Turner, Ruskin, Norton, Winthrop PDF

Harvard University Art Museums
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Harvard Art Museum
Turner, Ruskin, Norton, Winthrop

Author(s): Marjorie B. Cohn
Source: Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 1, Turner, Ruskin, Norton,
Winthrop (Autumn, 1993), pp. 1-3+5+7-57+59-77
Published by: President and Fellows of Harvard College on behalf of the Harvard Art Museum
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Turnere* Ruskin Norton Winthrop
Marjorie B. Cohn
Harvard University Art Museums
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin
Fall 1993
Volume II, Number 1 (ISSN 1065-6448)
Published three times a year by the Harvard University
Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA,
02138. Copyright ? 1993 by the President and Fellows
of Harvard College. Permission to reproduce any
portion of this publication must be obtained from the
Harvard University Art Museums.
The Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin is
provided as a benefit to members at the level of
Patron, and is available by subscription at the
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To order, please contact:
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485 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138. (617) 495-8286
This issue of the Bulletin is published in association
with the exhibition Turner . Ruskin . Norton
Winthrop, 27 November 1993-20 February 1994, Fogg
Art Museum. Publication has been supported by a
generous grant from the Boston Ruskin Club Prize
fund of Harvard College.
Cover:
Grenville Winthrop Feeding His Pheasants at the Rock
Pool, Groton Place (Fogg Art Museum Archives).
For a friend and gardener, Lois Orswell.
Contents
6 Director's Foreword
7 Acknowledgments
9 Turner- Ruskin Norton *Winthrop
59 Notes
67 Selected Bibliography
7 1 Checklist of the Exhibition
Acknowledgments
I have been lucky to benefit from the reminis- prints in the Winthrop bequest; Porter
7
cences of several persons whose memories of Mansfield, who made research on Julius
Grenville Winthrop and the Fogg of fifty years Gayler her special mission; Miriam Stewart,
ago remain fresh-Agnes Mongan, John who answered every drawing inquiry; and the
Coolidge, and Elaine Graffy-and from the staff of the Registrar's Department, who
advice of Phoebe P. Peebles, whose care of the combed their early records on my behalf.
records of Winthrop's collection of Western
paintings and sculpture has led to an empa- My manuscript has greatly benefited from
thetic understanding of the man. Many other close reading by James Cuno and Evelyn
librarians and archivists have also been of Rosenthal. The latter also guided its metamor-
great help, notably Abby Smith of the Harvard phosis into this elegant published form. Publi-
University Art Museums, Maureen Melton of cation has been supported by a generous grant
the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Joyce Tyler from the Boston Ruskin Club Prize fund of
of the Archives of American Art, and Dennis Harvard College.
Lessier of the Lenox Library Association, as
well as staff members of the Fine Arts, Frances The exhibition was forwarded by the atten-
Loeb, and Houghton libraries and the archives tions of Anne Driesse of the Center for Con-
of Harvard University. I should like to thank servation and Technical Studies and Danielle
Miroslava Benes, Helena Cronin, Bruce Hanrahan of the Art Museums' Exhibitions
Kuklick, and especially James Turner, who Department and their associates. Although it
shared their knowledge in areas entirely be- was drawn largely from the resources of the
yond my competence. Other welcome re- Fogg, loans were essential to present a full
search assistance was given by Jay Fisher, John picture. I am glad to acknowledge the gener-
Gage, Eleanor Garvey, Patrick Noon, Michael ous cooperation of Malcolm H. Wiener of
Leja, and Eric Rosenberg. New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
and the College, Fine Arts, Frances Loeb, and
Work on this publication and its associated Houghton libraries of Harvard University.
exhibition was greatly aided at the Fogg by -Marjorie B. Cohn
Branden W. Joseph, who catalogued all of the CarlA. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints
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Grenville Winthrop Feeding His Pheasants in the Pine Grove, Groton Place (Fogg Art Museum Archives).
Turner * Norton Ruskin * Winthrop
In 1832, on his thirteenth birthday, John cult, Winthrop was in his turn ready to part
9
Ruskin (1819-i9oo) was given a copy of with a copy of Rogers's Italy. He offered it to
Rogers's Italy. Ruskin later always maintained Harvard through the agency of Paul J. Sachs,
that it was this book, with engravings after the art history professor and associate director of
designs of Joseph Mallord William Turner the University's Fogg Art Museum.5 The occa-
(1775-1841), that "changed the entire direc- sion was a visit by Sachs to Winthrop's coun-
tion" of his "life energies."' Turner's composi- try home, where he kept his Turners (and not
tions initiated Ruskin into the sensibility, the rest of his art collection) and where he
perceptions, and sentiments of artistic man- devoted himself to landscape architecture.
hood; he would ever find the vignettes "en- Correspondence between Winthrop and Sachs
tirely exquisite; poetical in the highest and indicates that the visit was devoted to the
purest sense; exemplary and delightful beyond beauty of Winthrop's estate.
all praise."2 Turner had found his champion,
who through writing, collecting, and teaching The hundred years and more spanned by these
would add immeasurably to his larger fame three gifts, which seem in retrospect to have
and also generate a Turner print cult in En- been freighted with portentous symbolism,
gland and, as it happened, America. and the fifty years subsequent to Winthrop's
death in 1943, when his Turners and all of his
Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908) met Ruskin other art treasures were bequeathed to the
in i85o.3 By November of 1856, after acquain- Fogg, have been filled with many other inci-
tance had kindled into intense friendship and dents of Turnerian and Ruskinian celebrity
when Norton was about to go to Italy, Ruskin and scholarship, but this catalogue will touch
wrote to him urgently, "... please let me know on these more generally only as they clarify the
quickly if you have already Roger's [sic] Italy? train of associations from Turner through
... I will send one in this evening ... if you Ruskin and Norton to Winthrop. The analysis
haven't got it-keep it, for its' [sic] a proof of those associations will, it is hoped, contrib-
copy...."4 With Ruskin's enthusiastic advice, ute to a wider knowledge not only of our four
Norton had just purchased a Turner water- protagonists but also of the history of art
color vignette; the proffered Italy seems to appreciation in America.
have been the seal on an indenture to Turner's
cause, which Norton would willingly serve in By dint of long usage in education for the
the United States for another half century. unsophisticated, art appreciation as a phrase
and a pursuit has been trivialized into banal-
Norton became the first professor of fine arts ity. For Ruskin, Norton, and Winthrop, how-
at Harvard, and one of his students was ever, art and, more largely, beauty were the
Grenville Lindall Winthrop (1864-1943), class key to the soul, to civilization, and to a hu-
of i886. With the friendship and collaboration mane life. And for them and their contempo-
of classmate Francis Bullard, who was raries art and beauty had through Turner a
Norton's nephew and acolyte in art and a special resonance to a yet larger world. It is
great Turner print connoisseur in his own not incidental that Turner was a landscape
right, Winthrop went on to collect art, begin- painter, nor irrelevant that during Winthrop's
ning with Turner prints. By 1936, a century years at Harvard Norton was working closely
after Ruskin's first glimpse of Turner and a with Frederick Law Olmsted, the first "land-
half-century after his own initiation into the scape architect" ever to be explicitly so de-
10 scribed. Norton would later declare that collections of the Boston museum-through
Olmsted, "Of all American artists, ... stands the Bullard bequest-and of the Fogg Art
first in the production of great works which Museum-through the Winthrop and Norton
answer the needs and give expression to the bequests9 and purchases under Norton's guid-
life of our immense and miscellaneous democ- ance-endow the Boston area with the world's
racy."6 Nor is it irrelevant that the contempo- greatest concentration of this material. More
rary Harvard professor of geology Nathaniel interesting is why Turner prints came to have
Southgate Shaler would decide that in the such influence. Was appreciation of their
evolution of altruism (a perplexing human particular quality as a repertory of composed
attribute if nature was governed by the law of landscapes a precedent, even a precondition,
survival of the fittest), "The ... newest of these for such a widespread cultural phenomenon,
modes of altruism is the love of nature, which or was their reputation a consequence? The
has several obscure modes or subordinate strands of influence and effect are so entwined
divisions, such as the love of the beautiful."7 and tender that it may not, in fact, be possible
to untangle them. Yet, unmistakably, an as-
These were not merely the opinions of local pect of the larger topography of American
luminaries who happened to be Grenville culture of the late nineteenth century was
Winthrop's favorite instructors at Harvard. At nourished, shaped, and shadowed by Turner
the end of the nineteenth century in America, -as read by Ruskin and reported by Norton.
Norton and, to a lesser degree, Shaler were
outstanding spokesmen among the nation's
cultural elite, whose recognized authority
ranged far beyond their scholarly specialties.
The particular quotations above have been Turner s illustrations to Rogers's Italy (nos.
cited to begin to define a nexus of moral and 24, 25),1O published in 1830, were not prints of
aesthetic value that was shared by American his own making. They were reproductions
humanists, scientists, and the broader culture engraved by professional craftsmen working
at the end of the nineteenth century. The after watercolors supplied by Turner on con-
value was for the composed landscape, as it tract to Samuel Rogers, the poet-author who
was conceived by the evolutionist, who stud- was also his own publisher. In one format or
ied nature as the product of physical and bio- another, this had been a typical method for an
logical processes, or by the historian, who was English artist's compositions to come before
convinced that the visual arts "afford evi- the public for many generations. Prior to the
dence, often in a more striking and direct disruption of British commerce caused by the
manner than literature itself, of the moral

French wars between 1793 and 1815, composi-
temper and intellectual culture of the various tions of the most important painters, living
races by whom they have been practiced....8

and dead, English or otherwise, were repro-
duced in single sheet engravings or, if in series,
That such value, pervasive in the United States within larger formats, suitable to be collected
at that moment, was located in landscape was in portfolios or framed for hanging. In the
the result of many concurrent influences. The second half of the eighteenth century, the
influence of Turner's landscape prints in par- British print production industry was the
ticular may have had its greatest effect locally, world's leading manufacturer of such goods,
as is manifest to this day: the Turner print with their products sold in Paris and Boston as
TURNER * RUSKIN - NORTON * WINTHROP
well as London. No obloquy was attached to 11

plates and their need for repeated reworking
the lack of the designer's touch upon the to maintain their effect required his continued
plates; his assigned role in this system was that involvement, much as Turner would later
of the creative genius whose design was so repeatedly refresh the mezzotint plates of his
potent that it could be translated, multiplied, Liber Studiorum (no. 9).
and distributed without loss of value. In this
system the engraver was accorded significant At the same moment that Sandby was publish-
status as a craftsman, and the publisher inter- ing his views of Wales, London's most ambi-
posed himself as a man of taste and enterprise tious print entrepreneur, John Boydell, was
in his choice of images for reproduction. The publishing Claude's Liber Veritatis, engraved
artist received no less fame because it was in etching and mezzotint by Richard Earlom
achieved through intermediary means."I (nos. 39, 40, fig. 2). The original Liber Veritatis
was a collection of drawings made over a
It is true that some artists did make and pub- period of many years by Claude Gellee, a seven-
lish their own prints in eighteenth-century teenth-century native of Lorrain resident in
Britain. The case of Paul Sandby and the series Rome, to record his painted compositions. In
of Welsh views (no. 41, fig. 1), which he issued late-eighteenth-century Britain his landscapes
in 1775-1777, is particularly instructive in the were avidly collected, and his Liber Veritatis
context of Turner's later print publications. was in the possession of the Duke of Devon-
Sandby had in 1761 been the first British artist shire. To quote a later biographer of Turner,
publicly to exhibit "An Historical Landskip." "It is scarcely too much to say that in those
For his subject he had selected an Ossianic days Claude stood between nature and the
theme; Ossian was a legendary Welsh bard.'2 artist, and that he was as much the standard of
Thus Sandby can hardly be labeled a mere landscape art as Pheidias of sculpture."'14
print technician. His choice of views of Wales
for dissemination through prints reflected not In the late eighteenth century Turner was
only his practical experience as a military already in demand as a designer of engravings
surveyor and drawing instructor but also his of British sites and structures (no. 20), but his
cultured assessment of a developing romantic artistic goals were far grander than local to-
sensibility for Britain's native pagan past as a pography. By i8oo he had exhibited his first
counterweight to classical Italy. historical, as opposed to landscape, subject at
the Royal Academy (no. 7), and he successfully
Sandby's great innovation in his Welsh views campaigned to become an associate and then a
was his pioneering use of aquatint,"3 undoubt- full member of the Academy at the minimum
edly employed so that the prints, which, down ages for admission to this institution, which
to their decorative borders, were imitations of ranked history painting highest among its
wash drawings, would provide models and categories of art. As might be expected, Turner
surrogate views for the amateur draftsmen revered the model set by Claude, who had
(and women), the armchair travelers who painted historical subjects in landscape set-
were his specific market. That he chose to tings. These are Turner's words in a lecture at
publish the prints himself suggests an interest the Academy in i8ii (delivered, it should be
in the proceeds of print sales rather than an noted, before he had traveled to Italy):
anachronistic aesthetic concern for printing
niceties, although the fragility of the aquatint Pure as Italian air, calm, beautiful and serene
12 I
..
Fig. I. Paul
Sandby, The Iron
Forge between
Dolgelli and
Barmouth in
Marioneth Shire,
1776 (no. 4 1).
Ea_om Roman
Fig._ 2. Richard. f
Lorrain (no. 4. T
TURNER* RUSKIN NORTON WINTHROP
13
Fig. 3. Joseph
Mallord William
Turner and
Charles Turner,
Pembury Mill,
1808 (no. 6).
.. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~i. 4 . gtVJoseph
; $ Q~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Mlod WLliam t|
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Chrle..s Turner,.-
- ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~~~~~~h Woma withw s
-M= l C~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~hares Taburine,
*_-<:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -80 ( uno. 4).
14
springs forward the works and with them the name as well, which set oils above watercolors
of Claude Lorrain. The golden orient or the amber- (which were suitably imitated by aquatint).
coloured ether, the midday ethereal vault and Presumably Boydell and Earlom had selected
fleecy skies, resplendent valleys, campagnas rich mezzotint for their reproductions after Claude
with all the cheerful blush of fertilization, trees drawings from the same considerations of
possessing every hue and tone of summer's evident prestige (to say nothing of the pragmatic
heat, rich, harmonious, true and clear ...15 reason that at the time Sandby was the only
accomplished aquatinter in Britain).
And as also might be expected of such an
ambitious artist, Turner saw Claude as his The various plates of the Liber Studiorum
main rival for the esteem of critics, collectors, show that the scope of Turner's rivalry was
and posterity. Out of such a complex blend of even grander than just with Claude and
veneration and competition came the Liber Sandby. Reflections glint off Salvator Rosa,
Studiorum, a set of landscape compositions Jacob van Ruisdael, Albert Cuyp, and Nicolas
published by Turner beginning in 1807. He Poussin among the ancients, and Joseph
proposed to publish one hundred prints in Wright of Darby, George Morland, and
twenty sets of five; publication ceased after

Thomas Girtin among the moderns. Yet it was
seventy-one had appeared, although at Claude above all whom Turner's contempo-
Turner's death another twelve plates were raries understood as the foundation of his
found in various stages of completion. The effort, and, more important to this essay, it
compositions were etched by Turner; gener- was Claude whom Ruskin denigrated in his
ally he then turned the plates over to profes- ceaseless promotion of Turner. In many in-
sional mezzotinters for finishing, although he

stances, of course, it was the paintings of
did complete a few of the images himself and

Claude and Turner that he set in contrast, yet
in any case exercised the closest supervision

the Liber Studiorum plates were cited more
over his engravers.

often than not, as a whole, one by one, or even
detail by detail.
Turner's original intention was to combine
etching with aquatint. It has been speculated

The simplest reason for Ruskin's focus on the
that the artist, always a sharp trader, broke

Liber must have been the same one that he
with the aquatint specialist he had selected in

attributed to Turner himself for its creation:
an argument over fees and also that he turned

the prints were more widely accessible than
to mezzotint because of its lower cost.'6 It

the paintings.
seems more likely, however, that although he
was certainly familiar with the works of

In order to provoke comparison between Claude
Sandby and his successors, as many of his

and himself, Turner published a series of engravings
Liber plates betray, all along he aimed to sur-

called the Liber Studiorum, executed in exactly the
pass the Claude/Earlom production on its own

same manner as these drawings of Claude.... You
terms, which would be perfectly understood

see the notable publicity of this challenge. Had he
by British connoisseurs, and also to employ

confined himself to pictures in his trial of skill with
the printmaking technique-mezzotint-

Claude, it would only have been in the gallery or
which traditionally in Britain was used to

the palace that the comparison could have been
reproduce oils on canvas (figs. 3 and 4). For

instituted; but now it is in the power of all who are
there was an academic hierarchy of technique

interested in the matter to make it at their ease."7
TURNER * RUSKIN * NORTON * WINTHROP
This notion of accessibility was crucial to too fine in scale to be effectively conveyed by
15
Ruskin, who hoped to expand beyond upper- the photomechanical techniques then (or
class painting collectors (or their scions who now) in use.
attended Oxford) and the middle-class audi-
ence for his books and lectures to the working These practical aspects were not, however, the
man, for whom he also wrote, lectured, and real cause of the focus upon reproductions of
founded collections. It also, of course, was the Liber Studiorum. By the early 1870s, Ruskin
essential to Norton's endeavor to extend and Norton were embarked upon teaching
Ruskin's mission across the Atlantic, where oil careers at Oxford and Harvard universities,
paintings by neither Claude nor Turner could each becoming in his nation's oldest and most
ever, it seemed, become common artistic prestigious educational institution the first
currency. Finding even the supply of Turner professor of art history. Coincidentally, in 1873
prints insufficient for their potential audi- the long legal struggle over Turner's will con-
ences, both Ruskin and Norton embarked cluded with the sale of prints found in his
upon campaigns of reproduction, sometimes house after his death. The scene there in 1852
resorting to the traditional option of hiring had been described to Ruskin in a letter from
reproductive draftsmen and engravers and his father: "The drawing-room has ... ?25,000
other times using photomechanical techniques worth of proofs, and sketches, and drawings,
unavailable to Turner himself. and prints. It is amusing to hear dealers saying
there can be no Liber Studiorum-when I saw
As early as the 1850s, Ruskin, in his own neatly packed and well labeled as many
words, bundles of Liber Studiorum as would fill your
entire bookcase...."' In fact, ?30,000 was
placed in the hands of Mr. Ward (Working Men's realized at auction in 1873.20 Presumably the
College) some photographs from the etchings depression in Britain at the time prevented the
made by Turner for the Liber; the original etchings intervening twenty-one years of Ruskin's
being now unobtainable, except by fortunate praise for the Liber from raising the total
accident.... the student will find these proofs the much higher.
best lessons in pen-drawing accessible to him.'8
At the time that these prints-even including
Always it was the Liber Studiorum which was etchings, though these were very rare com-
the focus of their promotions, rather than any pared to published states-became available,
other Turner prints. While Ruskin cited in his the Etching Revival, a movement that elevated
writings many of the engravings for which the value of the artist's touch in the produc-
Turner had provided designs, these were not tion of prints, was fully underway in Britain
chosen for reproduction. The hand copyists and the United States. It destroyed that ethos
that he hired, notably William Ward (no. 30), of the original reproductive print in which
reproduced Turner's drawings themselves, Turner himself had participated, and it also
gaining access through Ruskin to the originals devalued engraving as opposed to etching, a
in the Turner bequest. Reproductive engrav-

technique that was accessible to the draftsman
ings after these designs were not only still

who had not undergone a lengthy apprentice-
widely available, as they were largely engrav- ship in professional printmaking. Retrospec-
ings on steel that had been published in huge tive praise of an artist such as Turner, who was
editions without loss of quality; they were also

both an original etcher and the designer of
i6 prints by others, conformed to the criterion of supervision of Ruskin, to make and collect
the moment by stressing the virtues of his visual teaching aids (no. 56).
original prints, even while making sure they
were widely available in reproduction. Thus When a few years later a reproductive set of
for his readers who would know the Liber only the Liber in its mezzotinted state was at-
through his books, Ruskin evoked the tactile tempted, the British editor resolved the prob-
quality of the etched lines of the originals lem of the disappearance of Turner's etched
overlaid by mezzotint, in his description of lines in the shadows by reworking by hand the
Turner's part in the print as controlling the photogravure plates (themselves supposedly
part executed by others: "the deep-driven and such a great technical improvement over
deep-bitten ravines of metal by which Turner hand-reproductive methods):
closed, in embossed limits, the shadows of the
Liber Studiorum."2" Note how Ruskin reversed In the original these lines are the strength, the life,
the actual sequence of work, as if to give the story of the whole ... without them the plate is
Turner the last word. a body without bones, and this use of the etching is
most valuable at those very places where the
Then in the 1870s, in a sequence of photo- mezzotint is darkest, that is, where the photograph
mechanical reproductions of the Liber in necessarily fails.... "Is it not possible, then," I said,
which the production techniques did not "since they are there, to follow them carefully with
produce a raised outline to give an appropri- a needle, and get them clear in the photograph?"23
ate clue to the viewer about where to look for
the artist's touch, only the etched states of the The same procedure was followed in 1890,
plates were published, that is, the states bear- when a full set of photomechanical reproduc-
ing only Turner's hand and not that of any tions of the etchings was accompanied by
reproductive engraver. Here the criterion of three gravures of mezzotinted plates; again,
the Etching Revival corresponded perfectly the latter were felt insufficient without hand
with Ruskin's promotion of Turner's etchings reworking.24
as models.
Thus over a period of a century, the cumula-
Ruskin sponsored a set of "autotype" repro-

tive conceptions and effects of prints by
ductions of the Liber in its etched state in

Sandby, Earlom (after Claude), and Turner
England in 1871. Norton, who reproduced

(with professional mezzotinters), and prints
three etchings in an otherwise unillustrated

after Turner (by hand and by camera) had
catalogue of the Liber issued in 1874, found the

rung every change on original and copy, re-
English reproductive technique much inferior

production and model. For decades Ruskin
to one he was using to publish old master

had erected a monstrous structure of praise
prints in Harvard's collection. In 1878 he pub-

and blame based upon the triumph of Turner
lished thirty-three of the etchings in "helio-

over his predecessors, largely in a visual
type," in a set (no. 33) which Ruskin found

vacuum in that the originals were unavailable,
"'wonderful' and quite all that a student needs

notably in America where the audience for his
as showing the essential qualities of the origi-

books, pirated in cheap unillustrated editions,
nals,"22 to quote Charles Herbert Moore, the

was enormous. When in the 1870s and 188os
Harvard drawing instructor whom Norton

examples and reproductions of the Liber
had sent abroad to work under the direct

Studiorum became relatively easy of access in
the United States-at least in Boston and at during the early i86os, disagreeing with the 17
Harvard-they must have seemed a revelation Northern position in the Civil War, and dur-
to minds already convinced of the artist's ing their separation Norton seems to have
been particularly supportive of the American

superhuman genius and the value of the ori-
ginal work of art. Pre-Raphaelites. Several visited and even lived
for a time in Ashfield, the isolated hamlet
where Norton had bought a summer home
and where, till the end of his life in the early
twentieth century, he "rejoiced in having no
Charles Herbert Moore (1840-1930) was an car, no telephone, and no electricity....27
essential link in the transmission of Ruskin's After the war communications between
ideas to the United States, and not only Norton and Ruskin resumed, but the hiatus
through his association with Norton at proved decisive in that Ruskin's own attitude
Harvard. Moore was one of the small group of toward Pre-Raphaelite dogma and practice of
American artists who had united in the mid- the literal rendition of the detail rather than
i850s in emulation of the English Pre- the design of nature had changed.
Raphaelites. The American Pre-Raphaelite
movement, because its tenets were mediated Ruskin's earlier attitude was condensed by
through Ruskin's support of the English Moore into a letter he wrote to Norton in
movement (despite its apparent aesthetic 1866:
contradictions with Turner's achievement)
rather than direct exposure to English paint- Plain faithful recording is infinitely delightful to me
ings, took on a peculiarly Ruskinian cast that & I think it possible that I may never do anything
was also sympathetic to already established else.... I am fully persuaded of the truth of what
trends in American landscape painting, nota- Mr. Ruskin says ... namely that "whatever great-
bly a heightened, detailed realism.25 ness any among us may be capable of, will, at least,
be best attained by beginning in all quietness &
The American Pre-Raphaelites made quick hopefulness... to represent the things around us ...
contact with Norton, in his role as Ruskin's & knowing assuredly that the determination of the
principal friend and conduit for his ideas in degree in which watchfulness is to be exalted into
the United States, and specifically because of invention, rests with a higher will than our own."28
Norton's support of a major exhibition of
English Pre-Raphaelite drawings that toured A comparable definition of the goal of the
in the States in 1857. The exhibition included American Pre-Raphaelite landscape painters
landscape studies in the Pre-Raphaelite mode had already been given by William J. Stillman,
by Ruskin, and Norton acquired the most fully editor of The Crayon, the nation's first art
realized among them, the opulently colored journal, which was saturated with Ruskinian
watercolor Fragment of the Alps,26 which in its

ideology. Stillman's word choice indicated
concept and facture is a compendium of the how far his idea of the study of landscape
technical advice of Ruskin's Elements of Draw- diverged from Turner's and Ruskin's concep-
ing, the manual of choice for the American tion of the Liber Studiorum:
Pre-Raphaelites.
The true method of study is to take small portions
Ruskin broke off correspondence with Norton of scenes, and there to explore perfectly ... every
that he could or would impart this virtually

i8 object presented, and to define them with the
sacred capacity for composition to them:

carefulness of a topographer. We must learn to see
as well as draw.... To make a single study of a
portion of a landscape in this way, is more worth But it is also appointed that power of composition
in the fine arts should be an exclusive attribute of

than a summer's sketching.29
great intellect. All men can more or less copy what
This was exactly the system that Moore evoked they see.... But the gift of composition is given at
all to no more than one man in a thousand; in its

when he endorsed "plain faithful recording"
"in all quietness & hopefulness" "to represent highest range, it does not occur above three or
four times in a century.... It follows from these

the things around us." He referred back to
Ruskin's advice in Elements of Drawing for the general truths, that it is impossible to give rules
which will enable you to compose.3'

beginner to be content with perfecting his
capacity to reproduce nature's forms exactly
and minutely. Only a few would be sufficiently Moore, modestly and correctly, did not count
gifted, by "a higher will" and not through himself among the three or four of his century
study, to proceed to the next stage of practice, capable of imaginative composition. That role
in which the imaginative faculty would orga- he, and Ruskin, allotted to Turner. In Elements
nize the representation of nature into art. of Drawing Ruskin cited many of the Liber
plates as exemplars of the rules which he re-
Elements was intended for the beginning artist, fused to articulate yet was irresistibly drawn to
more particularly for the serious amateur, describe. Moore, in his turn, in the written
whom Ruskin wanted to teach to draw so that notes of his Harvard lecture on composition
he or she would learn to see. He had no expec- declared that "Ruskin's analyses of such prin-
tation that any among his readers would be- ciples of composition, given in Modern Paint-
come a creative painter on the order of a ers and The Elements of Drawing, are among
Turner. And so Ruskin downplayed his the finest things in his writings, and are unique
in the literature of The Fine Arts."32 He then

reader's need to know about formal organiza-
tion in order to make an artistic composition. went on to cite Liber Studiorum plates as illus-
Indeed, when the subject came up in what was trations of specific principles, with Ben Arthur
supposed to be a practical manual, he slid with (no. 17, figs. 5 and 6), for instance, serving to
his usual agility onto the higher plane of po- exemplify "gradation" and "radiation."
litical and moral disquisition:
Composition means ... putting several things
together, so as to make one thing out of them; the
nature and goodness of which they all have a share Elements of Drawing was published in 1857;
in producing.... Composition, understood in this the last volume of Modern Painters, begun
pure sense, is the type, in the arts of mankind, of years earlier, appeared in i86o. In the interim
the Providential government of the world.... It Ruskin passed through a convulsion of soul
seems to be appointed, in order to remind us, in all and mind that was largely caused and entirely
we do, of the great laws of Divine government and framed by a new comprehension of Venetian
human polity....30 art. Any objective consideration we might
make of the appearance of the Pre-Raphaelite
He quickly withdrew hope from his readers landscape painting that he had advocated in
19
. . . . . .... . ~~~~ Fg.5.Joep
-: ,< + -er.:'. t-iS *4>~.. ....
...- ...E .. ..
.. ... .. .'. ..'.. .. . .....
.. ... ... ..
k ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Arthur, 1819 (no.
iz . . ....... T o a G
BenhAr,hu 18 19(
(n1 I7c).
Ser?tt~~~~~~~~~ure andr"
.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Fg 6. JosephM7i;l
*t, .,,.,,., _ Jg |-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~M llr W lla
"Mr. Halsted tells me [William Rawlinson, the

20 the 1850S and early i86os in comparison with
cataloguer of the Liber] that Turner, once coming

the works of Carpaccio, Titian, Veronese, and
to his shop in Bond Street, found fault with him for

Tintoretto that now preoccupied his vision
will demonstrate the gulf that he had irrevoca- breaking up sets of the Liber; and when he heard
that some Plates sold habitually much better than

bly leapt. So, with regard to composition, he
others, he grunted out 'A pack of geese! pack of

would declare in the final volume of Modern
Painters, "If you can get the complete series of geese! Don't they know what Liber Studiorum
Lefebre's engravings from Titian and means?"'35
Veronese, they will be quite enough to teach
you, in their dumb way, everything that is That is, the Liber was a book of, or for, study,
teachable of composition." Composition itself as even the construction of its Latin indicates,
he defined as "the help of everything in the and not a book of studies. It was an integral
picture by everything else."33 array, not merely an array of integers.
Turner and the Liber Studiorum were in no Not that Ruskin, despite his defense of the
way reduced in Ruskin's esteem by this new unity of the print series, did not frequently
vision. Rather, the desideratum of unity that succumb to his obsessive need to judge and
he now formed through his understanding of prescribe, much as after asserting the indivis-
Venetian art, which caused him to be ever ible wholeness of imaginative composition
more critical of Pre-Raphaelite landscape more generally, he would proceed to define its
(though not of Rossetti and Burne-Jones, Pre- various components. In the case of the Liber,
Raphaelite painters in the figural tradition he repeatedly specified for his readers and
who themselves were preoccupied with his- auditors the best-"This is, on the whole, the
torical art), elevated the Liber even above finest plate in the Liber Studiorum," referring
other Turners in his regard. to Afsacus and Hesperie (no. 15)36 -and the
worst, taken one by one or in ranked lists. For
In the Ruskinian Liber, composition extended Ruskin, one of the worst was always the Fifth
beyond the individual images, each in them- Plague of Egypt (no. 7); presumably the com-
selves a display of imaginative genius, to the position looked too much like the later nine-
composition of the set as such, which Turner teenth-century melodramas of John Martin or
himself had defended. In the final volume of Gustave Dore, a French artist who maintained
Modern Painters, Ruskin declared that in London an extremely successful commer-
"Turner appears never to have desired ... care cial outlet for his paintings-"not fit for the
in favour of his separate works. The only thing

dunghill," in Ruskin's opinion (figs. 7 and 8).3
he would say sometimes was, 'Keep them And Ruskin habitually would single out indi-
together.' He seemed not to mind how much vidual Liber plates as best in their representa-
they were injured, if only ... they were kept in tion of particular phenomena. Ben Arthur (no.
the series which would give the key to their

17), for example, was among the finest for storm
meaning. effects, as well as for its overall composition.38
Ruskin referred here to the totality of Turner's But when the mood was upon him to main-
oeuvre, but the editors of Ruskin's Works tain the integrity of the series, his interpreta-
appended an anecdote about the Liber in par- tion moved beyond even its unity to the
ticular which Ruskin would have seconded: indivisibility-the "help"-of great art from
It IHIIM1
Fig. 7. Joseph
Mallard William
Turner and
Liam ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Charles Turner,
h Plgue of
~-M Egypt, 1808 (no.
_. Fig _.o
~~~~~~~~~~~Mri, The _
.~~~~~~~~~~~Dlg, ..,_ 1-3_
c ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~n. 50. .:.I
permission of withdrawn, monastic virtue,39 but is

22 human history, a history which for Ruskin
only good in its connection with the rest, and in

would doom American art in the near future
that connection infinitely & inimitably good;-and

at least, as America had no history. After the
the showing how each of these designs is con-

Civil War was over and correspondence be-
nected by all manner of strange intellectual chords

tween Ruskin and Norton resumed, Ruskin's
and levers with the pathos and history of this old

new perspective was quickly imparted to his
English country of ours; and on the other side with

friend who had been in the interim so preoc-
the history of European mind from earliest

cupied with the development of the American
mythology down to modern rationalism-and ir-

Pre-Raphaelite school of landscape.
rationalism-all this showing-which is what I
A letter from Ruskin to Norton of 8 August meant to try for in my closing work [that is, the
last volume of Modern Painters]-l felt, long before

1867 rehearsed every argument, even, in his
that closing-to be impossible; and the mystery of

impassioned postscript, specifically damning
it all-the God's making of the great mind

the realist landscape artists and disclaiming
[Turner]-and the martyrdom of it-and the fall

his earlier influence upon them (no. 62). I
and miserable pain & wreck of it-and the

excerpt at length not only because of the com-
plexity of the interwoven themes but also uselessness of it all for ever, as far as human eyes
can see or thoughts travel-All these things it is of

because of the intensity of tone which per-
no use talking about....

vades even these, the more topical, less
personal portions of a very long and intimate
One more word about Turner. You see every
letter. The lingering resonance of this emo-
great man's work-(his preeminently)-is a
tional pressure must be understood when the
digestion of nature, which makes glorious HUMAN
circumstances of Winthrop's education in
FLESH of it. All my first work in Modern Painters,
Turner by Ruskin via Norton almost twenty
was to show that one must have nature to digest....
years later are perforce only suggested because
and now a great deal of artists work-done as they
of our lack of documentation.
suppose, on my principles-is merely gobbling
good food and polluting it a little and sending it out
Here is Ruskin in 1867, doubtful of the utility
at the other end of them-and asking the public to
of bringing the Turnerian message to
admire the faeces.40
America:
With a calming editorial hand, Norton quoted
But this is what I wanted to say-your American
briefly from this letter in his 1874 catalogue, to
friends, even those who know most of art-may
introduce the Liber Studiorum to America.3'
be much disappointed with the Liber Studiorum-
For the nobleness of those designs is not so much
in what is done, as in what is not done in them. Any
tyro-looking at them first-would say, Why, I can
do trees better than that-figures better-rocks
better-everything better. At his first lectures at Oxford University in
1870, Ruskin showed his audience Hedging and
"Yes: and the daguerreotype- similarly-better Ditching, a plate from the Liber Studiorum
than you".-is the answer, first-But the final (no. 12, fig. 9), to demonstrate the essentially
answer-the showing how every touch in these moral character of landscape art, which re-
plates is related to every other, and has no quired reference to the human condition and
TURNER * RUSKIN - NORTON - WINTHROP
23
/t~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~W w _ a I
_'\& _ _ Fig. 9. Joseph
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~Mallord William
Turner andJ.C.
Easling, Hedging
and Ditching,
_ . ,. rQ C - 1812 (no. 12).
history. Ruskin declared that such a composi- the presence of history as the necessary basis
tion was a positive contrast to landscape for artistic creation: history as ruins, history
painting in the United States: which was denied to a nation as new as the
United States, yet without ruins. In 1875 he
... there are crude efforts at landscape-painting, wrote to Norton, who had just published his
made continually upon the most splendid physical catalogue of the Liber with its three reproduc-
phenomena, in America, and other countries tions and was attempting to acquire originals
without any history. It is not of the slightest use. for use in teaching at Harvard,
Niagara ... won't make a landscape, but a ditch at
Iffley will, if you have humanity enough in you to I have not yet acknowledged the receipt of your
interpret the feelings of hedgers and ditchers, and catalogue and admirable illustrations of the "Liber;"
frogs.42 nothing could possibly be better. But I do not
believe that you will ever have the satisfaction of
Ruskin's swipe at Niagara Falls proceeded seeing any result of your labour in America. There
from the typical conception of the Falls as the is not a tree of Turner's which is not rooted in
extravagant paradigm of untrammeled nature. ruins;-there is no sunset of his, which does not
They had become for him and for many oth- set on the accomplished fate of the elder nations.43
ers the symbol of the United States, the nation
within the wilderness, which for Ruskin was Norton was predisposed to Ruskin's interpre-
denied the possibility of art because true art, tation (if not to the worthlessness of Turner to
while it had to represent nature in the most America), and repeated it in a letter of 188i to
factual way, arose from human history. And it an American friend who had just visited the
was in Turner, specifically, that Ruskin located natural splendors of Colorado:
24 for an indefinite succession of generations, has

... the interest of nature is not in herself, save from
the scientific point of view, but in her effect on been worse than lost. A great educational influence
man.... Nature to be really beautiful to us must be has been perverted.46
associated with the thoughts and feelings of men.
An Italian sunset is better than a Californian for this It is worth noting that he was particularly
reason.... This is the reason why Turner's pictures disgusted by Sever Hall, home to the Fine Arts
are of such worth. The heart of his landscape is the Department and its collections during
deeds or sufferings of man. If he paints mere Grenville Winthrop's student years. In lecture
nature, as he seldom does, he is only technically notes from Fine Arts 4, Norton's course on
better than our American landscapists." Florentine art, Winthrop recorded his pro-
fessor's opinion:
But Norton understood the symbolic value of
Niagara as the equivalent of history- nature's The door in Sever is small and sunk into the wall
analogue of the ruin-for the United States in while it should be large and prominent, extending
the nineteenth century. When the Falls were out from the building as if holding out its arms to
threatened by industrial development in the the students. The windows look like windows for
late 1870s, he set out to save them with an- defense just large enough to shoot from.47
other American saturated with the Ruskinian
view of art, history, and nature: Frederick Law Norton's crusade was for the beneficence of
Olmsted, in whose offices, first in New York art in the built environment. In the case of
City and then in Brookline, always hung a Olmsted, it was not the architecture of struc-
photograph of John Ruskin.5 Norton and tures but that of landscape, again for its be-
Olmsted had met in 1850 and become close neficence on those who would live within
associates in 1863 working for the Northern it-social engineering through an artful natu-
cause in the Civil War; they quickly discovered ral environment, as seen first and preemi-
their common Ruskinian bond and the affin- nently in his plan for Central Park. Neither
ity of their ambitions for the cultural welfare man was oriented toward the salvation of
of the nation, which they hoped to enhance by nature "in the raw," and the campaign they
encouraging the forms of art that they indi- mounted to save Niagara Falls from despolia-
vidually best understood and could inflect. tion was a response in the Ruskinian mode,
inspired by their mentor's chagrin at railways
In Norton's case this was through teaching and by his example in purifying a polluted
and criticism, especially of architecture. In his spring. As Norton said in a letter to Olmsted,
last years he especially regretted what he con- "... the real value of the Falls is moral not
sidered to be the bad recent architecture of material,... their beauty is not a mere show
Harvard, because he felt that the improvement for the eyes...."48 Norton and Olmsted
of taste in Harvard men would, by virtue of achieved their goal, and Niagara was protected
their eventual, inevitable national eminence, through action by the New York state legisla-
have devolved upon the entire country: ture in i886. One wonders what effect the
news of this triumph had on Grenville
A great opportunity for giving such aspect and form Winthrop, Norton's student and Harvard
to the university that its beauty should operate, graduate in that very year, who by the end of
with often unconscious but yet unquestioned

his life would create not only a great collection
power, upon the character of the Harvard students of art but also a beautiful landscape.
drawing that focused upon the adaptation of 25
natural, especially botanical, forms for indus-
trial decorative use. As such its stylizations
In 1871, the year after Ruskin's jab at Niagara's were antithetic to everything Ruskin believed
uselessness to landscape art and long before in, from the inherent worth of organic form to
Norton could have had any idea how impor- the deadly effect of machine production on
tant Niagara Falls would become to him, the architectural and domestic decoration.
Englishman wrote to the American of his
plans for a series of sequential visual aids for Elements of Drawing was written as a counter
teaching drawing: "Folio plates are in prepara- to the endless drawing manuals and models
tion.... They begin with Heraldry (what will churned out by the South Kensington sys-
you backwoodsmen say to that?), then take up tem-to no immediate avail, as Ruskin tacitly
natural history in relation to it."49 The refer- admitted in his Laws of Fesole, a later revision
ence to "backwoodsmen" was, of course, of Elements: "It will be found also that the
another swipe at the lack of historical tradi-

system of practice here proposed differs in
tions in the United States, a void that the

many points, and in some is directly adverse,
nation would, in Ruskin's opinion, inevitably

to that which had been for some years insti-
perpetuate through its choice of democracy. tuted in our public schools of art."50 He was
explicit in letters to Norton in 1871:
Natural history and its relationship to heraldry
in Ruskinian dogma was complex. Simplifying

At Oxford, having been Professor a year & a half, I
greatly, one association was his conception of

thought it time to declare open hostilities with
heraldic insignia as the most primitive visual

Kensington ... for a separate school on another
art-color and line without the sophistication

system.... I am going to furnish my new room with
(even in the archaic sense of fraudulence) of

coins-books-catalogued drawings & engrav-
modeling and with the simplest of spatial

ings-and your Greek Vases.... I'm going to give
organization. Thus defined, stylized heraldic

?5000 to found a Mastership [in drawing instruc-
design lay at the opposite end of the represen-

tion]-which will take the mechanical work off
tational spectrum from, for instance, Pre- me-yet block out Kensington.5'
Raphaelite landscape drawing as Ruskin had
encouraged it, that is, from the representation

Although Ruskin probably never learned of
of natural history.
his success, the South Kensington system
eventually capitulated at one point to
Ruskin was not developing his teaching system

Ruskinian models. The next set of reproduc-
at Oxford in a vacuum. Already established in

tions of Liber Studiorum etchings to be pro-
the university, although not under its admin-

duced after that published by Norton in 1878
istration, was a branch of the art education

was issued in 1890 (after Ruskin had lapsed
system centered at the South Kensington

into insanity) by the South Kensington
School and Museum in London. This huge

School. It was subtitled: "A drawing book
and doctrinaire bureaucracy had been orga-

suggested by the writings of Mr. Ruskin."52
nized in the early 1850s to promote the value
of artistic industrial design on the part of

The South Kensington reproductions were
manufacturers, workers, and consumers alike.

edited by Frank Short, a brilliant mezzotint
It was based upon a system of instruction in

engraver and copyist of Turner (no. 35) who
26
:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.J- ale J--8 ( g; R9A a :
Fig. 10. Joseph
Mallord William
Turner and .
Charles Turner,
Little Devil's
Bridge over the
Russ, above
Altdorf Swiss,
1809 (no. 8).
had, many years before when a student in the Kensington instructional ideology because by
South Kensington system but already a the early 1870s Boston had become the entry
Ruskinian, been inspired by the sight of a plate point and focus in the United States of the
from the Liber. In Short's words, same system. Its highly persuasive advocate
was a Brahmin richer than he and socially
I must ask you to picture ... a diligent student of even more highly placed, Charles Callahan
Mr. Ruskin's works, working away under the stifling Perkins, Harvard class of 1843 (Norton was
influence of one of the Government provincial class of 1846), who had the only competing
schools of art.... Think of his finding himself one claim to a comparable European experience of
day in that little dismal room of the National art. Perkins's book on Tuscan sculpture,
Gallery containing the Turner watercolours, and probably the first concentrated art historical
seeing there a proof of the "Devil's Bridge"-the scholarship by an American to appear in
first mezzotint he ever saw-and imagine the shock print (in 1864), was illustrated by his own
of delight that went through him.53 etchings. Norton had known Perkins all his
life. The latter's sister was "constantly at
Later Short would acquire an exceptional Shady Hill while Norton was in college,
proof of Little Devil's Bridge; still later that and ... through life she remained the closest
impression would be the finest Liber and dearest of friends," in the words of
Studiorum proof in the collection of Grenville Norton's daughter Sara, who also recorded
Winthrop (no. 8, fig. io). that the four Perkins brothers, including
Charles, "possessing unusual qualities and
Norton took more than a merely academic gifts which endeared them to their friends ...
were also familiars."54

interest in Ruskin's opposition to the South
27
After investigating art education methods in collections of teaching material, they date only
Europe, Perkins returned to Boston in 1869 from the middle of the nineteenth century.56
determined to institute the South Kensington
system in Massachusetts. In 1870 he secured Perkins became the museum's "Honorary
state and local authorization to import from Director" and began collecting in the South
England a trained arts administrator, com- Kensington mode: casts, electrotypes, prints,
plete with a traveling museum of drawings and examples of the historical decorative arts.
and copies, casts and models, imported from A coup was the agreement by Harvard to loan
South Kensington.55 Within a few years this to the museum the Gray Collection of Engrav-
one man was director of art education for the ings, whose associated endowment was a ma-
Boston public schools, the New England Con- jor portion of the new institution's funding;
servatory of Music, and the Commonwealth of the Harvard Corporation named Perkins and
Massachusetts; he was affiliated with the Mas- Norton a committee of two to advise on print
sachusetts Institute of Technology and was the acquisitions.
founding director of the Massachusetts State
Normal School for Art (now the Massachu- There is no record of open dissent between the
setts College of Art). Perkins himself became a "familiars," whose tastes in art, especially for
lecturer at Harvard on the history of art: in early Italian painting and engraving, were in
1870-71 in two series of lectures outside the any case very close. But by the 188os, the dis-
regular curriculum, he spoke on ancient art proportion of art education according to the
and Italian art-the very subjects that would South Kensington system with the rest of the
be taught by Charles Eliot Norton so effec- curriculum on every educational level in Mas-
tively for so many years that any memory of sachusetts had become obvious to its critics
Perkins has utterly vanished from histories of and insupportable to the electorate. A particu-
the fine arts at Harvard. larly sharp attack was published in 1882 by
Sylvester Rosa Koehler, print curator at the
The conceptual high-art apex of the South National Museum in Washington and super-
Kensington system of promoting decorative intendent of a Boston art publishing firm.
design for industrial production was a collec- Harvard's copy of Koehler's pamphlet, Art
tion of exempla-models of design and his- Education and Art Patronage in the United
torical prototypes. In Britain this role was States, was donated to the library immediately
filled by the South Kensington Museum, now upon its publication by Charles Eliot Norton.
the Victoria and Albert. In Boston, the orna- By i886 the British arts administrator had
mental motifs on the first building of the been discharged from all his public offices in
Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1870, made Massachusetts and Perkins was dead, killed in
the intentions of its organizers clear: a carriage crash. The next year Koehler was
appointed curator of Harvard's Gray Collec-
The two large panels in relief on the front of the tion at the Museum of Fine Arts.57
building are labeled respectively "The Genius of
Art" and "Art and Industry."... These ... symbolize
the two motives, artistic and industrial, which have
been historically concerned in the establishment of
public collections of fine art. Museums as treasuries

Norton's attitude in the 1870S toward the
already flourished under Hellenistic kings; as establishment on his home territory of the
28 for art instruction even before Norton him-

system of art education against which Ruskin
openly campaigned, not least by endowing a self gave his first lectures at Harvard College
competing system with his own funds, is not in 1874.
to be measured by the lack of recorded hostil-
ity to Perkins. Rather, it can be assessed by the Norton's teaching methodology was also
system Norton himself established, at highly influenced by Ruskin's ideas and the
Harvard. In 1870, when Perkins began his system of instruction Ruskin had instituted at
campaign to reform drawing instruction in Oxford, which required the student to learn to
Boston and Ruskin began teaching at Oxford, see through learning to draw. Unlike Ruskin,
Norton, studying in Italy and still several years Norton had no competence in drawing-"the
away from the beginning of his own teaching mechanical work"-and so when he began to
career, wrote to his friend the Ruskinian Pre- lecture, he quickly secured Moore's services in
Raphaelite painter Charles Herbert Moore, the regular college curriculum. Moore's
who had been teaching drawing privately, to courses in the Fine Arts Department, orga-
encourage him to start a formal course in nized in 1875, were numbered Fine Arts i and
drawing at Harvard: 2; Norton's, Fine Arts 3, 4, and 5. Surviving
correspondence indicates that when Moore
I agree with you in the conviction that there is little went to Europe in 1876 to study with Ruskin
to be hoped for art in America, until the standard and make and collect instructional materials,
of taste is raised by solid education.... If you care Norton paid at least some expenses from his
to see President Eliot [Norton's cousin], to consult own pocket; and even late in their careers the
with him as to drawing classes, I will go to him & wealthy Norton supported Moore in the most
let him know that you are introduced to him by tangible way, as is indicated by a letter to Eliot:
me. I am sure that he will receive you cordially. I "I thank you for informing me of the action of
will hear with interest of your plans.58

the Corporation in transferring $750. of my
salary to Mr. Moore. This arrangement is
Within three years Moore, whom Eliot had entirely satisfactory to me. "60
appointed to teach at the Lawrence Scientific
School,- a separate division of the University The immediate impetus for Norton to teach
established to teach the applied sciences, art history at Harvard seems to have been the
would write to Norton,

death of his wife in 1872. If only for the sake of
his six children, he felt a need to give structure
President Eliot takes a very kind interest in my

to his life, previously passed in peripatetic,
work & desires to help it by providing what is nec- private scholarship. His correspondence with
essary little by little. He says he hopes our present

Ruskin in 1874 not only testified to his inten-
acquisitions "are the beginning of a considerable

tion to make the Harvard system at least a
collection for teaching purposes"... concurring in a

reflection of Ruskin's, it even indicated
plan of mine to have our examples arranged upon

Norton's hope that the Harvard example
the walls of our drawing room & always open to all

would somehow become a model for Ruskin,
students of the University.... I have not ... had any

who, to Norton's distress, was increasingly
very systematic plan of instruction; but have fol-

distracted from art by projects of economic
lowed Mr. Ruskin's teaching as far as I could.59

and social reform and was showing more and
more clearly signs of the mania that would
Thus Harvard began to acquire a collection

overtake him within a few years. Thus on
TURNER - RUSKIN * NORTON * WINTHROP
29
io January 1874, Norton wrote to Ruskin, of faith in the good as good, and to be aimed at
referring more to Moore's teaching than his whether attainable or not, has vanished from my
own, which was yet to begin: soul.6'
I have hope that we shall found a good school here, A month later he expanded upon his planned
even before you get one established in England. curriculum:
We have some advantages to be sure. The Pro-
fessor does not interfere with his own work, by My plan is to give my class at first a brief sketch of
tempting us to follow him in the byeways that his the place of the arts in the history of culture.... I
genius opens, and that alas! lead to-well, at least have it much at heart to make them understand
to forgetfulness of our main object. I think you that the same principles underly all forms of human
would be satisfied with what Moore is doing in his expression,-and that there cannot be good
instruction of the students.... He has such draw- poetry, or good painting or sculpture, or architec-
ings of yours as can be made serviceable; and he is ture, unless men have something to express which
just about having some of the best of my etchings is the result of long training of soul & sense in the
from the Liber Studiorum reproduced by photogra- ways of high living & true thought. I want to make
phy, to give his pupils the perfect examples of them see that we have in our days nothing to say,
mastery of line in the authoritative forms of that silence befits us, that the arts of beauty are not
imaginative landscape. for us to practice;-& seeing this to resolve so to
live that another generation may begin to be
Norton was acting as American agent for the happier than we.
sale of the Ward copies sponsored by Ruskin;
he went on to report that with the appropria- After we have done with Athens, I propose to go
tion given to Moore by President Eliot, Moore to Venice....62
"has taken for the school one of the Ward
copies of Turner, for which 20 guineas will be Thus it is immediately clear that Norton was
forthcoming in a few weeks...." (no. 30a?). as doubtful as Ruskin of the possibility of art
in America-at least in nineteenth-century
But in the same letter Norton did not neglect America-although his basis was not the lack
to report on his own teaching activities and of a historic past (which for Ruskin always
intentions: ensured at least the possibility of modern Eu-
ropean art) but rather the absence of present
For the past two or three months I have had a culture and moral worth.
class on Wednesday of half a dozen young men,
professors in the college here, an architect, &c.,

Although Norton made it clear from the very
... concerning the principles & history of Greek &

beginning that he could adduce great art in his
Italian Art.... talk with them serves me in forcing

classes only from the great civilizations of
me to revise my knowledge, define my opinions, &

ancient Greece and medieval Italy-for
classify my scattered notes.... I want to be made

Norton, high art ended, rather than began,
Professor in the University here that I may have

with the Italian High Renaissance-the work
hard work forced upon me, and may be brought

of Turner remained central. In 1874, for ex-
into close relations with youths whom I can try to

ample, the crucial year when he embarked
inspire with love of things that make life beautiful,

upon his teaching program at Harvard, he also
& generous. I have some ardours left,-and no whit

gave public lectures in Boston, the hotbed of
lectures, I shall dedicate them to you,"66 but

South Kensingtonian activity, not on classical
30
unfortunately they were never published and

or Italian art but on Turner. It was with
his manuscript text does not survive among

Turner that he wished to introduce a compet-
his papers at Harvard. Our only description of

ing art ideology, one that the reading public,
this one organized exposition of his concep-

saturated with Ruskin, would take to heart as a
tion of Turner, which was to prove so influen-

clear break from the prevailing instructional
tial in the genesis of the collecting career and

dogma which adapted classical and medieval
landscape aesthetic of Grenville Winthrop, is

design motifs (to industrial ends) and thus
could not so easily be differentiated from the to be found in a newspaper report entitled
"Turner." The article started by setting the

Ruskinian system in a brief course of lectures.
To give visual substance to his words, Norton scene in terms of the familiarity to Bostonians
of Ruskin's apparently hyperbolic writings on

organized a Turner exhibition, in a rented
hall. As usual, Ruskin was dubious: "I pro- Turner and of engravings after Turner, com-
foundly think it useless for Americans to look pared to the relative unfamiliarity of Turner's
at Turner. He is English to the sole of his original prints in the Liber Studiorum. It then
foot-every faculty in him pensive-and of proceeded with what must have been a synop-
days of old."63 sis of Norton's argument:
In his next letter, in which he placated the ... [Americans] have thus far almost wholly
prejudiced Englishman, Norton boasted of the neglected that department of culture which makes
success of his lectures and exhibition, which men capable of appreciating those higher aspects
had featured all seventy-one published Liber and meanings of natural phenomena.... Turner's
compositions, three of the unpublished ones, art is essentially unlike that of any other artist,
and nine of the plates in their etched states: living or dead. He saw nature and received
impressions and ideas from her which were wholly
You were quite right not to send me the Turners. I new, and which required new forms of expression.
have had a pretty little exhibition, as you will see by He had to invent a new language.... He seems to
the catalogue [of the Liber Studiorum] & list ... and have felt ... that behind or within all forms and
my two lectures have had the effect I desired, that phases of things as spread out in the landscape
of a protest against the prevalent taste and the there were powers existing-unseen by the
prevalent modes of artistic study & discipline.64 superficial eye-which gave to these such character
as they had; that there was a ruling principle of life
Norton's disparaging reference to the "preva- expressing itself in each visible fragment not only,
lent modes" would have been correctly under- but binding all fragments into wholes which were,
stood by Ruskin; just as Norton's protest, in in turn, but parts of a larger whole. In this connec-
terms of Turner, would have been recognized tion it is instructive to consider that Turner seems
by his audience. Surely, at the moment when not to have made studies of fragments as other
South Kensington-style drawing manuals were artists do.... And it is further notable that he was
rushing off Boston presses, the Boston re- especially fond of making his designs in connected
viewer of Norton's Liber catalogue chose his series.67
words carefully when he pronounced it "quite
a manual."65
Here we see the primary, defining emphasis
placed on Turner's capacity to compose land-
Norton promised Ruskin that "If I print the scapes. For Norton as for Ruskin, imaginative
composition as epitomized in the extended The paintings and drawings herewith exhibited are 31
set of the Liber defined Turner as an artistic the beginning of a series which is being formed in
genius. Harvard University, in illustration of a scheme of
instruction derived from the principles and
By the report of this reviewer, Norton then methods of the classic schools. These principles
proceeded to integrate Turner's compositional and methods are exemplified by the works of those
sense into his view of nature, in order to vali- schools which are preserved in Europe; but they
date Turnerian images to a public that derived have been singularly lost sight of since the rise of
its aesthetic from a patriotic valuation of the the Academic Schools in Italy [i.e., the followers of
appreciation of nature and the study of natu- Raphael and Michelangelo].70
ral history as America's analogue to human
history. (That Norton did not counter a cer-

Moore here parroted the attitude of Norton as
tain prejudice against Turner's truth to nature described by George Santayana, who charac-
is indicated by a description in the same Bos- terized by his portrait of Norton an entire
ton newspaper several years later of the effect

generation of cultural conservatives who could
of Turner's painting The Slave Ship, which

not believe that the new could ever be as beau-
entered a local collection in 1876: "a tortoise- tiful as the old: "Old Harvard men will re-
shell cat having a fit in a platter of toma-

member the sweet sadness of Professor
toes."86) In Norton's reviewer's words, which

Norton. He would tell his classes, shaking his
were presumably close to Norton's own:

head with a slight sigh, that the Greeks did not
play football. In America there had been no
The sense ... of functional sequence and human

French cathedrals, no Venetian school of
significance throughout nature seems to be the painting.. ."
chief spring to Turner's imaginative genius.... His
method was to study all visual facts with laborious

However, the section of Moore's exhibition
care, till he had mastered their essential laws. Then

titled "Examples of the Works of Florence and
these facts became plastic in his hands.... to the

Venice" and geared to the needs of students in
superficial eye, he seems to depart from reality, but

Norton's Fine Arts 4 and 5 featured the works
he does not depart; he perceived normal tenden-

of Turner, even including many of his British
cies and essentials. He arranges these in helpful

and French subjects in reproductive engrav-
sequences.... His art is the expression of impres-

ings and William Ward copies. Doubtless both
sions received from nature by an elevated,

Norton and Moore regretted that there were
disciplined, and maturely imaginative mind.69

not more original Turner drawings on display
as well, that a tantalizing prospect held out by
This is as close as we can get to instruction on

Moore in a letter to Norton just before his
Turner that Norton gave at Harvard College.

return in the summer of i878 from Europe had
He never taught a course in which-ostensi-

not materialized (no. 63):
bly-Turner could figure, and in the intro-
duction to the catalogue of the teaching

Last Wednesday Mr. Ruskin kindly invited me to
exhibition associated with Norton's and

spend the day with him in the National Gallery. to
Moore's courses, which opened in Thayer Hall

look over some of the nineteen thousand drawings
in 1878, Moore seemed to preclude any

& sketches by Turner.... [Ruskin here described
illustrative material postdating the High

his selection for teaching.] And he tells me that he
Renaissance:
now means to make another equally good selection
32
which he had good reason to hope the Trustees years, and the system was so new that it had
will be willing to present to our Fine Arts Depart- not yet devised any means to advise the fresh-
ment at Harvard. This will be a great acquisition for men-a cause of pained complaint in the
us-will it not? The sight of these drawings gave student newspaper:
me a new sense of the greatness of Turner's
genius.... In turning them over I was strongly If the Faculty were to devise two or three
impressed with the sense of how absolutely in alternative schemes suiting each of the most
accord with the principles and methods of the important professions and occupations, and were
great schools every scrap of his work iS.72 to recommend that the Freshmen follow one or
the other of them ... we should get ... the manifold
Ruskin himself, however, sent to Norton a benefits of the elective system, together with the
number of Turner drawings that he had col- advantage of that consistent and well-directed
lected and exhibited in London in 1878. Given effort which not a few of us feel we have lacked.73
the attitude of Moore expressed in the last
sentence quoted above, it is no wonder that The lack of direction was soon remedied, but
these were included in his display in Thayer not within Winthrop's undergraduate years.
(and, three decades later, were purchased He subsisted within a brief window of neglect;
from Norton for the Fogg Art Museum by to quote the reminiscences of his classmate
Moore, the museum's first director; see no. i). George Santayana,
Nor is it in doubt that Norton appreciated the
exhibition section associated with his courses ... the reigning feeling was that if a youth passed his
on Florentine and Venetian art; the Harvard examinations and conformed to the other official
College Library copy of Moore's catalogue requirements, it was nobody's business how he
bears Norton's handwritten signature on its spent his time or broke his bones.... I remember
cover (no. 64). And presumably when Grenville that as a sophomore I cut all but two recitations in
Winthrop took these courses in his senior year, a course ... and passed by merely taking the
he too admired the Turners, by now hanging in examinations....74
the "Drawing Room" at Sever Hall, the new
Harvard building so disliked by the chairman Santayana implied that some elective courses,
of the resident Department of Fine Arts. in which the professors competed for enroll-
ment, were made far too easy; and, indeed,
this was the reputation of Norton's courses. In
President Eliot's annual report for 1884-85, in
which he searchingly examined the elective
Although fine arts courses had existed at system, the running heads of his published
Harvard for several years prior to Winthrop's text are indicative of its tone, passing from
matriculation as a freshman in 1882, they were

"The Elective System. Easy Courses." to "The
among Harvard's newest, and they were Elective System. Large Courses." Eliot alluded
purely-and merely-electives. A system of

specifically to "Fine Arts 3 and Music 3 [taught
elective courses, which had begun decades by John Knowles Paine], which are courses
earlier in a tentative way, had been greatly peculiar to this College and derive their char-
expanded and formalized by Pres. Charles W. acter entirely from the eminent professors
Eliot. The class of 1886 was the first to be al- who give them...."" Edward W. Forbes, class
lowed to elect courses throughout their college

of 1895, who succeeded Moore as director of
being able to say that he had been the first

the Fogg, attributed Norton's great cultural 33
influence to force of personality, regardless of man in Boston to receive a copy, and before
why or how he might have initially attracted the end of the year he reported to an English
his hordes: friend that he and three other Harvard profes-
sors (of anatomy, botany, and literature) had
... if you ask anyone who was at Harvard during grown "warm discussing the new book of Mr.
these years-doctor, lawyer, scientist or business- Darwin's.... His book will help overthrow
man-from what courses he received the most, many old and cumbrous superstitions, even if
it establish but few new truths...."79 Eventu-

the answer would most probably be, "From
Professor Norton's fine arts courses." Though ally Norton would adopt Darwinian meta-
there were loafers and athletes who took the phors-"A struggle for existence is as essential
courses because they heard that they were easy to for the distinction and vigor of ideas, as for
pass, even for them I think it was a case of: "and the distinction and vigor of plants and ani-
those who came to scoff, remained to pray."76 mals"80-and, as a declared atheist and pessi-
mist, decide that Darwinism was a great
The other professor with whom Grenville benefit: "Your out-and-out pessimist is
Winthrop elected to take no less than three cheerful, even though nature herself plays
courses also enjoyed a reputation as an easy false, and uses loaded dice... Darwinism has
grader: "... courses that were both easy and helped us a good deal. You expect less of men
interesting, like those of the geologist, Profes- when you look at them not as a little lower
sor Shaler, drew in masses of undergraduates than the angels, but as a little higher than the
who, disliking work, liked to be amused, and anthropoid apes....'81
had no objection to being incidentally edi-
fied."77 This was Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, As a professional geologist, Shaler could not
professor of geology and dean of the Lawrence rest with an evaluation of an evolutionary
Scientific School, "the beau ideal of this gen- theory on the basis of its relevance to his per-
eration of Harvard youth."78 Winthrop sonal philosophy. He digested it, aligned him-
achieved exceptionally high grades under self with Darwin in opposition to his own
Shaler, higher even than with Norton, and professor at Harvard, Louis Agassiz, and even-
thanks to them he graduated with "Honorable tually developed his own theory (which
Mention," that is, cum laude, in natural his- tended toward neo-Lamarckian rather than
tory-a remarkable accomplishment for a Darwinian principles). Of special interest to
student whose academic record otherwise him was the problem of altruism, which Dar-
epitomized the gentleman's C. win had considered in his Descent of Man.
How could altruism, a capacity for self-sacri-
Regardless of the basis of his attractions, how- fice, serve a species in a system based upon the
ever, Shaler's views would not have been unin- law of survival of the fittest? Shaler, the pro-
teresting to anyone whose primary orientation fessor who believed that "the key to education
was toward art, especially landscape art. Like is in developing the altruistic powers,"82 un-
every intellectual of his generation, Shaler was fortunately broke off his analysis of the evolu-
engaged by the competing, and compelling, tion of altruism at exactly the point most
theories of evolution that centered on interesting to this essay, an analysis of the
Darwin's epochal publication of The Origin of evolution of art appreciation in one of Shaler's
Species in 1859. Even Norton took pride in favored students:
Manifestly the strongest of these modes or belief that the appreciation of landscape and
34
emotions of altruism is that which is the deepest its creation in the artistic sense depended
stamped into the mind by long use, namely upon knowledge of its historical associations.
sympathy with progeny.... The faintest and newest For Shaler history in a landscape referred to its
of these modes of altruism is the love of nature, geology as well as its inhabitation, and so
which has several obscure modes or subordinate knowledge of geology and other applicable
divisions, such as the love of the beautiful.83 realms of natural history would contribute to
an aesthetic appreciation of the real landscape,
"Love of nature ... which, though in its begin- especially the wilderness that was America's
ning, and as yet weak, promises to become ... special attribute. In his essay "The Landscape
one of the most important elements in the as a Means of Culture," Shaler wrote:
structure of the mind"84 in this context re-
ferred to all of the contemporary efforts to There can be no doubt that knowledge may vastly
preserve nature, from the campaigns to found enhance the intensity of aesthetic impressions.
national parks and save Niagara Falls in the There are many landscapes in the unhistoric
United States to Ruskin's participation in the wildernesses, endowed with a far greater share of
antivivisection movement in England. More purely natural beauty than that of the Val d'Arno
particularly, Shaler concerned himself with the or of the plain of Marathon. [It was no accident
contemporary aesthetic appreciation of land- that Shaler cited the landscapes of the two subjects
scape, taking a Ruskinian view but with the taught by his friend Charles Eliot Norton.] ... but
special slant of the professional geologist. this light does not shine forth from the ... guide-
Shaler was thoroughly conversant with book.... The evidence of the slow changes which
Ruskin's works, including in Modern Painters have brought the bit of earth to its existing form ...
the many chapters on geology which demon- has to be gained by deliberate inquiry, so that the
strated Ruskin's own expertise, and he even reading is as that of a great volume in its difficulty
attended a Ruskin lecture at Oxford in 1873 and in the time it demands.
and "paid close attention to the Art School
that he had founded."85 Shaler embodied the Yet scientific inquiry would not be sufficient:
reconciliation of science and art that a turn-
of-the-century commentator on Ruskin iden- It is evident that our culture is near the station
tified as the Englishman's "greatest where we may hope for some effort to develop the
achievement": landscape sense by a systematic training in the arts
which may enable us to appreciate scenery ... a
He has endowed man with a new habit of mind, fitting supplement of that which we now devote to
and laid the foundation for a new class of obser- the purely scientific aspects of nature.
vation,... midway between science and art.... I
shall call this new intellectual discipline Phaenome- Shaler advocated, as a faculty that was re-
nology of Nature ... strongly modified and quired for an aesthetic appreciation of land-
directed, on the one hand, by the predominant scape, the cultivation of a temperament he
wave of observation in modern natural science, feared was alien to the late-nineteenth-century
and, on the other hand, by the development of American mind:
landscape painting, especially since Turner.86
The first of all the mental arts which the student of
Shaler gave a special construction to Ruskin's the landscape needs to acquire is that of contem-
plation,-the calm, affectionate forthgoing to the landscape architecture, in particular in how

35
environment which permits the scene to enter in the works of man could most sympathetically
its fullness to the understanding.... He who would impose themselves upon the land. He wrote,
acquire this, the very foundation of all aesthetic for instance, that roads should not be bor-
sense, must be prepared to set himself against the dered by regimented lines of trees but rather
spirit of his age. by "systematic plantations of groups ... the
species being varied and the outline of the
Suspecting that advocacy of a Ruskinian mood plantations toward the road broken so as to
of "calm, affectionate forthgoing" would not promote pleasing vistas," and that rivers
be sufficient, he went on to propose a mecha- should be bridged with stone and not wood or
nism whereby the multifarious natural world steel, as there were "no other architectural
could be most profitably contemplated. The features attainable in our American landscapes
viewer must compose it: so well calculated to enhance their beauty as
the sight of well-shaped masonry arches over
Perhaps the commonest blunder, in looking upon the streams."88
the landscape, is found in the effort to take in at
once all that a wide field contains.... the observer
will find it profitable to make some experiments to
determine the most advantageous limits of a
view.... The easiest way in which to make the We must now ask, how far did the influence
essay is by looking at a wide and attractive view of Shaler and Norton extend over the under-
through a doorway or a window ... so that all the graduate Winthrop? Did he flourish in their
scene can, in a way, be compassed with one courses as he did in no others because he
"setting" of the eyes.... If the reader has never found them sympathetic, or were they simply
criticised his ways of looking at the landscape, he expedients to improve upon his gentleman's
will be likely to think that there can be no great C's? His one recorded reminiscence of his
difference in the mental result arising from the college years tends toward the second option:
mere shifting of the eyes in the process of com- asked about any acquaintance with classmate
passing a view. [But he] will perceive ... that his William Randolph Hearst, Winthrop recalled
attention is distracted by the change, and that he "his kindness while in college and many others
had diminished the effectiveness of the impression. since those happy, carefree days."89 For
The conditions are much the same as those we Winthrop the immediate setting of those
meet in beholding pictures. We all know that a "happy, carefree days" was Beck's Hall, the
painting, especially if it be a landscape, is most most elegant and prestigious among the pri-
advantageously seen alone; not in a gallery.... the vate dormitories on Harvard's Gold Coast,
effect of the successive impressions may destroy all where only youths of Winthrop's wealth and
the aesthetic value of the noblest art.87

lineage resided. He was a member of
Harvard's most exclusive club, the Porcellian,
It was but a short step for Shaler to proceed to

as well as the Institute of 1770, the Hasty Pud-
composing landscape itself. Presumably influ-

ding, Alpha Delta Phi, and-more apposite to
enced by acquaintance with Frederick Law this essay-the Art Club.
Olmsted and Charles Eliot, son of the Harvard
president and student and then partner of

Yet despite these signs of sociability, even in
Olmsted, Shaler took an active interest in college years Winthrop seems already to have
36
possessed the withdrawn temperament that Perhaps any more casual relations with Edith
later in life left those with no need to know Wharton were thwarted because of her sex:
him unaware and those who unbidden sought Winthrop seems to have enjoyed easy associa-
his acquaintance rebuffed. George Santayana, tion with very few women, perhaps only his
also in the class of i886, remembered that he sister Katherine Winthrop Kean. His marriage
"moved just behind the scenes, when I

had ended tragically with his wife's insanity
watched the play, as an exemplary person that and early death, and his subsequent close
everybody knew and admired.... But both he confinement of his two daughters for fear they
and I seemed to have cared little for miscella- would marry, bear children, and succumb to
neous society...."90
the same depression that had overtaken their
mother resulted in 1924 in their simultaneous
By 1902, when Winthrop had become an ac- elopement with the family chauffeur and a
tive collector of Turner prints in association local electrician. Winthrop was devastated,94
with Francis Bullard, his classmate and

and he resumed relations with only one of his
Norton's nephew, these personal characteris- children, after her divorce.
tics had become more marked, so that even in
his relations with a woman who moved in the His reserve extended to practically the entire
same aristocratic circles of ancient Puritan and circle of his acquaintance. It would be too
Patroon society, he was reticent until art and simple to attribute it to another evident
common acquaintance with the Nortons be-

source, his obsessive concern with his distin-
came the subject. Here is Edith Wharton's

guished pedigree, as two of his later associates
appraisal of Winthrop; she was his summer

in whom he placed confidence to the point of
neighbor in Lenox, and she was writing

friendship, if not intimacy, were Jewish.
Norton's daughter Sara, one of her closest

Winthrop was the very type of the aristocrat as
friends:
defined by John Ruskin, who might have been
astonished to learn that such a man existed in
I had a visit from Grenville Winthrop yesterday, in

the United States (apart from his dear friend
which he said such pleasant & sympathetic things of Charles Norton):
his visit to Ashfield that I began to understand the
juxtaposition, which had puzzled me. The fact is, I

A truer sign of breeding than mere kindness is
had thought him (with every virtue under heaven) a

... sympathy [yet] the quantity of sympathy a
rather opaque body; & you are all so translucent.

gentleman feels can never be judged of by its
But I daresay I did him an injustice. He had nice

outward expression, for another of his chief
tastes, certainly (I don't mean only in liking you,

characteristics is apparent reserve.... In a great
though that is a test), but he seems to me to want

many respects it is impossible that he should be
digging out & airing.... "

open except to men of his own kind.... By the
very acuteness of his sympathy he knows how
Although they worked together for years on

much of himself he can give to anybody ...
Lenox Library Association committees,92

but [he] is obliged, nevertheless, in his general
Winthrop would remain aloof to Wharton,

intercourse with the world, to be a somewhat
as he would to so many others. After the silent person.95
death of his mother was reported to her in
1925, she exclaimed, "I never was intimate with

A commentator on the refined New York set
Grenville-the very word is a contradiction!"93

in which Winthrop silently moved put it more
succinctly: "To the old aristocrat notoriety is a tors' English village (fig. ii). His mother
37
type of social nudism.... "96 owned a house in Lenox, and also Mrs. Will-
iam S. Bullard, nee Louisa Norton, a winter
resident of Boston, had her summer home
there. Her son Francis, who remained a bach-
elor, lived with his widowed mother, Charles
One person with whom Winthrop shared an Eliot Norton's older sister, all his life. It was
intimate friendship was Francis Bullard, who little more than a mile's walk from the front
was almost his social equal (although not of door of Winthrop's new house, down his long
sufficiently ancient wealth and lineage to be drive, along a stretch of West Street, and up an
chosen for the Porcellian). We can only pre- even longer drive to reach the Bullards' door,
sume that the classmates became friends in and this proximity may have guided Winthrop
college; there is no record. They certainly in his purchase.
resumed what may have been only an ac-
Fig. I I. Edwin quaintance when in 1902 the New York City-
Only a single letter between the two friends
Hale Lincoln, A based Winthrop purchased an estate in Lenox,
has been located, one in which Bullard asked
Great Elm,
Winthrop-he called him "Grenville," not the

Groton Place, Massachusetts, "The Elms," which he immedi-
1930 (no. 76d). ately renamed "Groton Place," after his ances-
nickname "Gren" used by his siblings and a
boyhood friend, but also not the "Winthrop"
or "Mr. Winthrop" used by everyone else-
about a Turner collecting issue.97 The two men
are seen together, however, in other surviving
letters and reminiscences, most notably in
brief records of two of the three trips abroad
that Winthrop seems to have made. The first
was in 1905 when Bullard and Winthrop were
encountered in Italy by Edward Forbes. This
was Forbes's first meeting with Winthrop; he
reported that he "was just beginning to collect,
.1'
I suppose under Bullard's and Professor
X~
Norton's influence."98 The second was in 1907
when Bullard wrote to Norton from shipboard
at the instigation of his traveling companion;
Winthrop wanted Norton's interpretation of
* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
Durer's engraving Knight, Death, and the
Devil, which Bullard had just acquired.99 It is
. S _k;-~~~4..
probable that Winthrop was also accompanied
by Bullard on his third trip, around 1911 ac-
cording to the recollection of Martin
Birnbaum, because this took him to England
at a time when he and Bullard were most
active in their purchases of Turner prints. In
later years, when Winthrop could not be per-
suaded to leave home overnight, much less
38 friend who stood first in my esteem & affection,

travel to Europe, Birnbaum became his agent
abroad, scouting drawings, paintings, and therefore I feel you will forgive me if I do not
accept every suggestion made by the Museum.'02

sculpture-and not prints. Thus it is not sur-
prising that he characterized Winthrop on his
1911 trip not by print acquisitions but by his Although the reticent Winthrop resorted to a
visit to Groton, England, in search of his an- cliche in quotation marks, there seems no
cestral past.'00 doubt that he did indeed love Francis Bullard;
and Bullard's will, in which so many Turners
Explicit testimony to the place that Bullard and other prints were left to the Boston
held in Winthrop's heart is given by a letter to museum, left no doubt that the sentiment
Morris Gray, the president of the Museum of was reciprocated. The only works of art be-
Fine Arts, whom Winthrop wrote in 1916 queathed to private persons who were not
concerning the disposition of copies of the relatives were three Burne-Jones drawings, left
catalogue of Bullard's collection of Liber to Grenville Winthrop and his two young
Studiorum impressions. Bullard had died daughters (no. 55). The choice presumably
unexpectedly in 1913. His Turners were reflected not only a shared taste but a senti-
bequeathed to the Boston museum, and mental allusion to the beginnings of the two
Winthrop could imagine no better memorial men's friendship under the guidance of
than to reveal to the public the superb fruit of Charles Eliot Norton, himself a close friend of
their shared experience as Turner collectors. Burne-Jones and collector of his work. That
Winthrop funded the publication of the cata- Bullard did not leave Turners to the Winthrops
logue, from its writing by a hired curator probably reflects a consciousness of the integ-
(whom he closely edited) to its design (re- rity of his collection and the magnitude of his
membered by Daniel Berkeley Updike, accomplishment. He would not want to sacri-
head of the Merrymount Press, for the fice an important impression; he would not
special pains taken with the reproductions1), want to slight a man whose shared taste was as
printing, and distribution. This was the next sophisticated as his own. And so it behooves
great Liber set, which now, significantly, re- us, in attempting to interpret the reasons why
produced the finished mezzotints, not the Winthrop himself collected Turner prints, to
etchings, in an exquisite miniaturized format learn more about his best friend, who owned
for the connoisseur-collector, not the student- so many more.
draftsman.
Gray had suggested to Winthrop that after the
catalogue was sent gratis to every conceivable
museum, library, and educational institution, Francis Bullard's education at Harvard Col-
and even to private persons with an interest in lege differed from that of Grenville Winthrop
prints, it might be sold to benefit the museum. in an important essential: he was the
Winthrop replied,
nephew-by all accounts the favorite
nephew-of Professor Norton. It may be,
Do you not think that a sale even of a limited

however, that this relationship only ripened
number of copies would be contrary to the spirit

from the merely avuncular years after
of the Memorial? This catalogue has been a "labour

Bullard's graduation, for apparently he first
of love" on my part undertaken in memory of a

spent a difficult sojourn abroad. Perhaps he
referred to this period in his own life when in and athletic, he would have had to go into
39
one of his philosophical essays he wrote, "business" or into a profession no less businesslike
and absorbing, because according to the ruling
The saddest day in a young man's life is when he code this would have been his duty to society. 05
realizes that because a thing is just and beautiful ... Bullard and I hardly knew each other when
and good, it had not power of itself, for the sole undergraduates; but ten or fifteen years later he
reason of its intrinsic worth, to come to fruition. took to studying philosophy and came to hear
... A civilized youth, finding that his will is thwarted some of my lectures. We then established an active
... is thrown back upon himself to conceive the exchange of moral and intellectual ideas. The
world anew.... He must face the awful fact that all influence of his uncle had led him to collect prints,
is not right with the world.'03 especially Turner prints. They were very beautiful,
and on the frequent occasions when I was a guest
Bullard studied philosophy in Germany, to the at his mother's house, we used to go up after
detriment of his health, and then recuperated luncheon to his study and look over his treasures.
in Italy before resuming life in Boston and
Cambridge some time in the 189os. Presum- Here the elderly Santayana, whose only fine
ably the thread is picked up at this point in a arts course at Harvard had been an "incom-
reminiscence by Sara Norton: plete" in Moore's beginning drawing class, felt
obliged to interpolate his own ideas about
[Charles Eliot] Norton's pleasure and interest in Turner's oft-disputed truth to nature. One
helping youth to "find itself' was perhaps in no case gets the feeling that after education at Harvard
more markedly shown than in his relation to his in the i88os and friendship with Francis
nephew, Francis Bullard. Stimulating, in a nature Bullard, anyone would have an opinion about
open to the appeal, a love of the arts, and critical Turner:
discriminations, Norton never wearied of guiding
those perceptions and discriminations by sympathy It is not true, by the way, that the aerial effects in
and suggestion. The almost matchless Bullard Turner's landscapes are exaggerated and melodra-
Collection of Turner prints ... is in a sense the matic. Nature in England and elsewhere-for
record of the intercourse between uncle and instance in Venice is often like that, or even more
nephew-and a shared enthusiasm-happy for emphatic; and the delicacy with which Turner
both in an eminent degree. 104

preserves the special character and melody of the
parts in the midst of that violent ensemble, shows a
The report of Bullard by George Santayana is sincere love of nature and life and a devout
even more illuminating, embedded as it is in a imagination.
larger consideration of the predicament of the
late-nineteenth-century scion of wealth and

He then resumed the description of his rela-
high social class in America who felt no ambitions with Bullard:
tion to succeed in the practical world:
Frank Bullard and his collections did much more to
"Culture," with religious and philosophical

educate my taste than my lectures did to clarify his
preoccupations, belonged especially to Bullard. He

intellect. He was interested and unprejudiced, but,
was a nephew of Professor Norton, and I might say

as he said, "bird-witted." His flights were short and
almost in fortunately delicate health; fortunately,

flurried. He came to no large conclusions; what
because if he had been thoroughly sound, strong, survived was only an open and ardent spirit. Chris-
tianity and Puritanism had here debouched into a Bullard's conclusion:

40
sensitive humanity; yet the natural aims of life
remained for him miscellaneous and conflicting.'06 Turner broke away from conventional traditions
and looked out on Nature with keen, unsophisti-
Bullard would publish two "short and flur- cated eyes. He saw the world as it appears to man.
ried" philosophical flights, as appendices in ... Thus circumstances acquire godlike significance
catalogues of two Turner print exhibitions and brute necessity is transformed into the truth
that he mounted at the Museum of Fine Arts, of life.'08
in 1904 and 1g9o. What sense can be gleaned
from them indicates that he, like so many Bullard's frequent references to the ideal indi-
American intellectuals at the end of the nine- cate a brand of Neoplatonism and its deriva-
teenth century, was attempting to wrestle tion from Santayana, but he could never
Darwinian theory into a reconciliation with reconcile the reduction of religion to poetry,
religion.'07 Ruskin, Goethe, and Shakespeare as the more profound philosopher would.
were all quoted in a Turnerian context, and
Bullard went on to propose his own philo- Even George Santayana, however, seemed in
sophical synthesis. A taste will suffice: his own writings inculcated with issues raised
by the dominance of Turner and Ruskin in his
We find that Nature faints on the way to her Harvard education and association with
appointed ends. The mammoth passes out into the Bullard. His special interest was aesthetics,
elephant without having quite fulfilled its own and in The Sense of Beauty, he considered the
nature. We have examples in the races of mankind appreciation of landscape as a special case. In
which have never attained the excellence repre- the passage prior to the quotation that follows,
sented by the ideal. Alas! the Greeks were Santayana had deplored the later nineteenth-
overcome by hordes of barbarians.... Surely and century indifference to formal structure in the
persistently love has emerged out of brute lust, arts, reflecting an ideal related to Ruskin's
music out of rude and barbarous sounds, beauty concept of imaginative composition:
out of strange beginnings. We are not furthered in
our insight into Nature by the supposition of a An extraordinary taste for landscape compensates
God-Father as the Maker and Creator of the us for this ignorance of what is best and most
world. The civilization into which we are born is finished in the arts. The natural landscape is an
our God-Father.... I should like to define Christ as indeterminate object; it almost always contains
the mystery of man's moral nature,-the mystery

enough diversity to allow the eye a great liberty in
of man's aspiring after the good, which he envisages

selecting, emphasising, and grouping its elements,
in the ideal.... I think Mr. Ruskin means by "future

and it is furthermore rich in suggestion and in
life" the invisible life, the spirit's view of the moral

vague emotional stimulus. A landscape to be seen
consequences of man's acts, rather than a continua-

has to be composed [here one hears Shaler], and
tion of commonplace existence after death. For

to be loved has to be moralised [and here,
Heaven is not in the realm of time and space, but in Ruskin].109
the transcendent world of meaning and ideas.
Heaven is the recognition of beauty and things

Even in his choice of the object with which to
done well.... Turner belongs among the seers and

illustrate his discussion of the Platonic idea,
prophets because he painted Nature as the place

Santayana betrayed a cultural context local to
or situation in which man finds himself.

Harvard in the i88os, redolent with everything
from Ruskin's apotheosis of Turnerian tree his uncle, previously cited, his query on
41
drawing to evolutionary argument about the Winthrop's behalf is followed by pages of his
multiplicity of species: own high-flown interpretation (among other
things, the Dtirer engraving was a prefigura-
The question whether there are not, in external tion of Abraham Lincoln), which Winthrop, a
nature or in the mind of God, objects and eternal captive audience on shipboard, would have
types, is indeed not settled ... but ... such tran- already heard. Norton's reply, a model of terse
scendent realities, if they exist, can have nothing to good sense by comparison, must have been
do with our ideas of them. The Platonic idea of a gratefully received."4
tree may exist.... How should I deny that I might
someday find myself outside the sky gazing at it,
and feeling that 1, with my mental vision, am
beholding the plenitude of arboreal beauty,
perceived in this world only as a vague essence However Winthrop may have regarded his
haunting the multiplicity of finite trees? But what dear friend's intellectual ambitions, there is no
can that have to do with my actual sense of what a doubt of his appreciation of his talents as a
tree should be? Shall we take the Platonic myth print connoisseur, which were very great.
literally, and say the idea is a memory of the tree I Here is Paul J. Sachs's recollection of Bullard:
have already seen in heaven? ... But why, in that
case, this infinite variability of ideal trees? Was the He had a passion for prints, but was free from the
Tree Beautiful an oak, or a cedar, an English or an weakness of the average collector of his day for
American elm?"0I mere quantity.... His carefully chosen group of
Durer woodcuts, in impressions of extraordinary
Bullard did not answer his mentor's question, beauty, bears out this statement.... In two
and certainly Winthrop, however deeply in- instances, to be sure, he had the good fortune of
volved he became in the actual growing of combining completeness with quality of impres-
trees, did not. For Winthrop was constitution- sion-in his unparalleled set of Turner's Liber
ally averse to intellectualizing, judging from Studiorum and in the remarkable series of Canaletto
hints in reminiscences-"He disliked artistic etchings.... Bullard's paramount interest, however,
jargon, and modestly exaggerated any lack of was always in early Italian engravings.'5
information about his possessions"' 1'-and
the contents of his library, which ran to his- All of the print-collecting interests cited by
tory, horticulture, heraldry, the classics in Sachs were Ruskinian enthusiasms, even
matched sets, and second-rate fiction.'"2 Canaletto, whom Ruskin deplored as an artist
but cherished because in his prints he had
One suspects that the three books by preserved a view of Venice that Ruskin had
Santayana that Winthrop owned were either known in his youth, before the nineteenth
gifts from Bullard or purchased from loyalty century had turned the Queen of the Adriatic
to the class of 1886,"3 and one guesses, from into "a vulgar serving-maid" (Norton's words;
his request through Bullard to Charles Eliot they swapped gloomy reports of the city's
Norton for the latter's opinion on Dtirer's fate)."16 And Ruskin had greatly raised the
problematic engraving, that he even occasion- status of Dtirer's woodcuts in the esteem of
ally had his fill of Bullard's metaphysical print connoisseurs, who previously had valued
speculations. For in Bullard's letter to his engravings far more highly. Appreciative of
42 the Liber.'2' Bullard visited frequently, and he

early woodcuts' expressive contour, he said
about Durer in a lecture in 1854 (on decorative was deeply involved in acquisitions for the
color-such was Ruskin's discursiveness): young museum, both of Turners and of old
"'He was a man ... who knew his business.' master prints, selling many of them to the
Displaying a woodcut to his audience, he Fogg from his own collection and regretting
continued, 'It was coarse and bold, but it was that he wasn't "a million heir and then I
true."' Then Ruskin segued directly from would give you all these things."'22 This some-
Durer to Turner: "'there was another man what disingenuous exclamation from a
who knew his business-Turner (an etching wealthy man of leisure who had already re-
of Turner's was here produced). This was ceived his patrimony was made in a letter to
done by Turner with the point of an old fork, Moore, who as director had a direct hand in
he believed. The effect was beautiful. All of all print acquisitions. "All these things" in-
these were first-rate specimens of outline."'117 cluded an excessively rare unpublished Liber
Following Ruskin's example, Durer woodcuts Studiorum impression that was duplicated in
were included along with Turner etchings Bullard's already extensive collection. He
from the Liber Studiorum by Charles Herbert turned it in to a British dealer for payment on
Moore in his compendium of models for the other Liber prints.
draftsman. 18
Presumably Winthrop shared Bullard's enthu-
Early in his collecting career, Grenville siasm about the Fogg's Turner collection,
Winthrop purchased several quattrocento which through expenditures from the Gray
paintings, but he did not seem to share

Fund had been improving since the early i88os
Bullard's enthusiasm for early Italian engrav- and which now was growing even faster.
ings. Otherwise, however, his print collection, Among the twelve Turners bought in 1goo-
which was modest in almost every respect, the Fogg's first print purchases with the fine
emulated Bullard's in type if not in quantity. arts appropriation, turned over to the new
His few Durer woodcuts (no. 36) were su- museum by the department-was the very
perb,"19 and his two Canalettos, while lesser

rare etched state of Ben Arthur (no. 17a, fig. 5),
examples, did represent that paradigm of

the Liber Studiorum plate extolled by Ruskin
Venice, the Piazza San Marco (no. 38). Only

and-as if in an echo-by Moore's lecture
Turners were collected by Winthrop in re-

notes: "No finer illustration of what the great
markable quantity: over 400 of the 617 prints

artist does in composition could be desired.
received by the Fogg in the Winthrop bequest

He makes nothing up out of his own head. He
were by or after the English artist.'20

only grasps the essential lines before him, with
a quick eye to their potential beauty, and pic-
When we first hear of Winthrop's interest in torial value."'123
Turner prints, he was in the company of
Francis Bullard. The one surviving visitors

Bullard remained active within the Fogg Print
register for the Fogg print room (no. 72)

Department until his death in 1913, but the
records that Bullard and "G.L. Winthrop" of

frequency of his visits and the enthusiasm of
New York City looked at the Liber Studiorum

his letters fell off after 1gog, when Moore re-
on 3 September 1902. He came only once

tired to England. More significantly, on 20
more in the brief span of years covered by this

September 1908, Bullard had written his uncle
register, again with Bullard and again to see

concerning the disposition of his Turner col-
lection. Perhaps the guttering life of the older panied the Gray Collection when it returned 43
man-he would die the following month- to Harvard in 1897. Perennially short of
operating funds, the Fogg would leave the

put Bullard in mind of his own mortality,
print collection for forty years in the (very

although he could hardly have imagined that
he himself would be gone less than five years capable) hands of Laura Dudley, who, as
later. Bullard wanted to bequeath the collec- a woman, could never receive an official
tion not to Harvard but to the Boston mu- appointment.
seum, and he wanted his uncle's blessing.
In the four or five years that remained, Bullard
... my main idea is this-to choose Boston rather threw himself into the aggrandizement of the
Boston museum print department. In 1912 he

than Cambridge for the resting place of my Turner
masterminded the hiring as curator of FitzRoy

collection ... you have done so much to help me
that it is really partly yours, and I should not be Carrington, a New York print dealer, who
happy, unless I thought my plan met with your apparently felt the move not worth his while
approval. I know you regard a Museum as no ideal without the distinction of a Harvard teaching
place for works of art, and I sympathize with that appointment. The memoirs of Paul Sachs
idea, yet when I remember the delightful hours I enlarge on the situation, and also indicate
have spent in the British Museum studying prints, I Sachs's own early interest in prints and ac-
can not but hope that some youth will be grateful quaintance with Winthrop, even prior to his
to me for giving him the chance to study Turner in involvement with the Fogg Museum:
the Print department in Boston.'24
Our [Sachs's and Felix Warburg's] first joint
Left unsaid is why Bullard felt that more im- undertaking, the year before I went to Harvard,
pressionable youths were to be found in Bos- had to do with the incomparable Print Department
ton than in the print room of the Fogg Art in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.... For years,
Museum, but he may well have been among with the backing of Francis Bullard and Grenville L.
the "Harvard graduates ... a certain group of Winthrop, the development of the department had
Bostonians who were interested in art and been distinguished. Harvard was not yet giving
who had been disciples of Professor Norton. instruction in the history of engraving. Warburg
They wanted a giant to follow ... and were not and 1, as print enthusiasts, wished to be helpful in
pleased at President Eliot's courage in trusting this field to both the Boston museum and the Fogg.
to a group of young men, more or less I learned from Frank Bullard ... that our co-
unknown," in the words of one of those operation [that is, financial support] would be
unknown young men, Edward W. Forbes, welcomed.... On approval by the trustees in
Moore's successor as director of the Fogg.125 Boston, FitzRoy Carrington was appointed curator
Norton, moribund at the time of Bullard's and for a time lecturer at Harvard.'26
letter, had been retired for several years; his
replacements within the department, as well as Bullard's death in February 1913 revealed
Forbes, who was already active within the Winthrop's association with the Boston mu-
Museum, had none of his scholarly stature or seum to have been no more than a context for
high cultural associations-or any particular friendship.'27 On request, he did send funds to
interest in prints. Further, the Fogg seemed in continue Bullard's program to buy priced
no hurry to appoint a print curator to replace print catalogues; as he said in his letter of 29
Sylvester Rosa Koehler, who had not accom- August 1913, "I know that priced catalogues are
,r iu be P4niaaero 4 'iV Qenn4eG b*r

44
. . . . ' ' . .~ ~~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . .... .. .. . ... . .. .. . . . . .
I~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~ . ........... . . ......
. *. ... . .
.. .
Fig.12Joseh . .
|~~~~~ k
Mallord William
Plague of Egypt,
1808 (no. 7a). 5 1r-
important for Mr. Bullard and I often studied Poems. In 1915 he wrote to Carrington, "I have
sent to you this morning ... the line engraving

them together."'28 And he produced the splen-
(touched proof) which I showed you when I

did Bullard memorial catalogue, at consider-
saw you in New York. Please place it with the

able effort and cost. He firmly declined,
Museum collection should it be acceptable to

however, a request from the president of the
museum, "For the sake of Frank Bullard and the Museum. If not please send it to me in
Lenox."130
the work he began so splendidly," to chair the
Committee of the Museum on the Depart-
ment of Prints. Winthrop replied, "I feel that The Winthrop bequest to the Fogg contains
the Chairman should be in constant touch two published states of Captivity. Why did he
with the Department and in a position to not retain such a rarity as a touched proof for
himself, one which, as Carrington gratefully

consult with the members of his Committee at
acknowledged, was earlier than the three

any moment. This I could not do living so far
from Boston." The president tried again, again engraver's proofs already in the Bullard collec-
tion?'3' The peculiar nature of this unique

invoking Bullard's ghost (which must have been
donation, and also the request by Winthrop to

distasteful to Winthrop), again to no avail.'29
return the print, if rejected, to him in Lenox,
The very few other records of Winthrop's provide two clues to the actual formation of
involvement with the Museum of Fine Arts, all the Winthrop Turner collection, which other-
dating from the l90os, refer exclusively to wise is practically undocumented. Only a few
Turner print acquisitions. The one gift of art dealers' receipts are extant, for example, and
they and the accompanying correspondence

that he made was a touched proof of Captivity,
indicate that after about 1916 Winthrop was

an engraving after Turner from Rogers's
only interested in filling gaps in his collection, impressions that were needed to prove 45
especially in acquiring all of the rare etched Turner's involvement with his engravers.135
Winthrop would donate the one impression of

states of the Liber Studiorum. Always there is
the sense of closing what had been opened a touched proof that came his way (or that he
years before.'32 discovered in his collection) shortly after his
friend's death to the repository where it would
The gift by Winthrop of a touched proof to be most appropriate. But he declined the
the Boston museum is significant because it chance in 1917 to purchase the residue of the
was that sort of Turner print, or print after collection formed by William G. Rawlinson,
Turner, which had been the specialty of even though it contained, in Winthrop's
Francis Bullard. Such an impression would words, "1450 prints in all, comprising almost
exist in the Winthrop bequest to the Fogg only everything in Turner engraving except the
in a single example, purchased years after Liber Studiorum. Upwards of 120 are proofs
Bullard's death (no. 7a, fig. 12).1'" Evidently touched or written upon by Turner."'36
Winthrop deferred to his friend's intentions to
form the "collection of prints from Turner's That Winthrop requested Carrington to re-
Liber Studiorum not only of unrivalled quality turn the touched proof not to New York but
and interest, but also the most comprehensive to Lenox is even more significant. A number
in existence-the greatest of its kind ever (though not all) of the surviving dealers' re-
formed," in the concluding words of ceipts for Winthrop's Turner prints designate
Winthrop's catalogue preface.'34 After Bullard Lenox as the shipments' destination; in the
had made his choices, Winthrop would ac- Museum of Fine Arts register entry that lists
quire exemplary specimens but not the unique Captivity, his address is given as "Lenox,
0~~~~0
Fig. 13. Joseph
Mallard William
Turner, Aesacus
and Hesperie,
1819 (no. I5).
46 from Winthrop's own in his younger years,
exact identification is uncertain). Many of
these same impressions also bear Winthrop's
initials, as if the two were divvying up their
joint accessions.'40 These inscriptions do not
necessarily imply a Bullard provenance, how-
ever. From every indication, the two friends
collaborated closely in their study of Turner
prints, and it is probable that in summertime
in Lenox at least, they daily shared the plea-
sures of comparison and cataloguing. That
Bullard wrote on Winthrop's prints suggests
the dominance of the one man's personality

.~~~
over the other, which is borne out by Bullard's
assertiveness and Winthrop's habitual defer-
ence evidenced in so many other ways.
Fig. 14. Charles
Herbert Moore,
Portrait of John
Ruskin (no. 58).
Mass."'37 We have the testimony of Paul Sachs Although Grenville Winthrop was most
definitely his own man in his collecting

that "Turner's prints in perfect impressions"
hung in the guest bedrooms at Groton choices, which expanded enormously through
Place.'38 And the inscription on a third state the thirty years remaining to him after the
death of Francis Bullard, he always seemed to

impression of Aisacus and Hesperie (no. 15, fig.
need, or at least enjoy, the company of a more

13), the only one among all of Winthrop's
Turners that offers irrefutable evidence that it scholarly and energetic associate whose con-
was a gift from Bullard, is dated 26 July 1910. noisseurship and acquisitive instincts equaled
At this season the two men would have been his own. Paul J. Sachs, who, as we have re-
in residence in their summer homes in Lenox, ported, appeared on the scene as a print col-
where shady groves provided a perfect natural lector in the context of Bullard's and
context for the composition that was, again to Winthrop's patronage of the Museum of Fine
quote Ruskin's judgment, "on the whole, the Arts, filled that role in later years.
finest plate in the Liber Studiorum."
Sachs had spent the first substantial sum of
Many of the Turner prints in the Winthrop money that came into his hands, a twenty-first
collection bear Bullard's initials, either in his birthday present from his grandfather, on
prints, including "a Turner, the one that I had

own handwriting or in the form of his
collector's stamp, which according to his copied on the top floor of Sever Hall ... under
Martin Mower's guidance."'4' He spent the

cousin was "a very private mark ... almost like
his signature."'39 Many more seem to have first money he ever earned "on a painting I
been inscribed by him with cataloguing infor- had looked at for days. It was the Portrait of
mation or comments on quality (although as Ruskin [no. 58, fig. 14] by his disciple, Charles
his script is sometimes difficult to distinguish Herbert Moore, the teacher whose assistant I
Ruskin, and Norton that Winthrop and 47

might have been [instead of Martin Mower] ."142
Then in 1gog, when Moore retired from the Bullard had shared.
Fogg and the purchase of a Ruskin drawing
was decided upon as a testimonial, Edward It is probably to Sachs that we can attribute
Forbes (in his own words), "sent out the ap- the first major shift in Winthrop's taste, which
peal.... As I remember it, there was only one occurred practically immediately after
substantial gift of $50 or $1oo. That came from Bullard's death. Sachs credited a comparable
a man named Paul Sachs. I said, 'Who is change in his own collecting taste to the ex-
he?""43 Forbes would quickly learn. ample of the French collector Leon Bonnat:
"He influenced me by his example to move
When in 1911 Sachs made his first gift of art to from Prints into the more hazardous and
the Fogg, of prints, Forbes wrote to him, exciting field of Master Drawings."'47 Signifi-
"While I was looking at them Mr. Francis cantly, the Bonnat collection included not
Bullard, whom you know, is the leading print only the old masters but also a magnificent
collector of Boston and one of the Committee selection of nineteenth-century French draw-
on the Fogg Museum, came in. He looked ings, and this same range would eventually be
them over with me, and was much pleased."'44 seen in the Sachs collection as well.
The next year Forbes wrote concerning some
other print acquisitions that he evidently When Edward Forbes mused upon his rela-
thought would please Sachs: "We are also on tionship with Sachs, who became associate
the point of buying a few Turner etchings of director of the Fogg and worked with him as
the Liber Studiorum. Mr. Bullard urges an equal, he noted that "Some of our patrons
very strongly the importance of building and benefactors gravitated naturally to him
up our already fine collection of the Liber and some to me."'48 In the case of Grenville
Studiorum...."1145
Winthrop in his later years, this can be ac-
counted for on the basis of taste. As Forbes
Sachs quickly became more interested in art said, "... I have never been able to share Paul's
than in his family's New York investment enthusiasm for all the French painters of the
business. Forbes asked him to work at the nineteenth century. He would agree with what
Fogg, and he came up to Cambridge in De- Clive Bell said in his lecture in the Fogg Mu-
cember 1914 to look for a house. He purchased seum the other day (January, 1950), in which
Shady Hill, the Federal-style mansion in a he exalted the French nineteenth century to a
secluded grove in Cambridge in which Charles pinnacle."' 49 One need look no further than
Eliot Norton had been born, lived, and died the circumstantial evidence of an abrupt shift
(no. 65). And in 1915 Sachs secured a major in collecting from prints to drawings on the
Venetian painting for the Fogg that had been

part of Sachs and then Winthrop in the late
in the collection of John Ruskin. The man

iios, and the formation of a collection by
from whom Sachs purchased it, a pupil of Winthrop in which French nineteenth-century
Ruskin, wrote that "It was the finest of art would be exalted "to a pinnacle," to dis-
Ruskin's Tintorettos, & was much admired by

cern the strength of Sachs's example.'50
him, and by John [sic] Eliot Norton, his
friend."' 46 It is obvious that from the begin-

The pictorial tastes of the two collectors did
ning Paul J. Sachs was a passionate art collec-

not exactly coincide. Winthrop never became
tor steeped in the same context of Turner,

interested in the old masters; he never lost his
48
affection for the Pre-Raphaelites whom Sachs, ... I think "Nocturne in Blue and Silver" is a work
despite his early appreciation of Norton and of art, but ... a very incomplete one; an admirable
Ruskin, seems not to have admired; and he beginning, but that it in no sense whatever shews
never came to appreciate the aesthetic of the the finish of a complete work of art. I am led to the
sketch. However wide-ranging his tastes be- conclusion because while I think the picture has
came, they always centered upon his first lesson many good qualities ... it is deficient in form, and
from the Liber Studiorum: Winthrop always form is as essential as color.'52
preferred the finished composition. Even late
in his life, when he began to collect Impres- Winthrop, however, eventually recognized the
sionist painting, he sought out more finished subtle artistry of Whistler's constructions and
examples with relatively discreet facture, as if

amassed a considerable collection. In 1941, two
he remembered the deprecating comparisons years before his death, he bought the very
made by men such as Charles Herbert Moore: work, Nocturne in Blue and Silver, which had
been introduced at the trial as evidence of
To set up this incomplete impressionist conception Whistler's incompetence. Winthrop had also
and treatment of things as a finality is arbitrary and acquired, several years before, the Days of
reprehensible.... The English Pre-Raphaelites lost Creation by Burne-Jones, which had been
this [pictorial] balance by the over-elaboration of praised by Ruskin in the same libelous review
sharply defined details. The impressionist reaction in which he excoriated Whistler.'53 So little
may prove a good remedy for this defect, but remained of the print collector in Winthrop,
equally wide of the mark in an opposite direction. however, that he never bought any Whistler
... We get the fullest and truest illustration of the

etchings, although Norton and even John
fundamental principles of painting yet reached in

Ruskin himself had grudgingly admired them.
the art of Venice only.'5'
"As the years passed, Mr. Winthrop came to
Interestingly, the Pre-Raphaelite painting

... much that his first teacher had neither
collected by Winthrop was always that kind talked of nor thought about."'154 Thus Sachs
favored by Moore, Norton, and Ruskin after

memorialized the broadening of Winthrop's
their Venetian "conversions." Winthrop owned

artistic vision beyond the horizons of Charles
no landscapes such as those Moore himself

Eliot Norton. In one of his very rare confes-
had painted; he favored the richly colored

sions of aesthetic faith (which, so far as surviv-
figure pieces of Rossetti and Burne-Jones.

ing correspondence indicates, were in his later
years made only to Sachs), Winthrop admitted
Winthrop also came to collect the works-

to the catholicity of his taste: "As you know I
both figure pieces and landscapes of James

have been pegging away for many years-over
A. McNeill Whistler, that painter vilified by

forty years-looking for beauty and believing
Ruskin and categorized by contemporary

that every country and every period has pro-
critics as the leading representative of the

duced something beautiful which is ready to
Impressionist movement in Britain. Ironically, disclose itself."'55 And it was to Sachs that
it was Burne-Jones himself, testifying for the

Winthrop wrote the single letter in which the
defendant Ruskin at the trial in which Whis-

collector attempted to define the construction
tler would eventually win a judgment for libel,

of the beauty that he sought, in the context of
who best defined the position of conservative

this letter referring explicitly to one art form
advocates for Turnerian composition:

but implicitly everywhere, as evidenced by his
art collection, which by 1934 ranged from the contagion of example that beauty was the supreme
49
abstract reticence of archaic Chinese jades to value in life.... Of course, the very ardor and
the far more descriptive poise of Ingres's superiority to compromise with which he held his
Raphael and the Fornarina. Winthrop reduced unconventional gospel of beauty could not but
his prescription for beauty to a diagram: arouse opposition in the average man.'58
Simplicity
The same year that Winthrop took Norton's
Proportion Culminating in
courses in Florentine and Venetian art,
Scale
Balance | Beauty 156

Norton began his first lecture with the pro-
Harmony J
nouncement: "Beauty should be the aim of
every right-minded man of character."'59
Grenville Winthrop was a "right-minded man
of character," and he certainly was not your
average man." He was too reticent, of course,
It should not surprise us that beauty was to leave his memoirs, but the pages of careful
the chief criterion of value for Grenville notes that he took in Norton's courses do
Winthrop. As has been indicated, even his survive. They confirm the primacy his profes-
Harvard geology professor valorized beauty, sor placed upon beauty. Here is Winthrop's
finding it evidence of the highest level of hu- record from an early lecture in the same
man evolution. And for Charles Eliot Norton course (fig. 15):
beauty was the single most important attribute
of human life, and nowhere more needed than Beauty is better than the good, because it includes
in America: the Good.... If we can do anything which will cause
us to appreciate Beauty in any form so that it will
... no where in the civilized world are the practical make our characters more harmonious and gentle
concerns of life more engrossing; nowhere are the we are gaining one of the most important pleasures
conditions of life more prosaic; nowhere is ... the that life has to offer to us.'60
love of beauty less diffused. The concern for
beauty, as the highest end of work, forms no part The very last lecture that the undergraduate
of our character as a nation.... the absence of the Winthrop heard from Norton closed with
love of beauty is an indication of a lack of the these words:
highest intellectual quality, but it is also no less
an indication of the lack of the highest moral The highest source of pleasure is love of Beauty....
disposition. 157
Most men never rise above well bred animals....
Youth has its share of Beauty but young men
Norton was determined to inculcate a sense generally consider Beauty as holding second place
for beauty at least within the susceptible instead of first place as it should do. What does
youths in his own Harvard classes, and grate- success mean? There is no success worth having
ful alumni testified that he occasionally which is not moral. Happiness in life consists in the
succeeded: fact that success is always in the power of each
individual to attain for himself.'6'
The inspiring quality of Norton's "Fine Arts 3" and
"4" lay in their attitude rather than their subject Thus we see that Norton was not content to
matter-in his power to make you feel by the leave the harmonizing, gentling powers of
.'.''.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. . .
Wz' s X l l E | ! | | | l l ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~"I .... g
...... wm_ _-I | I I | .................. _ 11F h -'*.E H. ..... .. .................... ...
*.;.''5'-1111|1~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~g .. ......l S S_1
T?__ ...............................................................ll_ fil<_xr ,.,.,,, ..
. ,'.Jm~~~~~~m * St, 57l25 ei2,seae--B> PO_7*@vx4; <w>
....--1 l I | I I 1 I * _ L 's - - !~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.......
Fi.'.Grnil .'Wnho,NtsTkna etr by Chre IEJo Norto in Fin Art IV (Foetn Art) 15(o.6
51
beauty in the sensory or aesthetic realm. There every period" was for him the far boundary of
was always a moral dimension, which, as a self-revelation. We are left to assume that
professor of art history, he located within the because the search for beauty literally shaped
context of human civilizations. To quote a the life of this transparently high-minded
memoir by a friend: man, he felt that he had lived up to the stric-
tures of his professor.
He found the significance of art very much in its
presentation of historic phases of the moral
character of a people, or in the civic conditions at
an epoch,-not so much in its absolute beauty per
se; indeed, he seemed to me always unsatisfied with In his concern for the development of a sense
beauty as an end in itself, and restless till he could for beauty in his Harvard students, Norton
give it an intellectual value or moral relation.'62

had not supposed that he was educating art-
ists. Indeed, one of his and Charles Herbert
His retrospective classification of historical Moore's primary tenets was that instruction in
morality by its expression of beauty was analo- drawing should be instituted at Harvard Col-
gous to but also subtly different from the lege to benefit fledgling appreciators of art
perfusion of moral argument in the work of rather than artists. The latter were presumed,
Ruskin, who believed that beauty could en- correctly, to be in short supply among the
gender as well as reflect the moral condition

undergraduates. But Winthrop's diagram for
of man. These viewpoints are essential to a

Sachs of the principles compositional prin-
consideration of the formation of the aesthet-

ciples, it should be noted-that culminated in
ics of Grenville Winthrop, which otherwise

beauty were in a letter in which he was ex-
seem easily to fall into the "art for art's sake"

pressing his hopes for the professional educa-
modality of his generation. Norton specifically

tion of a kind of artist: the landscape architect;
rejected that aesthetic posture, significantly,

and the letter was an invitation to Sachs to
in his introduction to Ruskin's lectures to

come see how Winthrop himself had put such
Oxford University students:

principles into practice: "... please arrange
your stay [at Groton Place] so that I may have
[The Fine Arts] are the ultimate expressions of the

the pleasure of ... showing you the kind of
mental state of individuals and of nations. The

landscape work I am so keen to have the
significance of this truth has not yet been fully

schools teach the coming generation...."164
recognized. Historians have failed to apply it to the
elucidation and interpretation of the past experi-

Sachs's ultimate interest in Winthrop lay in
ences and conditions of man, while the votaries of

his art collection and his intention to be-
art for art's sake lose sight of the most intimate

queath it to Harvard, which Winthrop had
and exquisite quality of art, neglecting a correlation

confided to Sachs as early as 1919, when he had
no less close and indissoluble than that of the

distanced himself from the Boston museum,
physical forces of the universe. 163

virtually ceased collecting Turner prints, and
shown the beginnings of an interest in draw-
Winthrop himself never insisted upon any

ings.165 As early as 1916, in Sachs's words,
moral dimension of his sense for beauty. His

"Winthrop's home had been one of the high
articulation to Sachs of his motive and crite-

spots on my yearly trips with students at the
rion for collecting art from "every country and

holiday seasons, "166 referring here to trips to
52 New York City to visit museums, galleries, actual compositions out of his art objects:
and private collections. But Sachs's words-
"Winthrop's home"-must be set against When the curve of his life was descending he rarely
Winthrop's own, those of his will, in which he accepted invitations to dine or go to a concert or
specified the very bequest upon which Sachs play; he preferred to devote hours of meditative
had set his sights for so many years: "I give idleness to the dreams of assembling this unique
and bequeath to ... Harvard College ... my collection which he hoped might inspire future
collection of drawings ... and all other works generations of American youth.... After a lonely
of art ... located in the house at No. 15 East dinner [Winthrop] would move about the shadows
8ist Street, New York, N.Y., and in my home hanging his drawings or cataloguing them, or
in Lenox, Massachusetts...."67 rearranging the Chinese jades and gilt bronzes....
In each cabinet he patiently sought for a distribu-
What was a "home" to Sachs was a "house" to tion.. that would result in perfect harmony and
Winthrop, the one that contained virtually all balance.... the cabinets were poems of balanced
of his art collection. But "my home" in Lenox composition.'70
contained the Turner prints, and it was the
site of Winthrop's personal artistic expression Visualizing the reclusive, anti-intellectual
of beauty. Even Sachs eventually, and grudg- aristocrat padding about in the dark, one re-
ingly, had to admit to its significance to

calls Ruskin's words: "... true composition is
Winthrop. In a bread-and-butter note after inexplicable.... If you do not feel it, no one
that portentous weekend in the country when can by reasoning make you feel it. And the
Winthrop had offered Rogers's Italy, Sachs

highest composition is so subtle, that it is apt
wrote, "It was a delight also to see the grounds to become unpopular......171
all about the house, and to realize with every
step that the same constructive imagination has

Again in Birnbaum's words, we learn that
gone into the creation of those grounds and

Winthrop devoted the same kind of attention
into the placing of stones and trees, that I have

to his grounds at Groton Place:
long observed in your activity as a collector."' 68
Mr. Winthrop, who had visited the charming
It is important to note that Sachs recognized

English town [Groton] about 191 1, attempted to
in Winthrop's work as a landscape artist its

reproduce its atmosphere at Lenox. With infinite
quality as a composition. An obsession with

patience he drew plans of his grounds to scale, and
the arrangement of elements into unities was

never tired of planting trees, laying out attractive
also an aspect of Winthrop's art collecting,

paths, constructing fountains on his spacious
which Sachs must have observed, as did lawns.... 172
Martin Birnbaum, who reported upon it in his
memoirs. Birnbaum characterized Winthrop's

Winthrop's activities as a landscape designer at
compositions both in terms of his endeavors

Lenox were ultimately as uninteresting to
to amass representative ensembles-"examples

Birnbaum as they were to Sachs, from a com-
covering the artist's entire career"' 69-by

parable vested interest in the art collection in
favorites such as Ingres and, more poignantly,

New York City. Thus clues to their importance
of his pleasure in old age in imagining the

to Winthrop are only circumstantial and infer-
perfectly compiled collection. And he waxed

ential; the most important in this analysis of
poetic about Winthrop's obsessive creation of

such a reticent man is the note of urgency that
TURNER * RUSKIN * NORTON - WINTHROP
well as individual specimens. He created in

53
nature a series of monochromatic views that
featured radiant vistas and massed shadows: a
Liber Studiorum (figs. 16 and 20).
Winthrop's appreciation for the effect of shad-
ows in the constructed landscape was not a
unique perception; a nineteenth-century
British writer was specific in his recommenda-
tion to the garden designer. Note how the
beginning of this passage reflected the increas-
ing elevation of the status of the profession
by an identification with the architect of
buildings:
Light and shade is what an architect of sound
Fig. 16. Edwin came into his letters when he spoke of them.
feeling will always aim to procure.... In a garden
Hale Lincoln, The visit to Groton Place by Sachs that culmi-
scene, too, ... an immense deal of the beauty will
Terrace and nated in the offer of Rogers's Italy was pre-
depend upon the nice arrangement of parts to
secure these.... It is towards evening, when the

Place (no. 76b). ceded by a brief letter of invitation containing
this uncharacteristically declarative sentence:

stillness and softness of the air, or the glory of the
"I want Mrs. Sachs and you to see the beauti-

descending sun, incite to a closer communion with
ful effect of shadows as the sun goes down."'73

Nature, that shadows will be most conspicuous,
Shadows are only one element in landscape and most rapidly changing.'74
design, of course, yet they were singularly
important to Winthrop, because the land-

One cannot imagine a more Turnerian image
"as the sun goes down," in Winthrop's words.
Fig. 1 7. Julius scape he created at Groton Place was excep-
Gayler, Gratan tional in its restriction to green-no flowers
Place, Moonlight allowed-and in its emphasis on larger Winthrop never made an explicit connection
(no. 61). masses -trees and not shrubs, and groves as

between the luminous compositions of lawn
and wood that he saw from his windows and
the plates from the Liber Studiorum that hung
on the walls within. That he appreciated the
analogy is implied, however, by a print,
Groton Place, Moonlight (no. 61, fig. 17), by
Julius Gayler, in which Winthrop's house and
trees behind it are rendered in etching and
aquatint on a plate that is within millimeters
of the size of those of the Liber and that was
printed in a comparable brownish ink. Here
the light source into which the viewer directly
gazes is not the setting sun but a rising moon.
Gayler was not primarily an etcher but rather
an architect, specializing in the country homes restoration project is of a piece with his at-
54
of the rich. He designed the fieldstone-walled, tempt at Groton Place to evoke his ancestral
slate-roofed main house at Groton Place, with home. There is every sign that the armigerous,
its suggestion, curious in a mansion of eleven Anglophiliac collector, whose family tree that
bedrooms, of the overhanging thatch of an hung framed in his study "was of such vast
English country cottage (fig. ii).'75 We hear of ramification that ... one might safely claim that
another association with Winthrop, in 1918, in the sun never set on the Winthrops,"'76 wanted
connection with the restoration of the century- to imbue his personal landscape with the his-
torical associations that scoffers such as Ruskin
had attributed to Britain and Turner but de-
AN", ~ ~ ~ ~ "'
nied to the United States and its artists, thus
denying the possibility of landscape beauty.
'4'~~~~~~~I
That Gayler was interested in Winthrop's
M . 4j." ..
grounds at Lenox is indicated by two drawn
views now in the Fogg collection,'77 but there
is no indication that anyone but Winthrop
was the landscape architect, nor is there rea-
son to doubt that he conceived of Groton
Place as a composed work of art. The refine-
ment of his conception, incomprehensible to
the "average man" (or in this case woman), is
revealed by a misunderstanding reported by
Birnbaum in a draft memoir:
The fine trees on his celebrated estate at Lenox,
Groton Place, were almost all planted by him, and
his landscape work won the Hunnewell Gold Medal
for the year 1935 [no. 77]. He used to tell an
amusing story of a visit by one of the large garden
clubs to Lenox. After he had shown his beautiful
[corrected to "broad"] acres to his guests, one lady
smilingly exclaimed, "And, now, Mr. Winthrop,
won't you show us your garden?"' 78
Fig. 18. Edwin old courthouse that seirved as the library build-
Hale Lincoln, ing in Lenox, a project funded by Winthrop.
Grunit Plae, The men became close friends, and Gayler
1930 (no. 76a). visited Winthrop in New York until the latter's
death and also came to Lenox frequently, even

The reconciliation or improvement of the
demonstrating printmaking techniques at the

natural landscape with the forms of art had
Lenox Library, doubtless under Winthrop's

preoccupied English garden designers, picto-
patronage.
rial artists, and print connoisseurs at least
since the mid-eighteenth century, and their
Winthrop's hiring of Gayler for a historic
concerns took on a new life in the United
States by the middle of the nineteenth. Thus landscape modification.... Is it absurdly incomplete
55
the Englishman William Gilpin, whose writ- to say as I do that the prime object of a work of art
ings around 18oo on the picturesque as per- is to affect the emotions?... You see I want to
ceived in nature and produced in art would distinguish the motive & purpose of what I have to
have tremendous influence, had "lament[ed] call gardening from that of the florist & confec-
that it is not often that mountainous land- tioner, on the one side, & from that of the engineer
scape in particular, 'coincides with the rules of & bricklayer on the other.... the public indifference
beauty and composition.""79 The constant to it-no, not the public indifference but the
issue in British landscape art became the rela- indifference of the proper leaders of the public in
tion of "the rules of beauty and composition" matters of art-ought to be exploded.'8'
to the truth of nature, with Turner and the
Pre-Raphaelite landscape painters presenting, As usual Norton was not optimistic about the
as has been noted, particularly compelling public, but he did second Olmsted's identifi-
targets for critical attack and Ruskinian de- cation as art of a landscape architecture that
fense. The confusion carried even to the level was neither flowers nor bricks-exactly the
of the vernacular; here is a snippet of dialogue landscape that Winthrop would create at
from a young woman's drawing manual: Groton Place:
"ELLEN. -I have three subjects to show you, A fine art seems to me to be any form of labor
Mamma.... directed to the expression of thought, feeling or
emotion in beautiful forms or modes; as an art of
MAMM. -... The moonlight scene is the repre- expression it must awaken corresponding thoughts,
sentation of some place which I am not acquainted feelings, and emotions [in those] who see or hear
with; it is, however, particularly beautiful. How its work. Beauty being its distinctive characteristic
very natural!"'80 it must always appeal to the emotions awakened by
the perception of beauty. From this, it is plain that
And it reached new heights of cultural com- to appreciate any high work of art requires a
plexity in the United States. Barbara Novak considerable degree of cultivation. And here it
has eloquently presented the evolution of the seems to me is your only error, you expect too
issue in American nineteenth-century thought much from men who have not culture enough to
and art in her Nature and Culture: American enable them even intellectually to conceive of such
Landscape and Painting, 1825-i875, and, with- a state of mind as yours, much less to appreciate
out recapitulation, her discussion can be ex- beauty where you see it.'82
tended on the most particular and local level
by quoting an exchange of letters in i88i be- It was Olmsted's disciple Charles Eliot who
tween Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles would voice the specific landscape aesthetic
Eliot Norton. Olmsted, frustrated and con- that Winthrop adopted for Groton Place.
fused by his inability to win recognition for Eliot, it should be mentioned, carried through
his art of landscape architecture, wrote to plans initiated by Norton with Olmsted for
Norton for reassurance of the validity of his the sympathetic subdivision of his wooded
conceptions: estate, Shady Hill, forced by rising taxes in the
189os. Significantly, Eliot located in the na-
Where shall I find the definition of art which I want tion's historic past his definition of the beauti-
to correct me-a definition which will include

ful in landscape architecture for the country
56 house. In "Six Old American Country-Seats,"
to quote the title of his essay, the first country
place to which he alluded was none other than
that of John Winthrop, first governor of
Massachusetts, the ancestor Grenville vener-
ated. In reference to a late eighteenth-century
species set within landscapes that owed much Fig. I 9. John
estate near Cambridge, Eliot said,
i3 E . t .: .:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. .......
Here is not one rare tree, not a single vegetable or
architectural wonder, not one flower or ribbon-
border; only common trees, grass, and water,
smooth ground, and a plain building. The scene is
interesting, impressive, and lovable, and it is this
solely by reason of the simplicity, breadth, and
harmony of its composition.'83
species set within landscapes that owed much Fig. 19. John
Referring to the old country seats collectively, in format and even technical handling to the Robert Cozens,
he went on: precedents provided by both Sandby's Welsh Hawthorne, 1789
views and Claude in reproduction in Earlom's
Their power over the mind and heart consists Liber Veritatis. And trees were, of course, the
chiefly in the unity of the impression which they principal obsession of the growing nature
make. Their scenery is artificial in the sense that movement in late nineteenth-century
Nature, working alone, would never have pro- America, when the closing of the frontier had
duced it, but the art which had here "mended emptied the ax and plow of their positive
nature," to use Shakespeare's phrase, has here, symbolism as emblems of progress.185 The
by judicious thinning, helped Nature to grow great moral basis of the tree-planting campaign,
trees.... "Almost all natural landscapes are re- marked by such events as the founding of
dundant sources of more or less confused beauty, Arbor Day and also of Harvard's Arnold
out of which the human instinct of invention can ... Arboretum in the early 1870s, surely lay in
arrange not a better treasure, but one ... having such passages as John Ruskin's identification
this great virtue, that there shall be nothing which of love of trees as the test of the good man:
does not contribute to the effect of the whole."
... these [are the] good words of Mr. Ruskin.'84 ... this race of plants, deserving boundless affection
and admiration from us, becomes, in proportion to
The culture of "great trees" as a principal their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our being
structural element in the "natural" ordered in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no
landscape had begun much earlier in Britain, one can be far wrong in either who loves the trees
as part of the reaction against the symmetries enough, and every one is assuredly wrong in both
of flowering parterres. By the end of the eigh- who does not love them ... if human life be cast
teenth century, prints of trees provided mod- among trees at all, the love borne to them is a sure
els of these new gardening concepts for the test of its purity.'86
landscape draftsman and even for the aspiring
estate owner; a set of trees by John Robert Grenville Winthrop cast his life among the
Cozens (no. 43, fig. 19) presented individual trees, and he kept his Turners among them.'87
57
Fig. 20. Edwin
Hale Lincoln,
Visto of Lawn and
Trees, Grotan
Place (na. 76c).
Whether one turns to particular impressions This invocation of beauty's power to harmo-
of individual plates from the Liber Studiorum nize and gentle the soul to the benefit of a
recommended by Ruskin, such as Procris and lifetime echoes in the consoling words that
Cephalus, Hedging and Ditching, and Mill near Winthrop in old age offered to a bereaved
the Grand Chartreuse (nos. 11, 12,14), and friend: "Fortunately Time in passing causes
especially Esacus and Hesperie (no. 15, fig. 13), sad memories to grow dim and happy ones to
"the most consummate example" of "the come to the fore. Otherwise, it seems to me,
management of the upper boughs,"'88 or to the accumulation of sadness would be unbear-
photographs that he commissioned of his own able."'9" Were the happy memories for
trees (no. 76, figs. i8, 20), it is evident that he Winthrop the words of Norton and through
possessed a special sense for trees ordered him those of Ruskin, which had brought him
imaginatively into compositions "culminating the pleasures of friendship and the prints of
in beauty," the realized ideal of the student Turner? Did he dream these green thoughts in
who had taken to heart his professor's words: the green shade of Groton Place?
If we can do anything which will cause us to
appreciate Beauty in any form so that it will make
our characters more harmonious and gentle we are
gaining one of the most important pleasures that
life has to offer to us.'89
Notes
References
8. Norton to Charles William Eliot, 15 January 1874
59
(HL, bMS Am1826.389, copy of a letter in the collection
In the following references, the locations of manuscript of the Boston Athenaeum).
sources and other unique documents are indicated by
abbreviations in parentheses: 9. The Norton bequest was that of Susan Norton,
granddaughter of Charles Eliot Norton, received by the
Fogg Museum in 1989. Through her parents she was the
AAA Martin Birnbaum Papers, Archives of
inheritor of a portion of his print collection, including
American Art-Smithsonian Institution,
several Turner prints (nos. 13c, 17b) and also old master
consulted on microfilm in Boston
and reproductive prints that pertained directly to his
FAMA Fogg Art Museum Archives, Harvard
friendship with Ruskin and his teaching at Harvard.
University Art Museums
Notable among these are works with Venetian
HL The Houghton Library, Harvard
associations (nos. 37, 44).
University
HUA Harvard University Archives
io. Numbers referred to in parentheses throughout this
MFAA Museum of Fine Arts Archives, Boston
essay are those of works in the Checklist.
The author would like to thank the above archives and ii. The reader is recommended to Eaves 1992 for an
libraries for their kind permission to publish material extraordinary analysis of the British print publishing
in their physical possession. industry of the period.
12. Parris 1973, p. 55; Robertson 1984, p. 44.

Notes
1. Herrmann 1ggo, p. 187.

13. Griffiths 1987, pp. 263-70.
2. Ruskin 1878, p. 44. 14. Monkhouse 1879, p. 57.
3. At "a pleasant literary party" at the London home of

15. Parris 1973, pp. 15-16.
Charles and Mary Lyell, according to a letter from
Norton to his family. I am indebted to James Turner 16. Rawlinson 1906, pp. xxi-ii, xxiv.
for this reference.
17. Ruskin 1903, 12 (Lectures on Architecture and
4. John Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton, [November Painting), p. 126.
1856], quoted in Bradley and Ousby 1987, p. 30. Every
effort has been made to transcribe quotations exactly

i8. Ruskin 1903,15 (Elements of Drawing), p. 218; this
from their source, including irregular spellings and

passage was added in the third edition, 1859.
grammatical constructions.
19. Ruskin 1903, 13, p. xxvi, quoting from a letter dated
5. In fact, Sachs did not accept the gift; as he reported 21 February 1852.
back to Winthrop, the Fogg already owned a complete
set of proofs of Rogers's Italy (see no. 78). Perhaps in 20. Ibid., p. xxvii, n. 1.
making his offer, Winthrop had recalled that in 1910
the Museum had been glad to borrow for exhibition

21. Ruskin 1903, 22 (Aratra Pentelici), p. 329.
twenty-nine plates from the publication from him,
together with many other engravings after Turner

22. Charles Herbert Moore to Norton, 5 August 1878
(Fogg Museum registrar's records, TL5-67).

(no. 63; HL, bMS Amio88.4783).
6. Norton 1898, n.p.

23. Brooke 1885, p. xvi. Brooke went on to recommend
that the student purchase a photograph of a Liber print
7. Shaler 1893, p. 263.

from the South Kensington Museum and on it redraw
the lines of the etching in contrasting ink "to illuminate
the whole photograph and make it of greater value" (p. 35. Ibid., p. 434, n. 1, quoting William George
6o
xviii). Rawlinson.
24. Wedmore and Short 1890. The gravure plates were 36. Ruskin 1903, 21 (Ruskin's Art Collections, Oxford),
reworked by Short himself. p. 224.
25. See Dickason 1953, Stein 1967, and Ferber and 37. See Ruskin 1903, 22 (Ariadne Florentina), pp. 471-72,
Gerdts 1985 for the American Pre-Raphaelites. Those where Ruskin deplored the neglect of Turner prints by
with the closest association with Norton, apart from crowds who flocked to shop-window displays of Dore's
Moore, were Russell Sturgis, a young architect in the works.
Ruskinian mode whom Norton later promoted to
design Harvard's Civil War memorial (which, though 38. Ruskin 1903,15 (Elements of Drawing), p. 131.
not by Sturgis, remains the University's dominating
monument to Ruskin's influence on the arts in 39. The adjectives "withdrawn, monastic" replace
America); Thomas C. Farrer, an English emigre who "individual," which Ruskin struck through in the
had studied in Ruskin's workingman's drawing school original letter (HL, bMS Amio88.5937). "Individual,"
in London, who was probably introduced to Norton by while more intelligible, lacks the instinctive reach by
Sturgis in order to see Norton's small collection of Ruskin in every breath past the merely descriptive to
paintings and drawings by British Pre-Raphaelites, and the metaphoric.
who taught drawing in Ashfield in 1865-66; John Henry
Hill, a painter and etcher who studied Turner in 40. John Ruskin to Norton, 8 August 1867 (no. 62),
England in 1863-64 (no. 32) and upon return traveled quoted in Bradley and Ousby 1987, pp. 104-5. Ruskin
to Ashfield to see Norton, and who taught etching to had just sent Norton fourteen Liber plates and several
Moore; and Henry B. Newman, whose Study of Pigeons Turner drawings.
was purchased by Norton as early as 1864. Many
drawings by these artists are in the collection of the 41. Norton 1874a, p. 6.
Fogg Art Museum, some with a Norton provenance,
others the gift or purchase of Norton pupils, and still 42. Ruskin 1903, 20 (Lectures on Art), pp. 15-i6.
others by transfer from the Fine Arts Department,
which under the guidance of Norton and Moore in the 43. Ruskin to Norton, 27 January 1875, quoted in
1870s and 188os had acquired them as teaching aids. Bradley and Ousby 1987, p. 352.
26. Fogg Art Museum, Gift of Samuel Sachs, 1919.506. 44. Norton to George E. Woodberry, 31 July 1881,
quoted in Norton 1913, 2, pp. 121-22.
27. Lewis 1975, p. 128.
45. Roper 1973, pp. 345, 391.
28. Moore to Norton, 8 April i866, quoted in Mather
1957, p. 26. 46. Norton 1895, p. 347.
29. Cary 1900, p. 45. 47. Winthrop 1885-86, p. 103.
30. Ruskin 1903, 15 (Elements of Drawing), pp. 161-63. 48. Norton to Frederick Law Olmsted, 22 January 1883
(HL, bMS Am1o88.2-Box 5).
31. Ibid., p. 163.
49. Ruskin to Norton, 24 September 1871, quoted in
32. Moore, "Painting," the section titled "Composi-

Bradley and Ousby 1987, p. 239.
tion," p. 1.
50. Ruskin 1903,15 (Laws of Fesole), p. 342. See Kemp
33. Ruskin 1903, 7 (Modern Painters), pp. 224, 205. 1991, pp. 223-44, for a discussion of Ruskin's relation-
ship to the founder of the South Kensington system of
34. Ibid., p. 434, n. drawing instruction.
51. Ruskin to Norton, 3 April 1871, 9 June [1871], 67. "Turner," Boston Evening Transcript (1 May 1874): 6.
6i
quoted in Bradley and Ousby 1987, pp. 226, 231.
68. Ziff 1984, p. 28, quoting a "Boston Newspaper
52. Wedmore and Short 1890. Printed at the bottom of reporter" as quoted by Mark Twain in A Tramp
the title page: "NOTE:-The Etchings are printed on Abroad. Records in the Department of European
cartridge paper, and are not fastened in the body of the Painting of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, attribute
work, so that they may be withdrawn at will and placed the quotation to a reporter from the Boston Evening
before the student for copying, or transferred to the Transcript.
collector's portfolio."
69. "Turner," Boston Evening Transcript (i May 1874): 6.
53. Strange 1908, pp. xii-xiii. This publication contains
a number of letters from Ruskin concerning the Liber 70. Moore 1878, p. 3.
Studiorum, its reproduction by Short, and its use in
teaching. 71. Santayana 1967, p. 155.
54. Norton 1913, 1, pp. 24-25. 72. Moore to Norton, 5 August 1878 (no. 63, HL).
55. See Bailey 1900, pp. 10-28, and Eliot 1887 concern- 73. The Harvard Advocate, 33, no. 3 (17 March 1882): 26.
ing Perkins and his work.
74. Ballowe 1967, p. 61, quoting Santayana's "The Spirit
56. G. 1909, pp. 18-19. and Ideals of Harvard University," The Educational
Review (April 1894).
57. Cohn 1986, pp. 258-66.
75. Eliot 1886, pp. 44-45.
58. Norton to Moore, 7 January 1870 (HL, Autograph
File). 76. Forbes 1955, p. 2.
59. Moore to Norton, 6 February 1873 (HL, bMS

77. Mather 1957, p. 57.
Amio88.4766).
78. Harvard Illustrated Magazine, 7, no. 7 (April 1906 ):
60. Norton to Eliot, 22 April 1898 (HUA). n.p.
61. Norton to Ruskin, io January 1874, quoted in 79. Norton to Elizabeth Gaskell, 26 December 1859,
Bradley and Ousby 1987, pp. 302-3. quoted in Norton 1913, 1, p. 202.
62. Norton to Ruskin, io February 1874, quoted in 80. Norton i888, p. 320.
Bradley and Ousby 1987, p. 305.
81. Norton to Edward Lee-Childe, 29 November 1884,
63. Ruskin to Norton, 9 April 1874, quoted in Bradley quoted in Norton 1913, 2, p. 168.
and Ousby 1987, p. 312.
82. Shaler 1893, p. 276.
64. Norton to Ruskin, 4 May 1874, quoted in Bradley
and Ousby 1987, p. 315. Norton repeated the Turner 83. Ibid., p. 263. Darwin had also considered the issue
lectures and also mounted a small exhibition in of the human aesthetic sense; he believed it derived
Concord, Mass., two years later; see The Concord from sexual competition and that it resided in the
Freeman, i, no. 45 (lo February 1876): 1. female, who would chose her mate on the basis of his
attractiveness. I am greatly indebted to Cronin 1991 for
65. "The 'Liber Studiorum,"' Boston Evening Transcript understanding in these matters. Although the author
(3o April 1874): 4. does not mention Shaler, she provides an excellent
analysis in historical perspective.
66. Norton to Ruskin, 4 May 1874 (see n. 64 above).
93. Wharton to Mary Cadwalader Jones, 12 June 1925,

84. Ibid., p. 261.
62
quoted in Wharton 1988, p. 485.
85. Shaler 1909, p. 265. Shaler was disillusioned by the
lecture; quoting from Mrs. Shaler's journal: "Mr. Shaler 94. New York Times (7, 8, 9 September 1924): 1. The
was exasperated by the statement [Ruskin] made that headlines above one story, the second front-page
men of science had given no attention to so remarkable coverage in as many days: "NEWS OF ELOPEMENT
a phenomenon as the flight of birds. On his way out he UNNERVES WINTHROP / Treated for Shock Due to
said to one of the professors, 'Is it possible that Ruskin Daughters' Marriage to Chauffeur and Electrician I
knows nothing of Marais' great work on the flight of WHERE THEY ARE SECRET / Parent's Frequent
birds?' 'Of course, he knows all about it, but it doesn't Absences in New York Furnished Opportunities for
suit his purpose to recognize it here.' 'Hypocrite!' Wooing in Automobile." The social distinction be-
exclaimed Mr. Shaler...." tween a chauffeur and an electrician was the subject of
editorial comment. Winthrop must have suffered in-
86. Waldstein 1903, pp. 20-21. tensely even beyond the trauma of the realization of his
fears for his daughters. See Owens 1984, p. 42, for anec-
87. Shaler 1898, pp. 781, 777, 777-78, 779-80. dotal accounts of Winthrop and his daughters in Lenox.
88. Livingstone 1987, pp. 113-14,120, quoting Shaler's 95. Ruskin 1903, 7 (Modern Painters), pp. 346-48.
American Highways: A Popular Account of Their
Conditions and of the Means by Which They May Be 96. Wecter 1937, p. 8.
Bettered (1896).
97. Francis Bullard to Winthrop, 19 July 1912 (FAMA).
89. Grenville Lindall Winthrop to Paul J. Sachs, 26
April 1937 (FAMA). In fact, three members of the class 98. Forbes 1955, pp. 49-50. A letter from Norton to
of i886 would eventually be counted among the Winthrop (no. 74) directly connects the three men: on
greatest American art collectors: Winthrop, Hearst, and 31 July 1905 Norton invited Winthrop to spend a long
Charles Loesser, whose old master drawings, including weekend at Ashfield because "Frank Bullard is going to
sheets by Durer, Raphael, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, spend next Sunday with us...." Winthrop tipped the
and Claude Lorrain, were bequeathed to the Fogg. letter into the first volume of his copy of Norton 1913,
now in the Harvard College Library.
go. Quoted in Birnbaum 1960, p. 182.
99. Bullard to Norton, from the R.M.S. Baltic, 16 March
91. Edith Wharton to Sara Norton, 30 September 1907 (FAMA, copy). Norton closed his reply, dated 13
[1902], quoted in Wharton 1988, p. 72. The editor April 1907: "Give my kind regards to Mr. Winthrop"
incorrectly identified Winthrop as a son of Egerton (FAMA, copy).
Winthrop (1838-1916), one of Wharton's mentors and
closest friends; in fact Grenville Winthrop was Egerton loo. Birnbaum 1960, p. loo.
Winthrop's third cousin once removed. Egerton's son
Egerton was a class ahead of Winthrop at Harvard, and 101. Updike 1934, pp. 37-38.
they were confused even in the official registrar's
records of the University. One such confusion makes it 102. Winthrop to Morris Gray, 24 September 1916 (no.
impossible to tell which Winthrop received which 69, MFAA).
grade in Norton's course on ancient art.
103. Bullard 1910, p. 86.
92. Winthrop joined the board of the Lenox Library
Association in 1903 and became its president in 1915. He 104. Norton 1913, 2, p. 368.
served until his death and was succeeded by Mrs.
William N. Bullard, Francis Bullard's sister-in-law. 105. Winthrop, whose health was excellent, did the
Winthrop was consistently among the library's largest expected: he graduated from Harvard Law School in
donors. The Association's annual reports provide a full 1889 and joined a New York firm. Finding legal practice
record of his activities. distasteful, he tried banking, which even within the
protected confines of the family firm, Robert equivalent in 1917 of the Turner catalogue published by
63
Winthrop & Company, was not palatable. After a few Winthrop for the Boston museum in 1916. Bullard had
years he abandoned all pretense of employment. bequeathed to the Fogg his impression of Pollaiuolo's
Battle of Nude Men in memory of his uncle (M377).
io6. Santayana 1944, pp. 234-36.
ii6. Charles Eliot Norton, in his introduction to John
107. See Kuklick 1977, especially p. 357, on Santayana's Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Brantwood edition (New
concern with evolution. I am indebted to this book and York: Macmillan, 1891), p. vi.
to correspondence with Professor Kuklick for
elucidation of the philosophical issues of the day at 117. Ruskin 1903,12 (Addresses on Decorative Colour),
Harvard and on Bullard in particular. pp. 488-89.
io8. Bullard 1904, Appendix, pp. 30, 39, 40, [3], 56, 57. 118. Moore 1882. The Durers were the figure of St. John
kneeling before God enthroned with seven candle-
109. Santayana 1896, p. 103. sticks, from the Apocalypse, and the figure of a swords-
man in the Ecce Homo, from the Great Passion (p1. 2, 3).
110. Ibid., p. 91. Given Moore's artistic sophistication it is surprising
that he misidentified a figural detail from a Boldrini
iii. Birnbaum 1960, p. 183. woodcut after Titian (pl. 4) as a "Portion of an old
wood-cut by LeFebre" (see no. 37, another LeFebre).
112. The Fogg Art Museum archives hold lists of books Probably he wanted to be able to quote Ruskin: "Mr.
in the Winthrop bequest. Notable for a man of his time Ruskin says of LeFebre, 'You may learn more of
and acquaintance is the lack of much Henry James, Titian's true power from LeFebre's engravings than
although he did own a substantial proportion of the

from any finer ones [etc.]."' (p. 7). The five Liber
work of Edith Wharton. His better tastes in literature Studiorum etchings that Moore included among his
are reflected in a collection of nineteenth-century poets

fourteen plates (pl. 7-11) included Flint Castle, Smug-
and Dickens first editions. Confirming Birnbaum's

glers Unloading (no. 5) and Ben Arthur (no. 17a). Moore
characterization, there are remarkably few art reference assured his student readers, "These five etchings ... are
books. Those that have to do with prints date largely among the most useful examples that the student of
from the late nineteenth century and the early years of landscape could have, on account of the expressive
the twentieth. The only art books that he acquired in character, and the economy of their lines" (p. 8).
quantity late in his life (judging by publication dates)
are on Asian art, relating to his interest in Chinese

119. Winthrop also owned several Durer engravings, all
jades, bronzes, and figural sculpture, which was a late Madonnas.
collecting interest. Winthrop's art reference books,
including his Turner print catalogues and a full run of 120. A summary list of Winthrop's prints is found in
Carrington's journal Print Collector's Quarterly, are

Fogg 1969, pp. 253-55.
used by Harvard researchers to this day, on the open
shelves of the Fine Arts Library; they can be identified

121. Another early visitor, who came to see "Turner
by his armorial bookplate.

publications" as well as other prints on 3 and 5 July
1899, was Gertrude Stein, in the company of her
113. The three: Life of Reason (1905), Three Philosophical brother Leo.
Poets (1910), and Soliloquies in England (1922).
122. Bullard to Moore, undated but referring to prints
114. Both letters survive in the Fogg Museum archives

that are discussed in other letters of 1goo (FAMA). In
as copies typed on the same machine that Bullard used

his correspondence with University officials, Bullard
for other correspondence.

was always careful to say that he asked only the price
that he had paid for a print.
115. Sachs 1954, pp. 114-15. Sachs organized a Bullard
memorial exhibition of quattrocento engravings, a

123. Moore, "Painting," in the section "Composition,"
loan show at the Fogg, and wrote its catalogue, the p. 6.
124. Bullard to Norton, 20 September 1908 (HL, bMS ink version from Finberg.
64
Amlo88.734).
134. Winthrop 1916, n.p.
125. Forbes 1955, p. 106.
135. This aspect of Turner's work on the Liber was
126. Sachs 1954, pp. 232-33. See Forbes 1955, p. 137, for a stressed in an article on mezzotint for Carrington's
different slant on the story, which has Bullard paying print journal, which was founded upon the Etching
some of the salary instead of Sachs. Revival's valuation of the original print and which
therefore had to make a special niche for mezzotint,
127. In his letter of 2 May 1938, long after Bullard's historically a reproductive process: "In making the
death and his own decision to bequeath his art mezzotint Turner regarded the picture in the same way
collection to Harvard, Winthrop revealed to Martin as, when painting the picture, he had regarded the
Birnbaum a sense of real competitiveness with the actual scene-that is, not as something to be mechani-
museum: "Friday morning I passed in the Museum of cally copied, but as the suggestion for a work of art.
Fine Arts and came away believing that the objects in [Here Turner's obsessive correction of proof impres-
No 15 [his New York house] ... can hold up their heads sions was discussed.] As a result, these plates of the
without needing in the least of making apologies" (AAA). 'Liber' are ... in no sense reproductions.... They are
pure Turner-that is to say, they are original works by
128. Winthrop to FitzRoy Carrington, 29 August 1913 the greatest landscape-painter who ever lived" (Norton
(MFAA). 1913a, p. 425). This defense of the original against the
taint of reproduction was mounted by none other than
129. Letters exchanged between Gardiner Martin Lane a son of Charles Eliot Norton.
and Winthrop, 15, 19, 31 October, 8 November 1913
(MFAA). 136. Winthrop to Carrington, 27 February 1917,
reporting an offer of sale from England (MFAA).
130. Winthrop to Carrington, 3 May 1915 (MFAA). Rawlinson's Liber collection, so rich in touched proofs,
had been purchased by Bullard and was thus already in
131. Carrington to Winthrop, 4 May 1915 (MFAA). the Boston museum. Many of the touched proofs of
engravings after Turner are now in the Yale Center for
132. These records of Winthrop's dealings with William British Art, New Haven.
Ward, Jr., and A.J. Finberg of the Cotswald Gallery, are
in the Fogg Museum archives, with the exception of an 137. Museum of Fine Arts register for accession number
undated letter from Ward tipped into the copy of

M25941, p. 57. Winthrop was a legal resident of Lenox
Rogers's Poems that is the subject of the letter, now at and one of the town's highest taxpayers.
the Houghton Library. All of the Ward correspon-
dence, from 1914-1916, concerned reproductive engrav- 138. Sachs 1944, p. 9.
ers' proofs. Winthrop's correspondence with Finberg
began in 1921 and ended in 1936; a typical excerpt: "I 139. Ellen Bullard to Carrington, undated but c. 1916 in
am sending you ... two more of the 'Liber Studiorum' context (MFAA). The stamp is found on twenty-nine
etchings which you asked me to find [no. 5]. I am sorry prints by or after Turner and one Nanteuil portrait
it is taking so long to fill up these gaps in your collec- engraving in the Winthrop bequest.
tion, but the etchings so seldom come into the market
that, though I am always on the lookout and buy all

140. Winthrop's initials are also occasionally seen on
that become available, the process is necessarily slow" impressions that do not bear any inscriptions by
(15 July 1929). Bullard.
133. The Fifth Plague of Egypt (no. 7a), purchased from

141. Sachs 1954, pp. 23-24.
Finberg in 1922; presumably Winthrop was glad to get
it because it would be the only impression of the 142. Ibid., p. 26.
etching of this plate in his collection at the time. In
1936 he acquired an impression of the standard, brown- 143. Forbes 1955, p. 94.
TURNER- RUSKIN * NORTON * WINTHROP
such thing as a landscape; what we call such is an

144. Edward W. Forbes to Paul J. Sachs, 13 March 1911 65
(FAMA). infinity of different scraps and glimpses given in
succession. Even a painted landscape, although it tends
to select and emphasise some parts of the field, is

145. Forbes to Sachs, 22 January 1912 (FAMA).
composed by adding together a multitude of views ...
although, of course, it offers much less wealth of

146. R. Langston Douglas to Sachs, 26 October 1915
(FAMA). Ruskin bought the painting, Personification of material than its living original, and is therefore vastly
Fidelity, as a Veronese of Diana. Ruskin reattributed it inferior. Only the extreme of what is called impression-
to Paolo Tintoretto; it is now attributed to Domenico ism tries to give upon canvas one absolute momentary
view; the result is that when the beholder has himself

Tintoretto (1942.165). Sachs attempted unsuccessfully
to acquire the picture as a gift to the Museum and then actually been struck by that aspect, the picture has an
persuaded his father to purchase it; it was eventually extraordinary force and emotional value.... But, on the
donated to the Fogg by his widowed mother. other hand, such a work is empty and trivial in the
extreme; it is the photograph of a detached impression,
not followed, as it would be in nature, by many

147. Sachs 1954, p. 55.
variations of itself" (Santayana 1896, p. 104).
148. Forbes 1955, p. 641.
152. Dickason 1953, pp. 155-56.
149. Ibid., pp. 665-66.
153. The paintings are now in the Fogg Art Museum:
150. This assertion of Sachs's role complements that 1943.176 and 1943.254-59.
advanced by Martin Birnbaum, in the 1910S the
American agent in New York for the Berlin Photo- 154. Sachs 1944, p. 35.
graphic Company, who wrote, referring to a gallery
visit by Winthrop in 1914, "Without my knowledge, 155. Winthrop to Sachs, ii July 1935 (FAMA).
Mr. Winthrop had been following the exhibitions I
[arranged] there, and now he explained that he thought 156. Winthrop to Sachs, 28 September 1934 (no. 70,
of really starting a collection.... He wanted virgin fields FAMA).
to plow.... I suggested one of my personal enthusi-
asms-the collection of drawings by the salient figures 157. Norton 1895, p. 346.
of the nineteenth century" (Birnbaum 1960, p. 184).
This omits the fact that Birnbaum had been active in 158. Mason 1936, pp. 63-64.
sales to both the Boston and Fogg print departments in
the l910S and thus would probably have encountered 159. Fasanelli 1967, p. 254, quoting notebooks of
Winthrop through Bullard in quite another context, William Roscoe Thayer for Fine Arts 4 and 5, 1885-86,
and also the evidence of the two men's later correspon- the same year that Winthrop took the courses.
dence, which suggests that they did not become closely
associated for at least another decade, when Sachs had i6o. Winthrop 1885-86, pp. 5, 7, 11 (no. 66).
long since earned Winthrop's confidence.
i6i. Winthrop i886, pp. 217-19 (no. 67).
151. Moore 1891, p. 814. Far more subtle was
Santayana's critique of Impressionism at the end of the

162. Norton 1913, 2, p. 415.
century, in a passage that suggests the entire spectrum
of issues of truth to nature in landscape compositions 163. Charles Eliot Norton, in his introduction to John
and the perception of beauty in the natural landscape Ruskin, Lectures on Art, Brantwood edition (New York:
which underlies this essay: "This is a beauty dependent Macmillan, 1891), p. x.
on reverie, fancy, and objectified emotion. The
promiscuous natural landscape cannot be enjoyed in

164. Winthrop to Sachs, 28 September 1934 (no. 70,
any other way. It has no real unity, and therefore FAMA).
requires to have some form or other supplied by the
fancy.... In fact, psychologically speaking, there is no

165. Sachs, 1954, p. 237.
i66. Ibid. 178. This draft of a memorial to Winthrop is preserved

66
among the Martin Birnbaum papers in the Archives of
American Art. While it has strong associations with the

167. This is the eleventh article in Grenville Winthrop's
will, on file at the Berkshire County Probate Court, memorial published by Sachs in Art News in 1944, it is
not typed on the same typewriter as Sachs's contempo-

Pittsfield, Mass. The extent to which Winthrop
conceived of his city house as merely a home for his art raneous correspondence with Birnbaum, and it seems
collection is revealed by an appraisal of the house after to be corrected in Birnbaum's script. The Hunnewell
his death, on file with a copy of his will at the Surro- Medal of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society is
gate's Court in New York City: "There is no large presented for "estates ... laid out [in the] most rare and
entertaining room. All of the other [rooms except the desirable ornamental trees and shrubs." It has been
dining room and the master bedroom] are small cubby awarded only twice in the past twenty-five years,
holes, which allowed him the maximum wall space to according to Walter Punch, librarian emeritus of the
hang and show his collection and also to segregate the society, to whom I am indebted for my information
periods." about the terms of the award.
i68. Sachs to Winthrop, 28 October 1936 (no. 79, 179. Quoted in Finley 1992, p. 89.
FAMA).
i8o. Gandee 1835, p. 184.
169. Birnbaum 1960, p. 189.
i8i. Olmsted to Norton, 19 October i88i (HL, bMS
170. Ibid., pp. 215-16. Am1o88.5155).
171. Ruskin 1903, 7 (Modern Painters), p. 210. 182. Norton to Olmsted, 23 October i881 (HL, bMS
Amio88.2-Box 5).
172. Birnbaum 1960, p. io8.
183. Eliot 1903, p. 242.
173. Winthrop to Sachs, 20 October 1936 (no. 71,
FAMA). 184. Ibid., p. 259.
174. Kemp 1858, p. 224. 185. See Huth 1957, pp. 169-71.
175. See Gayler's obituary in the New York Times (24 i86. Ruskin 1903, 7 (Modern Painters), pp. 16-17.
February 1948): 25. The best description of Groton
Place as it was at Winthrop's death is found in an i87. The Bullard family is also associated with trees:
undated brochure by the realtor Wheeler & Tayler Inc. Francis Bullard's sister left two endowments totaling
in the collection of the Lenox Library Association. more than $700,000 to Harvard University for a
Groton Place is now the home of Boston University's professorship and research in forestry, in memory of
Tanglewood Institute, an adaptive use that probably their brother Charles. And the Bullard estate in Lenox
would have pleased Winthrop, who was as moved by was called "Highwood."
the beauty of music as he was by that of visual art.
i88. Ruskin 1903, 3 (Modern Painters), p. 586.
176. Birnbaum 1960, p. i8o.
189. Winthrop i885-86, pp. 5, 7, 11.
177. Viewfrom South Lawn, Groton Place (1943.1341),
White Pine Grove in Groton Place (1943.1350). 190. Winthrop to Birnbaum, 24 May 1938 (AAA).
Selected Bibliography
Cohn, Marjorie B. 1980. "Introduction," in Cohn, 67

I have read but a small portion of the immense
Marjorie B., and Susan L. Siegfried. Works by J.-A.-D.

literature on Turner and Ruskin, and of my readings
Ingres in the Collection of the Fogg Art Museum.

only a selection is given here. This bibliography
contains all of the works cited in references except Cambridge, Mass.: Fogg Art Museum.
manuscript letters and newspaper articles, which are
omitted here and fully cited in individual notes. It also Cohn, Marjorie B. 1986. Francis Calley Gray and Art
contains works that are not cited but were generally Collectingfor America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
useful to me in forming a background for my particular University Art Museums.
focus on Charles Eliot Norton and Grenville Winthrop.
Cronin, Helena. 1991. The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism
Bailey, Henry Turner. 1goo. A Sketch of the History of and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today. Cambridge:
Public Art Instruction in Massachusetts, vol. 1 of Paris Cambridge University Press.
Exposition of 10oo. The Public Schools of Massachusetts,
U.S.A. Boston: Wright & Potter. Dickason, David Howard. 1953. The Daring Young Men:
The Story of the American Pre-Raphaelites. Blooming-
Ball, Johnson. 1985. Paul and Thomas Sandby, Royal ton: Indiana University Press.
Academicians. Cheddar: Charles Skilton Ltd.
Eaves, Morris. 1992. The Counter-Arts Conspiracy: Art
Ballowe, James, editor. 1967. George Santayana's and Industry in the Age of Blake. Ithaca: Cornell
America: Essays on Literature and Culture. Urbana: University Press.
University of Illinois Press.
Eliot, Charles William. 1886. "President's Report," in
Barnes and Farnham. 1904. Atlas of Berkshire County, Harvard University. Annual Reports of the President and
Massachusetts. Pittsfield: Barnes & Farnham. Treasurer ... 1885-1886. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University.
Birnbaum, Martin. 1960. The Last Romantic. New York:
Twayne. Eliot, Charles William. 1903. Charles Eliot, Landscape
Architect. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Bowron, Edgar Peters. 1ggo. European Paintings Before
igoo in the Fogg Art Museum. Cambridge, Mass.: Eliot, Samuel. 1887. "Charles C. Perkins." Massachusetts
Harvard University Art Museums. Historical Society Proceedings 3, second series:222-46.
Bradley, John Lewis, and Ian Ousby. 1987. The Fasanelli, James A. 1967. "Charles Eliot Norton and His
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Harvard University Press.
Checklist of the Exhibition
Prints from Turner's Liber 2 7a-b

71
Studiorum have been catalogued The Acropolis at Sunset, with a Fifth Plague of Egypt, lo June i8o8
according to Alexander J. Finberg, Charge of Turkish Cavalry in the Etching
The History of Turner's Liber Foreground, c. 1823-24 F. 16, touched proof (graphite)
Studiorum with a New Catalogue Watercolor Ex coll. Charles Turner (L. 2409)
Raisonne (London: Ernest Benn, Ex coll. H.A.J. Munro of Novar, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
1924), abbreviated "F." Lewis Powell M1o497
Loan from Malcolm Wiener Etching and mezzotint (by Charles
Other prints by and after Turner TL34276 Turner, 1774-1857)
have been catalogued according to F. 16 i/iii
William George Rawlinson, The Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop

3
Engraved Work of J.M. W. Turner, Devonport and Dockyard, M1o498
R.A. 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, Devonshire, c. 1828
1908), abbreviated "R." Watercolor and gouache over 8
black chalk (?) Little Devil's Bridge over the Russ,
The previous owners of impres- Ex coll. John Ruskin above Altdorf, Swiss, 29 March 1809
sions that are stamped with their Gift of Charles Fairfax Murray in Etching and mezzotint (by Charles
marks are identified with their honor of William J. Stillman Turner, 1774-1857)
reference numbers in Frits Lugt, 1903.49 F. 19, engraver's proof a
Les marques de collections de dessins Ex coll. Frank Short
& d'estampes (Amsterdam: Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
Vereenigde Drukkerijen, 1921, and Mio0o5
Plates from the Liber Studiorum
The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1956), abbreviated "L." Note: often ga-c
impressions that are known to The Hindoo Worshipper, 1 January

4
have been owned by the same The Woman with the Tambourine, i8i
collectors are not stamped and 20 January 1807 Etching and mezzotint (by Robert
thus are not so identified, although Etching and mezzotint (by Charles Dunkarton, 1744-before 1817)
the collectors themselves are listed Turner, 1774-1857) F. 23 i/v
after "Ex coll." F. 3 i/iv Ex coll. Francis Bullard
Gift of Denman W. Ross Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
All works are in the collection of M9596 M1o513
the Fogg Art Museum unless F. 23 iii/v
otherwise indicated. Transfer from the Department of

5
Scene on the French Coast (so- Architecture
called Flint Castle, Smugglers M9586
Unloading), 11 June 1807 F. 23 v/v
Drawings and Prints by Turner
Etching Transfer from the Department of
F. 4 Fine Arts
JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop

M3433
BRITISH, 1775-1851 M1o474
10
Whitby Harbor, Yorkshire, i800- 6 Coast of Yorkshire, near Whitby,
i8oi
Pembury Mill, 10 June i8o8 1 January 18ii
Graphite Etching and mezzotint (by Charles Etching and mezzotint (by William
Ex coll. John Ruskin, Charles Eliot Turner, 1774-1857) Say, 1768-1834)
Norton F. 12 i/iv
F. 24 i/iv
Gift of James Loeb, class of i888 Turner sale (L. 1498) Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop

1907.7
M1o051
M1o489
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Rawlinson

11
72
Ex coll. William George

Procris and Cephalus, 14 February M1o598
Rawlinson, Francis Bullard

1812
16 Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop

Etching and mezzotint (by George
East Gate, Winchelsea, i January Mio6ii

Clint, 1770-1854)
F. 41 i/iii 1819
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Etching
F. 67, unrecorded proof 19

M1o551
Turner sale (L. 1498), ex coll. The Calm, or, Study of Sea and Sky,
Richard Fisher (L. 2204) from the Little Liber

12
Hedging and Ditching Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Mezzotint
Etching and mezzotint (by J.C. M1o599 R. 8o6, Seymour Haden impres-
Easling) sion
Ex coll. Francis Bullard (L. 982)

F. 47 i/iv 17a-c
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Ben Arthur, 1 January 1819 Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
M1o562 Etching Mio637
F. 69
13a-c Fine Arts Appropriation
Solway Moss, i January 1816 Mg
Drawings, Prints, Photographs,
Etching Etching and mezzotint (by
and Photomechanical Repro-
F. 52 ii/ii Thomas Goff Lupton, 1791-1873)
ductions after Turner
Turner sale (L. 1498) F. 69 i/iii
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Ex coll. John Ruskin, Charles Eliot
M1o57o Norton, Richard Norton JOHN WALKER
Etching and mezzotint (by Bequest of Susan Norton BRITISH, LATE 18TH C.
Thomas Goff Lupton, 1791-1873) M21182 20
F. 52 i/v F. 69 i/iii Rochester, from The Copper-Plate
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Ex coll. Edward Brown Lees, Magazine, i May 1794
M1o571 Francis Bullard (L. 982) Etching and engraving
F. 52 iV/V Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop R. 1 ii/v
Ex coll. John Ruskin, Charles Eliot Mlo6o4 John Witt Randall Fund
Norton, Richard Norton R599 NA
Bequest of Susan Norton 18a-d
M21186 Glaucus and Scylla
Etching GEORGE COOKE
14 BRITISH, 1781-1834
F. 73
Mill near the Grande Chartreuse, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop 21
January i8i6 Mlo6og Florencefrom the Chiesa al Monte,
Etching and mezzotint (by Henry Etching and mezzotint (by William plate 57 from Hakewill's Italy, 1820
Edward Dawe, 1790-1848) Say, 1768-1834) Etching and engraving
F. 54 i/iv F. 73, posthumous impressions in R. 158, engraver's proof b
Turner sale (L. 1498) brown ink printed in 1879 for Ex coll. William George Rawlinson
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Rawlinson (L. 2624)
M1o574 Ex coll. William George Rawlinson Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
(L. 2624 on M1o612 only), Francis Mio866
Bullard
15
AEsacus and Hesperie, 1 January 1819 Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
Etching and mezzotint M1o612 ("First impression"),
F. 66 ii/vi Mio6io
Ex coll. Francis Bullard (L. 982) F. 73, posthumous impression in
black ink printed in 1879 for
JOHN COUSEN Etching and mezzotint (by

GEORGE HENRY PHILLIPS
73
BRITISH, ACTIVE 1825-1835 BRITISH, 1804-1880 Thomas Goff Lupton, 1791-1873)
22 27 Gift of Miss Ellen Bullard
Arundel Castle on the River Arun, The Acropolis of Athens, from M2126
from River Scenery (so-called Murray's Byron's Life and Works,
Rivers of England), 1827 c. 1832
Mezzotint Etching and engraving JOHN HENRY HILL
R. 754 ii/v R. 408, engraver's proof a AMERICAN, 1839-1922
Gift of Miss Elizabeth G. Norton John Witt Randall Fund 32
M62 R254 NA Mill near the Grande Chartreuse,
from the Liber Studiorum
28 Etching and mezzotint
EDWARD GOODALL Whitby, from Dr. Broadby's Poems, Bequest of Evert J. Wendell
c. 1844 M922
BRITISH, 1795-1870
23 Etching and engraving
Florence, from The Keepsake, 1828 R. 639, engraver's proof c
Etching and engraving Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM
R. 319, engraver's proof M1o778
TURNER (reproduction after)
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
M1o786
33
THOMAS GOFF LUPTON Scene on the French Coast (so-called
24a-c BRITISH, 1791-1873 Flint Castle, Smugglers Unloading),
A Villa on the Night of a Festa di 29 in Fac-Similes of Thirty-Three
Ballo, from Rogers's Italy, 1830 Solway Moss, from the Liber Etchings by Turnerfor the Plates of
Etching Studiorum, 1858 the Liber Studiorum, Reproduced
R. 371, engraver's proof b Etching and mezzotint from Copies in the Possession of Mr.
(successive states unknown to Ex coll. Francis Bullard Ruskin and of the Editor [Charles
Rawlinson) Gift of Miss Ellen Bullard Eliot Norton], 1878
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop M2107 Printed book with heliotype
Mio668, Mio669, M1o670 reproductions produced by James
R. Osgood and Co.
25 WILLIAM WARD Loan from the Fine Arts Library,
Venice, from Rogers's Italy, 1830 BRITISH, 1829-1908 Harvard University
Etching and engraving 30a-b TL34277.1
R. 358, engraver's proof (unknown Luxembourg
to Rawlinson) Watercolor and gouache
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Transfer from the Fine Arts
JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM
M1o654 Department
TURNER (photograph after)
1926.33.190
Gift of Nelson Goodman 34a-b
THOMAS JEAVONS
1978.78 Sandbank with Gypsies (oil
BRITISH, 1816-1867
painting, 1809)
26
Sandbank with Gypsies (softground
Devonport and Dock Yard, from JOHN RUSKIN etching)
Picturesque Views in England and BRITISH, 1819-1900

Silver emulsion photograph
Wales, 1830 31a-b Gift of Daniel Bell in honor of
Etching and engraving The Lake of Zug Marjorie B. Cohn
R. 237 i/ii Etching

M20267, M20268
Gray Collection of Engravings Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
Fund Mio899
G4735
FRANK SHORT Bequest of Susan Norton WILLIAM WOOLLETT

74
BRITISH, 1857-1945 M21246 BRITISH, 1735-1785
35a-f 42
Studies for Print after Turner's Jacob and Laban, after Claude
Sandbank with Gypsies ANTONIO CANALE, CALLED Gellee, called Lorrain
Black chalk CANALETTO Etching, proof
Sandbank with Gypsies (oil ITALIAN, 1697-1768 Gift of Belinda L. Randall from the
painting after Turner's painting of 38 collection of John Witt Randall,
the same subject) La Piera del Bando R1895
Photograph with black chalk Etching, second state
additions Ex coll. Peter Gellatly (L. 1185)
Sandbank with Gypsies Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop JOHN ROBERT COZENS
Etching, trial proof with white Mlo333 BRITISH, 1752-1797
gouache heightening
43
Etching, proof over-drawn in Hawthorne, from Trees, 1789
brown wash to guide mezzotint RICHARD EARLOM Softground etching and aquatint
Etching and mezzotint, trial proof BRITISH, 1743-1822 Alvin Whitley Purchase Fund
of first scraping, printed in brown from the Liber Veritatis, after M22005
ink Claude Gellee, called Lorrain
Etching and mezzotint, trial proof

39
printed in 1936, with hand- View of a Seaport, pl. 49, 1774 GIOVANNI DE PIAN AND
lettering Etching, mezzotint, and roulette; FRANCESCO GALIMBERTI
Gift of Daniel Bell in honor of proof before the published edition ITALIAN, 1764-1800, DATES
Marjorie B. Cohn Gift of Mrs. Frederick T. Lewis in UNKNOWN
1983.209, M20257, M20259, memory of Dr. Frederick T. Lewis

44
M20261, M2026o, M20265 M13869 The Dream of Saint Ursula, from
Scenesfrom the Life of Saint Ursula,
C. 1799, after Carpaccio

40
Roman View with the Three Etching and aquatint
Drawings and Prints neither by
Columns of Jupiter and the Ex coll. Charles Eliot Norton,
Turner nor after Turner
Colosseum, pl. 1, 1777 Richard Norton
Etching, mezzotint, and roulette; Bequest of Susan Norton
ALBRECHT DURER first published edition M21226
GERMAN, 1471-1528 Gray Collection of Engravings
36 Fund
Samson and the Lion, c. 1500

G7865 FRANC,oIs LOUIS THOMAS FRANCIA
Woodcut
FRENCH, WORKING IN ENGLAND,
Ex coll. Peter Gellatly (L. ii85)

1772-1839
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop PAUL SANDBY

45
M10315 BRITISH, 1725-1809 Landscape, from Studies of
41 Landscapes, i8io, after William
The Iron Forge between Dolgelli and Owen
VALENTIJN LEFEBRE
Barmouth in Marioneth Shire, from Softground etching with white
FLEMISH, 1642-C. 1700 Twelve Views in North Wales, 1776 heightening
Aquatint, softground etching, and Gift of Belinda L. Randall from the

37
The Death of Saint Peter Martyr,

engraving; first published state collection of John Witt Randall,
from Opera Selectiora, i68o, after

Alvin Whitley Purchase Fund
R15332
Titian
M21654
Etching
Ex coll. John Ruskin, Charles Eliot
Norton, Richard Norton
JOHN CROME collection of John Witt Randall EDWARD BURNE-JONES
75
BRITISH, 1768-1821 R14898 BRITISH, 1833-1898
46
55
Front of New Mills, 1813 Perseus and Andromeda, 1875
Etching, second state (proof) DAVID LUCAS Watercolor, gouache, shell gold,
Curatorial Study Group Fund BRITISH, 1802-1881 and chalks on blue paper
M20337 Ex coll. Francis Bullard

51
Weymouth Bay, Dorsetshire, from Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
Various Subjects of Landscape, 1943.674
JOHN FREDERICK LEWIS Characteristic of English Scenery,
BRITISH, 1805-1872 1831, after John Constable
Mezzotint, second published state CHARLES HERBERT MOORE

47
Sleeping Lion and Lioness, from Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop AMERICAN, 1840-1930
Studies of Wild Animals, 1824 M1o446 56
Etching Quick Sketch, from Life, of a Lion's
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Head. Copyfrom a Drawing by Mr.

52
M10422 Salisbury Cathedral from the Ruskin, in the Educational
Meadows (The Rainbow), 1837, Collection at Oxford, 1876, after
after John Constable John Ruskin
THOMAS GOFF LUPTON Mezzotint, touched proof Graphite and watercolor
BRITISH, 1791-1873 (graphite) Transfer from the Fine Arts
48 Anonymous loan in honor of Department
York Minster on the River Foss, Jakob Rosenberg 1926.33.93
from River Scenery (so-called 26.1992
Rivers of England), 1827, after 57a-b
Thomas Girtin On the Lagune, Venice, 1879
Mezzotint; first published edition, ROBERT HAVELL, JR. Etching
second state BRITISH, ACTIVE 1815-1850 Ex coll. Charles Eliot Norton,
Gift of Miss Elizabeth G. Norton Richard Norton

53
M52 Night Hawk, from The Birds of Bequest of Susan Norton
America, 1836, after John James M21191
Audubon Etching and mezzotint
WILLIAM BLAKE Etching and aquatint, handcolored Gray Collection of Engravings
BRITISH, 1757-1827 Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Fund, or, Gift of the artist
M10302 G4857
49
"Behold now Behemoth which I
made with thee," from Book ofjob,

58
1827 VINCENT BROOKS Portrait of John Ruskin
Engraving, proof on India paper BRITISH, 19TH CENTURY Watercolor
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Ex coll. Charles Eliot Norton, Paul

54
M10462 The Giotto Chapel, Padua, in 1306, J. Sachs
i856, after Mrs. Higford Burr Gift of Sara, Elizabeth, and
Chromolithograph (Arundel Margaret Norton
JOHN MARTIN Society publication) 1919.1
BRITISH, 1789-1854 Gift of Charles Eliot Norton
50 G4324
The Deluge, from Illustrations to
the Bible, 1831-35
Etching and mezzotint
Gift of Belinda L. Randall from the
GIOVANNI BOLDINI Harvard University 68

76
TL34278.2 A Catalogue of the Collection of

ITALIAN, 1845-1931
Printsfrom the Liber Studiorum of

59
James A. McNeill Whistler Asleep, 64 Joseph Mallord William Turner
Catalogue, with Notes, of Studies Formed by the Late Francis Bullard

1897
Drypoint and Fac-Similes ... Belonging to the of Boston, Massachusetts, and
Fine Arts Department of Harvard Bequeathed by Him to the Museum

Ex coll. Royal Cortissoz
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop University, 1878 of Fine Arts in Boston, 1916
Printed pamphlet Printed book

M1Q418
Loan from the Fine Arts Library, Loan from the Fine Arts Library,
Harvard University Harvard University
CHILDE HASSAM TL34277.2 TL34277.3
AMERICAN, 1859-1935
6o 65 69
Nyssa Sylvatica, 1926 "Shady Hill," i886 Letter to Morris Gray,
Etching Bound album of photographs, 24 September 1916
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop documents, and printed ephemera Manuscript letter
M1o365 compiled by Sara Norton, opened Loan from the Museum of Fine
to an albumen print of Shady Hill Arts, Boston
Loan from The Houghton Library, TL34242
JULIUS F. GAYLER Harvard University
AMERICAN, 1872-1948 TL34278.3

70, 71
61 Letters to Paul J. Sachs,
Groton Place, Moonlight 28 September 1934, 20 October
Etching and aquatint GRENVILLE LINDALL WINTHROP

1936
Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop AMERICAN, 1864-1943 Manuscript letters
M1o394 66 Fogg Art Museum Archives
"Fine Arts IV." (Winthrop's class
notes of Charles Eliot Norton's

72
lectures in Florentine art), 1885-86 "Visitors Book, Print Collections,
Publications and Manuscripts
Manuscript in bound notebook William Hayes Fogg Art Museum,"
Fogg Art Museum Archives, 1899-1915
JOHN RUSKIN Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Bound book, manuscript entries
BRITISH, 1819-1900 1943.1815.21 Print Department, not accessioned
62
Letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 67
8 August 1867 "Fine Arts V." (Winthrop's class FRANCIS BULLARD
Manuscript letter notes of Charles Eliot Norton's AMERICAN, 1863-1913
Loan from The Houghton Library, lectures in Venetian art), i886

73
Harvard University Manuscript in bound notebook, Exhibition of the Liber Studiorum
TL34278.1 containing fourteen albumen ofJ.M. W. Turner and of a Few
prints of views of Venice, of which Engravings after His Drawings,
three showing the Doge's Palace Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1904
CHARLES HERBERT MOORE are on display Printed book
AMERICAN, 1840-1930 Fogg Art Museum Archives, Loan from the Fine Arts Library,
63 Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Harvard University
Letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 1943.1815.22 TL34277.4
5 August 1878
Manuscript letter
Loan from The Houghton Library,
TURNER* RUSKIN * NORTON * WINTHROP
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON EDWIN HALE LINCOLN PAUL JOSEPH SACHS
77
AMERICAN, 1827-1908 AMERICAN, 20TH C. AMERICAN, 1878-1965
76a-d
74 78, 79
Letter to Grenville Winthrop, Sunlit Alle, Groton Place, 1930 Letters to Grenville L. Winthrop,
31 July 1905 Terrace and Trees, Groton Place 27 and 28 October 1936
Manuscript letter tipped into Vista of Lawn and Trees, Groton Typewitten (carbon copy) and
Winthrop's copy of Letters of Place manuscript (stenographic copy)
Charles Eliot Norton, vol. 1 A Great Elm, Groton Place, letters
Loan from the Harvard College 5 September 1930 Fogg Art Museum Archives
Library, Bequest of Grenville L. Silver emulsion photographs,
Winthrop recent prints 8o
TL34279.1 Courtesy of the Lincoln Collection, Grenville Winthrop Feeding His
Lenox Library Association Pheasants at the Rock Pool, Groton
Place
SARA NORTON Silver emulsion photograph
AMERICAN, 1864-1922 Fogg Art Museum Archives

77
"Gold Medal Estate with No

75
Letter to Grenville Winthrop, Flowers," in Horticulture, vol. 13,
i5 October 1908 no. 15 (i August 1935), p. 355
Manuscript letter tipped into Printed journal
Winthrop's copy of Letters of Loan from the Frances Loeb
Charles Eliot Norton, vol. 2 Library, Graduate School of
Loan from the Harvard College Design, Harvard University
Library, Bequest of Grenville L. TL34280
Winthrop
TL34279.2

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Harvard University Art Museums

President and Fellows of Harvard College

Turner, Ruskin, Norton, Winthrop

Harvard University Art Museums

Volume II, Number 1 (ISSN 1065-6448)

Published three times a year by the Harvard University

Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA,

02138. Copyright ? 1993 by the President and Fellows

of Harvard College. Permission to reproduce any

portion of this publication must be obtained from the

Harvard University Art Museums.

The Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin is

provided as a benefit to members at the level of

Patron, and is available by subscription at the

Individuals and libraries: $25.00

(outside the U.S. $45.00)

Friends of the Harvard Art Museums: $20.00

(outside the U.S. $36.oo)

To order, please contact:

Sales Department, Harvard University Art Museums,

485 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138. (617) 495-8286

This issue of the Bulletin is published in association

with the exhibition Turner . Ruskin . Norton

Winthrop, 27 November 1993-20 February 1994, Fogg

Art Museum. Publication has been supported by a

generous grant from the Boston Ruskin Club Prize

fund of Harvard College.

Grenville Winthrop Feeding His Pheasants at the Rock

Pool, Groton Place (Fogg Art Museum Archives).

9 Turner- Ruskin Norton *Winthrop

7 1 Checklist of the Exhibition

records of Winthrop's collection of Western

of the Archives of American Art, and Dennis Harvard College.

Lessier of the Lenox Library Association, as

and the College, Fine Arts, Frances Loeb, and

exhibition was greatly aided at the Fogg by -Marjorie B. Cohn

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perceptions, and sentiments of artistic man- devoted himself to landscape architecture.

purest sense; exemplary and delightful beyond beauty of Winthrop's estate.

all praise."2 Turner had found his champion,

death in 1943, when his Turners and all of his

color vignette; the proffered Italy seems to appreciation in America.

have been the seal on an indenture to Turner's

and a pursuit has been trivialized into banal-

evolution of altruism (a perplexing human particular quality as a repertory of composed

to untangle them. Yet, unmistakably, an as-

Winthrop's favorite instructors at Harvard. At nourished, shaped, and shadowed by Turner

Norton and, to a lesser degree, Shaler were

outstanding spokesmen among the nation's

cultural elite, whose recognized authority

ranged far beyond their scholarly specialties.

manner than literature itself, of the moral

races by whom they have been practiced....8

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A_ '3i;=i' iii: -_ir j- *-s