HKB
by Turner," &c., 1878. Next year a number of his studies were shown in Boston, U.S.A., under the management of Professor Charles Eliot Norton, whose appreciative paragraph we have quoted.
It seemed as though his working life had come to an end at the time, with that crisis of illness. A visit to Amiens in 1880, with Mr. Arthur Severn and Mr. Brabazon, gave him the subject for writing the "Bible of Amiens," but his sketches were less vigorous and full. But in 1882 he was ordered away again for rest; and, as forty years before, he took his rest--the best rest for a tired brain--in sketching. He gradually warmed to work; at Avallon, in Central France, he began with a few sketches of detail, but in Italy the ancient love of architecture took hold of him, and he drew the Porch at Lucca assiduously. His two chief drawings of this subject were shown in the next exhibition of the R.W.S., and one of them at the R.A. in 1901. He exhibited on many occasions at the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, having been elected an honorary member in 1873. He said at the time to a visitor--"Nothing ever pleased me more. I have always been abusing the artists, and now they have complimented me. They always said I couldn't draw, and it's very nice to think they give me credit for knowing something about art."
Later than this there is little to chronicle. Ill-health came down upon him, and his last drawings were done to amuse his friend of "Hortus Inclusus" in 1886, though he made a few pencil notes of Langdale Pikes and Calder Abbey in 1889.
After his death an exhibition of his sketches, with some personal relics and added examples of the art about which he had written, was held at Coniston in the summer of 1900. It attracted over 10,000 visitors to the village, and to many was a revelation of Ruskin in a new character, and of a kind of art which charmed in spite of all they had been accustomed to look for in pictures.
In January and February 1901, a similar exhibition was held at the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, London. Many of the drawings then shown, with a large series of engravings after his work, are on view in the Ruskin Museum at the Institute, Coniston; where, in 1903, the Fourth Annual Exhibition contained a further instalment of Ruskin sketches not previously shown in public, giving examples of his great variety in subject and treatment, ranging from an early outline of Dover (1831), to sketches at Avallon and Citeaux (1882; see above, pages 48-51); from geological studies of Alps to notes of lions and tigers at the Zoo, and the head of the Venus de' Medici, elaborately shaded; and from the carefully finished and daintily detailed pen and tint Valley of Lauterbrunnen, in which the lens is needed to make out tiny chalets, smaller than a letter of this type, to large splashes of water-colour, one of which (on a sheet 42 by 23 inches in size) is identical in subject with the view by Laurence Hilliard given at page 33 of this volume.
One pair of sketches among these has a curious biographical interest. When Turner's Sun of Venice Going out to Sea was exhibited at the Academy (1843), Ruskin was greatly impressed with its wonderful colour and truth, but especially with the reflections and eddies of the calm water, on which he wrote a well-known page in "Modern Painters" (vol. i. p. 357). Accustomed to write from notes with pen and pencil, he forgot, or ignored, the rule forbidding visitors at the Exhibition to copy the pictures. These are the sketches he made, and for making them was expelled from the Exhibition.
IX
RUSKIN'S HAND
IX
RUSKIN'S HAND