TO FRANCIS HAWKSWORTH FAWKES, ESQ. OF FARNLEY, These Pages, WHICH OWE THEIR PRESENT FORM TO ADVANTAGES GRANTED BY HIS KINDNESS, ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND, JOHN RUSKIN. PREFACE. EIGHT years ago, in the close of the first volume of "Modern Painters," I ventured to give the following advice to the young artists of England:— 'They should go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to penetrate her meaning; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing." Advice which, whether bad or good, involved infinite labor and humiliation in the following it; and was therefore, for the most part, rejected. It has, however, at last been carried out, to the very letter, by a group of men who, for their reward, have been assailed with the most scurrilous abuse which I ever recollect seeing issue from the public press. I have, therefore, thought it due to them to contradict the directly false statements which have been made respecting their works; and to point out the kind of merit which, however deficient in some respects, those works possess beyond the possibility of dispute. Denmark Hill, Aug. 1851. |
