CHAPTER VIII.
"MODERN PAINTERS" CONTINUED (1855-1856) It was in the year 1855 that Ruskin first published "Notes on the Royal Academy and other Exhibitions." He had been so often called upon to write his opinion of Pre-Raphaelite pictures, either privately or to the newspapers, or to mark his friends' catalogues, that he found at last less trouble in printing his notes once for all.

The new plan was immediately popular; three editions of the pamphlet were called for between June 1 and July 1.

Next year he repeated the "Notes" and six editions were sold.
In spite of a dissentient voice here and there, he was really by that time recognised as the leading authority upon taste in painting.

He was trusted by a great section of the public, who had not failed to notice how completely he and his friends were winning the day.

The proof of it was in the fact that they were being imitated on all sides; Ruskinism in writing and Pre-Raphaelitism in painting were becoming fashionable.
But at the same time the movement gave rise to the Naturalist-landscape school, a group of painters who threw overboard the traditions of Turner and Prout, Constable and Harding, and the rest, just as the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren threw over the Academical masters.