Hence both in his _Watts_ and his _Blake_ we get what
some of us ask of an art critic--the enlargement of our own powers of
vision. This is what made Ruskin so great an art critic, a fact once
realised, today forgotten. He may have made a thousand mistakes, he
had a multitude of foolish prejudices, but he opened the eyes of a
whole generation to see and understand great art.
G.K. was to begin his published writings with poetry and art
criticism--in other words with vision. And this vision he partly owed
to the Slade School. Here is a letter (undated) to Bentley containing
a hint of what eight years later became a book on Watts:
On Saturday I saw two exhibitions of pictures. The first was the
Royal Academy, where I went with Salter. There was one picture there,
though the walls were decorated with frames very prettily. As to the
one picture, if you look at an Academy catalogue you will see
"Jonah": by G. F. Watts, and you will imagine a big silly picture of
a whale.
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