Modern Painters (Vol. 1-5)

Modern Painters is a five-volume work by the eminent Victorian art critic, John Ruskin. The work placed emphasis on symbolism in art, expressed through nature and it was influential on the early development of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Ruskin wrote Modern Paintings for 17 years updating it and adding later volumes in subsequent years. The book was primarily written as a defense of the later work of J. M. W. Turner. Ruskin argues that recent painters emerging from the tradition of the picturesque are superior in the art of landscape to the old masters. He used the book to argue that art should devote itself to the accurate documentation of nature. In Ruskin's view, Turner had developed from early detailed documentation of nature to a later more profound insight into natural forces and atmospheric effects.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolorist, philosopher, prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.