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1. John Ruskin,End of Market,
St. Croydon
John Macarthuris a lecturer at the Uni-
versityof Queensland, Brisbane,Australia.
Assemblage 32: 126-141 ? 1997 by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
127
John Macarthur
The Heartlessness
of the Picturesque:
Sympathy and Disgust
in Ruskin's Aesthetics
For, in a certain sense, the lower picturesque ideal is an emi-
nently heartlessone; 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 quarterof 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)'
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 distress to go unnoticed by the
heartless aesthete in a search for tone and shadow is another
 > *,
\

A- -
Ay--

,' J

a, t1I
! 1. , eI
o _~~~~~~~~ .* '

It ' .

and parallelkind of waste:the affliction of artwith a can-
kerous failure of sympathy.Yet the movement of the pas-
sage, from its propositionalforms to the description of a
scene, particularand exemplary,is like that supposed in the
term "picturesque."We say a thing is "like a picture"not
in orderto use it as such, but to walk in or out of it, inter-
changing, back and forward,the flatnessof possession with
lived experience or theoretical insight.
We might think, and rightly,that this passageis confes-
sional, describing feelings that Ruskinknows well. Read in
isolation, the passagemight seem a renunciation. In fact, it
is an overly affecting call for a quite subtle modification of
the picturesque that Ruskin is proposing. For him, the pic-
turesque is a startingpoint, one that it is unclear he ever
surpasses.It is the received aesthetic of his age, which he
believes can be given a cause and origin (lack of sympathy)
and then surpassedinto a more complete aesthetic project
for which the picturesque had given us a taste. The pictur-
esque is "heartless";nevertheless,it can lead us to nobility.
Indeed, the movement that occurs here in Ruskin'scom-
mentaryis little more than an iterationof the structureof
the picturesque idea; we give up the picture for the ability
to split viewing into concept and affect. Ruskin'siteration is
significant, however, not only in the historyof the propaga-
tion of the concept of the picturesque, but in its conceptual
structure.It is on the basis of Ruskin'suptake that the pic-
turesque reiteratesin modern perceptualistculture. Ruskin
writes of the picturesque as if it were a naturalpropensityto
taste that requiresthe development of an aesthetic theory to
discipline and instructit. Rathermore obscurely, he deals
with the picturesque as a preexistingtheoretical problem of
genre, disinterest,and affected disgust. In moving between
these two constructionsof the picturesque, Ruskin invents
for it a temporal mechanism by which the picturesque can
be both a present lack and a historical origin.
assemblage 32
Disinterest
Ruskin'sproposalto cure the picturesque with sympathy
might seem to be in opposition to eighteenth-centurycon-
cepts of aesthetical disinterest.The invention of modern
aesthetics is synonymouswith the concept of disinterested-
ness. In the eighteenth century the problem of aesthetic
theory had been how to articulatethe relation of things of
value and the exercise of taste. Ruskin points out that aes-
theticism creates an opposite problem of the relation of
taste to the ugly, the distorted,and the pathological. This
relation had alreadybeen problematizedin the firstperiod
of the picturesque around the general question of how to
conceptualize a high taste for low objects. In the theory of
Uvedale Price this gradientof taste is merely a tactical mo-
ment in evincing knowledge of the hierarchyof genre.2We
exercise our taste on Dutch paintings of peasantsin cottages
only to expressthe liberalityof our appreciationof the land-
scapes of Claude Lorrain;similarly,our love for the ordi-
naryagriculturalcountrysideof Britaindoes not signify an
inabilityto appropriatethe Alps or the Bay of Naples.
Price's interest in the picturesque, which is to say, in the
ordinary,in the ugly and deformed, is supposed to be an
explorationof the range of taste, so as to better understand
and agree on a common standardof proprietyin taste. But
Price was unable to persuadehis critics that his proposalof
the value of low objects in evincing disinterestwas not, in
the end, a perverseinterest in disgust.Afterall, Price as-
sumes a special value for the ugly and deformed, which is
that they can improve in our appropriationof them while
the beautiful is indifferentto us. Ruskin'simage of the per-
versityof picturesque practice is, then, the repetition of
a critique from the turn of the century, which he must
have been familiarwith through his reading of Humphry
Repton. But, in general, the exaggerationand critique of
Price's position by Repton, J. C. Loudon, William
128

Marshall,and others is directed at Price'staste and his vari-
ance from propriety.3He had made himself ridiculous with
his appetite for views of higglers, and by imagining banditti
on his lawn, and no one would have thought to be con-
cerned with the effect of Price's aesthetics on the subjects of
his view. This is the force of Ruskin'spassage,which im-
bues the foolishness of aesthetic distancing with a sense of
injustice and moves the social and political context of taste
from outside (the choice of objects properfor gentlemen to
judge) to inside (the subject/object relation). Ruskin'spas-
sage asks us to briefly imagine what should be impossible
and must be avoided:that crippled laborersand tubercular
children might ask us why we look at them "likethat."
As I will argue in this paper, much of the mechanism of
aesthetical disgust continues in Ruskin in relation to the
picturesque, except that Ruskin'sdisgust is largely directed
at the picturesque ratherthan through it. But before look-
ing in detail at the chapter on the picturesque in volume
four of Modem Painters,I want to examine three relations
between Ruskinianand eighteenth-centurytheory that all
have to do with articulationsof genre hierarchyand disin-
terest. The firstdeals with the hierarchyof nobility in art it-
self and Ruskin'sresponse to Joshua Reynolds.The second
concerns the use of disinterestedness.The last addresses
picturesquenessas a description of how the Britishare af-
fected by foreign filth and melancholy.
Like Reynolds, Ruskin distinguishes between base pleasure
and noble truth as contending reasonsfor our use of art.
Reynolds thinks that only the lower genres aim at pleasing
while all high art requiresthe development of cultivated
society and conceptualization. If we were to imagine some
persons innocent of painting of great art (those "fromthe
banks of the Ohio or from New Holland"), according to
Reynolds, they would neither comprehend artistictruths
129
Macarthur
nor take pleasure.4He offersa very simplistic hierarchyof
genre based on the distance that can be achieved from the
exact imitation of nature and the particularityof things.5
The higher genres do not call on our appetites and desires,
do not put us in a relationshipwith objects. Rather,moral
judgments are called on to be exercised over general ideas
in the realm of civil life. Price argues against Reynolds that
the picturesque was a kind of generic transcoding;like, he
says,the plays of Shakespearein which are embedded rustic
and comic scenes and subplots that provide a reflection
on the great themes of the play. He neverthelessfollows
Reynolds on the issue of detail; finding that the better genre
paintersare those who are not obsessed with mechanical
imitation and who expressa knowledge of their subject as
genre. Few recordsexist of Ruskin'sOxfordlectures of 1875
on Reynolds'sDiscourses,but the notes that surviveshow a
vehement continuity of the idea of a nobility of taste and a
hierarchyof painting (22: 493-507). Ruskin'smain dis-
agreement with Reynolds is over his denigrationof detail:
Ruskin thinks that the truth lies in practiced observation
and claims that Reynolds would have agreed with him had
he known the early Florentines ratherthan the mean vanity
of the Dutch in painting "the spicula of haystacksand the
hairs of donkeys"(22: 494). A furtherdefinition of the
Ruskinianpicturesque, then, would be a picturesque liber-
ated from its earlier generic positioning, one that rescues
detailed observationfrom the odium of technique, and that
adds questions concerning the truth of imitation that are at
the heart of the Western tradition.
The second point about Ruskin'srelationswith eighteenth-
centuryaestheticsaddressesthe function of disinterestedness.
Low subjectsand disgustare included in Price'ssystemof
tasteto evince disinterestednessas an attributeof a noble ob-
server.Price is anxiousto appeardisinterestedat the level of
taste in the ruralaffairsfor which he is politicallyresponsible.

The scenic improvementsto a gentleman'sestatemust not
seem to be in any way determinedby, or even understoodin
relationto, agriculturalimprovementsfor fear of besmirching
their liberality.The picturesqueof the periodaround 1800
(at the height of what E. P. Thompson calls the English
Counterrevolution)is an ideology of nobilityin which good
taste,consideredan autonomousrealm of judgment,autho-
rized social and political franchise.6The historyof the con-
cept of disinterestin English aestheticsis more complex than
stricturesagainstsensualpleasure.Its relationwith "interest"
is not one of simple oppositionbut of articulationbetween
spheresof attentionand concern.7It was thoughtthat the dis-
interestednessnecessaryfor membersof parliamentto vote in
the nationalinterestcould be guaranteedby hereditaryland-
holding. By contrast,a merchantmight see each decision on
taxes,war,or the poor laws as effecting changes in the price
of tradablecommodities.For eighteenth-centurythinkerssuch
as Reynoldsand Price,the formationof standardsof proper
tastewithin an aristocraticsocietywasanalogous,interestin
land guaranteeingdisinterestedjudgmentin both spheres,and
the parallelbetweenthem naturalizingeach.8While Ruskin
condemnsthe picturesquefor its failureof sympathyand
affect,this is not a critiqueof the concept of aestheticaldisin-
terestednessso much as an inversionof the eighteenth-century
positionsof the interest/disinterest pair.Ruskin'sfranchiseas a
disinterestedartcriticand theoristcan be guaranteedin an au-
thentic human interestin the objectsof the picture,a pre-
parednessto rejectthis particularpicturein sympathyfor the
starvinglaborersit depicts;that is, in an awarenessof the inter-
section of artand polity.This awarenessis not yet (in this, the
earlierhalf of Ruskin'scareer)the broaderprojectfindingan
integratedrelationof artand politicaleconomy,but rather
concernshow artitselfshould be governed.In the eighteenth
century,the concept of disinterestand aestheticsin general
had functionedas an ideologyof taste,an aristocratictastefor
artworksthatwere still largelyemblematicof the wealthto ac-
assemblage 32
quirethem. By the mid-nineteenthcentury,art,and particu-
larlyarchitecture,had become thoroughlyideologicalin the
construalof national,class,and religiousinterests.Ruskinis
participatingin thatprocessby which aestheticsthen becomes
the generalrealmof both the appropriationand productionof
art;he inventsthe role of the bourgeoiscriticas a position
privilegedby his interestin artitself,an interestguaranteedby
a disinterestin the artmarketor the politicalvalence of
particularartworks(18: 433-58).9
The last, and somewhat slighter, point about disinterested-
ness concerns the Englishness of the picturesque. In its
rhetoricalfinality, we might think that the argument of the
"heartlessnessof the picturesque"passagefrom Modern
Painterswould lead on to a discussion of ruralhousing re-
form in England, an issue with which picturesque aesthet-
ics is intimately bound up and with which is it identified.10
But Ruskin is not asking us to drop pencils to legislate or to
repairthatch in responseto his description.We know this
because a footnote to the passagetells us that it is based on
an observationin Amiens, which is to say, beyond the re-
sponsibilities of Ruskin'sEnglish readers.Descriptions of
the raggedmisery of cottagersare the staple of picturesque
culture, whether in Goldsmith or Gainsborough,whether
depicted as divertingvisual characteror as a cry for reform
or both. In any case, the programof the picturesque in the
eighteenth century is an aesthetic of the ordinaryand famil-
iar, of England. It is curious and significant, then, that
Ruskindoes not find England picturesque. One of Ruskin's
most markeddevelopments of the picturesque is to see it as
an issue of foreign affairs.Ruskin'sfirstpublished work,
"The Poetryof Architecture,"begins with a contrastof En-
glish and French cottages in which the English one is too
prim and comfortableto please the eye of taste, as it an-
swersto "a sentiment of mere complacency" (1: 17). The
French cottage can please us because of an "impressionof
130

having once been fit for prouder inhabitants.... Every
markof dilapidation increases this feeling: while these very
marks. . . are all delightful in themselves."Ruskin has
transferredall that had been familiarlysaid of English cot-
tages to a more extreme, foreign picturesque. The work is
all the strangerfor its publication by Loudon in his Archi-
tecturalMagazine in 1837 and 1838. Loudon had in 1833
published his own Encyclopaediaof Cottage Architecture,
which was firmly addressedas a remedy to the degraded
misery of Britishcottagers.In describing Italian "cottages,"
Ruskin describes aesthetic objects in wordsthat in England
would soon belong only to the discourse of the sanitary
commissioners:"the filthy habits of the Italian prevent him
from sufferingfrom the state to which he is reduced. The
shatteredroofs, the dark,confused, raggedwindows, the ob-
scure chambers, the tatteredand dirtydraperies,altogether
present a picture which, seen too near, is sometimes revolt-
ing to the eye, alwaysmelancholy to the mind" (1: 28). This
nationalistic displacement of picturesque objectification is
not overcome in Ruskin'slater works."
In "Of Mountain Gloom," in volume five of Modem Paint-
ers, Ruskindiscusses the artisticappropriationof povertyun-
der sentiments of gloominess and horror.He is appalled that
popularoperas nightly present impoverishedAlpine peas-
ants, without the audiences even connecting this literary
topos with an actual human situation. But this is a simple
enough problem where artistictruth convergeswith moral
truth, and Ruskincan simply damn together the lack of sym-
pathyand the foolishness of starvingpeasantscoopted as the
rosysubjects of the pastoral.At this same point in the de-
scription, however, Ruskinopens a much more problematic
set of issues that he cannot resolve:the question of the gro-
tesque in art,the aesthetic of horror,and an art that has
much more to do with affect than with truth.We might
wonder how this differsfrom the picturesque in his condem-
nation of it. Yet it is importantto Ruskinto make a distinc-
Macarthur
tion here because, as we shall see, his is an immanent cri-
tique of the picturesque intended to redeem it. Grotesque
art and the "lowerpicturesque"is given a foreign site, in
melancholic Italyand benighted Savoy.These aesthetic
problems of foreign location are caused by dank air, Ca-
tholicism, and a habitual use of bad art (6: 405). But Ruskin
thinks that neither povertynor cultural ignorance would
have the same affects in Britain.The "absolutejoy in ugli-
ness"and "imbecile revelling in terror"of foreign peasantsis
"independentof mere povertyor indolence," as we see by
contrastwith "Irishrecklessnessand humour"and "the well-
conducted English cottager"(6: 399, 396, 389). With an art-
less shift in logic, it is only on the Continent that art must
face the choice to disguise or to enjoy oppression.
Picturesquenessand Sympathy
Ruskin'sdiscussionof the picturesqueformspartof an argu-
ment as to the superiorityof the workof J. M. W. Turnerover
populartastefor picturesqueviews. In the chapter"Ofthe
TurnerianPicturesque,"Ruskinopposesthe "lowerpictur-
esque,"with which we have thus far dealt, with a Turnerian
noble picturesque(6: 9-26). The differenceis authorialsym-
pathy:Turner'ssympathywith his subjectsleads him to a
noble representationof them even when they are mean.
At stake here are severalaspects of the reiterationof the pic-
turesque. Like Price, Ruskin uses examples of the high taste
for low objects as an entree to the question of nobility and
truth in representation.The picturesque is alwaysa begin-
ning and never an end. For each author, it is genre hierar-
chy that is importantand Reynolds who is both authority
and target.Price's claims for the superiorityof Rembrandt
over van Ostade are exactly the same as Ruskin'sclaims for
Turner: both artistshave chosen to paint lower genres from
the height of their success with historypainting. For Price,
this occurs in Rembrandt'sfreedom of technique and a cer-
131

tain negligence with detail; for Ruskin, it is in Turner'spre-
cision and "sympathy."But in each case, masterycomprises
not only a relation to the subject but a command of the
genre system and freedom from determination.
Perhapsthe most remarkableaspect of Ruskin'sdiscussion
of the picturesque is his acceptance of Price's claim that
picturesquenessis a separateaesthetic category.'2Price in-
sisted that picturesquenesswas categoricallydifferentfrom
beauty, an empirical attributeof objects that could be rep-
resented. Most commentatorsconsider this a less progres-
sive view than that of RichardPayne Knight, who held that
beauty was an issue of the sensoryperception of light and its
variationsand thus not inherent in objects;picturesqueness
being merely a descriptorof some of those objects judged to
be beautiful because of their perceptual relationswith a
subject. In most twentieth-centuryaccounts of the pictur-
esque, where it is seem as an origin for modern formalism,
the more progressiveposition appearsto belong to Knight,
who was in fact a more sophisticatedthinker and writer
than Price. Yet, if we put aside the historical success of
Knight'sargument, the position he argues - that beauty is
one thing and picturesquenessmerely an attributeof it - is
the more conservativeone, held also by his quite muddle-
headed contemporariessuch as Repton. Knight'sposition,
although philosophically engaging, could not have made as
much sense at the time as Price's convoluted and some-
times illogical attemptsto put abstractand critical theories
of judgment into the existing cultural formationsbased on
genre. Price had a neat way of demonstratingthat the aes-
thetic appropriationof the mean, common, and disgusting
did not perverselyvalue these things, nor did aesthetic ap-
propriationundo the double articulationby which objects
possessed social and aesthetic value. This was possible so
long as one said "picturesque"ratherthan "beautiful"about
the dung hills of everydaylife.
assemblage 32
Ruskin implicitly accepts the categorical separationof the
picturesque and the beautiful and, what is more, defines
the picturesque in terms of the sublime. Eighteenth-cen-
tury theoristswere unlikely to do so because the sublime is
a categoryof transcendence. But, for Ruskin,the distinction
between the beautiful and the picturesque is that the pic-
turesque is a parasiticalform of sublimity (8: 221-47). The
example Ruskingives, in "The Lamp of Memory,"is of
cottages, the roofs of which in their decrepit and twisted
shapes, might recall rangesof mountains. The equation
here seems to be a version of the opposition of nature to
artifice.Art is beautiful, nature sublime, and those human
worksthat are greatlyaged and changed in use or that are
the result of habitual unconscious practice are half-natural.
Artifice in its unreflected picturesque state naturallyshows
the pathos of human workswhen put againstthe worksof
nature. The aesthete'sexperience of picturesquenessis,
then, a sort of sublimity where the subject exceeds the ob-
ject, ratherthan the other way around. We could conclude
from Ruskin'sexamples that the picturesque is the human;
that is, the human seen as nature ratherthan as art.The
beautiful is what humans attemptto obtain in their artifacts;
it is, as it were, the human project. Seen as objects, how-
ever, all human projects,architecturefor instance, are
vanitas. They are metonymic, or parasitical,of death and
the sublimity of time itself.
The lower picturesqueis also called the "surfacepictur-
esque" (6: 16). This surface is that of the parasiticrelations
by which mean objects might produce visual stimuli like
noble naturalobjects. Ruskinsupposesthat these visual
stimuli are so inevitablyappealing and desirablethat those
without spiritualbreadthwill be seduced to look no further
and will lack criteriafor distinguishingmountain from cot-
tage. On the other hand, the noble picturesque is a relation
in depth. Nobility does not require us to eschew the surface
132
 Macarthur

relations,but ratherto put this fascination"in subordination the gauge of human life.14In a remarkablepassagein "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 landscape 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
metaphoras "the pathetic fallacy"(5: 205-6). Ruskinsees
a roadsidebank"(6: 21). Roadsidebanks are another para-
metaphoras 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. Ruskindoes not say that the
less, we are supposed to understandthat the seeker afterpic-
cottage is a metaphorof the sublime mountain, yet it is clear
turesque qualities will preferthe ruined cottage "to give a
that the picturesquearousesthe feeling of pathos. We could
deeper tone to his pleasure."Ruskin'sonly 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 picturesquesees
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 parasiticalsublimitythat
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 questionsof the architecturalcharacterof cot-
level of the historyof our fall from the grace of creation.
tages that go back to "The Poetryof Architecture."'3
When
Nevertheless, Ruskin insiststhat sorrowand age would be
Ruskinreturnsto these thoughtsin the passageswe are dis-
sublime, except that in the picturesque they are "mingled
cussing in volume four of ModernPainters,he must extend
with such familiarand common charactersas prevent the
the scope of the analysisfrom architectureto paintingand
object from becoming perfectlypathetic in its sorrow,or
figurepainting;and he does so with the concept of sympathy.
perfectlyvenerable in its age" (6: 11). This is another symp-
The examples of human figures and landscapes and tom of the genre hierarchyimplicit in the picturesque, but
buildings with human figures that Ruskin gives in Modern it leads us on to furtherqualificationsof "sympathy."The
Painterstake him beyond the simple materialrelations of noble picturesque is the sympatheticobservationof
cottages to mountains. In any case, it is unclear whether the
suffering, of povertyor decay, nobly endured by unpretending
geological time of the decay and weathering of the moun- strength of heart. Nor only unpretending but unconscious. If
tain can be understoodwithout the cottage; that is, without there be visible pensiveness in the building, as in a ruined ab-

133

bey, it becomes,or claimsto becomebeautiful;but the pictur-
esquenessis in the unconscioussuffering,- the lookthatan old
labourerhas, not knowingthatthereis anythingpatheticin his
greyhair,andwitheredarms,and sunburntbreast.... [Between
the 'extremes'of the admittedpathosof the ruinedabbeyand
the sweptproprietiesand neatnessof modernEngland]. . . there
is the unconsciousconfessionof the factsof distressand decay,
in by-words;the world'shardworkbeinggone throughall the
while, and no pityaskedfor,nor contemptfeared.(6: 14-15)
At the most obvious level, human misery is being natural-
ized here, and with this its causes in materialpovertythat
must have seemed a fact of life to Ruskin before he began
to think on the systemic aspects of the maldistributionof
wealth. But Ruskin'sinsistence on the unconsciousness of
sufferingis more or less explicitly political in the terms of
his day. Clearly, what would not be allowed in the noble
picturesque is the knowledge of sufferingon the partof the
personsviewed, who might then call on the sympathyof the
noble viewer in a less than abstractway. This is follows the
eighteenth-centurydistinction of a deservingpoor from the
mendicant poor.l5In a later piece entitled "Of Vulgarity,"
Ruskin describes "sympathy"as an attributeof the well-bred
gentleman who is kind but reserved(7: 343-62). He argues
against those who would misunderstandthis reserveas a
lack of sympathy.Ruskin thinks that reserveis not a failure
to be generous with one's self but an acute realization of
assemblage 32
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 unawareof their
plight and the noble viewer must not speak with them.
Although sympathymight lead to charityat 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'sdemonstrationof the veracityof his definition of
the picturesque is a comparison of two prints of windmills
by Clarkson Stanfield and by Turner. Ruskin begins with
the rhetoricalclaim that we will find Stanfield'sprint the
more attractivebut that he can persuade us that Turner'sis
the better, not least because it refuses to be attractivefor us.
Turner, it seems, has been limited in his attemptsto please
us by keeping his mill in a reasonablyserviceable condi-
tion, while Stanfield has sought out, and found with an evi-
dent delight, a mill packed with featuresof tone and line,
and incidentally so decrepit that it would doubtless be the
ruin of any community who depended on it. But all this is
mildly humorous, for Stanfield has changed a real poverty
into an imaginaryeye-pleasingone. The conceit deserves
ridicule. Stanfield tries to please even if this requireshim to
exaggerate,while Turner refusespleasure for the statement
of general truths.There is also a question of salaryin all of
this. Ruskinwrites for Turner and for us, not for Stanfield,
who has been invited into the argument only to be ex-
cluded. Stanfield'sproblem is differentfrom that of the
liberal viewer; he has been paid to overcome his feelings
at the sight of povertyand decay. Unlike Turner, who
struggleswith his genius, Stanfield has "pursuedhis career"
as a masterof the lower picturesque, a choice that may have
cost him dearlyin the hardening of his heart.
134

3. "The Picturesque of Windmills,"comparison of
paintings by ClarksonStanfield and J. M. W. Turner
Turner'ssympathyhas lead him to a depiction of a mill that
"marksthis great fact of windmill nature"by a representa-
tion of its function: an accurate delineation of the partsand
through the inclusion of an abandoned mill stone that al-
ludes to its internal mechanism. Ruskin writes as if Turner
has provided, ratherthan depicted, a serviceable mill; and
while this passage of thought might seem "sympathetic"to
users of mills, this is only the firststage to Ruskin'srather
darkerand deeper account of Turner'ssympathy:"he feels
something pensive about it. It is poor property.... Turning
around a couple of stones for the mere pulverisationof hu-
man food is not noble workfor the winds. So, also of all low
human labour to which one sets human souls.... All men
have felt it so this grinding at the mill, whether it be breeze
or soul that is set to it" (6: 18-19). Turner'ssympathy,then,
Macarthur
is to know to be glad that he is not a manual laborerand to
have the good manners not to displayhis relief to those less
fortunate.
Disgust
To take the analysisof the heartlessnessof the picturesque
furtherwe need to returnfrom Ruskin'sovert discussion of
"sympathy"to his rhetoric and the place of disgust within it.
Another passagecondemning the picturesque that is often
quoted describes starvingScots crofters.In a spectacular
word painting, Ruskin gives a page and a half of descriptive
approbationof Highland scenery structuredonly by the
rhythmic prose that representsthe passageof his eye across
the imagined scene. The fluid eye hesitates momentarily in
135

the middle of the passagewhen catching on the carcassof a
ewe, and this is carefullycalculated to cut the more deeply
when Ruskin finishes by focusing in on a small section of
the view, on a starvingman and boy: "the child's wasted
shoulders, cutting his old tartanjacketthrough, so sharp
they are"(7: 268-69). The rhetoricalstructureof "Of
Mountain Gloom" is similar. On a walk in the Alpine for-
ests of Savoy, Ruskinhalts his torridprose descriptionof the
scenery when he arrivesat the mountain village, which is
a "darkand plague-like stain in the midst of gentle land-
scape" (6: 389). This turn in the rhetoricalstructureis
affective through an unexpected change in the statusof de-
scription. Ruskin induces in the readera state of airy, ocu-
lar, distanced observationbefore sharplyintrudingwith
human reference and a moral argument.The passagesbe-
gin ekphrasis:in the verbal descriptionof a visual represen-
tation, we hear the picture that Ruskin sees. But then at the
sight of human miserywe are jolted, disgusted (at the ob-
jects and then at ourselvesfor aestheticizing them), and we
realize that the description Ruskingives us is not mediated
visual experience, it is the position he argues against.The
description-minus-argumentis the rhetoricalplace of the
picturesque-without-sympathy, and disgust is the moment
on which this shift in rhetoricturns.16
The passageon picturesque heartlessnessthat began this es-
say is consistent with these passagesin its rhetoricalpattern
although it uses disgust and affecting description in a more
complicated way. Although the passagequoted is all pejora-
tive, a long footnote gives a description of innocent visual
pleasuresfrom which disgust and sympathywill awaken us.
Ruskin introduces the note as an entry in his diaryabout a
"happywalk"along the Somme. The diaryentry makes
wonderfullyclear that the heartlessnesshe described is the
generalization of a particularexperience of his own. The
"feverishmisery of the lower quarterof the town"described
in the body of the text is, in fact, Amiens. The decrepit
assemblage 32
buildings are the cottages of gloomy spinnersand dyers.
The faces of laborersand the green waterand soaking
wrecksof boats match the reflexivesentences at the end of
the note.
An old flamboyantGothicchurch,whoserichlytraceriedbut-
tressesslopedinto the filthystream;- all exquisitelypictur-
esqueand no less miserable.We delightin seeingthe figuresin
thesepushingthem aboutthe bitsof blue water,in Prout'sdraw-
ings;but as I lookedto-dayat the unhealthyface and melancholy
mien of the man in the boatpushinghis loadof peatsalongthe
ditch, ... I could not help feelinghow manysufferingpersons
mustpayformy picturesquesubjectand happywalk.(6: 20)
George Landow writesthat the inclusion of the note shows
that Ruskin "could not help feeling."17RobertHewison
thinks it a "documentarytouch" that supportsthe body text,
as well the general theme of Ruskin distancing himself
from the picturesque as his social conscience is awakened.'8
But the text is much more complex, paradoxical,and recur-
sive than that. This is more than one of Ruskin'sfamous in-
consistencies; it is a deliberate polyphony. The Ruskin of
the body text accuses the Ruskin at Amiens of a monstrous
heartlessness.There is reason to think that on his happy
walk at Amiens Ruskinlooks to take pleasure by finding
a scene to compare to a particulardrawingby Samuel
Prout.19His reflection on the cost of his experience is as for-
mulaic as a memento mori and does not answerthe scorn
of the passagenor equate with the concept of sympathyout-
lined earlier in the chapter. In fact, his reaction in the diary
note is much closer to those lovers of the lower picturesque
described immediately after in the text as "innocent of evil
but not broad in thought,"who might cultivate their taste
"not with any special view to artistic,but merely humane
education" (6: 21-22).
In the structureof the chapter on the picturesque from
ModernPainters,the concept of sympathyprecedes the
comparison of the mills and Stanfield'sexemplification of
136

4. Samuel Prout, Amiens
the lower picturesque. The heartlessnesspassagethen
builds our outrage at picturesque practice before the re-
mainder of the chapter piles qualification on qualification
until the lower picturesque appearsas the inevitable start-
ing point to a love of art, and marksthe distinction of those
capable of such growthfrom both the sanitarycommission-
ers and the person who "would thrustall povertyand misery
out of his way"(6: 22). The note on Amiens thus lies at the
pivot of the chapter'sstructure,at the height of Ruskin'sdis-
gust before he forgivesthe picturesque. Prout is a symptom
of Ruskin'sequivocation, an exception in that he is, by vir-
tue of the genre of his work, a masterof the lower pictur-
esque; not a historypainter like Turner, but nonetheless
sympatheticand exempt from denigration (6: 22-23).
It is well established that Ruskin'scritique of the pictur-
esque revealshis debts to it as much as anything else.20
It might have been the case that Ruskin had difficulty in
thinking beyond his formativemilieu and was, at the time
he wrote volume four of Modem Painters,developing the
interestsand beliefs that would guide his later career as a
social reformer.But the form of his equivocation is implicit
Macarthur
in the picturesque itself. On one count, this is because it
follows the trackof seeing artisticmerit in the interpolation
of genre that I have been emphasizing throughout;on an-
other, because the argument is supposed to be self-evident
in our disgust at bad art;and lastly, because our disgust at
bad art is put in relation to questions of the meaning of
disgust within the representedscene.
Price, like Edmund Burke, posits disgust as having three
levels of action in the realm of taste.2'At the first,disgust
shows the power of art, in that dung hills and back kitchens
can be objects of artisticrepresentation,when we would not
enjoy the sight of them in real life.22At the second, there is
a limit to this aspect of art;some things disgust even in rep-
resentation:we can imagine variousugly and distortedhu-
man faces as studies in character,but a man with a face like
an oystercovered in wens and excrescences is too much.23
At the third, the taste of the poor disgustsus because the
poor preferrepresentationsof food, jolly times, and fine
weather. Their fault is to desire sensual pleasures so much
that they misunderstandthe contract of mimesis; wanting to
have in representationthings longed-forbut unobtainable
in life. My point has been to show that Ruskin'scondemna-
tion of the lower picturesque has as much to do with this
disgust at the low taste of the English middle class as it has
to do with the povertyrepresented.Ruskin deploys a three-
tiered structureassuming:one, a real phenomenal affection
of disgust, fear, and sorrowthat he and the readermight
have at real scenes of human depravityand degradation;
two, a right approachby noble artiststo such scenes
wherein they know what can and cannot be bracketedsuffi-
ciently in representation;and three, a slavish compulsion to
imitation that disguststhose of good taste. This last is fool-
ish and dismissible, but when we think on it, such abuse of
art comes to truly disgust. Ruskin'sand the reader'staste is
affrontedby the Stanfield print in a strangekind of circuit
with our phobic horrorof the poor. Stanfield'sapproachto
137

art is merely unreasonable,but the knowledge of this leads us
to feel sick and angry.
There are differences, of course, between Ruskinand the
eighteenth-centurytheorists.Price was a lover of Dutch land-
scapes and of genre painterssuch as Philips Wouvermanns
and David Teniers. Ruskin includes a chapter on these artists
in volume five of ModernPainters,the introductionto which
includes the memorable quip that "all their life and work is
the same sort of mysteryto me as the mind of my dog when
he rolls on carrion"(7: 363). Ruskin'staste thus differsfrom
that of Price, but their mechanism for confrontingthe low in
art is the same. Servile art is not simply an unreasonableuse
of art, but an affrontto reason that leads to it own affects;that
is, to disgust.
It is unclear whether Ruskinhad read Price with attention to
the details of his theory of disgust.24In any case, he would
have little use for it. Because he thinks the beauty and nobil-
ity of art lie in its relationswith the world, he cannot believe
(as does Price) that partsof the world are beneath representa-
tion yet capable of ennoblement by the choice of the artistto
objectify them. He neverthelesshas a theory of disgust.The
manuscriptRuskinaniapublished in the LibraryEdition with
volume two of ModernPaintersincludes largelycomplete
notes for a chapter on awe and horror(4: 371-81). The edi-
tors do not know whether it was intended for inclusion in
volume two or for a revision.They point out that some of the
wordsand phrases,including "Of Mountain Gloom," are
used in later volumes. The point of these notes seems to be
to distinguish the experience of the sublime from a love of
horror.25Justas he does later with the picturesque, Ruskin
drawsa line between right and wrong uses of horror.There
is a shallow enjoyment of the affect of being frightened and a
true horrorat the evil of the world wherein "thereought
surely be times when we feel its bitterness,and perceive this
awful globe of ours as it is indeed, one pallid charnel house,
assemblage 32
- a ball strewedbrightwith human ashes, glaring in its
poised swayto and fro beneath the sun that warmsit, all
blinding white with death from pole to pole" (4: 376).
Ruskin'stopic is the horrorand fear of the terriblesublime,
but he had alreadydefined the picturesque as a parasitical
sublimity and his views on disgustare consistent. "Disgust,
properlyso called, is a minor degree of horrorfelt respecting
things ignoblypainful or offensive"(4: 372).26Ruskinthinks
that horroris evoked by artistsimagining a "bodymore or
less subjected to visible decay: as in the skeleton dances of
Retsch. A 'horrible'death is one in which the laws of life are
violently and unnaturallyinterruptedwith such infliction of
pain as nature usually forbids:as in the body'sbeing torn or
dashed to pieces - or burnt"(4: 371). It is worth remem-
bering at this point the skeletal figures of the Highland
shepherds.27The horrorthat Ruskin uses to tell the
unrepresentablefacts of the Highland clearances is the boy's
visible skeleton, his walking death. For the viewer of the
lower picturesque, whom Ruskin reproacheshere, such a
scene in life would presumablydisgust (it being a minor and
ignoble horrorto starveto death), but still remain something
amenable to being depicted as "character"in painting.
Ruskintitles one fragmentof the notes "Supplementary
Notes on TerrorArisingfrom Weakness of Health." He refers
to the charactersand worksof Keatsand Coleridge, but the
passagecould also be thought of as foreknowledgeof his later
madness and hyperaesthesia.Ruskindescribes the reactions
of a farmerand a poet when coming acrossa snake. The
farmerkills it and "proceedsin his walk - whistling. A sick
and sorrowfulpoet, meeting the same creature,pauses -
watches, follows and irritatesit - takes strangepleasure in
looking into its eyes, and hearing it hiss" (4: 380). This is a
course of action that Ruskin does not recommend and that
can be forgiven only if it resultsin "Lamia"or "Christabel"
(or, perhaps,the worksof John Ruskin). What is it to say that
138
 Macarthur

disgust is an ignoble form of this encounter with inhuman
evil? We could conclude our tour of the Ruskinianpictur-
esque by defining the picturesque as an ignoble parasiticfas-
cination with human degradation,which can be forgiven if it
is the startof something better.
Since Ruskin,it is commonplaceto explainthe judgmentof
tastein its differencenot only from interestedjudgment,from
conceptualperfectionand the restof the Kantianapparatus,
but also from a naive aestheticism,frompositionsthat Ruskin
would have said lackedsympathyand that are these dayscalled
"uncritical."HeinrichW1olfflin,NikolausPevsner,Susan

Ruskinand the Picturesque Sontag,RobertSmithson,and Yve-AlainBois have all played

on the idea of the picturesqueas a kind of transhistorical
Despite Ruskin'svehement condemnation of it in some precursor.28 The picturesquethat Ruskinreceivedwas a theory
places, his work is indebted to earlier writerson the pictur- of how tastecould be normalizedwithin an elite and in relation
esque; and in general terms, his work can be understood to to objectsappropriatedby that elite. AfterRuskin,and since
be a development of picturesque sensibility. But it is also the the generalagreementon the impossibilityof an objective
case that our image of the picturesque is, to a large degree, aesthetics,the picturesquehas become availableas the example
one received through Ruskin. To the extent that we think of of a nafveaestheticof the observingsubject.The picturesque
the picturesque as a general aesthetic concept, ratherthan is usuallyevokedin the presenttense as a pejorative,but then
one particularto its eighteenth-century inventors, it is in restoredto privilegeby being given as the origin of modern
Ruskin'scondemnation of the picturesque that the concept perceptualistculture.Justas the eighteenth-centurypicturesque
is completed. Ruskin tells us that the picturesque is a kind was fixatedon genre transcoding(on the mechanismsby which
facile preoccupation with visual qualities that blind the weak a high tastefor low objectscould be normalizedand displayed
minded to human suffering.The picturesque leads to un- as virtu),so the picturesquesince Ruskinhas been a site of
seemly interestsand Ruskin'sdisgust at picturesqueness is an historicaltranscoding,keeping open the place of "taste"in
exact parallel to the picturesque viewer's having forgotten to modernaesthetictheory.The picturesquestandsfor a historical
be disgusted. There are two interesting aspects to this para- origin or a presentlack:it is at once the originof modernist,
doxical denunciation. First, Ruskin'sdenunciation takes the politicallynuanced formalismand what distinguishespopular
form of an unacknowledged reiterationof the problem of fromprogressivetaste.This confusion is not some fault in the
conceptualizing disgust that is fundamental to eighteenth- commentaryon the picturesque(whetherin Ruskinor later).
century picturesque theory. Second, for Ruskin to repeat the The historicalsuccess of the picturesquehas been in its giving
problematic of disgust as if it were an aspect of his historical us an original,Arcadianscene of a formalismunwittinglysubju-
distance from the picturesque (ratherthan an integral part of gated to content. This ever-presentinnocence can be evokedat
the picturesque thematic) is, in a strangeway, a any point and overcomeagain and again by the discoveryof
development of the eighteenth-century picturesque. Ruskin's either the arbitrariness of the content of culturalpracticesor
use of the picturesque as a kind of hors d'oeuvre to his own their politicaldeterminations.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 ruralgenre painting and centuryinventionof the picturesqueat the point where Ruskin
propertyimprovement could become a general aesthetic completes the picturesquein his condemnationof its
principle. heartlessness.

139

Notes
Thanks to RosemaryHawkerand
Charles Rice.
1. This and all references to
Ruskin'sworkshereafterare to the
LibraryEdition of The Worksof
John Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and
AlexanderWedderburn, 39 vols.
(London: George Allen, 1903-12).
My citations follow the convention
of volume and page numbers.
2. Uvedale Price, Essays on the Pic-
turesque(London, 1810). Price's
three-volume treatise proposes to
teach landscape improvement from
the principles of painting. This aim
has lead many commentators to see
it as a precocious compositional for-
malism. In fact, there are remark-
ably few statements on composition
as, for Price, the principles of paint-
ing are largely those of its genre sys-
tem and the objects and ornaments
of these genres. A crucial passage is
in the "Essayon Picturesque Archi-
tecture," 2: 329, where Price is
sometimes thought to say that, if
examined as compositions, there is
no difference between the work of
Claude and of Ostade. See, for
instance, Martin Price, "The
Picturesque Moment," in From
Sensibility to Romanticism,ed.
FrederickW. Hilles and Harold
Bloom (New York:Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1965). In fact, what he
says is that the correspondences of
their palaces and cottages are pleas-
ing because they offer the viewer
the possibility of transcoding the
genre hierarchy.
3. See Humphry Repton, "ALetter
to Uvedale Price,"published in
Price, Essays on the Picturesque,3:
3-21. See also Repton'sdescription
of the generic height of garden and
landscape in J. C. Loudon, ed., The
LandscapeGardeningof the Late
HumphryRepton Esq. (London,
1840), 365. There are, in Repton,
moments of concern that the
exercise of picturesque taste is
materiallyto the disadvantageof
agriculturalworkers;for instance, in
Fragment 32 where Repton reports
his meeting with a laborerforced to
a mile furtherbecause he is forbid-
den to cross a park(The Landscape
Gardening, 535). Both Loudon, in
his firstbook, and Marshallare
antipicturesqueand deny the sepa-
ration of agriculturaland scenic im-
provement. See J. C. Loudon, A
Treatiseon Forming,Improvingand
Managing CountryResidences(Lon-
don, 1806), and William Marshall,
On the Landed Propertyof England,
An Elementaryand PracticalTrea-
tise; Containing the Purchase,the
Improvementand the Management
of LandedEstates (London, 1804).
4. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses
on Art, ed. Robert R. Wark (New
Haven: Yale UniversityPress,
1975), Discourse 13, 233.
5. Reynolds explains this point in
Discourse 13 and gives it as the
mechanism of comparison and rela-
tive hierarchybetween painting and
the other arts including architec-
ture and gardening. Reynolds's
strong argument that all painters
should strivefor the grand manner,
while he himself preferredand
practiced a kind of elegant rusticity,
was remarkedas inconsistent at the
time, see especially William Blake's
marginalia, in ibid., Appendix 1.
6. See E. P. Thompson, The Mak-
ing of the English WorkingClass
(Hammondsworth:Penguin, 1963).
7. Jerome Stolnitz, "On the Origins
of 'Aesthetic Disinterestedness,"'
Journalof Aestheticsand Art Criti-
cism 20 (1961): 131-43.
8. This idea of a republic of taste
mirroringthe political republic is
the key to John Barrell'sreading of
Reynolds in The Political Theoryof
assemblage 32
Painting fromReynoldsto Hazlit:
The Body of the Public (New Haven:
Yale UniversityPress, 1986). Barrell
has drawnattention to this idea be-
fore in English Literaturein History
1730-1780: An Equal, Wide Survey
(London: Hutchinson, 1983), where
the play on interestand disinterest
in governmentand taste is taken
from the poet JamesThomson.
Barrellrelies to some extent on J. G.
A. Pocock'svariousanalysesof the
traditionof civic humanism. Of par-
ticular relevance is Pocock's essay,
"Authorityand Property:The Ques-
tion of LiberalOrigins,"in Virtue,
Commerceand History(Cambridge:
CambridgeUniversityPress, 1985),
51-78, which deals with the author-
ity-conferringstatusof land and the
political alignments around the
propositionthat "land,or real prop-
erty,tended to make men indepen-
dent citizens, who articulatedtheir
naturalpolitical capacity,whereas
mobile propertytended to make
them artificialbeings, whose appe-
tites and powerscould and must be
governed by a sovereign"(68). What
land defended was not the hege-
mony of one class over another, but
the freedom of members of the pol-
ity and the legislaturefrom being
drawninto a relationshipof pa-
tronageby executive government.
Pocock points out the lexical equiva-
lence of "property"and "propriety"
in the seventeenth centurythat
bearson eighteenth-centuryfearsof
corruption,but also, no doubt, on
the "propercharacter"in landscape
gardeningand architecture.
9. The position of the bourgeois
critic is made wonderfullyclear in
Ruskin'sbittercaricatureof himself
as "an architecturalman-milliner"
in the essay"Traffic"from The
Crownof Wild Olive, which is as
much a critique of the possibilities
of criticism as it is of bourgeoistaste.
140
10. The English cottage epitomized
the picturesquefrom its beginnings.
The cottage is something that we
now think of almost entirelyin aes-
thetic terms,but around 1800 it was
a crucial object in a nationalpolitical
crisisover ruralpovertyand rebel-
lion. We could argue that the prime
function of the picturesquehistori-
cally was to separatescenic landscape
improvementsfrom concurrentagri-
culturalimprovementsat a concep-
tual level. Nowhere is this binary
structuremore clearlymarkedthan
in the patternbooksfor picturesque
cottage design. As a genre these veer
between picturesqueaesthetic dis-
course and Bentamitesocial manage-
ment of agriculturalworkforces,and
severalbooksattemptto have it both
ways.In any case, by 1837-38 when
"The Poetryof Architecture"was
published, architecturalpattern
bookson cottageswere a highly de-
fined genre with a markedlynational-
istic sentiment and Ruskin'sassertion
that they were not picturesquemust
have had a curious reception. For a
descriptionof the patternbooks, see
Michael McMordie,"Picturesque
PatternBooksand Pre-VictorianDe-
signers,"ArchitecturalHistory18
(1975): 42-59, and my "The Pictur-
esque Cottage:Genre and Tech-
nique,"SouthernReview22, no. 3
(1989): 301-14.
George Landowin The Aestheticand
CriticalTheoriesof JohnRuskin
(Princeton:PrincetonUniversity
Press, 1971), 223n, points out that
Ruskinmay well have seen G. L.
Meason'sOn the LandscapeArchitec-
tureof the GreatPaintersof Italy
(London, 1828). The firstpattern
book to deal with "Italiancottages"is
Thomas FredrickHunt'sArchitettura
Campestre(London, 1827) and the
most assuredis Charles Parker'sVilla
Rustica(London, 1832). All these are
intended for English clients and do

not oppose English to Continental
taste on the partof the cottagersor
on the partof the aesthetesbuilding
them. It is my view that Parker,like
Charles Barryabout the same time,
is using foreign stylisticsourcesbe-
cause he wished to use irregular
planning geometries.Irregular
buildings in English vernacularare
strangelycontroversialamong the
patternbook architects,because they
were held by some to mix the binary
oppositionbetween the political and
aesthetic objects that the cottage was.
These mattersare discussedin my
Ph.D. thesis The OrnamentalCot-
tage, Landscapeand Disgust, Univer-
sity of Cambridge, 1989, and a book
of the same title in preparation.
11. The status of Scotland is inter-
esting here, and I am unsure what
to make of Ruskin'sdescription of
the impoverishment of the High-
landers mentioned later in this text.
It could be that this is special plead-
ing on Ruskin'spart - he is pre-
pared to let some admission of
faults with Britain past his national-
ism on the issues touching his an-
cestral home. Or, on the contrary,
it could be that he wrote so com-
pletely as an Englishman as to think
of Scotland as a foreign place.
12. Elizabeth Helsinger, Ruskin
and the Art of the Beholder (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity
Press, 1982), argues that Ruskin
begins with beauty (and truth) as
the only aesthetic categoryand has
picturesqueness and the sublime
merely as issues of points of view.
She thinks that he then changes
his mind and comes to admit the
sublime as a separatecategory
through the work on the "noble
picturesque"and the grotesque.
13. In the "Lampof Memory,"the
discussion of the lower picturesque
attention to detail is very close to
those of Price and Reynolds, in that
the problem with the architectural
picturesque is compared with the
problem of those sculptorswho too
accuratelydepict hair. Price makes
the same complaint of Denner, a
painter who he says errsby too accu-
rate an attempt at detail. See Price,
Essayson the Picturesque,3: 317.
14. Again, this is a fundamental pic-
turesque theme recalling Repton's
insistence on the necessity of orna-
mental dwellings to anchor the look
in the scenic view. See, for instance,
his discussion of the role of a deco-
rativewoodsman'scottage in his de-
sign for Blaise Castle Estate in The
LandscapeGardening,264-67.
15. On this distinction, see John
Barrell,The Dark Side of the Land-
scape: The Rural Poor in English
Painting, 1730-1840 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980).
16. W. J. T. Mitchell describes "the
still moment of ekphrastichope," in
which the sequential and referential
structureof language is forgotten in
the will to representation.This is
succeeded, he says, by "ekphrastic
fear,"the uncanny sense of the
difference of the visual and verbal
collapsing. See "Ekphrasisand the
Other,"chap. 5 of W. J. T. Mitchell,
PictureTheory(Chicago: Chicago
UniversityPress, 1994).
17. Landow, The Aestheticand
Critical Theories,232.
18. Robert Hewison, John Ruskin:
The Argumentof the Eye (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1976), 49.
19. The scene Ruskin describes is
very like the print by Samuel Prout
published in "Notes on Prout and
Hunt" (14: facing 392) and repro-
duced here. Ruskin'sfamily had
collected Prout'swork and Ruskin
had followed it from childhood, be-
lieving Prout'simportance lay in his
bringing picturesque principles to
Macarthur
urban scenes. Ruskin writes of
Prout in the note and might have
been looking for this view.
20. See John Dixon Hunt, "Ruskin
and the Picturesque,"in Gardens
and the Picturesque:Studies in the
Historyof LandscapeArchitecture
(Cambridge, Mass.:The MIT Press,
1992), and idem, The WiderSea: A
Life of John Ruskin (London: J. M.
Dent, 1982).
21. I have argued elsewhere that
aesthetical disgust is a concept in
picturesque discourse that is crucial
to its political interpolation. See
"The Butcher's Shop: Disgust in
Picturesque Aesthetics and Archi-
tecture,"Assemblage30 (April
1996): 32-43.
22. "So it is with most of the pieces
which the painterscall still-life:in
these a cottage,a dung hill, the
meanestand most ordinaryutensils of
the kitchen, are capableof giving us
pleasure"(EdmundBurke,A Philo-
sophicalEnquiryinto the Originof
Our Ideasof the Sublimeand Beauti-
ful, pt. 1, sec. 16; as quoted in Price,
Essayson the Picturesque,3: 324).
23. This is my gloss of a discussion
of picturesque physiognomy in
Price, Essays on the Picturesque,1:
189-203.
24. It seems likely that Ruskin had
read Price given his upbringing in
the picturesque and the fame of
Price's text. George Landow points
out that there is evidence that he
at least intended to do so. In the
manuscript notes, Ruskin lists Price
under "Worksto be seen" (8: 235).
See Landow, The Aesthetic and
Critical Theories,221-22.
25. Although the notes are certainly
equivocal. Elizabeth Helsinger
thinks that they are Ruskin'sat-
tempt to write on horroras part of
his reintroduction of the sublime as
141
a central aesthetic category in vol-
umes one and five of Modem Paint-
ers. See Helsinger, Ruskinand the
Art of the Beholder, 129.
26. My italics. Also "the person
originally capable of delight in ter-
ror remains for ever distinct from
the commonplace person originally
incapable of it."
27. It is possible that this passage
borrowsits motif from Thomas
Carlyle'sPast and Present(London:
J. M. Dent, 1960) where, in the in-
troduction, Carlyle looks into a pic-
turesque view of a workhouseand
indigent men to see them revealed
to him as skeletons. This is noted by
Helsinger, Ruskinand the Artof the
Beholder, 154. Thanks KarenBurns.
28. See Heinrich Wolfflin, Prin-
ciples of Art History:The Problemof
the Developmentof Style in Later
Art (New York:Dover, 1950),
Nikolaus Pevsner, Studies in Art,
Architectureand Design (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1968), Susan
Sontag, On Photography(New
York:Delta, 1973), Robert
Smithson, The Writingsof Robert
Smithson, ed. Nancy Holt (New
York:New YorkUniversityPress,
1979), and Yve-AlainBois, "A
Picturesque Stroll around Clara-
Clara," in October:The First De-
cade (Cambridge, Mass.:The MIT
Press, 1987), 342-72.
Figure Credits
1-4. The Worksof John Ruskin,
ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander
Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London:
George Allen, 1903-12).