Contemporary Drawings

ART: THE AMERICAN PRE-RAPHAELITES

By Grace GLUECK

''PAINT the leaves as they grow! If you can paint one leaf, you can paint the world,'' wrote the English critic John Ruskin in his epic ''Modern Painters.'' And in the mid-19th century, a small group of American artists took the advice to heart, rendering Nature close up with such fidelity as to make today's Photo-Realism look - well, out of focus. They came to be known as the American Pre-Raphaelites, and their work - celebrating Ruskin's bless-every- blade-of-grass esthetic - left something of a mark on American landscape and still-life painting. Now ''The New Path: Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites,'' the first show to study this short-lived movement in depth, has been mounted by the Brooklyn Museum, where it will run through June 10 before moving to Boston.

New York Times • Arts • page 24 • 1,476 words