WYNDHAM NOTES

Southland Times, Issue 20771, 11 May 1929, Page 4

WYNDHAM NOTES

W.E.A. CLASS. (From Our Correspondent.) At the weekly class of the W.E.A. held in the Athenaeum there were present: Mesdames Bennetts and Porter, Misses Ford, I. Ford, Gifford and Marsh, Messrs August, H. Heath, L. Heath, W. Jones, Marsh, Osborne and Strang; Mr H. Heath was in the chair. The subject was “John Ruskin.” Mr August said he had been asked for a long time to deal with Ruskin, but felt diffident about it from want of sufficient knowledge of the great writer’s works. Ruskin was one of the great Victorian authors, a contemporary of Dickens, Darwin, Thackeray, Hurley, etc. He was the son of a very wealthy man, who was able to give Ruskin the opportunity of education*. Ruskin was a tall square man, with figure slightly bent, owing to physical weakness. He was primarily an artist and art critic. Illness retarded his studies to‘some extent. Born in 1819 he lived well into his seventies and to the last was a keen controversialist. Ruskin put art on its feet. He wrote to inform—to teach. His “Moderh Painters” filled several volumes, and what he wrote was worth reading and studying. At the age of 21 he wrote in the Press, 'claiming the recognition of Turner as one of the greatest painters that ever lived, and was the means of giving Turner the fame that was his due. Turner imparted light and shade to his landscapes—a subtle quality lacking in other portrayals. A great part of Ruskin’s work was lectures, which were preserved in book form. The speaker exhibited one of his books, embodying his “Lectures on Architecture” published in 1853, the classic illustrations by himself. Ruskin illustrated his own books. The book bore Ruskin’s own handwriting and was inspected with great interest by the members. The lecturer touched on some personal phases of the great man’s life. Ruskin severely criticized Whistler’s work, and out of the criticism arose the famous action “Whistler v. Ruskin.” Whistler’s dignity was hurt by Ruskin’s famous sentence about “tirowing a pot of paint at the public and calling it pictures.” The case caused a great sensation. The outcome was that Whistler awarded -}d damages and each side had to pay its own costs. Ruskin married, and with his wife visited all the old cathedrals on the Continent and other examples of architecture. On returning on a day on which she did not accompany him, he found a note saying she had left him and had gone with his friend John Millis, a famous painter who was afterwards knighted, and she became Lady Millis. Ruskin accepted this situation philosophically and, as he had done before, he continued to praise the work of Millis. He took a notion that a little physical toil would do him some, good, and so jn his mature age he did some road ■ work—with him Oscar Wilde. Ruskin was unique as a man; and in any department well worth studying. The chairman referred to the characteristic straightforwardness of Ruskin, and Mr Marsh spoke of him as a man of the deepest insight and a wide range of vision—a seer.' A vote of thanks was voted to the lecturer. Next Tuesday evening will be provided by the Gore Play Readers (one of Wilde’s plays). The following evening, May 21, Mr Robert Gibb’s illustrated lecture, “New Zealand Birds,” will be given. On May 28 (probably) the “Merchant of Venice” will be read.