BRUNSWICK — An exhibition featuring the work of 19th century English and American landscape artists will open Tuesday, Oct. 30, at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

Drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, “We Never See Anything Clearly” focuses on landscape painting in relation to the theories of John Ruskin, one of the most influential art critics of Victorian Britain.

Ruskin’s taste led him to appreciate two divergent aesthetic qualities: the atmospheric effects that characterize art by Romantic landscape painter J.M.W. Turner and his circle; and the heightened detail cherished by the pre-Raphaelites and their emulators.

Like many of his contemporary critics and artists, Ruskin valued both styles, but could never manage to reconcile the two. “We Never See Anything Clearly” examines this dichotomy through the presentation of several of Ruskin’s own drawings as well as those of English and American artists whose struggles with pictorial detail and effect echoed his own.

“We Never See Anything Clearly” John Ruskin and Landscape Painting, 1840s-1870s” will be on view through Dec. 23.

Anne Helmreich, Ph.D., will give a talk, “Truth to Nature: John Ruskin and Landscape Painting 1840s-1870s,” at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 1. The lecture in the college’s Visual Arts Center (Beam classroom) is free. Helmreich is senior program officer with the Getty Foundation and associate professor of art history at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art is open to the public free of charge 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; Thursday until 8:30 p.m.; and 1-5 p.m. Sunday. For more information, visit www.bowdoin.edu/art-museum.