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the canvas. The last entry of ‘Water Beauty’ reflects on the writer’s final development of his sections on water. Ruskin’s knowledge of boats was meant to be included in the section ‘Of the Calm Water’, whereas his understanding of wrecks was to be found in a section entitled ‘The Sea’.
24
Unfortunately, none of these
three reflections had been eventually published and we appear to be on a territory that anticipates Ruskin’s future aquatic thinking very closely. Whereas Modern Painters I had dwelt on the Romantic Beauty (and Truth) of water, it was in Modern Painters V that Ruskin shifted his focus. In these decades he had catalogued in detail the changes which he believed had altered his views on water, both scientifically and metaphorically; right up until his death in 1900, Ruskin held on to an idea and ideal of this subject as the natural and spiritual fulfilment of a life-time’s observation of its motions, of its shapes and of its colours. References The Works of John Ruskin (Library Edition). Ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. 39 vols. London: George Allen, 1903-12. The Diaries of John Ruskin. Selected and edited by Joan Evans and John Howard Whitehouse. 3 vols., with continuous pagination. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956-9.
24
See section on ‘Rough Water’ in Works, VII. 484.