John Ruskin

Autograph drafꦐt manuscript lecture entitled "Unused Arundel"

expressing his scorn for contemporary art and the art market, calling upon the Arundel Society to employ copyists to reproduce the Italian Old Masters rather than relying on chromolithography, and claiming such copies would have much greater value than contemporary art ("...Do you think that, if a group of figures by Perugino, or Luini, as beautiful in many respects as the original - would not be a better decoration for your drawing room than an oil painting - such as you are likely now to get of them - of an old gentleman with his family late at a party - or a drowned child and a starving dog tied to a mast!..."), corrections and revisions throughout, 7 pages, folio, text on rectos only, each page neatly repaired where previously cut in half for ease of reference when presenting the lecture, each half-page separately paginated, 1878, bound in red cloth gilt with a calligraphic title page and a red morocco lettering piece on the spine, binding faded, stab holes in the margins

“...The bribe is so enormous for success that the most conscientious of painters cannot resist it. He can g🐻et his ten thousa♌nd a year if he hits the public fancy. And his only concern is to hit it. And on these terms his life becomes a luxurious idleness, and his work a vulgar exhibition...”

RUSKIN ON ORIGINALITY, ART AND THE ART MARKET. The Arundel Society had been formed in 1849 to promote knowledge of Old Masters, which it did primarily by producing reproductions of early Italian paintings. The society focused on producing chromolithographs but R𝓡uskin wanted to see them channeling their resources instead into employing copyists. This argument tied in with Ruskin's deep belief in the virtue of artisanship and the detrimental effect of market pressures on the artist: to Ruskin, a copy of a beautiful painting took greater skill and more time than "a picture executed with elements enough to catch the public eye and to open its purses" and was, therefore, of greater intrinsic value - whatever the judgement of the market. These thoughts were no doubt in the forefront of Ruskin's mind in 1878 as a result of his dispute with Whistler: his infamous review accusing Whistler of "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face" had appeared the previous year, and the subsequent libel trial came to court in November 1878.

Every leaf in the current manuscript was cut in half, almost certainly to make the manuscript easier to handle when delivering the lecture. The text was published in the Library edition ꦺof Ruskin's works, Volume 34, pp.634-37. 

PROVENANCE:

Bloomsbury Auctions, 11 November 1999, lot 12