Home » Visual & Performing Arts » Victorian Art » The King of the Golden River-Ruskin's Narrative as Word Painting

The King of the Golden River-Ruskin's Narrative as Word Painting

© A. Wilson

In his lecture entitled 'Of Modern Landscapes', Ruskin attempts to contrast what nineteenth century landscape painters were doing compared with the Neo-classical painters discussed in his sister discourse 'Of Classical Landscape'. Ruskin argues that modern painting tended to be 'cloudy'; that is, the artist tended to focus, rather unnecessarily, on mistiness; next to that, modern painters tended to show an innate love of liberty. Comparing nineteenth century artists to medieval painters, Ruskin concluded that the latter tended to focus on the symbols of restraint such as castles, and painted scenery that was placed 'behind fosses'; the medieval painter paid scrupulous attention to the detailing found in brick work. The Victorian artists, however, tended to illustrate open fields, avoiding all hedges and moats; painting only free- growing trees.

Ruskin suggested that the degree that modern painters interfered with their landscape be kept to a minimum. An example of this is the landscape painting of the Pre-Raphaelites, notably Holman Hunt's Our English Coast. Ruskin explores the link between modern painters and mediaeval artists; for modern painters, the love of mountain scenery was made more accessible by improvements in transportation technology as it enabled them to visit, and subsequently, illustrate remote and considerably inaccessible landscapes in their pursuits of 'craggy foregrounds and purple distances'. But for Ruskin, such artists were merely third-rate, since the timeless artistic masters would focus their talent primarily painting the Alps or the Italian landscape rather than overly idyllic fields and pastures. He points out, rather inaccurately, that such representations of landscape which break away both from the sublime and from mediaeval art, and become pleasurable studies which are rarely mixed with fear and anxiety. It seems that the modern artist approached their subjects with much the same sense of respect and admiration as sportsmen did the outdoors. This relationship between the painter and the painted became something that may be recognised today for...'modern society...goes to the mountains not to fast, but to feast...and leave their glaciers covered with chicken bones and egg-shells'.

However, perhaps the artist best able to create and design landscape is nature itself. Ruskin writes,

when a rock of any kind has lain for some time exposed to the weather, Nature finishes it in her own way; first she takes wonderful pains about its forms sculpting it into exquisite variety of dint and dimple, and rounding or hollowing it into contours, which for fineness no human hand can follow; she colours it; and every one of her touches of colour, instead of being a powder mixed with oil, is a minute forest of living trees, glorious in strength and beauty, and concealing wonders of structure.

The copyright of the article The King of the Golden River-Ruskin's Narrative as Word Painting in Victorian Art is owned by . Permission to republish The King of the Golden River-Ruskin's Narrative as Word Painting in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.