John Ruskin

Autograph letter signed, to S.C. Galpin

complaining about the poor quality of the woodcuts in the Magazine of Art, edited by Galpin ("...I have dwelt repeatedly on the increasing danger, and mischief, of making the black ground of the woodcut a source of false sensation..."), 3 pages, 8vo, headed stationery of Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, 11 November 1886; with autograph 🧸envelope 

The issue of the Magazine of Art that had been sent to Ruskin included a number of woodcuts by Carl van Haanen of Venetian subjec൲ts. After expressing his disappointment at dark and gloomy woodcuts (and indeed a poor quality reproduction of Turner's 'Fighting Temeraire'), Ruskin concludes his letter with the hope that Gilpin will in the future commission woodcuts that express "thඣe beauty of nature and art - not their terrors, or grotesqueness".