“Modern Painters (1843–1860) is a five-volume work by the eminent Victorian art critic, John Ruskin, begun when he was 24 years old based on material collected in Switzerland in 1842. Ruskin argues that recent painters emerging from the tradition of the picturesque are superior in the art of landscape to the old masters. The book was primarily written as a defense of the later work of J.M.W. Turner. Ruskin used the book to argue that art should devote itself to the accurate documentation of nature. In Ruskin's view, Turner had developed from early detailed documentation of nature to a later more profound insight into natural forces and atmospheric effects. In this way, Modern Painters reflects ‘Landscape and Portrait-Painting’ (1829) by American art critic John Neal by distinguishing between ‘things seen by the artist’ and ‘things as they are.’ ...”
2014 March: John Ruskin
The Two Paths: Being Lectures on Art, and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, Delivered in 1858-9.
