Books

Fifth edition, revised by the author, handsomely bound. A complete set of Ruskin's defence of modern painters, which the author began after reading a newspaper review attacking Turner's contributions to 1842 year's Royal Academy exhibition. Ruskin's "earliest major work was Modern Painters, of which the first volume, containing the celebrated defence of Turner, appeared anonymously in 1843... Modern Painters was to occupy Ruskin for another seventeen years, spanning the whole period of his writing on art... The second volume, a survey of Italian art which demands special notice as one of the direct causes of the foundation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, appeared in 1846... In 1851 Ruskin put his name to Modern Painters. The fourth volume (1856) was devoted to a favourite Ruskinian subject, mountain scenery and its formation. Both here and in the last volume the illustrations are beautifully engraved - Ruskin took an infinity of pains with the quality of the workmanship - often after his own exquisite drawings, which he thought of as merely diagrams but which are now valued as some of the most original watercolours ever executed. The fifth volume appeared in 1860, eliciting from Dante Gabriel Rossetti the gibe that its subjects would be Old Masters before Ruskin had finished. But Ruskin had finished" (PMM). Six vols, large octavo (252 x 172 mm). Finely bound for H. Sotheran in contemporary dark blue morocco, spines lettered and profusely decorated in gilt, raised bands, twin rule to sides gilt, inner dentelles gilt, burgundy endpapers, gilt edges. Steel-engraved frontispieces to vols 3, 4, and 5, 84 steel-engraved plates, including 1 with hand colouring, many by the author, 8 separate plates of wood engravings, others in the text. Bookplate to front pastedowns, an excellent set. Printing and the Mind of Man 315

This five-volume work argued that art should focus on depicting nature with truth and sincerity.