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APPENDIX I
RIGHT AND WRONG.
Readers who are using my _Elements of Drawing_ may be surprised by
my saying here that Tintoret may lead them wrong; while in the
_Elements_ he is one of the six men named as being "always right."
I bring the apparent inconsistency forward at the beginning of this
Appendix, because the illustration of it will be farther useful in
showing the real nature of the self-contradiction which is often
alleged against me by careless readers.
It is not only possible, but a frequent condition of human action, to
_do_ right and _be_ right--yet so as to mislead other people
if they rashly imitate the thing done. For there are many rights which
are not absolutely, but relatively right--right only for _that_
person to do under those circumstances,--not for _this_ person to
do under other circumstances.
Thus it stands between Titian and Tintoret. Titian is always absolutely
Right. You may imitate him with entire security that you are doing the
best thing that can possibly be done for the purpose in hand. Tintoret
is always relatively Right--relatively to his own aims and peculiar
powers. But you must quite understand Tintoret before you can be sure
what his aim was, and why he was then right in doing what would not be
right always. If, however, you take the pains thus to understand him,
he becomes entirely instructive and exemplary, just as Titian is; and
therefore I have placed him among those are "always right," and you can
only study him rightly with that reverence for him.
Then the artists who are named as "admitting question of right and
wrong," are those who from some mischance of circumstance or short-
coming in their education, do not always do right, even with relation
to their own aims and powers.
Take for example the quality of imperfection in drawing form. There are
many pictures of Tintoret in which the trees are drawn with a few
curved flourishes of the brush instead of leaves. That is (absolutely)
wrong. If you copied the tree as a model, you would be going very wrong
indeed. But it is relatively, and for Tintoret's purposes, right. In
the nature of the superficial work you will find there must have been a
cause for it. Somebody perhaps wanted the picture in a hurry to fill a
dark corner. Tintoret good-naturedly did all he could--painted the
figures tolerably--had five minutes left only for the trees, when the
servant came. "Let him wait another five minutes." And this is the best
foliage we can do in the time. Entirely, admirably, unsurpassably
right, under the conditions. Titian would not have worked under them,
but Tintoret was kinder and humbler; yet he may lead you wrong if you
don't understand him. Or, perhaps, another day, somebody came in while
Tintoret was at work, who tormented Tintoret. An ignoble person! Titian
would have been polite to him, and gone on steadily with his trees.
Tintoret cannot stand the ignobleness; it is unendurably repulsive and
discomfiting to him. "The Black Plague take him--and the trees, too!
Shall such a fellow see me paint!" And the trees go all to pieces.
This, in you, would be mere ill-breeding and ill-temper. In Tintoret it
was one of the necessary conditions of his intense sensibility; had he
been capable, then, of keeping his temper, he could never have done his
greatest works. Let the trees go to pieces, by all means; it is quite
right they should; he is always right.
But in a background of Gainsborough you would find the trees
unjustifiably gone to pieces. The carelessness of form there is
definitely purposed by him;--adopted as an advisable thing; and
therefore it is both absolutely and relatively wrong;--it indicates his
being imperfectly educated as a painter, and not having brought out all
his powers. It may still happen that the man whose work thus partially
erroneous is greater far, than others who have fewer faults.
Gainsborough's and Reynolds' wrongs are more charming than almost
anybody else's right. Still, they occasionally _are_ wrong--but
the Venetians and Velasquez, [Footnote: At least after his style was
formed; early pictures, like the Adoration of the Magi in our Gallery,
are of little value.] never.
I ought, perhaps, to have added in that Manchester address (only one
does not like to say things that shock people) some words of warning
against painters likely to mislead the student. For indeed, though here
and there something may be gained by looking at inferior men, there is
always more to be gained by looking at the best; and there is not time,
with all the looking of human life, to exhaust even one great painter's
instruction. How then shall we dare to waste our sight and thoughts on
inferior ones, even if we could do so, which we rarely can, without
danger of being led astray? Nay, strictly speaking, what people call
inferior painters are in general no painters. Artists are divided by an
impassable gulf into the men who can paint, and who cannot. The men who
can paint often fall short of what they should have done;--are
repressed, or defeated, or otherwise rendered inferior one to another:
still there is an everlasting barrier between them and the men who
cannot paint--who can only in various popular ways pretend to paint.
And if once you know the difference, there is always some good to be
got by looking at a real painter--seldom anything but mischief to be
got out of a false one; but do not suppose real painters are common. I
do not speak of living men; but among those who labour no more, in this
England of ours, since it first had a school, we have had only five
real painters;--Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Richard Wilson, and
Turner.
The reader may, perhaps, think I have forgotten Wilkie. No. I once much
overrated him as an expressional draughtsman, not having then studied
the figure long enough to be able to detect superficial sentiment. But
his colour I have never praised; it is entirely false and valueless.
And it would tie unjust to English art if I did not here express my
regret that the admiration of Constable, already harmful enough in
England, is extending even into France. There was, perhaps, the making,
in Constable, of a second or third-rate painter, if any careful
discipline had developed in him the instincts which, though
unparalleled for narrowness, were, as far as they went, true. But as it
is, he is nothing more than an industrious and innocent amateur
blundering his way to a superficial expression of one or two popular
aspects of common nature.
And my readers may depend upon it, that all blame which I express in
this sweeping way is trustworthy. I have often had to repent of over-
praise of inferior men; and continually to repent of insufficient
praise of great men; but of broad condemnation, never. For I do not
speak it but after the most searching examination of the matter, and
under stern sense of need for it: so that whenever the reader is
entirely shocked by what I say, he may be assured every word is
true.[Footnote: He must, however, be careful to distinguish blame--
however strongly expressed, of some special fault or error in a true
painter,--from these general statements of inferiority or
worthlessness. Thus he will find me continually laughing at Wilson's
tree-painting; not because Wilson could not paint, but because he had
never looked at a tree.] It is just because it so much offends him,
that it was necessary: and knowing that it must offend him, I should
not have ventured to say it, without certainty of its truth. I say
"certainty," for it is just as possible to be certain whether the
drawing of a tree or a stone is true or false, as whether the drawing
of a triangle is; and what I mean primarily by saying that a picture is
in all respects worthless, is that it is in all respects False: which
is not a matter of opinion at all, but a matter of ascertainable fact,
such as I never assert till I have ascertained. And the thing so
commonly said about my writings, that they are rather persuasive than
just; and that though my "language" may be good, I am an unsafe guide
in art criticism, is, like many other popular estimates in such
matters, not merely untrue, but precisely the reverse of the truth; it
is truth, like reflections in water, distorted much by the shaking
receptive surface, and in every particular, upside down. For my
"language," until within the last six or seven years, was loose,
obscure, and more or less feeble; and still, though I have tried hard
to mend it, the best I can do is inferior to much contemporary work. No
description that I have ever given of anything is worth four lines of
Tennyson; and in serious thought, my half-pages are generally only
worth about as much as a single sentence either of his, or of
Carlyle's. They are, I well trust, as true and necessary; but they are
neither so concentrated nor so well put. But I am an entirely safe
guide in art judgment: and that simply as the necessary result of my
having given the labour of life to the determination of facts, rather
than to the following of feelings or theories. Not, indeed, that my
work is free from mistakes; it admits many, and always must admit many,
from its scattered range; but, in the long run, it will be found to
enter sternly and searchingly into the nature of what it deals with,
and the kind of mistake it admits is never dangerous, consisting,
usually, in pressing the truth too far. It is quite easy, for instance,
to take an accidental irregularity in a piece of architecture, which
less careful examination would never have detected at all, for an
intentional irregularity; quite possible to misinterpret an obscure
passage in a picture, which a less earnest observer would never have
tried to interpret. But mistakes of this kind--honest, enthusiastic
mistakes--are never harmful; because they are always made in a true
direction,--falls forward on the road, not into the ditch beside it;
and they are sure to be corrected by the next comer. But the blunt and
dead mistakes made by too many other writers on art--the mistakes of
sheer inattention, and want of sympathy--are mortal. The entire purpose
of a great thinker may be difficult to fathom, and we may be over and
over again more or less mistaken in guessing at his meaning; but the
real, profound, nay, quite bottomless, and unredeemable mistake, is the
fool's thought--that he had no meaning.
I do not refer, in saying this, to any of my statements respecting
subjects which it has been my main work to study: as far as I am aware,
I have never yet misinterpreted any picture of Turner's, though often
remaining blind to the half of what he had intended: neither have I as
yet found anything to correct in my statements respecting Venetian
architecture; [Footnote: The subtle portions of the Byzantine Palaces,
given in precise measurements in the second volume of the "Stones of
Venice," were alleged by architects to be accidental irregularities.
They will be found, by every one who will take the pains to examine
them, most assuredly and indisputably intentional,--and not only so,
but one of the principal subjects of the designer's care.] but in
_casual references_ to what has been quickly seen, it is
impossible to guard wholly against error, without losing much valuable
observation, true in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and harmless
even when erroneous.
Content of APPENDIX I [John Ruskin's essay: The Two Paths]
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Read next: APPENDIX II
Read previous: LECTURE V - THE WORK OF IRON, IN NATURE, ART, AND POLICY
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