The Crown of Wild Olive
will be made pure emerald green by transmitted sunshine through its
edges. With all this, however, you are not much concerned at present,
but I tell it you partly as a preparation for what we have afterwards to
say about colour, and partly that you may approach lakes and streams
with reverence, and study them as carefully as other things, not hoping
to express them by a few horizontal dashes of white, or a few tremulous
blots.[232] Not but that much may be done by tremulous blots, when you
know precisely what you mean by them, as you will see by many of the
Turner sketches, which are now framed at the National Gallery; but you
must have painted water many and many a day--yes, and all day
long--before you can hope to do anything like those.
* * * * *
III. Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, before passing to the clouds, I
say nothing special about _ground_.[233] But there is too much to be
said about that to admit of my saying it here. You will find the
principal laws of its structure examined at length in the fourth volume
of "Modern Painters;" and if you can get that volume, and copy carefully
Plate 21., which I have etched after Turner with great pains, it will
give you as much help as you need in the linear expression of
ground-surface. Strive to get the retirement and succession of masses in
irregular ground: much may be done in this way by careful watching of
the perspective diminutions of its herbage, as well as by contour; and
much also by shadows. If you draw the shadows of leaves and tree trunks
on any undulating ground with entire carefulness, you will be surprised
to find how much they explain of the form and distance of the earth on
which they fall.
Passing then to skies, note that there is this great peculiarity about
sky subject, as distinguished from earth subject;--that the clouds, not
being much liable to man's interference, are always beautifully
arranged. You cannot be sure of this in any other features of landscape.
The rock on which the effect of a mountain scene especially depends is
always precisely that which the roadmaker blasts or the landlord
quarries; and the spot of green which Nature left with a special purpose
by her dark forest sides, and finished with her most delicate grasses,
is always that which the farmer ploughs or builds upon. But the clouds,
though we can hide them with smoke, and mix them with poison, cannot be
quarried nor built over, and they are always therefore gloriously
arranged; so gloriously, that unless you have notable powers of memory
you need not hope to approach the effect of any sky that interests you.
For both its grace and its glow depend upon the united influence of
every cloud within its compass: they all move and burn together in a
marvellous harmony; not a cloud of them is out of its appointed place,
or fails of its part in the choir: and if you are not able to recollect
(which in the case of a complicated sky it is impossible you should)
precisely the form and position of all the clouds at a given moment, you
cannot draw the sky at all; for the clouds will not fit if you draw one
part of them three or four minutes before another. You must try
therefore to help what memory you have, by sketching at the utmost
possible speed the whole range of the clouds; marking, by any shorthand
or symbolic work you can hit upon, the peculiar character of each, as
transparent, or fleecy, or linear, or undulatory; giving afterwards such
completion to the parts as your recollection will enable you to do.
This, however, only when the sky is interesting from its general aspect;
at other times, do not try to draw all the sky, but a single cloud:
sometimes a round cumulus will stay five or six minutes quite steady
enough to let you mark out his principal masses: and one or two white or
crimson lines which cross the sunrise will often stay without serious
change for as long. And in order to be the readier in drawing them,
practise occasionally drawing lumps of cotton, which will teach you
better than any other stable thing the kind of softness there is in
clouds. For you will find when you have made a few genuine studies of
sky, and then look at any ancient or modern painting, that ordinary
artists have always fallen into one of two faults: either, in rounding
the clouds, they make them as solid and hard-edged as a heap of stones
tied up in a sack, or they represent them not as rounded at all, but as
vague wreaths of mist or flat lights in the sky; and think they have
done enough in leaving a little white paper between dashes of blue, or
in taking an irregular space out with the sponge. Now clouds are not as
solid as flour-sacks; but, on the other hand, they are neither spongy
nor flat. They are definite and very beautiful forms of sculptured mist;
sculptured is a perfectly accurate word; they are not more _drifted_
into form than they are _carved_ into form, the warm air around them
cutting them into shape by absorbing the visible vapour beyond certain
limits; hence their angular and fantastic outlines, as different from a
swollen, spherical, or globular formation, on the one hand, as from that
of flat films or shapeless mists on the other. And the worst of all is,
that while these forms are difficult enough to draw on any terms,
especially considering that they never stay quiet, they must be drawn
also at greater disadvantage of light and shade than any others, the
force of light in clouds being wholly unattainable by art; so that if we
put shade enough to express their form as positively as it is expressed
in reality, we must make them painfully too dark on the dark sides.
Nevertheless, they are so beautiful, if you in the least succeed with
them, that you will hardly, I think, lose courage. Outline them often
with the pen, as you can catch them here and there; one of the chief
uses of doing this will be, not so much the memorandum so obtained as
the lesson you will get respecting the softness of the cloud-outlines.
You will always find yourself at a loss to see where the outline really
is; and when drawn it will always look hard and false, and will
assuredly be either too round or too square, however often you alter it,
merely passing from the one fault to the other and back again, the real
cloud striking an inexpressible mean between roundness and squareness in
all its coils or battlements. I speak at present, of course, only of the
cumulus cloud: the lighter wreaths and flakes of the upper sky cannot
be outlined--they can only be sketched, like locks of hair, by many
lines of the pen. Firmly developed bars of cloud on the horizon are in
general easy enough, and may be drawn with decision. When you have thus
accustomed yourself a little to the placing and action of clouds, try to
work out their light and shade, just as carefully as you do that of
other things, looking _exclusively_ for examples of treatment to the
vignettes in Rogers's Italy and Poems, and to the Liber Studiorum,
unless you have access to some examples of Turner's own work. No other
artist ever yet drew the sky: even Titian's clouds, and Tintoret's, are
conventional. The clouds in the "Ben Arthur," "Source of Arveron," and
"Calais Pier," are among the best of Turner's storm studies; and of the
upper clouds, the vignettes to Rogers's Poems furnish as many examples
as you need.
And now, as our first lesson was taken from the sky, so, for the
present, let our last be. I do not advise you to be in any haste to
master the contents of my next letter. If you have any real talent for
drawing, you will take delight in the discoveries of natural loveliness,
which the studies I have already proposed will lead you into, among the
fields and hills; and be assured that the more quietly and
single-heartedly you take each step in the art, the quicker, on the
whole, will your progress be. I would rather, indeed, have discussed the
subjects of the following letter at greater length, and in a separate
work addressed to more advanced students; but as there are one or two
things to be said on composition which may set the young artist's mind
somewhat more at rest, or furnish him with defence from the urgency of
ill-advisers, I will glance over the main heads of the matter here;
trusting that my doing so may not beguile you, my dear reader, from your
serious work, or lead you to think me, in occupying part of this book
with talk not altogether relevant to it, less entirely or
Faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
FOOTNOTES:
[220] It is meant, I believe, for "Salt Hill."
[221] I do not mean that you can approach Turner or Durer in their
strength, that is to say, in their imagination or power of design. But
you may approach them, by perseverance, in truth of manner.
[222] The following are the most desirable plates:
Grande Chartreuse.
AEsacus and Hesperie.
Cephalus and Procris.
Source of Arveron.
Ben Arthur.
Watermill.
Hindhead Hill.
Hedging and Ditching.
Dumblane Abbey.
Morpeth.
Calais Pier.
Pembury Mill.
Little Devil's Bridge.
River Wye (_not_ Wye and Severn).
Holy Island.
Clyde.
Lauffenbourg.
Blair Athol.
Alps from Grenoble.
Raglan. (Subject with quiet brook, trees, and castle on the right.)
If you cannot get one of these, any of the others will be serviceable,
except only the twelve following, which are quite useless:--
1. Scene in Italy, with goats on a walled road, and trees above.
2. Interior of church.
3. Scene with bridge, and trees above; figures on left, one playing a
pipe.
4. Scene with figure playing on tambourine.
5. Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower of a church seen
through them.
6. Fifth Plague of Egypt.
7. Tenth Plague of Egypt.
8. Rivaulx Abbey.
9. Wye and Severn.
10. Scene with castle in centre, cows under trees on the left.
11. Martello Towers.
12. Calm.
It is very unlikely that you should meet with one of the original
etchings; if you should, it will be a drawing-master in itself alone,
for it is not only equivalent to a pen-and-ink drawing by Turner, but to
a very careful one: only observe, the Source of Arveron, Raglan, and
Dumblane were not etched by Turner; and the etchings of those three are
not good for separate study, though it is deeply interesting to see how
Turner, apparently provoked at the failure of the beginnings in the
Arveron and Raglan, took the plates up himself, and either conquered or
brought into use the bad etching by his marvellous engraving. The
Dumblane was, however, well etched by Mr. Lupton, and beautifully
engraved by him. The finest Turner etching is of an aqueduct with a
stork standing in a mountain stream, not in the published series; and
next to it, are the unpublished etchings of the Via Mala and Crowhurst.
Turner seems to have been so fond of these plates that he kept
retouching and finishing them, and never made up his mind to let them
go. The Via Mala is certainly, in the state in which Turner left it, the
finest of the whole series: its etching is, as I said, the best after
that of the aqueduct. Figure 20., above, is part of another fine
unpublished etching, "Windsor, from Salt Hill." Of the published
etchings, the finest are the Ben Arthur, AEsacus, Cephalus, and Stone
Pines, with the Girl washing at a Cistern; the three latter are the more
generally instructive. Hindhead Hill, Isis, Jason, and Morpeth, are also
very desirable.
[223] You will find more notice of this point in the account of
Harding's tree-drawing, a little farther on.
[224] The impressions vary so much in colour that no brown can be
specified.
[225] You had better get such a photograph, even if you have a Liber
print as well.
[226] See the closing letter in this volume.