ic workman had not
entirely died out of the nation, in spite of the interregnum, for a full
century, of manufacture. And the experience led Ruskin forward to wider
views on the nature of the arts, and on the duties of philanthropic
effort and social economy.

CHAPTER VIII

"MODERN PAINTERS" CONTINUED (1855-1856)

It was in the year 1855 that Ruskin first published "Notes on the Royal
Academy and other Exhibitions." He had been so often called upon to
write his opinion of Pre-Raphaelite pictures, either privately or to
the newspapers, or to mark his friends' catalogues, that he found at
last less trouble in printing his notes once for all. The new plan was
immediately popular; three editions of the pamphlet were called for
between June 1 and July 1. Next year he repeated the "Notes" and six
editions were sold.

In spite of a dissentient voice here and there, he was really by that
time recognised as the leading authority upon taste in painting. He was
trusted by a great section of the public, who had not failed to notice
how completely he and his friends were winning the day. The proof of it
was in the fact that they were being imitated on all sides; Ruskinism in
writing and Pre-Raphaelitism in painting were becoming fashionable.

But at the same time the movement gave rise to the Naturalist-landscape
school, a group of painters who threw overboard the traditions of Turner
and Prout, Constable and Harding, and the rest, just as the
Pre-Raphaelite Brethren threw over the Academical masters. For such men
their study was their picture; they devised tents and huts in wild glens
and upon waste moors, and spent weeks in elaborating their details
directly from nature, instead of painting at home from sketches on the
spot.

This was the fulfilment of his advice to young artists; and so far as
young artists worked in this way, for purposes of study, he encouraged
them. But he did not fail to point out that this was not all that could
be required of them. Even such a work as Brett's "Val d'Aosta,"
marvellous as it was in observation and finish, was only the beginning
of a new era, not its consummation. It was not the painting of detail
that could make a great artist; but the knowledge of it, and the
masterly use of such knowledge. A great landscapist would know the facts
and effects of nature, just as Tintoret knew the form of the human
figure; and he would treat them with the same freedom, as the means of
expressin