Letter from John Ruskin, London, to Ellen Woods, 1859 : autograph manuscript signed.

Ruskin is returning Woods' two drawings with other mixed things that may interest or be of use to her and "all my birds" [the Winnington pupils]. He is very sorry that Miss Christian's drawing is not returned, but it was sadly crushed, and Ruskin is going to have it mounted for her. The black grounded leaves are for Ellen Woods especially and may show how to get some gradation by working over the ink with some blue black. She should use common ink, not Indian ink, when she works with the pen, and remember that the truth that she is in search of at present has nothing to do with size or fineness of work. The thing is to get the lines and gradations right, not to get them faint or delicate. He wishes Albert Durer's work was as large again as it is, with all the lines twice as think. The drawings he has sent are all examples of different ways of shortcoming, of contented badness, so that he gets the fact that he wants. They are all rather old sketches. (The cherry blossom is the latest.) Has been doing tiresome work, and his hand shakes as if he had been playing cricket, or he would draw a bit of her moss for her. He couldn't do it much better than hers is done, only perhaps a little more of the form in the intricacy of the leaves. His black drawing is of leaves (Rhododendron). As a postscript, Ruskin asks Woods to tell Miss Christian that the woods and red buds are capital. The larger bud just on the edge of being beautiful, but not yet. He wants sketches of the shape of the shoots, not finished drawings of them.