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In his defense of Turner, critic John Ruskin wrote that "the whole technical power of painting depends on our recovery of what may be called the innocence of the eye; that is to say, of a sort of childish perception of these flat stains of colour, merely as such, without consciousness of what they signify, — as a blind man would see them if suddenly gifted with sight.”

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Norham Castle, Sunrise, c.1845, Tate

Is such an "innocent eye" really a state of vision that we can recover? Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel, in his book The Age of Insight, explains that the 'innocent eye' is not possible: "All visual perception is based on classifying concepts and interpreting visual information. One cannot perceive that which one cannot classify."

Visual perception scientist Leon Lou says: "The innocent eye, or seeing ‘what the eye sees’ is a meaningful expression many artists use to capture their experience in observational drawing and painting. However, a literal interpretation of the innocent eye does not comport with a science of vision focused on object perception. Nor is a two-step model involving a ‘bottom-up strategy’ a plausible account of the notion."

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Read more:

Leon Lou: "Artists’ Innocent Eye as Extended Proximal Mode of Vision"
Book: The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present
Gombrich's 1960 book Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Bollingen) also discusses this topic.