ABSTRACT
Meditating on the awesome imagination of the Romantic artist J.M.W. Turner, in the first volume of Modern Painters, the English art critic and social reformer John Ruskin (1819–1900) asserts:
The higher the mind; it may be taken as a universal rule, the less it will scorn that which appears to be small or unimportant; and the rank of a painter may always be determined by observing how he uses, and with what respect he views the minutiae of nature. Greatness of mind is not shown by admitting small things, but by making small things great under its influence. He who can take no interest in what is small, will take no interest in what is great …
(Cook and Wedderburn 1904–13, vol. 3: 491, Kite's emphasis)