Volume 22, Number 13 · August 7, 1975
The Augustinian Ruskin
By Garry Wills
The Failing Distance: The Autobiographical Impulse in John Ruskin
by Jay Fellows
Johns Hopkins University Press, 187 pp., $10.00
Ruskin knew Mr. Fellows's kind of critic; sometimes was that kind of critic (as in Modern Painters II)—the one who throws up depth on depth of scaffolding before the cathedral, then swings and scrambles like a monkey through all the pipework. But Ruskin's very receptiveness prevented him from imposing any one theory on art. He started fresh in front of every work, and was so bowled over by it that his earlier pronouncements seemed worthless. He studied his masters by copying them—and then wrote about what he could not copy: 'Tintoret has shown me how to paint leaves. My word, he does leave them with a vengeance. I think you would like to see how he does the trunk, too, with two strokes; one for the light side and one for the dark side, all the way down; and then on go the leaves: never autumn swept them off as he sweeps them on.'
Review, 2803 words
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