I - A REPLY TO Blackwood's CRITICISM OF TURNER (1836)

Summary

1. Those who have long bowed themselves in reverence and admiration to the imperial passing-on of the maiden meditation of their much loved Maga,—who have fed upon her thoughts of beauty, and listened to her words of wisdom,— must indeed be grieved to meet with the most exquisite combination of ignorance and bad taste which she has just presented to them, in the shape of a criticism on the works of J. M. W. Turner, R.A.

It usually happens, that people most admire what they least understand. In the case of this artist the rule is reversed; he is admired, because understood, only by a few.

2. What sort of a critic he may be, to whom Maga has presented the magic ring of her authority, appears to me very difficult to determine. He must have a mind fastidiously high bred, indeed, who complains of vulgarity in Murillo. He appears never to have seen any of this artist's more elevated pieces. It is true that his virgins are never such Goddess-mothers as those of Correggio or Raphael, but they are never vulgar: they are mortal, but into their mortal features is cast such a light of holy loveliness, such a beauty of sweet soul, such an unfathomable love, as renders them occasionally no unworthy rivals of the imaginations of the higher masters.