BRUNSWICK — “We Never See Anything Clearly: John Ruskin and Landscape Painting, 1840s to 1870s” — an exhibition featuring the work of 19th-century English and American landscape artists — opens on Tuesday at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and runs through Dec. 23.

Two Bowdoin students, Ben Livingston, class of 2013 and Ursula Moreno-VanderLaan, class of 2013 worked with associate professor of art history Pamela Fletcher to research and organize the exhibition as part of Bowdoin College art history course, “The Pre-Raphaelites.”

Drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition focuses on 19thcentury British and American landscape painting in relation to the theories of John Ruskin, one of the most influential art critics of Victorian Britain, a news release said.

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.

The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. On Thursdays, the museum is open until 8:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.bowdoin.edu/artmuseum.