In May, 1843, “Modern Painters,” vol. i., was published, and it was soon the talk of the art-world.  It was meant to be audacious, and naturally created a storm.  The free criticisms of public favourites made an impression, not because they were put into strong language, for the tone of the press was stronger then than it is now, as a whole, but because they were backed up by illustration and argument.  It was evident that the author knew something of his subject, even if he were all wrong in his conclusions.  He could not be neglected, though he might be protested against, decried, controverted.  Artists especially, who do not usually see their works as others see them, and are not accustomed to think of themselves and their school as mere dots and spangles in a perspective of history, could not be entirely content to be classed as Turner’s satellites.  And while the book contained something that promised to suit every kind of reader everyone found something to shock him.  Critics were scandalized at the depreciation of Claude; the religious were outraged at the comparison of Turner, in a passage omitted from later editions, to the Angel of the Sun in the Apocalypse.

But the descriptive passages were such as had never appeared before in prose; and the obvious usefulness of the analyses of natural form and effect made many an artist read on, while he shook his head.  Some readily owned their obligation to the new teacher.  Holland, for one, wrote to Harrison that he meant to paint the better for the snubbing he had got.  Of such as reviewed the book adversely in Blackwood and the Athenaeum, not one undertook to refute it seriously.  They merely attacked a detail here and there, which the author discussed in two or three replies, with a patience that showed how confident he was in his position.

He had the good word of some of the best judges of literature.  “Modern Painters” lay on Rogers’ table; and Tennyson, who a few years before had beaten young Ruskin out of the field of poetry, was so taken with it that he wrote to his publisher to borrow it for him, “as he longed very much to see it,” but could not afford to buy it.  Sir Henry Taylor wrote to Aubrey de Vere, the poet, begging him to read: 

“A book which seems to me to be far more deeply founded in its criticism of art than any other that I have met with ... written with great power and eloquence, and a spirit of the most diligent investigation....  I am told that the author’s name is Ruskin, and that he was considered at college as an odd sort of man who would never do anything.”

A second edition appeared within 12 months.  When the secret of the “Oxford Graduate” leaked out, as it did very soon, through the proud father, Mr. John was lionized.  During the winter of 1843 he met celebrities at fashionable dinner-tables; and now that his parents were established in their grander house on Denmark Hill,[1] they could duly return the hospitalities of the great world.