In Tate Britain
Biography
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, philosopher, prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation.
The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.
He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J. M. W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s, he championed the Pre-Raphaelites, who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
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Read full Wikipedia entryArtworks
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John Ruskin The North-West Angle of the Facade of St Mark’s, Venice
date not known -
John Ruskin View of Bologna
c.1845–6 -
John Ruskin An Olive Spray and Two Leaf Outlines
before 1877
Artist as subject
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Sir Max Beerbohm Miss Cornforth: ‘Oh, very pleased to meet Mr Ruskin, I’m sure’
1916 -
Charles Fairfax Murray Portrait of John Ruskin, Head and Shoulders, Full Face
1875 -
Charles Fairfax Murray Portrait of Ruskin as St Paul
date not known -
Bernard Meninsky Notebook
date not known -
Anita Bartle, Grant Richards (London, UK) This is my Birthday
1902 -
Bernard Meninsky Typescript entitled ‘THE ART OF DRAWING by BERNARD MENINSKY. 2nd Lecture’
[1948] -
Eileen Agar Notebook
1928–[1980s] -
Anita Bartle, Grant Richards (London, UK) This is my Birthday
1902 -
Hampstead Artists Council (London, UK) Hampstead Artists’ Council souvenir exhibition catalogue titled ‘Hampstead Artists Past and Present’
1946
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