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    Lectures on Landscape Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871
    Lectures on Landscape Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871
    Lectures on Landscape Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871
    Ebook102 pages1 hour

    Lectures on Landscape Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871

    By John Ruskin

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 1, 2007
    Lectures on Landscape Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871

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    Reviews for Lectures on Landscape Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871

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    • 3/5
      A series of three lectures on landscapes, first on Outlines, then Light/Shade, then Color. The author repeatedly cites Titian, Holbein, Turner, Tintoretto. The eBook I found from Gutenberg has terrible quality plates, however, and I suggest you at least use Google for larger color shots.

      His main thesis on landscape is in its relation to humanity. I quote a passage in full:

      "The interest of a landscape consists wholly in its relation either to figures presentE€Eor to figures pastE€Eor to human powers conceived. The most splendid drawing of the chain of the Alps, irrespective of their relation to humanity, is no more a true landscape than a painting of this bit of stone. For, as natural philosophers, there is no bigness or littleness to you. This stone is just as interesting to you, or ought to beE€Eas if it was a million times as big. There is no more sublimityE€Eper seE€Ein ground sloped at an angle of forty-five, than in ground level; nor in a perpendicular fracture of a rock, than in a horizontal one. The only thing that makes"re interesting to you in a landscape than the other, is that you could tumble over the perpendicular fractureE€Ean

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    Lectures on Landscape Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 - John Ruskin

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures on Landscape, by John Ruskin

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: Lectures on Landscape

    Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871

    Author: John Ruskin

    Release Date: December 4, 2006 [EBook #20019]

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LECTURES ON LANDSCAPE ***

    Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Linda Cantoni, and the

    Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

    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

    Transcriber's Note: This e-text contains words and phrases in ancient Greek. In the original text, some of the Greek characters have diacritical marks which do not display properly in some browsers. In order to make this e-text as accessible as possible, the diacritical marks have been omitted, except that the rough-breathing mark is here represented by an apostrophe at the beginning of the word. All text in Greek has a mouse-hover pop-up transliteration, e.g., καλος.

    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.

    LIST OF PLATES

    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.

    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.

    One is a beautiful harmony of cool color; and the other of hot, and they are both exquisitely designed in ornamental lines. But they are not painted for those qualities. They are painted because the state of the scene in one case is full of delight to men; and in the other of pain and danger. And it is not Turner's object at all to exhibit or illustrate natural phenomena, however interesting in themselves.

    VESUVIUS IN ERUPTION.

    From the painting by Turner.

    [View color version]

    He does not want to paint blue mist in order to teach you the nature of evaporation; nor this lava stream, to explain to you the operation of gravity on ponderous and viscous materials. He paints the blue mist, because it brings life and joy to men, and the lava stream because it is death to them.

    5. Again here are two sea-pieces

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