fromthe bundles in which Turner had finally rolled them up andsqueezed them into his drawers in Queen Anne Street. Dust ofthirty years’ accumulation, black, dense, and sooty, lay in the rentsof the crushed and crumpled edges of these flattened bundles,looking like a jagged black frame, and producing altoget