Ruskin wrote to Millais and called Ophelia and The Huguenot 'exquisite', but he also gave
criticism.
He said the pictures were spoilt by the shadows, which "are all chilled and want varnishing or something."
He also disapproved of the way Millais painted the flesh of Ophelia calling it wrought out of crude purples and dusky
yellows perhaps due to trying to gain too much transparency.
He suggested that the close study of minor detail was not compatible with flesh painting.
He was not keen on the choice of Surrey for the landscape either;
"When you do paint nature why the mischief should you not paint pure nature and not that rascally wirefenced
garden-rolled-nursery-maid's paradise?"
Admiral Sir William James, ed., The Order of Release: The Story of John Ruskin, Effie Gray and John Everett
Millais Told for the First Time in Their Unpublished Letters, 1948, p. 176
(letter from John James Ruskin to Millais, 4 May 1852, quoted in The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape,
Allen Staley, 2nd ed. New Haven, London and Yale University Press 2001, p.33. |
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Portrait of John Ruskin, Head and Shoulders, Full Face, 1875,
Charles Murray Fairfax
© Tate 2003 |
