Lectures on Landscape

Lectures on Landscape, by John
Ruskin

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Title: Lectures on Landscape Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871
Author: John Ruskin
Release Date: December 4, 2006 [EBook #20019]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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LECTURES ON LANDSCAPE
DELIVERED AT OXFORD

IN LENT TERM, 1871.
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
[Illustration: BRANTWOOD
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH]

PREFATORY NOTE.
These Lectures on Landscape were given at Oxford on January 20,
February 9, and February 23, 1871. They were not public Lectures,
like Professor Ruskin's other courses, but addressed only to
undergraduates who had joined his class. They were illustrated by
pictures from his collection, of which several are here reproduced, and
by others which may be seen in the Oxford University Galleries or in
the Ruskin Drawing School.
W.G.C.

CONTENTS.
PAGE
LECTURE I.

OUTLINE 1
LECTURE II.
LIGHT AND SHADE 16
LECTURE III.
COLOR 32

LIST OF PLATES
Page
Vesuvius in Eruption, by J.M.W. Turner 2
Near Blair Athol, by J.M.W. Turner 19
Dumblane Abbey, by J.M.W. Turner 20
Madonna and Child, by Filippo Lippi 33
The Lady with the Brooch, by Sir Joshua Reynolds 35
Æsacus and Hesperie, by J.M.W. Turner 45
Mill near Grande Chartreuse, by J.M.W. Turner 47
L'Aiguillette; Valley of Cluses, by J.M.W. Turner 48

LECTURES ON LANDSCAPE.

I.
OUTLINE.

1. In my inaugural lecture,[1] I stated that while holding this
professorship I should direct you, in your practical exercises, chiefly to
natural history and landscape. And having in the course of the past year
laid the foundational elements of art sufficiently before you, I will
invite you, now, to enter on real work with me; and accordingly I
propose during this and the following term to give you what practical
leading I can in elementary study of landscape, and of a branch of
natural history which will form a kind of center for all the
rest--Ichthyology.
[Footnote 1: "Lectures on Art, 1870," § 23.]
In the outset I must shortly state to you the position which landscape
painting and animal painting hold towards the higher branches of art.
2. Landscape painting is the thoughtful and passionate representation of
the physical conditions appointed for human existence. It imitates the
aspects, and records the phenomena, of the visible things which are
dangerous or beneficial to men; and displays the human methods of
dealing with these, and of enjoying them or suffering from them, which
are either exemplary or deserving of sympathetic contemplation.
Animal painting investigates the laws of greater and less nobility of
character in organic form, as comparative anatomy examines those of
greater and less development in organic structure; and the function of
animal painting is to bring into notice the minor and unthought of
conditions of power or beauty, as that of physiology is to ascertain the
minor conditions of adaptation.
3. Questions as to the purpose of arrangements or the use of the organs
of an animal are, however, no less within the province of the painter
than of the physiologist, and are indeed more likely to commend
themselves to you through drawing than dissection. For as you dissect
an animal you generally assume its form to be necessary and only
examine how it is constructed; but in drawing the outer form itself
attentively you are led necessarily to consider the mode of life for
which it is disposed, and therefore to be struck by any awkwardness or
apparent uselessness in its parts. After sketching one day several heads
of birds it became a vital matter of interest to me to know the use of the

bony process on the head of the hornbill; but on asking a great
physiologist, I found that it appeared to him an absurd question, and
was certainly an unanswerable one.
4. I have limited, you have just heard, landscape painting to the
representation of phenomena relating to human life. You will scarcely
be disposed to admit the propriety of such a limitation; and you will
still less be likely to conceive its necessary strictness and severity,
unless I convince you of it by somewhat detailed examples.
Here are two landscapes by Turner in his greatest time--Vesuvius in
repose, Vesuvius in eruption.