The Heartlessness of the Picturesque: Sympathy and Disgust in Ruskin's Aesthetics Author(s): John Macarthur Source: Assemblage, No. 32 (Apr., 1997), pp. 126-141 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3171412 . Accessed: 12/09/2014 11:49

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John Macarthur The Heartlessness of the Picturesque: Sympathy and Disgust in Ruskin's Aesthetics

John Macarthuris a lecturer at the Uni- For, in a certain sense, the lower picturesque ideal is an emi- versity of Queensland, Brisbane,Australia. nently heartless one; the lover of it seems to go forth into the world in a temper as merciless as its rocks. All other men feel some regret at the sight of disorder and ruin. He alone delights in both; it matters not of what. Fallen cottage - desolate villa - deserted village - blasted heath - mouldering castle - to him, so that they do but show jagged angles of stone and timber, all are equally joyful. Poverty, and darkness, and guilt, bring their several contributions to his treasuryof pleasant thoughts. The shattered window, opening into black and ghastly rents of wall, the foul rag or strawwisp stopping them, the dangerous roof, decrepit floor and stair, ragged misery, or wasting age of the inhabitants, - all these conduce, each in due measure, to the fullness of his satisfaction. What is it to him that the old man has passed away his seventy years in helpless darknessand untaught waste of soul? The old man has at last accomplished his destiny, and filled the corner of a sketch, where something unsightly was wanting. What is it to him that the people fester in that feverish misery in the lower quarter of the town, by the river?Nay it is much to him. What else were they made for? what could they have done better?

John Ruskin, "Of the Turnerian Picturesque,"in Modem Painters, vol. 4 (6: 19-20)1

John Ruskin's disgust at the picturesque is palpable and ex- emplary in passages such as this. For him, the inhabitants of the picturesque scene are unconscious of their "untaught waste of soul." But for such Assemblage 32: 126-141 ? 1997 by the distress to go unnoticed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology heartless aesthete in a search for tone and shadow is another

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and parallel kind of waste:the affliction of art with a can- Disinterest kerous failure of sympathy.Yet the movement of the pas- Ruskin'sproposal to cure the picturesque with sympathy sage, from its propositionalforms to the description of a might seem to be in opposition to eighteenth-centurycon- scene, particularand exemplary,is like that supposed in the cepts of aesthetical disinterest.The invention of modern term "picturesque."We say a thing is "like a picture"not aesthetics is synonymous with the concept of disinterested- in order to use it as such, but to walk in or out of it, inter- ness. In the eighteenth century the problem of aesthetic changing, back and forward,the flatness of possession with theory had been how to articulatethe relation of things of lived experience or theoretical insight. value and the exercise of taste. Ruskin points out that aes- We might think, and rightly,that this passage is confes- theticism creates an opposite problem of the relation of sional, describing feelings that Ruskin knows well. Read in taste to the ugly, the distorted,and the pathological. This isolation, the passage might seem a renunciation. In fact, it relation had alreadybeen problematized in the first period is an overly affecting call for a quite subtle modification of of the picturesque around the general question of how to the picturesque that Ruskin is proposing. For him, the pic- conceptualize a high taste for low objects. In the theory of turesque is a startingpoint, one that it is unclear he ever Uvedale Price this gradient of taste is merely a tactical mo- surpasses.It is the received aesthetic of his age, which he ment in evincing knowledge of the hierarchyof genre.2We believes can be given a cause and origin (lack of sympathy) exercise our taste on Dutch paintings of peasants in cottages and then surpassedinto a more complete aesthetic project only to expressthe liberalityof our appreciationof the land- for which the picturesque had given us a taste. The pictur- scapes of ;similarly, our love for the ordi- esque is "heartless";nevertheless, it can lead us to nobility. nary agriculturalcountryside of Britaindoes not signify an Indeed, the movement that occurs here in Ruskin'scom- inability to appropriatethe Alps or the Bay of Naples. mentary is little more than an iteration of the structureof Price's interest in the picturesque, which is to say, in the the picturesque idea; we give up the picture for the ability ordinary,in the ugly and deformed, is supposed to be an to split viewing into concept and affect. Ruskin'siteration is explorationof the range of taste, so as to better understand significant, however, not only in the historyof the propaga- and agree on a common standardof proprietyin taste. But tion of the concept of the picturesque, but in its conceptual Price was unable to persuade his critics that his proposalof structure.It is on the basis of Ruskin'suptake that the pic- the value of low objects in evincing disinterestwas not, in turesque reiteratesin modern perceptualistculture. Ruskin the end, a perverseinterest in disgust. After all, Price as- writes of the picturesque as if it were a naturalpropensity to sumes a special value for the ugly and deformed, which is taste that requiresthe development of an aesthetic theory to that they can improve in our appropriationof them while discipline and instruct it. Rathermore obscurely, he deals the beautiful is indifferentto us. Ruskin'simage of the per- with the picturesque as a preexistingtheoretical problem of versityof picturesque practice is, then, the repetition of genre, disinterest,and affected disgust. In moving between a critique from the turn of the century, which he must these two constructions of the picturesque, Ruskin invents have been familiarwith through his reading of Humphry for it a temporal mechanism by which the picturesque can Repton. But, in general, the exaggerationand critique of be both a present lack and a historical origin. Price's position by Repton, J. C. Loudon, William

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Marshall,and others is directed at Price's taste and his vari- nor take pleasure.4He offers a very simplistic hierarchyof ance from propriety.3He had made himself ridiculous with genre based on the distance that can be achieved from the his appetite for views of higglers, and by imagining banditti exact imitation of nature and the particularityof things.5 on his lawn, and no one would have thought to be con- The higher genres do not call on our appetites and desires, cerned with the effect of Price's aesthetics on the subjects of do not put us in a relationshipwith objects. Rather,moral his view. This is the force of Ruskin'spassage, which im- judgments are called on to be exercised over general ideas bues the foolishness of aesthetic distancing with a sense of in the realm of civil life. Price argues against Reynolds that injustice and moves the social and political context of taste the picturesque was a kind of generic transcoding;like, he from outside (the choice of objects proper for gentlemen to says, the plays of Shakespearein which are embedded rustic judge) to inside (the subject/object relation). Ruskin'spas- and comic scenes and subplots that provide a reflection sage asks us to briefly imagine what should be impossible on the great themes of the play. He nevertheless follows and must be avoided: that crippled laborersand tubercular Reynolds on the issue of detail; finding that the better genre children might ask us why we look at them "like that." paintersare those who are not obsessed with mechanical imitation and who expressa knowledge of their subject as As I will in this much of the mechanism of argue paper, genre. Few records exist of Ruskin'sOxford lectures of 1875 aesthetical continues in Ruskin in relation to the disgust on Reynolds'sDiscourses, but the notes that surviveshow a that Ruskin's is directed picturesque, except disgust largely vehement continuity of the idea of a nobility of taste and a at the ratherthan it. But before look- picturesque through hierarchy of painting (22: 493-507). Ruskin'smain dis- in detail at the on the in volume ing chapter picturesque agreement with Reynolds is over his denigration of detail: four of Modem I want to examine three relations Painters, Ruskin thinks that the truth lies in practiced observation between Ruskinian and that all eighteenth-centurytheory and claims that Reynolds would have agreed with him had have to do with articulationsof and disin- genre hierarchy he known the early Florentines ratherthan the mean vanity terest. The first deals with the of in art it- hierarchy nobility of the Dutch in painting "the spicula of haystacksand the self and Ruskin's to The second response Joshua Reynolds. hairs of donkeys"(22: 494). A furtherdefinition of the concerns the use of disinterestedness.The last addresses Ruskinian picturesque, then, would be a picturesque liber- as a of how the British are af- picturesqueness description ated from its earlier generic positioning, one that rescues fected filth and by foreign melancholy. detailed observationfrom the odium of technique, and that adds questions concerning the truth of imitation that are at Like Reynolds, Ruskin between base distinguishes pleasure the heart of the Western tradition. and noble truth as contending reasons for our use of art. Reynolds thinks that only the lower genres aim at pleasing The second point about Ruskin'srelations with eighteenth- while all high art requiresthe development of cultivated centuryaesthetics addresses the function of disinterestedness. society and conceptualization. If we were to imagine some Low subjectsand disgustare included in Price'ssystem of persons innocent of painting of great art (those "fromthe taste to evince disinterestednessas an attributeof a noble ob- banks of the Ohio or from New Holland"), according to server.Price is anxious to appeardisinterested at the level of Reynolds, they would neither comprehend artistictruths taste in the ruralaffairs for which he is politically responsible.

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The scenic improvementsto a gentleman'sestate must not quire them. By the mid-nineteenthcentury, art, and particu- seem to be in any way determinedby, or even understoodin larlyarchitecture, had become thoroughlyideological in the relationto, agriculturalimprovements for fear of besmirching construalof national,class, and religiousinterests. Ruskin is their liberality.The picturesqueof the period around 1800 participatingin that processby which aestheticsthen becomes (at the height of what E. P. Thompson calls the English the generalrealm of both the appropriationand productionof Counterrevolution)is an ideology of nobility in which good art;he inventsthe role of the bourgeoiscritic as a position taste, consideredan autonomousrealm of judgment,autho- privilegedby his interestin artitself, an interestguaranteed by rized social and political franchise.6The historyof the con- a disinterestin the artmarket or the politicalvalence of cept of disinterestin English aestheticsis more complex than particularartworks (18: 433-58).1 stricturesagainst sensual pleasure.Its relationwith "interest" is not one of simple oppositionbut of articulationbetween The last, and somewhat slighter, point about disinterested- spheresof attentionand concern.7It was thought that the dis- ness concerns the Englishness of the picturesque. In its interestednessnecessary for membersof parliamentto vote in rhetoricalfinality, we might think that the argument of the the national interestcould be guaranteedby hereditaryland- "heartlessnessof the picturesque"passage from Modern holding. By contrast,a merchantmight see each decision on Painterswould lead on to a discussion of ruralhousing re- taxes, war, or the poor laws as effecting changes in the price form in England, an issue with which picturesque aesthet- of tradablecommodities. For eighteenth-centurythinkers such ics is intimately bound up and with which is it identified.'0 as Reynoldsand Price, the formationof standardsof proper But Ruskin is not asking us to drop pencils to legislate or to tastewithin an aristocraticsociety was analogous,interest in repairthatch in response to his description. We know this land guaranteeingdisinterested judgment in both spheres,and because a footnote to the passagetells us that it is based on the parallelbetween them naturalizingeach.' While Ruskin an observationin Amiens, which is to say, beyond the re- condemnsthe picturesquefor its failureof sympathyand sponsibilities of Ruskin'sEnglish readers.Descriptions of affect,this is not a critiqueof the concept of aestheticaldisin- the ragged misery of cottagersare the staple of picturesque terestednessso much as an inversionof the eighteenth-century culture, whether in Goldsmith or Gainsborough, whether positionsof the interest/disinterestpair. Ruskin's franchise as a depicted as divertingvisual characteror as a cry for reform disinterestedart critic and theoristcan be guaranteedin an au- or both. In any case, the programof the picturesque in the thentic human interestin the objectsof the picture,a pre- eighteenth century is an aesthetic of the ordinaryand famil- parednessto rejectthis particularpicture in sympathyfor the iar, of England. It is curious and significant, then, that starvinglaborers it depicts;that is, in an awarenessof the inter- Ruskin does not find England picturesque. One of Ruskin's section of artand polity.This awarenessis not yet (in this, the most markeddevelopments of the picturesque is to see it as earlierhalf of Ruskin'scareer) the broaderproject finding an an issue of foreign affairs.Ruskin's first published work, integratedrelation of artand politicaleconomy, but rather "The Poetry of Architecture,"begins with a contrastof En- concernshow artitself should be governed.In the eighteenth glish and French cottages in which the English one is too century,the concept of disinterestand aestheticsin general prim and comfortableto please the eye of taste, as it an- had functionedas an ideologyof taste,an aristocratictaste for swersto "a sentiment of mere complacency" (1: 17). The artworksthat were still largelyemblematic of the wealthto ac- French cottage can please us because of an "impressionof

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once been fit for inhabitants tion here as we shall his is an immanentcri- having prouder .... Every because, see, markof dilapidationincreases this feeling:while thesevery tiqueof the picturesqueintended to redeemit. Grotesque marks.., areall delightfulin themselves."Ruskin has artand the "lowerpicturesque" is givena foreignsite, in transferredall thathad been familiarlysaid of Englishcot- melancholicItaly and benighted Savoy. These aesthetic tagesto a moreextreme, foreign picturesque. The workis problemsof foreignlocation are caused by dankair, Ca- all the strangerfor its publicationby Loudonin hisArchi- tholicism,and a habitualuse of badart (6: 405). ButRuskin tecturalMagazine in 1837and 1838.Loudon had in 1833 thinksthat neither poverty nor cultural ignorance would publishedhis own Encyclopaediaof CottageArchitecture, havethe sameaffects in Britain.The "absolutejoy in ugli- which wasfirmly addressed as a remedyto the degraded ness"and "imbecilerevelling in terror"of foreignpeasants is miseryof Britishcottagers. In describingItalian "cottages," "independentof merepoverty or indolence,"as we see by Ruskindescribes aesthetic objects in wordsthat in England contrastwith "Irish recklessness and humour"and "thewell- wouldsoon belongonly to the discourseof the sanitary conductedEnglish cottager" (6: 399, 396, 389).With an art- commissioners:"the filthy habits of the Italianprevent him less shiftin logic, it is only on the Continentthat art must fromsuffering from the stateto whichhe is reduced.The face the choice to disguiseor to enjoyoppression. shatteredroofs, the dark,confused, ragged windows, the ob- scurechambers, the tatteredand dirtydraperies, altogether Picturesquenessand Sympathy presenta picturewhich, seen too near,is sometimesrevolt- ing to the eye, alwaysmelancholy to the mind"(1: 28).This Ruskin'sdiscussion of the picturesqueforms part of an argu- nationalisticdisplacement of picturesqueobjectification is mentas to the superiorityof the workof J. M. W. Turnerover not overcomein Ruskin'slater works." populartaste for picturesque views. In the chapter"Of the TurnerianPicturesque," Ruskin opposes the "lowerpictur- In "OfMountain Gloom," in volumefive of ModemPaint- esque,"with which we havethus far dealt, with a Turnerian ers,Ruskin discusses the artisticappropriation of povertyun- noblepicturesque (6: 9-26). The differenceis authorialsym- der sentimentsof gloominessand horror.He is appalledthat pathy:Turner's sympathy with his subjectsleads him to a popularoperas nightly present impoverished Alpine peas- noblerepresentation of themeven when they are mean. ants,without the audienceseven connectingthis literary toposwith an actualhuman situation. But this is a simple At stakehere areseveral aspects of the reiterationof the pic- enoughproblem where artistic truth converges with moral turesque.Like Price, Ruskin uses examples of the high taste truth,and Ruskincan simplydamn together the lackof sym- forlow objectsas an entr6eto the questionof nobilityand pathyand the foolishnessof starvingpeasants coopted as the truthin representation.The picturesqueis alwaysa begin- rosysubjects of the pastoral.At thissame point in the de- ning and neveran end. Foreach author,it is genrehierar- scription,however, Ruskin opens a much moreproblematic chy thatis importantand Reynoldswho is bothauthority set of issuesthat he cannotresolve: the questionof the gro- and target.Price's claims for the superiorityof Rembrandt tesquein art,the aestheticof horror,and an artthat has overvan Ostadeare exactly the sameas Ruskin'sclaims for much moreto do withaffect than with truth. We might Turner:both artists have chosen to paintlower genres from wonderhow thisdiffers from the picturesquein his condem- the heightof theirsuccess with history painting. For Price, nationof it. Yet it is importantto Ruskinto makea distinc- this occursin Rembrandt'sfreedom of techniqueand a cer-

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tain negligence with detail; for Ruskin, it is in Turner'spre- Ruskin implicitly accepts the categorical separationof the cision and "sympathy."But in each case, masterycomprises picturesque and the beautiful and, what is more, defines not only a relation to the subject but a command of the the picturesque in terms of the . Eighteenth-cen- genre system and freedom from determination. tury theoristswere unlikely to do so because the sublime is a categoryof transcendence. But, for Ruskin, the distinction Perhapsthe most remarkableaspect of Ruskin'sdiscussion between the beautiful and the picturesque is that the pic- of the picturesque is his acceptance of Price's claim that turesque is a parasitical form of sublimity (8: 221-47). The picturesqueness is a separateaesthetic category.'2Price in- example Ruskin gives, in "The Lamp of Memory,"is of sisted that picturesquenesswas categoricallydifferent from cottages, the roofs of which in their decrepit and twisted , an empirical attributeof objects that could be rep- shapes, might recall ranges of mountains. The equation resented. Most commentatorsconsider this a less progres- here seems to be a version of the opposition of nature to sive view than that of , who held that artifice. Art is beautiful, nature sublime, and those human beauty was an issue of the sensoryperception of light and its worksthat are greatlyaged and changed in use or that are variationsand thus not inherent in objects; picturesqueness the result of habitual unconscious practice are half-natural. being merely a descriptorof some of those objects judged to Artifice in its unreflected picturesque state naturallyshows be beautiful because of their perceptual relationswith a the pathos of human workswhen put againstthe worksof subject. In most twentieth-centuryaccounts of the pictur- nature. The aesthete's experience of picturesquenessis, esque, where it is seem as an origin for modern formalism, then, a sort of sublimity where the subject exceeds the ob- the more progressiveposition appearsto belong to Knight, ject, ratherthan the other way around. We could conclude who was in fact a more sophisticatedthinker and writer from Ruskin'sexamples that the picturesque is the human; than Price. Yet, if we put aside the historical success of that is, the human seen as nature ratherthan as art. The Knight'sargument, the position he argues - that beauty is beautiful is what humans attempt to obtain in their artifacts; one thing and picturesquenessmerely an attributeof it - is it is, as it were, the human project. Seen as objects, how- the more conservativeone, held also by his quite muddle- ever, all human projects, architecturefor instance, are headed such as contemporaries Repton. Knight'sposition, vanitas. are or of death and could not have made as They metonymic, parasitical, although philosophically engaging, the of time itself. much sense at the time as Price's convoluted and some- sublimity times illogical attemptsto put abstractand critical theories The lower picturesque is also called the "surfacepictur- of judgment into the existing cultural formationsbased on esque" (6: 16). This surface is that of the parasiticrelations genre. Price had a neat way of demonstratingthat the aes- by which mean objects might produce visual stimuli like thetic appropriationof the mean, common, and disgusting noble naturalobjects. Ruskinsupposes that these visual did not perverselyvalue these things, nor did aesthetic ap- stimuli are so inevitablyappealing and desirablethat those propriationundo the double articulationby which objects without spiritualbreadth will be seduced to look no further possessed social and aesthetic value. This was possible so and will lack criteriafor distinguishingmountain from cot- long as one said "picturesque"rather than "beautiful"about tage. On the other hand, the noble picturesque is a relation the dung hills of everydaylife. in depth. Nobility does not require us to eschew the surface

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relations,but ratherto put this fascination "in subordination the gauge of human life.14In a remarkablepassage in "The to the inner characterof the object."Turner thus knows that Lamp of Memory,"Ruskin describes the horrorof imagin- the cottage and mountain each rewardhis sensorium but ing an Alpine without permanent habitations;its knows, too, that they are not the same; that the cottage is sublime beauties would be uncanny were it an "aboriginal pathetic. This is his "sympathy"and breadthof spirit. forest of the New Continent" (8: 223). A scene devoid of human markswill necessarilybe terribleand sublime. Else- We could put the relation of sympathyand parasiticsub- where, he discusses the preference of a viewer to "choose limity another way by looking at Ruskin'sdefinition of for his subject the broken stones of a cottage ratherthan of metaphor as "the pathetic fallacy"(5: 205-6). Ruskin sees a roadside bank"(6: 21). Roadside banks are another para- metaphor as a kind of untruth not needed by great poets, digmatic picturesque object in Uvedale Price and there is who can speak of objects and scenes directly. The pathetic no reason that such cuttings into the earth, with their intri- fallacy of metaphoricallanguage is that, while it is a weak- cate and varied forms of rock, earth, and roots, could not ness, it truly expressesthe affect on the poet who is over- also be parasiticalof the sublimity of mountains. Nonethe- come by the thing described. Ruskin does not say that the less, we are supposed to understandthat the seeker after pic- cottage is a metaphor of the sublime mountain, yet it is clear turesque qualities will prefer the ruined cottage "to give a that the picturesque arouses the feeling of pathos. We could deeper tone to his pleasure."Ruskin's only remarkis to understandthe lower picturesque in a kind of pair with the warn that the pleasure he assumes to be sought will be ig- pathetic fallacy. The lover of the lower picturesque sees noble without an authentic sympathy.In this case, "sympa- truly every detail of the shatteredroof, ivy-chokedchimney, thy" is merely Ruskin'srepetition of the old axiom that and damp walls of the cottage, but is lying nonetheless there is as much joy in a life lead in cottages as in palaces. through a failure to be affected by povertyand decay. What the noble picturesque has sympathywith are sorrow The critique of the picturesqueas parasiticalsublimity that and old age; that is, the explicitly human attributesof the had been made earlierin "The Lamp of Memory"is clearly scene that are possessed by nature only at the most general derivedfrom questions of the architecturalcharacter of cot- level of the historyof our fall from the grace of creation. tages that go back to "The Poetryof Architecture.""'When Nevertheless, Ruskin insists that sorrowand age would be Ruskinreturns to these thoughts in the passageswe are dis- sublime, except that in the picturesque they are "mingled cussing in volume four of ModernPainters, he must extend with such familiar and common charactersas prevent the the scope of the analysisfrom architectureto painting and object from becoming perfectly pathetic in its sorrow,or figure painting;and he does so with the concept of sympathy. perfectly venerable in its age" (6: 11). This is another symp- The examples of human figures and and tom of the genre hierarchyimplicit in the picturesque, but buildings with human figures that Ruskin gives in Modern it leads us on to furtherqualifications of "sympathy."The Painterstake him beyond the simple material relations of noble picturesque is the sympatheticobservation of cottages to mountains. In any case, it is unclear whether the suffering,of povertyor decay,nobly endured by unpretending time of the and of the moun- geological decay weathering strengthof heart.Nor only unpretendingbut unconscious.If tain can be understood without the cottage; that is, without therebe visiblepensiveness in the building,as in a ruinedab-

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2. William Hunt, The Blessing

class. "In a great many respects it is impossible that he should be open except to men of his own kind.... By the very acuteness of his sympathyhe knows how much he can give to anybody.., and would be glad to give more if he could. [But] whateverhe said a vulgar man would misinter- pret"(7: 347-48). The poor must thus be unaware of their plight and the noble viewer must not speak with them. Although sympathymight lead to charity at a later time, within the space of the aesthetic appropriationit is a rela- tively specialized concept of feeling, or lack of it, in art. It is an attributeof the observernot a relation with the scene.

Ruskin'sdemonstration of the of his definition of bey, it becomes,or claimsto become beautiful;but the pictur- veracity esquenessis in the unconscioussuffering, - the look thatan old the picturesque is a comparison of two prints of windmills labourer not thatthere is in his has, knowing anythingpathetic by Clarkson Stanfield and by Turner. Ruskin begins with and withered and sunburntbreast . . . greyhair, arms, [Between the rhetoricalclaim that we will find Stanfield's the the 'extremes'of the admittedpathos of the ruinedabbey and print the sweptproprieties and neatnessof modernEngland] . . . there more attractivebut that he can persuade us that Turner's is is the unconsciousconfession of the factsof distressand decay, the better, not least because it refuses to be attractivefor us. in the world'shard work all the by-words; being gone through Turner, it seems, has been limited in his attemptsto please while, and no pityasked for, nor contemptfeared. (6: 14-15) us by keeping his mill in a reasonablyserviceable condi- At the most obvious level, human misery is being natural- tion, while Stanfield has sought out, and found with an evi- ized here, and with this its causes in material povertythat dent delight, a mill packed with features of tone and line, must have seemed a fact of life to Ruskin before he began and incidentally so decrepit that it would doubtless be the to think on the systemic aspects of the maldistributionof ruin of any community who depended on it. But all this is wealth. But Ruskin'sinsistence on the unconsciousness of mildly humorous, for Stanfield has changed a real poverty suffering is more or less explicitly political in the terms of into an imaginaryeye-pleasing one. The conceit deserves his day. Clearly, what would not be allowed in the noble ridicule. Stanfield tries to please even if this requires him to picturesque is the knowledge of sufferingon the part of the exaggerate,while Turner refuses pleasure for the statement persons viewed, who might then call on the sympathyof the of general truths.There is also a question of salaryin all of noble viewer in a less than abstractway. This is follows the this. Ruskin writes for Turner and for us, not for Stanfield, eighteenth-centurydistinction of a deserving poor from the who has been invited into the argument only to be ex- mendicant poor.15 In a later piece entitled "Of Vulgarity," cluded. Stanfield'sproblem is different from that of the Ruskin describes "sympathy"as an attributeof the well-bred liberal viewer; he has been paid to overcome his feelings gentleman who is kind but reserved(7: 343-62). He argues at the sight of povertyand decay. Unlike Turner, who against those who would misunderstandthis reserveas a struggleswith his genius, Stanfield has "pursuedhis career" lack of sympathy.Ruskin thinks that reserveis not a failure as a master of the lower picturesque, a choice that may have to be generous with one's self but an acute realization of cost him dearly in the hardening of his heart.

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3. "The Picturesque of Windmills,"comparison of paintings by ClarksonStanfield and J. M. W. Turner

Turner's sympathyhas lead him to a depiction of a mill that is to know to be glad that he is not a manual laborerand to "marksthis great fact of windmill nature"by a representa- have the good manners not to display his relief to those less tion of its function: an accurate delineation of the partsand fortunate. through the inclusion of an abandoned mill stone that al- ludes to its internal mechanism. Ruskin writes as if Turner Disgust has provided, ratherthan depicted, a serviceable mill; and while this passage of thought might seem "sympathetic"to To take the analysisof the heartlessnessof the picturesque users of mills, this is only the first stage to Ruskin'srather furtherwe need to return from Ruskin'sovert discussion of darkerand deeper account of Turner's sympathy:"he feels "sympathy"to his rhetoric and the place of disgust within it. about it. It is Another the that is often something pensive poor property.... Turning passage condemning picturesque around a couple of stones for the mere pulverisationof hu- quoted describes starvingScots crofters.In a spectacular man food is not noble work for the winds. So, also of all low word painting, Ruskin gives a page and a half of descriptive human labour to which one sets human souls.... All men approbationof Highland scenery structuredonly by the have felt it so this grinding at the mill, whether it be breeze rhythmic prose that representsthe passage of his eye across or soul that is set to it" (6: 18-19). Turner's sympathy,then, the imagined scene. The fluid eye hesitates momentarily in

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the middleof the passagewhen catchingon the carcassof a buildingsare the cottagesof gloomyspinners and dyers. ewe, and this is carefullycalculated to cut the moredeeply The facesof laborersand the greenwater and soaking when Ruskinfinishes by focusingin on a smallsection of wrecksof boatsmatch the reflexivesentences at the end of the view,on a starvingman and boy:"the child's wasted the note. shoulders, his old tartanjacket so cutting through, sharp Anold Gothic whose traceriedbut- are" The rhetoricalstructure of "Of flamboyant church, richly they (7: 268-69). tressessloped into the filthy stream; - all exquisitelypictur- MountainGloom" is similar.On a walkin the Alpinefor- esqueand no lessmiserable. We delightin seeingthe figures in estsof Savoy,Ruskin halts his torridprose description of the thesepushing them about the bits of bluewater, in Prout'sdraw- butas I looked atthe faceand scenerywhen he arrivesat the mountainvillage, which is ings; to-day unhealthy melancholy mienof theman in theboat hisload of peats the a "darkand stainin the midstof land- pushing along plague-like gentle ditch,... I couldnot help feeling how many suffering persons scape"(6: 389).This turnin the rhetoricalstructure is mustpay for my picturesque subject and happy walk. (6: 20) affectivethrough an unexpectedchange in the statusof de- writesthat the inclusionof the note shows scription.Ruskin induces in the readera stateof airy,ocu- GeorgeLandow thatRuskin "could not RobertHewison lar,distanced observation before sharply intruding with help feeling.""' thinksit a touch"that the humanreference and a moralargument. The passagesbe- "documentary supports bodytext, as well the themeof Ruskin himself gin ekphrasis:in the verbaldescription of a visualrepresen- general distancing fromthe as his socialconscience is awakened.' tation,we hearthe picturethat Ruskin sees. But then at the picturesque But the textis much more and recur- sightof humanmisery we are jolted,disgusted (at the ob- complex,paradoxical, sive thanthat. This is morethan one of Ruskin'sfamous in- jectsand then at ourselvesfor aestheticizing them), and we it is a deliberate The Ruskinof realizethat the descriptionRuskin gives us is not mediated consistencies; polyphony. the textaccuses the Ruskinat Amiensof a monstrous visualexperience, it is the positionhe arguesagainst. The body heartlessness.There is reasonto thinkthat on his description-minus-argumentis the rhetoricalplace of the happy walkat AmiensRuskin looks to take picturesque-without-sympathy,anddisgust is the moment pleasureby finding on whichthis shiftin rhetoricturns.16 a scene to compareto a particulardrawing by Samuel Prout."9His reflectionon the cost of his experienceis as for- The passageon picturesqueheartlessness that began this es- mulaicas a mementomori and does not answerthe scorn is consistentwith these in its rhetorical say passages pattern of the passagenor equatewith the conceptof sympathyout- it uses and in a more although disgust affectingdescription lined earlierin the chapter.In fact,his reactionin the diary the is all complicatedway. Although passagequoted pejora- note is much closerto thoselovers of the lowerpicturesque a footnote a of innocentvisual tive, long gives description describedimmediately after in the textas "innocentof evil fromwhich and will awakenus. pleasures disgust sympathy but not broadin thought,"who mightcultivate their taste Ruskinintroduces the note as an in his abouta entry diary "notwith any special view to artistic,but merelyhumane walk" the Somme.The makes "happy along diaryentry education"(6: 21-22). wonderfullyclear that the heartlessnesshe describedis the generalizationof a particularexperience of his own.The In the structureof the chapteron the picturesquefrom "feverishmisery of the lowerquarter of the town"described ModernPainters, the conceptof sympathyprecedes the in the bodyof the textis, in fact,Amiens. The decrepit comparisonof the millsand Stanfield'sexemplification of

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in the picturesqueitself. On one count,this is becauseit followsthe trackof seeingartistic merit in the interpolation of genrethat I havebeen emphasizingthroughout; on an- other,because the argumentis supposedto be self-evident in ourdisgust at badart; and lastly,because our disgustat badart is put in relationto questionsof the meaningof disgustwithin the representedscene. Price,like EdmundBurke, posits disgust as havingthree levelsof actionin the realmof taste.2'At the first,disgust showsthe powerof art,in thatdung hills and backkitchens can be objectsof artisticrepresentation, when we wouldnot enjoythe sightof them in reallife.22 At the second,there is 4. Samuel Prout, Amiens a limit to this aspectof art;some thingsdisgust even in rep- resentation:we can imaginevarious ugly and distorted hu- man facesas studiesin character,but a manwith a face like the lowerpicturesque. The heartlessnesspassage then an oystercovered in wensand excrescencesis too much.23 buildsour outrageat picturesquepractice before the re- At the third,the tasteof the poordisgusts us becausethe mainderof the chapterpiles qualificationon qualification poorprefer representations of food, jollytimes, and fine until the lowerpicturesque appears as the inevitablestart- weather.Their fault is to desiresensual pleasures so much ing pointto a love of art,and marksthe distinctionof those thatthey misunderstand the contractof mimesis;wanting to capableof such growthfrom both the sanitarycommission- havein representationthings longed-for but unobtainable ersand the personwho "wouldthrust all povertyand misery in life. My pointhas been to showthat Ruskin's condemna- out of his way"(6: 22). The note on Amiensthus lies at the tion of the lowerpicturesque has as much to do withthis pivotof the chapter'sstructure, at the heightof Ruskin'sdis- disgustat the low tasteof the Englishmiddle class as it has gustbefore he forgivesthe picturesque.Prout is a symptom to do withthe povertyrepresented. Ruskin deploys a three- of Ruskin'sequivocation, an exceptionin thathe is, by vir- tieredstructure assuming: one, a realphenomenal affection tue of the genreof his work,a masterof the lowerpictur- of disgust,fear, and sorrowthat he and the readermight esque;not a historypainter like Turner,but nonetheless haveat realscenes of humandepravity and degradation; sympatheticand exemptfrom denigration (6: 22-23). two,a rightapproach by noble artiststo such scenes It is well establishedthat Ruskin's critique of the pictur- whereinthey know what can and cannotbe bracketedsuffi- esque revealshis debtsto it as much as anythingelse.20 cientlyin representation;and three,a slavishcompulsion to It mighthave been the case thatRuskin had difficultyin imitationthat disgusts those of good taste.This lastis fool- thinkingbeyond his formativemilieu and was,at the time ish and dismissible,but when we thinkon it, such abuseof he wrotevolume four of ModernPainters, developing the artcomes to trulydisgust. Ruskin's and the reader'staste is interestsand beliefsthat would guide his latercareer as a affrontedby the Stanfieldprint in a strangekind of circuit socialreformer. But the formof his equivocationis implicit with ourphobic horror of the poor.Stanfield's approach to

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art is merely unreasonable,but the knowledge of this leads us - a ball strewedbright with human ashes, glaring in its to feel sick and angry. poised sway to and fro beneath the sun that warms it, all blinding white with death from pole to pole" (4: 376). There are differences, of course, between Ruskin and the eighteenth-centurytheorists. Price was a lover of Dutch land- Ruskin'stopic is the horrorand fear of the terrible sublime, scapes and of genre painterssuch as Philips Wouvermanns but he had alreadydefined the picturesque as a parasitical and David Teniers. Ruskin includes a chapter on these artists sublimity and his views on disgust are consistent. "Disgust, in volume five of ModernPainters, the introduction to which properlyso called, is a minor degree of horrorfelt respecting includes the memorable quip that "all their life and work is things ignobly painful or offensive"(4: 372).26 Ruskin thinks the same sort of mysteryto me as the mind of my dog when that horroris evoked by artistsimagining a "bodymore or he rolls on carrion"(7: 363). Ruskin'staste thus differsfrom less subjected to visible decay: as in the skeleton dances of that of Price, but their mechanism for confronting the low in Retsch. A 'horrible'death is one in which the laws of life are art is the same. Servile art is not simply an unreasonable use violently and unnaturallyinterrupted with such infliction of of art, but an affrontto reason that leads to it own affects;that pain as nature usually forbids:as in the body's being torn or is, to disgust. dashed to pieces - or burnt"(4: 371). It is worth remem- at this point the skeletal figures of the Highland It is unclear whether Ruskin had read Price with attention to bering shepherds.27The horrorthat Ruskin uses to tell the the details of his theory of disgust.24 In any case, he would unrepresentablefacts of the Highland clearances is the boy's have little use for it. Because he thinks the beauty and nobil- visible skeleton, his walking death. For the viewer of the ity of art lie in its relationswith the world, he cannot believe lower picturesque, whom Ruskin reproacheshere, such a (as does Price) that partsof the world are beneath representa- scene in life would presumablydisgust (it being a minor and tion yet capable of ennoblement by the choice of the artistto ignoble horrorto starveto death), but still remain something objectify them. He neverthelesshas a theory of disgust. The amenable to being depicted as "character"in painting. manuscriptRuskinania published in the LibraryEdition with volume two of ModernPainters includes largely complete Ruskin titles one fragmentof the notes "Supplementary notes for a chapter on awe and horror(4: 371-81). The edi- Notes on TerrorArising from Weakness of Health." He refers tors do not know whether it was intended for inclusion in to the charactersand worksof Keatsand Coleridge, but the volume two or for a revision. They point out that some of the passage could also be thought of as foreknowledgeof his later words and phrases, including "Of Mountain Gloom," are madness and hyperaesthesia.Ruskin describes the reactions used in later volumes. The point of these notes seems to be of a farmerand a poet when coming across a snake. The - to distinguish the experience of the sublime from a love of farmerkills it and "proceedsin his walk whistling. A sick 5 - horror.2 Justas he does later with the picturesque, Ruskin and sorrowfulpoet, meeting the same creature, pauses drawsa line between right and wrong uses of horror.There watches, follows and irritatesit - takes strangepleasure in is a shallow enjoyment of the affect of being frightened and a looking into its eyes, and hearing it hiss" (4: 380). This is a true horrorat the evil of the world wherein "thereought course of action that Ruskin does not recommend and that surely be times when we feel its bitterness,and perceive this can be forgiven only if it results in "Lamia"or "Christabel" awful globe of ours as it is indeed, one pallid charnel house, (or, perhaps, the worksof John Ruskin). What is it to say that

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disgust is an ignoble form of this encounter with inhuman SinceRuskin, it is commonplaceto explainthe judgmentof evil? We could conclude our tour of the Ruskinian pictur- tastein its differencenot only from interested judgment, from esque by defining the picturesque as an ignoble parasiticfas- conceptualperfection and the restof the Kantianapparatus, cination with human degradation,which can be forgiven if it but alsofrom a naiveaestheticism, from positions that Ruskin is the startof something better. wouldhave said lacked sympathy and that are these days called "uncritical."Heinrich Wblfflin, Nikolaus Pevsner, Susan Sontag,Robert Smithson, and Yve-Alain Bois have all played Ruskin and the Picturesque on the ideaof the picturesqueas a kindof transhistorical Despite Ruskin'svehement condemnation of it in some precursor.28The picturesquethat Ruskin received was a theory places, his work is indebted to earlier writerson the pictur- of howtaste could be normalizedwithin an eliteand in relation esque; and in general terms, his work can be understood to to objectsappropriated by that elite. After Ruskin, and since be a development of picturesque sensibility. But it is also the the generalagreement on the impossibilityof an objective case that our image of the picturesque is, to a large degree, aesthetics,the picturesquehas become available as the example one received through Ruskin. To the extent that we think of of a naiveaesthetic of the observingsubject. The picturesque the picturesque as a general aesthetic concept, ratherthan is usuallyevoked in the presenttense as a pejorative,but then one particularto its eighteenth-century inventors, it is in restoredto privilegeby being given as the originof modern Ruskin'scondemnation of the picturesque that the concept perceptualistculture. Just as the eighteenth-centurypicturesque is completed. Ruskin tells us that the picturesque is a kind wasfixated on genretranscoding (on the mechanismsby which facile preoccupation with visual qualities that blind the weak a hightaste for low objects could be normalizedand displayed minded to human suffering. The picturesque leads to un- as virtu),so the picturesquesince Ruskin has been a siteof seemly interests and Ruskin'sdisgust at picturesqueness is an historicaltranscoding, keeping open the placeof "taste"in exact parallel to the picturesque viewer's having forgotten to modernaesthetic theory. The picturesquestands for a historical be disgusted. There are two interesting aspects to this para- originor a presentlack: it is at once the originof modernist, doxical denunciation. First, Ruskin'sdenunciation takes the politicallynuanced formalism and what distinguishes popular form of an unacknowledged reiteration of the problem of fromprogressive taste. This confusion is not somefault in the conceptualizing disgust that is fundamental to eighteenth- commentaryon the picturesque(whether in Ruskinor later). century picturesque theory. Second, for Ruskin to repeat the The historicalsuccess of the picturesquehas been in itsgiving problematic of disgust as if it were an aspect of his historical us an original,Arcadian scene of a formalismunwittingly subju- distance from the picturesque (ratherthan an integral part of gatedto content.This ever-present innocence can be evokedat the picturesque thematic) is, in a strange way, a anypoint and overcome again and again by the discoveryof development of the eighteenth-century picturesque. Ruskin's eitherthe arbitrarinessof the contentof culturalpractices or use of the picturesque as a kind of hors d'oeuvre to his own theirpolitical determinations. These nuances are a modern project completes the picturesque, gives it the temporal developmentthat can be distinguishedfrom the eighteenth- mechanism by which this theory of rural genre painting and centuryinvention of the picturesqueat the pointwhere Ruskin propertyimprovement could become a general aesthetic completesthe picturesquein his condemnationof its principle. heartlessness.

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Notes moments of concern that the Painting fromReynolds to Hazlit: 10. The English cottage epitomized Thanks to RosemaryHawker and exercise of picturesque taste is The Body of the Public (New Haven: the picturesquefrom its beginnings. Charles Rice. materiallyto the disadvantageof Yale UniversityPress, 1986). Barrell The cottage is something that we in 1. This and all references to agriculturalworkers; for instance, has drawnattention to this idea be- now think of almost entirely in aes- in in Ruskin'sworks hereafter are to the Fragment 32 where Repton reports fore English Literature History thetic terms, but around 1800 it was his with a laborerforced to 1730-1780: An Wide a crucial object in a national LibraryEdition of The Worksof meeting Equal, Survey political a mile furtherbecause he is forbid- (London: Hutchinson, 1983), where crisis over rural and rebel- John Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and poverty den to cross a the on interest and disinterest lion. We could that the AlexanderWedderburn, 39 vols. park(The Landscape play argue prime Gardening, 535). Both Loudon, in in and taste is taken function of the histori- (London: George Allen, 1903-12). government picturesque his first book, and Marshallare from the poet JamesThomson. was to scenic My citations follow the convention cally separate landscape antipicturesqueand deny the sepa- Barrellrelies to some extent on J. G. improvementsfrom concurrent of volume and page numbers. agri- ration of agriculturaland scenic im- A. Pocock's variousanalyses of the cultural improvementsat a concep- 2. Uvedale on the Pic- Price, Essays provement. See J. C. Loudon, A traditionof civic humanism. Of par- tual level. Nowhere is this binary Price's turesque(London, 1810). Treatiseon Forming,Improving and ticular relevance is Pocock's essay, structuremore clearly markedthan three-volume treatise to proposes Managing CountryResidences (Lon- "Authorityand Property:The Ques- in the patternbooks for picturesque teach from landscape improvement don, 1806), and William Marshall, tion of Liberal Origins,"in Virtue, cottage design. As a genre these veer the of This aim principles painting. On the Landed Propertyof England, Commerceand History(Cambridge: between picturesqueaesthetic dis- has lead commentators to see many An Elementaryand PracticalTrea- Cambridge UniversityPress, 1985), course and Bentamitesocial manage- it as a for- precocious compositional tise; Containing the Purchase,the 51-78, which deals with the author- ment of agriculturalworkforces, and malism. In there are remark- fact, Improvementand the Management ity-conferringstatus of land and the severalbooks attempt to have it both few statements on ably composition of Landed Estates (London, 1804). political alignments around the ways. In any case, by 1837-38 when for the of as, Price, principles paint- propositionthat "land,or real prop- "The Poetryof Architecture"was are those of its 4. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses ing largely genre sys- erty, tended to make men indepen- published, architecturalpattern tem and the and ornaments on Art, ed. Robert R. Wark (New objects dent citizens, who articulatedtheir books on cottageswere a highly de- of these A crucial is Haven: Yale University Press, genres. passage natural political capacity,whereas fined genre with a markedlynational- in the on Archi- 1975), Discourse 13, 233. "Essay Picturesque mobile propertytended to make istic sentiment and Ruskin'sassertion 2: where Price is in tecture," 329, 5. Reynolds explains this point them artificialbeings, whose appe- that they were not picturesquemust sometimes to if thought say that, Discourse 13 and gives it as the tites and powers could and must be have had a curious reception. For a examined as there is and rela- compositions, mechanism of comparison governed by a sovereign"(68). What descriptionof the patternbooks, see no difference between the work of and tive hierarchy between painting land defended was not the hege- Michael McMordie, "Picturesque Claude and of Ostade. for See, the other arts including architec- mony of one class over another, but PatternBooks and Pre-VictorianDe- Martin "The instance, Price, ture and gardening. Reynolds's the freedom of members of the pol- signers,"Architectural History 18 in From that all Picturesque Moment," strong argument painters ity and the legislature from being (1975): 42-59, and my "The Pictur- to ed. Sensibility , should strive for the grand manner, drawn into a relationshipof pa- esque Cottage:Genre and Tech- FrederickW. Hilles and Harold himself and while he preferred tronage by executive government. nique," SouthernReview 22, no. 3 Bloom York:Oxford Univer- (New practiced a kind of elegant rusticity, Pocock points out the lexical equiva- (1989): 301-14. In what he sity Press, 1965). fact, was remarkedas inconsistent at the lence of "property"and "propriety" is that the of says correspondences time, see especially William Blake's in the seventeenth century that George Landowin The Aestheticand their and are in 1. palaces cottages pleas- marginalia, ibid., Appendix bears on eighteenth-centuryfears of CriticalTheories of JohnRuskin ing because they offer the viewer but no on Princeton 6. See E. P. Thompson, The Mak- corruption, also, doubt, (Princeton: University the possibility of transcoding the the character"in Press, 1971), 223n, out that ing of the English WorkingClass "proper landscape points genre hierarchy. and architecture. Ruskin well have seen G. L. (Hammondsworth:Penguin, 1963). gardening may 3. See Humphry Repton, "ALetter Meason'sOn the LandscapeArchitec- 7. Jerome Stolnitz, "On the to Uvedale Price,"published in Origins 9. The position of the bourgeois tureof the GreatPainters of Italy of 'Aesthetic Disinterestedness,'"' Price, Essays on the Picturesque,3: critic is made wonderfullyclear in (London, 1828). The firstpattern Journalof Aestheticsand Art Criti- 3-21. See also Repton's description Ruskin'sbitter caricatureof himself book to deal with "Italiancottages" is cism 20 (1961): 131-43. of the generic height of garden and as "an architecturalman-milliner" Thomas FredrickHunt's Architettura landscape in J. C. Loudon, ed., The 8. This idea of a republic of taste in the essay "Traffic"from The Campestre(London, 1827) and the LandscapeGardening of the Late mirroringthe political republic is Crownof Wild Olive, which is as most assuredis Charles Parker'sVilla HumphryRepton Esq. (London, the key to John Barrell'sreading of much a critique of the possibilities Rustica (London, 1832). All these are 1840), 365. There are, in Repton, Reynolds in The Political Theoryof of criticism as it is of bourgeoistaste. intended for English clients and do

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not to Continental urban scenes. Ruskin writes oppose English the problem with the architectural of a central aesthetic category in vol- taste on the part of the cottagersor picturesque is compared with the Prout in the note and might have umes one and five of Modern Paint- on the of the aesthetes of those been for this view. part building problem sculptorswho too looking ers. See Helsinger, Ruskin and the them. It is my view that Parker,like accurately depict hair. Price makes Art the 129. 20. See John Dixon Hunt, "Ruskin of Beholder, Charles Barryabout the same time, the same complaint of Denner, a and the Picturesque,"in Gardens 26. My italics. Also "the person is using foreign stylisticsources be- painter who he says errs by too accu- and the Picturesque:Studies in the originally capable of in ter- cause he wished to use irregular rate an attempt at detail. See Price, delight Historyof LandscapeArchitecture ror remains for ever distinct from planning geometries. Irregular Essays on the Picturesque,3:317. (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, the buildings in English vernacularare commonplace person originally 14. Again, this is a fundamental pic- 1992), and idem, The Wider Sea: A of it." strangelycontroversial among the incapable turesque theme recalling Repton's Life of John Ruskin (London: J. M. patternbook architects,because they 27. It is possible that this passage insistence on the necessity of orna- Dent, 1982). were held by some to mix the binary borrowsits motif from Thomas mental dwellings to anchor the look opposition between the political and 21. I have argued elsewhere that Carlyle'sPast and Present(London: in the scenic view. See, for aesthetic objects that the was. instance, aesthetical is a in M. in the in- cottage his discussion of the role of a deco- disgust concept J. Dent, 1960) where, These mattersare discussed in my picturesque discourse that is crucial troduction, Carlyle looks into a pic- rative woodsman'scottage in his de- Ph.D. thesis The OrnamentalCot- to its political interpolation. See turesque view of a workhouseand sign for Blaise Castle Estate in The tage, Landscapeand Disgust, Univer- "The Butcher's Shop: Disgust in indigent men to see them revealed LandscapeGardening, 264-67. sity of Cambridge, 1989, and a book Picturesque Aesthetics and Archi- to him as skeletons. This is noted by of the same title in preparation. 15. On this distinction, see John tecture,"Assemblage 30 (April Helsinger, Ruskinand the Art of the 11. The status of Scotland is inter- Barrell, The Dark Side of the Land- 1996): 32-43. Beholder, 154. Thanks KarenBurns. and I am unsure what scape: The Rural Poor in English esting here, 22. "So it is with most of the pieces 28. See Heinrich Wl61fflin,Prin- to make of Ruskin's of Painting, 1730-1840 (Cambridge: description which the painterscall still-life:in ciples of Art History:The Problemof the of the Cambridge University Press, 1980). impoverishment High- these a cottage,a dung hill, the the Development of Style in Later landers mentioned later in this text. 16. W. J. T. Mitchell describes "the meanest and most ordinaryutensils of Art (New York:Dover, 1950), It could be that this is special plead- still moment of ekphrastichope," in the kitchen, are capable of giving us Nikolaus Pevsner, Studies in Art, on Ruskin's - he is ing part pre- which the sequential and referential pleasure"(,A Philo- Architectureand Design (London: to let some admission of pared structureof language is forgotten in sophical Enquiryinto the Originof Thames and Hudson, 1968), Susan faults with Britain past his national- the will to representation.This is Our Ideasof the Sublimeand Beauti- Sontag, On Photography(New ism on the issues his an- touching succeeded, he says, by "ekphrastic ful, pt. 1, sec. 16; as quoted in Price, York:Delta, 1973), Robert cestral home. on the Or, contrary, fear,"the uncanny sense of the Essayson the Picturesque,3: 324). Smithson, The Writingsof Robert it could be that he wrote so com- difference of the visual and verbal Smithson, ed. Nancy Holt (New as an as 23. This is my gloss of a discussion pletely Englishman to think collapsing. See "Ekphrasisand the York:New York University Press, of picturesque physiognomy in of Scotland as a foreign place. Other," chap. 5 of W. J. T. Mitchell, 1979), and Yve-AlainBois, "A Price, on the 1: 12. Picture Essays Picturesque, Stroll around Clara- Elizabeth Helsinger, Ruskin Theory(Chicago: Chicago 189-203. Picturesque and the Art of the Beholder (Cam- University Press, 1994). Clara," in October:The First De- Mass.: Harvard 24. It seems that Ruskin had cade (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT bridge, University 17. Landow, The Aesthetic and likely that Ruskin read Price his in Press, 1987), 342-72. Press, 1982), argues Critical Theories,232. given upbringing begins with beauty (and truth) as the picturesque and the fame of the aesthetic and has 18. Robert Hewison, John Ruskin: Price's text. Landow only category George points Credits picturesqueness and the sublime The Argumentof the Eye (London: out that there is evidence that he Figure merely as issues of points of view. Thames and Hudson, 1976), 49. at least intended to do so. In the 1-4. The Worksof John Ruskin, Ruskin lists Price She thinks that he then changes 19. The scene Ruskin describes is manuscript notes, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander his mind and comes to admit the under "Worksto be seen" (8: 235). 39 vols. very like the print by Samuel Prout Wedderburn, (London: sublime as a See Landow, The Aesthetic and separate category published in "Notes on Prout and George Allen, 1903-12). the work on the "noble Critical Theories,221-22. through Hunt" (14: facing 392) and repro- picturesque" and the grotesque. duced here. Ruskin'sfamily had 25. Although the notes are certainly 13. In the "Lampof Memory,"the collected Prout'swork and Ruskin equivocal. Elizabeth Helsinger discussion of the lower picturesque had followed it from childhood, be- thinks that they are Ruskin'sat- attention to detail is very close to lieving Prout's importance lay in his tempt to write on horroras part of those of Price and Reynolds, in that bringing picturesque principles to his reintroduction of the sublime as

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