The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin’s teaching collection at Oxford

The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin’s teaching collection at Oxford

Ruskin's revision to the Rudimentary series (1878)

Unpublished manuscript catalogue for proposed re-organisation of the Rudimentary series.

Rudimentary manu Cover

Catalogue / 5th Cabinet / 2nd Section

  • Turner, Joseph Mallord William - Lowther Castle Now 131 114.

    The examples we have hitherto reviewed have been chosen chiefly to illustrate the history and principles of art. For completion of the evidence they have given us I must now refer to the Standard Series, and I place in the remainder of the cabinets exercises for immediate practice and illustrations of the natural history and landscape which, as frequently stated in my lectures, I think the best subjects of art for amateur students. It is always to be remembered that this collection is prepared for the art-education of young people generally, and not at all as a means of professional discipline for the artist, whom, as often stated in my lectures, I expect to study in the academies of artists and not in mine. This first drawing of the series so selected, an early pencil-sketch by Turner, from nature, is made the introduction to everything in order to enforce on our students the first great law of practice, that unR. til you can manage the point of the pencil, you need never hope to manage anything else. Assuming, however, that the exercises which have been gone through during the study of the above described examples have sufficiently disciplined the students’, hand, he is to copy the cluster of trees on the left hand of this drawing as an introduction to landscape-sketching.

  • 115.

    I place next this outline the drawing engraved in Modern Painters of the right hand corner of Turner’s Richmond, in Yorkshire, the engraving of which the student will find placed in the Working Series. I wish this vignette of mine to be copied in order that the student may at once learn that a Turner foreground is just as ornamental a thing as a Velasquez drapery. I do not know whether in the act of copying he will become convinced of this fact which I have all my life been proclaiming in vain; but on his power of recognising it depends altogether his understanding of what the works of Turner are or mean. If any number of irregular zig-zags or of botanically copied leaves would please him as much as the arrangement of forms & shades in this R. group, or if any chance dabs here and there with a brush, or any upholsterer’s accurate drawing of a pattern would please him as much as the Velasquez drapery, he must remain totally incapable of comprehending what it is that the world recognises as admirable either in Turner or Velasquez. I once hoped to have given many examples of this kind in Modern Painters; but I always found that the most beautiful pieces in Turner’s compositions were beautiful precisely because they were part of the whole drawing and became weak or distorted in being separated. When I showed this vignette first to a young painter of eminence for whose judgement I had much respect, he asked me how I could possibly allow such an ugly thing as this group of three stones at the bottom to destroy the foliage at the top: but that foliage is nothing without its cast shadows, and those cast shadows could not have been terminated but by Turner’s termination - which rendering the edges of the stones indispensable, I thought it best to complete them into the angle, although their oblique position is only given them that they may R. take up the lines of rock and river in the distance in steep perspective. Difficulties of this kind, found for the most part insuperable, were among the chief reasons for the long delay in the completion of Modern Painters and may help to win pardon for its imperfection at last.

  • Ruskin, John - Drawing of Turner's "Goldau" 116.

    I give place next to another of the drawings executed for Modern Painters because the method of execution used in it, pencil washed with neutral tint, will enable the student often to obtain memoranda of chiaroscuro for which pencil alone would be too weak, and sepia too coarse. The drawing also represents, better than the engraving, the general effect of Turner’s Sunset seen from Goldau, so frequently alluded to in my lectureswritings .

  • Ruskin, John - The Brezon and Alps of the Reposoir, seen from Mornex: finished pencil Sketch from Nature Now 132 117.

    Next to this I place an example of mountain drawing in pure pencil, which will show what kind of labour I had to go through in gaining my own knowledge of mountain-form. At the time when I made this and the other Alpine studies admitted into this collection, I well hoped to have made some R. records of Swiss scenery which would have been precious, but even while I was finishing the shadows above the valley of Bonnville in this sketch, I was writing the first passages of Unto this Last, which began for me quite another work in this world. I do not recommend this study, however, as a copy; the anatomical markings in it being exaggerated for purposes of my own.

  • Awaiting photograph 118.

    Rapid studies of effects from the Faul-horn. I had only one bit of paper and packed the mountains all over it; but the Schreck-horn and Finsteraarhorn are all right as they first appear behind the brown rocks of the Faul-horn. Then, the summit of the Schreck horn becoming clear, I sketched it above the Finsteraarhorn. Presently, the Finsteraarhorn throwing off its clouds, I saw I had got it too steep and drew it again below itself. Farther to the right the Eiger and Jung-frau had to be packed in at the left-hand bottom corner, and a final study of the quite clear Schreck horn filled up what was left. These memoranda recall to me a most lovely scene, and I think the method of their execution is the most serviceable R. that can be adopted for such rapid work.

  • 119.

    This sketch drawn with the same simple means is yet made with much more care. It is now valuable as recording the state of snow in mid-summer on the Matterhorn in the year 1849, and as the first accurate drawing ever made of the mountain at all. It may be compared, at the student’s leisure, with existing photographs and with all that preceded it of mountain-drawing.

  • 120.

    Three rapid studies of mountain-form, to show the way in which the most craggy masses are modified by beautiful curves, and recommendable also as easily expressing the main points of form.

  • 121.

    Two studies of sky on Mount Pilate; both records of most beautiful things passing away in a few moments. The upper one was sketched with ink in order to get, if possible, some look of the mist through which everything shone. The lower one, I am sorry to say, is as much as I can ever get as clouds are actually passing: but if students will get into the habit of noting R. as much as they can at the moment an securely and then setting down afterwards in another drawing what they remember, many of them will be able to do incomparably better things than I ever could, because I cannot draw from memory in the least. It is very wonderful to me that among all the able sketches which I see continually brought home from Switzerland by well taught amateurs, there are scarcely ever any records of fleeting effects of this kind done conscientiously.

  • 122.

    Sketch of the Staub-bach, slight, but yet useful, as an example of easy pine-drawing, and interesting in noting as state of the fall when the water is low, which, though often despised by travellers, is of exquisite beauty in reality; the water coming dark against the sky at its first drooping from the cliff and diffusing itself, as it were, into a fountain upside down. Note also in this sketch that the paper is left gray, though the water has to come dark against it, because the light in the drawing, if it had ever been completed, would have been on the snowy mountains beyond the lower cliff, which conquered sky and water and all. The quantity of work which is done in the part of this R. sketch which is done ought always to be enough, if well and deliberately applied, to express with sufficient refinement all the form and colour necessary in a sketch. The lower subject in this frame is a memorandum of an exquisitely beautiful sky of English make. The forms of the clouds are those which I had continually in sight at sunrise and sunset in my early youth, being characteristic of South England and North France; their delicacy being partly dependent always on windy and unsettled climate. This sketch was made from the Crystal Palace Hotel, the brown stain on the right being of course London smoke. The crimson of the clouds is raw and unsatisfactory, but if the student will draw skies till he does them as well as this, he will know how to do them better, and perhaps be more fortunate than I in having time to use his knowledge.

  • Working Series (2) 38 123.

    A beautiful study by Mr. Macdonald of a sky closely corresponding in form to that in the last example; but the open sky is here in true tone, the smoke absent, and the crimson clouds in true relation of light to the sky, as will be instantly felt on retiring to R. a little distance.

  • W.S.(2) 39 124.

    Twilight sky by M.r. Macdonald. Full of fine qualities; but I do not describe it particularly because I am nearly certain that Mr. Macdonald will soon be able to put one with a more interesting fore-ground in its place; the trees and woods here being of little interest.

  • W.S. (2) 36 125.

    An excellent study of the action of evening-cloud, by Mr. Macdonald. Any student who attains the power of gradating sky with this delicacy, and laying forms of floating cloud with equal ease, will have no farther difficulty in sky-painting, so far as it is dependent on handling and materials.

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