John Ruskin

Lectures On Landscape John Ruskin

In the outset I must shortly state to you the position which landscape painting and animal painting hold towards the higher branches of art. Landscape painting is the thoughtful and passionate representation of the physical conditions appointed for human existence. It imitates the aspects, and records the phenomena, of the visible things which are dangerous or beneficial to men; and displays the human methods of dealing with these, and of enjoying them or suffering from them, which are either exemplary or deserving of sympathetic contemplation.