Lectures on Art

Lectures on Art, by John Ruskin

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Title: Lectures on Art Delivered before the University of Oxford in
Hilary term, 1870
Author: John Ruskin
Release Date: September 3, 2006 [EBook #19164]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ON ART ***

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Library Edition
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN RUSKIN
CROWN OF WILD OLIVE
TIME AND TIDE
QUEEN OF THE AIR
LECTURES ON ART AND LANDSCAPE
ARATRA PENTELICI
NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NEW YORK CHICAGO
***
LECTURES ON ART.
DELIVERED
BEFORE THE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
IN HILARY TERM, 1870.
***

CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
INAUGURAL 1
LECTURE II.

THE RELATION OF ART TO RELIGION 24
LECTURE III.
THE RELATION OF ART TO MORALS 46
LECTURE IV.
THE RELATION OF ART TO USE 66
LECTURE V.
LINE 86
LECTURE VI.
LIGHT 102
LECTURE VII.
COLOUR 123

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1887.
The following lectures were the most important piece of my literary
work done with unabated power, best motive, and happiest concurrence
of circumstance. They were written and delivered while my mother yet
lived, and had vividest sympathy in all I was attempting;--while also
my friends put unbroken trust in me, and the course of study I had
followed seemed to fit me for the acceptance of noble tasks and graver
responsibilities than those only of a curious traveler, or casual teacher.
Men of the present world may smile at the sanguine utterances of the
first four lectures: but it has not been wholly my own fault that they
have remained unfulfilled; nor do I retract one word of hope for the
success of other masters, nor a single promise made to the sincerity of
the student's labor, on the lines here indicated. It would have been

necessary to my success, that I should have accepted permanent
residence in Oxford, and scattered none of my energy in other tasks.
But I chose to spend half my time at Coniston Waterhead; and to use
half my force in attempts to form a new social organization,--the St.
George's Guild,--which made all my Oxford colleagues distrustful of
me, and many of my Oxford hearers contemptuous. My mother's death
in 1871, and that of a dear friend in 1875, took away the personal joy I
had in anything I wrote or designed: and in 1876, feeling unable for
Oxford duty, I obtained a year's leave of rest, and, by the kind and wise
counsel of Prince Leopold, went to Venice, to reconsider the form into
which I had cast her history in the abstract of it given in the "Stones of
Venice."
The more true and close view of that history, begun in "St. Mark's
Rest," and the fresh architectural drawings made under the stimulus of
it, led me forward into new fields of thought, inconsistent with the daily
attendance needed by my Oxford classes; and in my discontent with the
state I saw them in, and my inability to return to their guidance without
abandonment of all my designs of Venetian and Italian history, began
the series of vexations which ended in the very nearly mortal illness of
1878.
Since, therefore, the period of my effective action in Oxford was only
from 1870 to 1875, it can scarcely be matter of surprise or reproof that I
could not in that time obtain general trust in a system of teaching which,
though founded on that of Da Vinci and Reynolds, was at variance with
the practice of all recent European academy schools; nor establish--on
the unassisted resources of the Slade Professorship--the schools of
Sculpture, Architecture, Metal-work, and manuscript Illumination, of
which the design is confidently traced in the four inaugural lectures.
In revising the book, I have indicated as in the last edition of the
"Seven Lamps," passages which the student will find generally
applicable, and in all their bearings useful, as distinguished from those
regarding only their immediate subject. The relative importance of
these broader statements, I again indicate by the use of capitals or
italics; and if the reader will index the sentences he finds useful for his

own work, in the blank pages left for that purpose at the close of the
volume, he will certainly get more good of them than if they had been
grouped for him according to the author's notion of their contents.
SANDGATE,