MODERN PAINTERS

From The Genius of John Ruskin ed. by John D. Rosenberg (London: 
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), pp 22-25



Definition of Greatness in Art

    Painting, or art generally, as such, with all its 
technicalities, difficulties, and particular ends, is nothing 
but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle 
of thought, but by itself nothing. He who has learned what is 
commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art 
of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only 
learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed. 
He has done just as much towards being that which we ought to 
respect as a great painter, as a man who has learnt how to 
express himself grammatically and melodiously has towards being 
a great poet. The language is, indeed, more difficult of 
acquirement in the one case than in the other, and possesses 
more power of delighting the sense, while it speaks to the 
intellect; but it is, nevertheless, nothing more than language, 
and all those excellences which are peculiar to the painter as 
such, are merely what rhythm, melody, precision, and force are 
in the words of the orator and the poet, necessary to their 
greatness, but not the tests of their greatness. It is not by 
the mode of representing and saying, but by what is represented 
and said, that the respective greatness either of the painter or 
the writer is to be finally determined.... 
    If I say that the greatest picture is that which conveys to 
the mind of the spectator the greatest number of the greatest 
ideas, I have a definition which will include as subjects of 
comparison every pleasure which art is capable of convey-
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ing. If I were to say, on the contrary, that the best picture 
was that which most closely imitated nature, I should assume 
that art could only please by imitating nature; and I should 
cast out of the pale of criticism those parts of works of art 
which are not imitative, that is to say, intrinsic beauties of 
colour and form, and those works of art wholly, which, like the 
Arabesques of Raffaelle in the Loggias, are not imitative at 
all. Now, I want a definition of art wide enough to include all 
its varieties of aim. I do not say, therefore, that the art is 
greatest which gives most pleasure, because perhaps there is 
some art whose end is to teach, and not to please. I do not say 
that the art is greatest which teaches us most, because perhaps 
there is some art whose end is to please, and not to teach. I do 
not say that the art is greatest which imitates best, because 
perhaps there is some art whose end is to create and not to 
imitate. But I say that the art is greatest which conveys to the 
mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest 
number of the greatest ideas; and I call an idea great in 
proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the mind, 
and as it more fully occupies, and in occupying, exercises and 
exalts, the faculty by which it is received. 
    If this, then, be the definition of great art, that of a 
great artist naturally follows. He is the greatest artist who 
has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of 
the greatest ideas.

	[Vol. I, Part 1, Sec. 1, Chap. 2j


That the Truth of Nature Is Not to Be Discerned
by the Uneducated Senses

    It is possible for all men, by care and attention, to form a 
just judgment of the fidelity of artists to nature. To do this 
no peculiar powers of mind are required, no sympathy with 
particular feelings, nothing which every man of ordinary 
intellect does not in some degree possess,-powers, namely, 24 of 
observation and intelligence, which by cultivation may be 
brought to a high degree of perfection and acuteness. But until 
this cultivation has been bestowed, and until the instrument 
thereby perfected has been employed in a con sistent series of 
careful observations, it is as absurd as it is audacious to 
pretend to form any judgment whatsoever respecting the truth of 
art: and my first business, before going a step farther, must be 
to combat the nearly universal error of belief among the 
thoughtless and unreflecting, that they know either what nature 
is, or what is like her; that they can discover truth by 
instinct, and that their minds are such pure Venice glass as to 
be shocked by all treachery. I have to prove to them that there 
are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in their 
philosophy, and that the truth of nature is a part of the truth 
of God; to him who does not search it out, darkness, as it is to 
him who does, infinity. 
    The first great mistake that people make in the matter, is 
the supposition that they must see a thing if it be before their 
eyes. ... And what is here said, which all must feel by their 
own experience to be true, is more remarkably and necessarily 
the case with sight than with any other of the senses, for this 
reason, that the ear is not accustomed to exercise constantly 
its functions of hearing; it is accustomed to stillness, and the 
occurrence of a sound of any kind what. soever is apt to awake 
attention, and be followed with perception, in proportion to the 
degree of sound; but the eye during our waking hours, exercises 
constantly its function of seeing; it is its constant habit; we 
always, as far as the bodily organ is concerned, see something, 
and we always see in the same degree; so that the occurrence of 
sight, as such, to the eye, is only the continuance of its 
necessary state of action, and awakes no attention whatsoever, 
except by the particular nature and quality of the sight. And 
thus, unless the minds of men are particularly directed to the 
impressions of sight, objects pass perpetually before the eyes 
with. out conveying any impression to the brain at all; and so 
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pass actually unseen, not merely unnoticed, but in the full 
clear sense of the word unseen.... 

    With this kind of bodily sensibility to colour and form is 
intimately connected that higher sensibility which we revere as 
one of the chief attributes of all noble minds, and as the chief 
spring of real poetry. I believe this kind of sensibility may be 
entirely resolved into the acuteness of bodily sense of which I 
have been speaking, associated with love, love I mean in its 
infinite and holy functions, as it embraces divine and human and 
brutal intelligences, and hallows the physical perception of 
external objects by association, gratitude, veneration, and 
other pure feelings of our moral nature. And although the 
discovery of truth is in itself altogether intellectual, and 
dependent merely on our powers of physical perception and 
abstract intellect, wholly independent of our moral nature, yet 
these instruments (perception and judgment) are so sharpened and 
brightened, and so far more swiftly and effectively used, when 
they have the energy and passion of our moral nature to bring 
them into action- perception is so quickened by love, and 
judgment so tempered by veneration, that, practically, a man of 
deadened moral sensation is always dull in his perception of 
truth. 

[Vol.  I, Part 2, Sec. 1, Chap. 2]