Nature studies; selections from the writings of John Ruskin

Contents

I. Nature Studies .

II. Nature and Art

III. Sky and Cloud .

II. Nature And Art

As you know more and more of the created world, you will find that the true will of its Maker is that its creatures should be happy; — that He has made everything beautiful in its time and its place, and that it is chiefly by the fault of men, when they are allowed the liberty of thwarting His laws, that Creation groans or travails in pain. The Love of God exists, and you may see it, and live in it if you will. A Spirit does actually exist which teaches the ant her path, the bird her building, and men, in an instinctive and marvellous way, whatever lovely arts and noble deeds are possible to them. Without it you can do no good thing. ... In the possession of it is your peace and your power.

— Lectures on Art, Lecture IV, p. 274.

True criticism of art never can consist in the mere application of rules; it can be just only when it is founded on quick sympathy with the innumerable instincts and changeful efforts of human nature, chastened and guided by unchanging love of all things that God has created to be beautiful, and pronounced to be good.

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. II, p. 45.

Forms are not beautiful because they are copied from Nature; only it is out of the power of man to conceive beauty without her aid.

— Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. IV, p. 102.

There are some landscapes w r hose best character is sparkling, and there is a possibility of repose in the midst of brilliancy, or embracing it, — as on the fields of summer sea, or summer land:

" Calm, and deep peace, on this high wold, And on the dews that drench the furze, And on the silvery gossamers, That twinkle into green and gold"

And there are colorists who can keep their quiet in the midst of a jewellery of light; but, for the most part, it is better to avoid breaking up either lines or masses by too many points, and to make the few points used exceedingly precious.

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXIX, p. 340.

High art, consists neither in altering nor in improving Nature ; but in seeking throughout Nature for " whatsoever things are lovely, and whatsoever things are pure " ; in loving these, in displaying to the utmost of the painter's power such loveliness as is in them, and directing the thoughts of others to them by winning art, or gentle emphasis.

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. Ill, p. 60.

The highest art in all kinds is that which conveys the most truth.

— Arrows of the CAace, Vol. I, Letter VI, p. 140.

Art, followed as such, and for its own sake, irrespective of the interpretation of Nature by it, is destructive of whatever is best and noblest in humanity ; but Nature however simply observed, or imperfectly known, is, in the degree of the affection felt for it, protective and helpful to all that is noblest in humanity. . . .

... So long as Art is steady in the contemplation and exhibition of natural facts, so long she herself lives and grows ; and in her own life and growth partly implies, partly secures, that of the nation in the midst of which she is practised. . . .

Review for yourself the history of art, and you will find this to be a manifest certainty, that no great school ever yet existed which had not for primal aim the representation of some natural fact as truly as possible. Wheresoever the search after truth begins, there life begins; wheresoever that search ceases, there life ceases. . . .

Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth. . . . Seize hold of God's hand and look full in the face of His creation, and there is nothing He will not enable you to achieve.

Thus, then, you will find — and the more profound and accurate your knowledge of the history of art the more assuredly you will find — that the living power in all the real schools, be they great or small, is love of Nature.

— The Two Paths, Lecture I, pp. 16-30.

He who is closest to Nature is best. All rules are useless, all labor is useless, if you do not give facts.

— Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part IV, Chap. X, p. 172.

I suppose you will not wish me to spend any time in proving that imagination must be vigorous in proportion to the quantity of material which it has to handle: and that, just as we increase the range of what we see, we increase the richness of what we can imagine. Granting this, consider what a field is opened to your fancy merely in the subject-matter which architecture admits. Nearly every other art is severely limited in its subjects. . . . But is there anything within range of sight, or conception, which may not be of use to you, or in which your interest may not be excited with advantage to your art? . . .

. . . All the wide world of vegetation blooms and bends for you ; the leaves tremble that you may bid them be still under the marble snow; the thorn and the thistle, which the earth casts forth as evil, are to you the kindliest servants ; no dying petal, nor drooping tendril, is so feeble as to have no more help for you; no robed pride of blossom so kingly, but it will lay aside its purple to receive at your hands the pale immortality. Is there anything in common life too mean, — in common things too trivial, — to be ennobled by your touch ?

As there is nothing in life, so there is nothing in lifelessness which has not its lesson for you, or its gift; and when you are tired of watching the strength of the plume and the tenderness of the leaf, you may walk down to your rough river shore, or into the thickest markets of your thoroughfares, and there is not a piece of torn cable that will not turn into a perfect moulding. . . . Yes, and if you gather up the very sand, and break the stone on which you tread, among its fragments of all but invisible shells you will find forms that will take their place, and that proudly, among the starred traceries of your vaulting: and you, who can crown the mountain with its fortress, and the city with its towers, are thus able also to give beauty to ashes, and worthiness to dust. . . .

. . . Do not think it wasted time to submit yourselves to any influence which may bring upon you any noble feeling. Rise early, always watch the sunrise, and the way the clouds break from the dawn; you will cast your statue-draperies in quite another than your common way, when the remembrance of that cloud motion is with you, and of the scarlet vesture of the morning. Live always in the springtime in the country; you do not know what leaf-form means, unless you have seen the buds burst, and the young leaves breathing low in the sunshine, and wondering at the first shower of rain.

— The Two Paths, Lecture IV, pp. 95, 96, 100.

Where does Nature pause in her finishing — that finishing which consists not in the smoothing of surface, but the filling of space, and the multiplication of life and thought ?

— Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. IX, p. 166.

All most lovely forms and thoughts are directly taken from natural objects.

— Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. IV, p. 101.

The things which Art does care to know, are these: that in the heavens God hath set a tabernacle for the sun, "which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof."

This, then, being the kind of truth with which Art is exclusively concerned, how is such truth as this to be ascertained and accumulated? Evidently, and only, by perception and feeling. Neither either by reasoning or report. Nothing must come between Nature and the artists sight ; nothing between God and the artist's soul. Neither calculation nor hearsay, — be it the most subtle of calculations, or the wisest of sayings, — may be allowed to come between the universe and the witness which Art bears to its visible nature. . . .

The whole function of the artist in the world is to be a seeing and feeling creature; to be an instrument of such tenderness and sensitiveness, that no shadow, no hue, no line, no instantaneous and evanescent expression of the visible things around him, nor any of the emotions which they are capable of conveying to the spirit which has been given him, shall either be left unrecorded, or fade from the book of record. There is no great painter, no great workman in any art, but he sees more with the glance of a moment than he could learn by the labor of a thousand hours.

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. Ill, Chap. II, pp. 40, 41.

What is the purpose of your decoration ? . . . We profess that it is to honor the Deity; or, in other words, that it is pleasing to Him that we should delight our eyes with blue and golden colors, and solemnise our spirits by the sight of large stones laid one on another, and ingeniously carved.

I do not think it can be doubted that it is pleasing to Him when we do this ; for He has Himself prepared for us, nearly every morning and evening, windows painted with Divine art, in blue and gold and vermilion ; windows lighted from within by the lustre of that heaven which we may assume, at least with more certainty than any consecrated ground, to be one of His dwelling-places. Again, in every mountain side, and cliff of rude seashore, He has heaped stones one upon another of greater magnitude than those of Chartres Cathedral, and sculptured them with floral ornament,— surely not less sacred because living?

Must it not then be only because we love our own work better than His, that we respect the lucent glass, but not the lucent clouds; that we weave embroidered robes with ingenious fingers, and make bright the gilded vaults we have beautifully ordained — while yet we have not considered the heavens the work of His fingers : nor the stars of the strange vault which He has ordained. And do we dream that by carving fonts and lifting pillars in His honor, who cuts the way of the rivers among the rocks, and at whose reproof the pillars of the earth are astonished, we shall obtain pardon for the dishonor done to the hills and streams by which He has appointed our dwelling-place; — for the infection of their sweet air with poison; — for the burning up their tender grass and flowers with

tire. ... — Lectures on Art, Lect. II, p. 237.

The first thing we have to ask of decoration is that it should indicate strong liking, and that honestly. . . .

The second requirement in decoration, is a sign of our liking the right thing. And the right thing to be liked is God's work, which He made for our delight and contentment in this world. And all noble ornamentation is the expression of man's delight in God's work.

— The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. II, p. 56.

This infinite universe is unfathomable, inconceivable, in its whole; every human creature must slowly spell out, and long contemplate, such part of it as may be possible for him to reach; then set forth what he has learned of it for those beneath him; extricating it from infinity, as one gathers a violet out of grass ; one does not improve either violet or grass in gathering it, but one makes the flower visible; and the human being has to make its power upon his own heart visible also, and to give it the honor of the good thoughts it has raised up in him, and to write upon it the history of his own soul. And sometimes he may be able to do more than this, and to set it in strange lights, and display it in a thousand ways before unknown : ways specially directed to necessary and noble purposes, for which he had to choose instruments out of the wide armory of God. All this he may do-: and in this he is only doing what every Christian has to do with the written, as well as the created word, "rightly dividing the word of truth."

— Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXX, p. 344.

Beware, in going to nature, of taking the commonplace dogmas or dicta of art. Look not for what is like Titian or like Claude — but believe that everything which God has made is beautiful, and that everything which Nature teaches is true.

— Arrows of the Chace, Letter I, p. 38.

There is but one grand style in the treatment of all subjects, whatsoever, and that style is based on the perfect knowledge, and consists in the simple, unencumbered rendering of the specific characters of the given object. Every change, or abandonment of such specific character, is as destructive of grandeur as it is of truth, of beauty, of propriety. Every alteration of the features of nature has its origin either in powerless indolence or blind audacity, in the folly which forgets, or the insolence which desecrates, works which it is the pride of angels to know, and their privilege to love.

— Modern Painters, Vol. I, Preface to Second Edition, p. 27.

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

— Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. Ill, p. 99.

Human Art can only flourish when its dew is Affection: its air, Devotion; the rock of its roots, Patience; and its sunshine, God.

— The Laws of Fe sole, Chap. X, p. 135.

We need not hope to be able to imitate, in general work, any of the subtly combined curvatures of Nature's highest designing; on the contrary, their extreme refinement renders them unfit for coarse service or material. Lines which are lovely in the pearly film of the Nautilus shell, are lost in the gray roughness of stone; and those which are sublime in the blue of far away hills, are weak in the substance of incumbent marble. . . .

. . . No sculptor can in the least imitate the peculiar character of accidental fracture : he can obey or exhibit the laws of Nature, but he cannot copy the felicity of her fancies, nor follow the steps of her fury. The very glory of a mountain is in the revolutions which raised it into power, and the forces which are striking it into ruin. But we want no cold and careful imitation of catastrophe; no calculated mockery of convulsion; no delicate recommendation of ruin. We are to follow the labor of Nature, but not her disturbance ; to imitate what she has deliberately ordained, not what she has violently suffered, or strangely permitted. . . . Beautiful ornament, wherever found, or however invented, is always either an intentional or unintentional copy of some constant natural form.

r— The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XX, pp. 224, 225.

For prolonged entertainment, no picture can be compared with the wealth of interest which may be found in the herbage of the poorest field, or blossoms of the narrowest copse.

— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part IX, Chap. I, p. 249.

The art of man is the expression of his rational and disciplined delight in the forms and laws of the creation of which he forms a part. . . . Fix, then, this in your mind — that your art is to be the praise of something that you love, — be you small or great, what healthy art is possible to you must be the expression of your true delight in a real thing, better than the art.

— The Laws of Fesole> Chap. I, pp. 11, 12.

Many forest trees present, in their accidental contortions, types of the most complicated spiral shafts, the plan being originally of a graceful shaft rising from several roots; nor, indeed, will the reader ever find models for every kind of shaft decoration, so graceful or so gorgeous, as he will find in the great forest aisle, when the strength of the earth itself seems to rise from the roots into the vaulting: but the shaft surface, barred as it expands with wings of ebony and silver, is fretted with traceries of ivy, marbled with purple moss, veined with gray lichen, and tessellated by the rays of the rolling heaven, with flitting fancies of blue shadow and burning gold.

— The Stones of Venice^ Vol. I, Chap. XXVI, p. 299.

The greater part of those delights by which Nature recommends herself to man at all times, cannot be conveyed by his imitative work. He cannot make his grass green and cool and good to rest upon, which in Nature is its chief use to man ; nor can he make his flowers tender and full of color and of scent, which in Nature are their chief powers of giving joy. Those qualities which alone he can secure are certain severe characters of form, such as men only see in Nature on deliberate examination, and by the full and set appliance of sight and thought; a man must lie down on the bank of grass on his breast and set himself to watch and penetrate the intertwining of it, before he finds that which is good to be gathered by the architect. So then while Nature is at all times pleasant to us, and while the sight and sense of her work may mingle happily with all our thoughts, and labors, and times of existence, that image of her which the architect carries away represents what we can only perceive in her by direct intellectual exertion of a similar kind in order to understand it and feel it.

— T7ie Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. IV, p. 113.

All art, and all Nature, depend on the " disposition of masses." Painting, sculpture, music and poetry, depend equally on the "proportion," whether of colors, stones, notes, or words. Proportion is a principle, not of architecture, but of existence. It is by the law of proportion that stars shine, that mountains stand, and rivers flow.

— Lectures on Architecture and Painting ; Lecture I, p. 274.

The true ideal of landscape is precisely the same as that of the human form; it is the expression of the specific — not the individual, but the specific — characters of every object, in their perfection; there is an ideal form of every herb, flower, and tree: it is that form to which every individual of the species has a tendency to arrive, freed from the influence of accident or disease. Every landscape painter should have the specific characters of every object he has to represent, rock, flower, or cloud; and in his highest ideal works, all their distinctions will be perfectly expressed, broadly or delicately, slightly or completely, according to the nature of the subject, and the degree of attention which is to be drawn to the particular object by the part it plays in the composition. . . .

. . . Botanical or geological details are not to be given as matters of curiosity or subject of search, but as the ultimate elements of every species of expression and order of loveliness. . . .

. . . Every herb and flower of the field has its specific, distinct, and perfect beauty; it has its peculiar habitation, expression and function. The highest art is that which seizes this specific character, which develops and illustrates it, which assigns to it its proper position in the landscape, and which, by means of it, enhances and enforces the great impression which the picture is intended to convey. Nor is it of herbs and flowers alone that such scientific representation is required. Every class of rock, every kind of earth, every form of cloud, must be studied with equal industry, and rendered with equal precision. . . .

. . . Generalization, as the word is commonly understood, is the act of a vulgar, incapable, and unthinking mind. To see in all mountains nothing but similar heaps of earth; in all rocks, nothing but similar concretions of solid matter ; in all trees, nothing but similar accumulations of leaves, is no sign of high feeling or extended thought. The more we know, and the more we feel, the more we separate ; we separate to obtain a more perfect unity. ,

— Modern Painters, Vol.1, Preface, pp. 28-39.

Of all embellishments by which the efforts of man can enhance the beauty of natural scenery, those are the most effective which can give animation to the scene, while the spirit which they bestow is in unison with its general character. It is generally desirable to indicate the presence of animated existence in a scene of natural beauty; but only of such existence as shall be imbued with the spirit, and shall partake of the essence, of the beauty, which, without it, would be dead.

— The Poetry of Architecture, p. 9.

It is ordained that, for our encouragement, every step we make in the more exalted range of science adds something also to its practical applicabilities ; that all the great phenomena of nature, the knowledge of which is desired by the angels only, by us partly, as it reveals to farther vision the being and the glory of Him in whom they rejoice and we live, dispense yet such kind influences and so much of material blessing as to be joyfully felt by all inferior creatures, and to be desired by them with such single desire as the imperfection of their nature may admit; that the strong torrents which, in their own gladness fill the hills with hollow thunder and the vales with winding light, have yet their bounden charge of field to feed and barge to bear ; that the fierce flames to which the Alp owes its upheaval and the volcano its terror, temper for us the metal vein and quickening spring; and that for our incitement, I say not our reward, for knowledge is its own reward, herbs have their healing, stones their preciousness, and stars their times.

— Modern Painters^ Vol. II, Part III, Sect. 1, Chap. I, p. 228.

Nature is never mechanical in her arrangements; she never allows two members of her composition exactly to correspond : accordingly, in every piece of art which is to combine, without gradations, with landscape (as must always be the case in monuments) we must not allow a multitude of similar members; the design must be a dignified and simple whole.

— The Poetry of Architecture ', p. 171.

The word truth, as applied to art, signifies the faithful statement, either to the mind or senses, of any fact of Nature.

— Modern Painters^ Vol. I, Part I, Sect. 1, Chap. V, p. 95.

Every geological formation has features entirely peculiar to itself: definite lines of fracture, giving rise to fixed resultant forms of rock and earth ; peculiar vegetable products, among which still farther distinctions are wrought out by variations of climate and elevation. From such modifying circumstances, arise the infinite varieties of the orders of landscape, of which each one shows perfect harmony among its several features, and possesses an ideal beauty of its own. . . . The level marshes and rich meadows of the tertiary, the rounded swells and short pastures of the chalk, the square-built cliffs and cloven dells of the lower limestone, the soaring peaks and ridgy precipices of the primaries, having nothing in common among them — nothing which is not distinctive and incommunicable. Their very atmospheres are different — their clouds are different — their humors of storm and sunshine are different — their flowers, animals and forests are different. By each order of landscape — and its orders, I repeat, are infinite in number, corresponding not only to the several species of rock, but to the particular circumstances of the rock's deposition or after treatment, and to the incalculable varieties of climate, aspect, and human interference: by each order of landscape, I say, peculiar lessons are intended to be taught, and distinct pleasures to be conveyed: and it is as utterly futile to talk of generalizing their impressions into an ideal landscape, as to talk of amalgamating all nourishment into one ideal food, gathering all music into one ideal movement, or confounding all thought into one ideal idea.

— Modern Painters^ Vol. I, Preface to Second Edition, p. 40.

No picture can be good which deceives by its imitation, for the very reason that nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

— Modern Painters^ Vol. I, Part I, Sect. I, Chap. V, p. 99.

In the edifices of Man there should be found reverent worship and following, not only of the spirit which rounds the pillars of the forest, and arches the vault of the avenue — which gives veining to the leaf, and polish to the shell, and grace to every pulse that agitates animal organization — but of that also which reproves the pillars of the earth, and builds up her barren precipices into the coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of mountain purple into the pale arch of the sky.

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture ; Chap. Ill, p. 72.

It is always to be remembered that no one mind is like another, either in its powers or perceptions ; and while the main principles of training must be the same for all, the result in each will be as various as the kinds of truth which each will apprehend; therefore, also, the modes of effort, even in men whose inner principles and final aims are exactly the same. Suppose, for instance, two men, equally honest, equally industrious, equally impressed with a humble desire to render some part of what they saw in Nature faithfully. . . . But one of them is quiet in temperament, has a feeble memory, no invention, and excessively keen sight.

The other is impatient in temperament, has a memory which nothing escapes, an invention which never rests, and is comparatively near-sighted.

Set them both free in the same field in a mountain valley. One sees everything, small and large, with almost the same clearness ; mountains and grasshoppers alike; the leaves on the branches, the veins in the pebbles, the bubbles in the stream ; but he can remember nothing, and invent nothing. . . .

Meantime the other has been watching the change of the clouds, and the march of the light along the mountain sides ; he beholds the entire scene in broad, soft masses of true gradation, and the very feebleness of his sight is in some sort an advantage to him, in making him more sensible of the aerial mystery of distance, and hiding from him the multitudes of circumstances which it would have been impossible for him to represent. But there is not one change in the casting of the jagged shadows along the hollows of the hills, but it is fixed on his mind forever; not a flake of spray has broken from the sea of cloud about their bases, but he has watched it as it melts away, and could recall it to its lost place in heaven by the slightest effort of his thoughts. . . .

Fancy how his paper will be covered with stray symbols and blots, and undecipherable short-hand: — as for his sitting down to "draw from Nature," there was not one of the things which he wished to represent that stayed for so much as five seconds together ; but none of them escaped, for all that: they are sealed up in that strange storehouse of his ; he may take one of them out, perhaps this day twenty years, and paint it in his dark room far away. Now, observe, you may tell both of these men, when they are young, that they are to be honest, that they have an important function, and that they are not to care what Raphael did. This you may wholesomely impress on them both. But fancy the exquisite absurdity of expecting either of them to possess any of the qualities

Of the Other. — Pre-Raphaelilism, pp. 252, 254.

To my own mind, there is no more beautiful proof of benevolent design in the creation of the earth, than the exact adaptation of its materials to the art-power of man. The plasticity and constancy under fire of clay : the ductility and fusibility of gold and iron: the consistent softness of marble, and the fibrous toughness of wood, are in each material carried to the exact degree which renders them provocative of skill by their resistance, and full of reward for it by their