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John Ruskin

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Upper: Steel-plate engraving of Ruskin as a young man, made circa 1845, scanned from print made circa 1895. Middle: Ruskin in middle-age, as Slade Professor of Art at Oxford (1869-1879). Scanned from 1879 book. Bottom: John Ruskin in old age, 1894, by photographer Frederick Hollyer. 1894 print. All public domain.
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Upper: Steel-plate engraving of Ruskin as a young man, made circa 1845, scanned from print made circa 1895.
Middle: Ruskin in middle-age, as Slade Professor of Art at Oxford (1869-1879). Scanned from 1879 book.
Bottom: John Ruskin in old age, 1894, by photographer Frederick Hollyer. 1894 print. All public domain.

John Ruskin (February 8, 1819 – January 20, 1900) is best known for his work as an art critic and social critic, but is remembered as an author, poet and artist as well. Ruskin's essays on art and architecture were extremely influential in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

Contents

Life

Ruskin was born in London, and raised in south London, the son of a wine importer who was one of the founders of the company that became Allied Domecq. He was educated at home, and entered the University of Oxford without proper qualifications for a degree. He nevertheless impressed the scholars of Christ Church after he won the Newdigate prize for poetry, his earliest interest. In consequence, he was awarded a degree.

He published his first book "Modern Painters" in 1843, under the anonymous identity "An Oxford Graduate". It argued that modern landscape painters — in particular J.M.W. Turner — were superior to the so-called "Old Masters" of the Renaissance. Such a claim was highly controversial, especially as Turner's semi-abstract late works were being denounced as meaningless daubs. Ruskin argued that these works derived from Turner's profound understanding of nature. He soon met and befriended Turner, eventually becoming one of the executors of his will.

Ruskin followed this book with a second volume, developing his ideas about symbolism in art. He then turned to architecture, writing The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice, both of which argued that architecture cannot be separated from morality, and that the "Decorated Gothic" style was the highest form of architecture yet achieved.[Jonathan Smith, Architecture and Induction: Whewell and Ruskin on Gothic A talk presented at "Science and British Culture in the 1830s," Trinity College, Cambridge, July 1994.]

By this time Ruskin was writing in his own name, and had become the most famous cultural theorist of his day. In 1848, he married Effie Gray, for whom he wrote the early fantasy novel The King of the Golden River. Their marriage was notoriously unhappy, eventually being annulled in 1854 on grounds of his "incurable impotency,"Sir William James, The Order of Release, the story of John Ruskin,Effie Gray and John Everett Millais, 1946, p.237 a charge Ruskin later disputed. Effie later married the artist John Everett Millais, who had been Ruskin's protegé.

Ruskin had come into contact with Millais following the controversy over his painting Christ in the House of his Parents, which was considered blasphemous at the time. Millais, with his colleagues William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, had established the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. The Pre-Raphaelites were influenced by Ruskin's theories. As a result, the critic wrote letters to The Times defending their work, later meeting them. Initially he favoured Millais, who travelled to Scotland with Ruskin and Effie to paint Ruskin's portrait. Effie's increasing attachment to Millais created a crisis in the marriage, leading Effie to leave Ruskin, causing a major public scandal. Millais abandoned the Pre-Raphaelite style after his marriage, and his later works were savagely attacked by Ruskin. Ruskin continued to support Hunt and Rossetti. He also provided independent funds to encourage the art of Rossetti's wife Elizabeth Siddal. Other artists influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites also received both written and financal support from him, including John Brett, Burne-Jones and John William Inchbold.

During this period Ruskin wrote regular reviews of the annual exhibitions at the Royal Academy under the title Academy Notes. His reviews were so influential and so judgemental that he alienated many artists, leading to much comment. For example Punch published a comic poem about a victim of the critic containing the lines "I paints and paints, hears no complaints...then savage Ruskin sticks his tusk in and nobody will buy".

Ruskin also sought to encourage the creation of architecture based on his theories. He was friendly with Sir Henry Acland, who supported his attempts to get the new Oxford University Museum of Natural History built as a model of modern Gothic. Ruskin also inspired other architects to adapt the Gothic style for modern culture. These buildings created what has been called a distinctive "Ruskinian Gothic" style.See Crook, J. Mordaunt. "Ruskinian Gothic." The Ruskin Polygon: Essays on the Imagination of John Ruskin. Ed. John Dixon Hunt and Faith M. Holland. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1982. 65-93.

Following a crisis of religious belief Ruskin abandoned art criticism at the end of the 1850s, moving towards commentary on politics, under the influence of his great friend Thomas Carlyle. In Unto This Last he expounded his theories about social justice, which influenced the development of the British Labour party and of Christian socialism. Upon the death of his father, Ruskin declared that it was not possible to be a rich socialist and gave away most of his inheritance. He founded the charity known as the Guild of St George in the 1870s and endowed it with large sums of money as well as a remarkable collection of art. He also gave the money to enable Octavia Hill to begin her practical campaign of housing reform. He attempted to reach a wide readership with his pamphlets Fors Clavigera, aimed at the "working men of England". He also taught at the Working Men's College, London and was the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, from 1869 to 1879, he also served a second term. Ruskin College, Oxford is named after him.

While at Oxford Ruskin became friendly with Lewis Carroll, another don, and was photographed by him. After the parting of Carroll and Alice Liddell, she and her sisters pursued a similar relationship with Ruskin, as detailed in Ruskin's autobiography Praeterita.

During this period Ruskin fell deeply in love with Rose la Touche, an intensely religious young woman. He met her in 1858, when she was only nine years old, proposed to her eight years later, and was finally rejected in 1872. She died shortly afterwards. These events plunged Ruskin into despair and led to bouts of mental illness. He suffered from a number of breakdowns as well as delirious visions.

In 1878, he published a scathing review of paintings by James McNeill Whistler exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery. He found particular fault with [Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket], and accused Whistler of "ask[ing] two hundred guineas for throwing a pot of paint in the public's face."[link] Attempting to gain publicity, Whistler filed, and won, a libel suit against Ruskin, though the award of damages was only one farthing. The episode tarnished Ruskin's reputation, and may have accelerated his mental decline.

The emergence of the Aesthetic movement and Impressionism alienated Ruskin from the art world, and his later writings were increasingly seen as irrelevant, especially as he seemed to be more interested in book illustators such as Kate Greenaway than in modern art. He continued to support philanthropic movements such as the Home Arts and Industries Association

Much of his later life was spent at a house called Brantwood, on the shores of Coniston Water located in the Lake District of England.

Work

Ruskin's early work in defence of Turner was based on his belief that art was essentially concerned to communicate an understanding of nature, and that authentic artists should reject inherited conventions in order to appreciate and study effects of form and colour by direct observation. His most famous dictum was "go to nature in all singleness of heart, rejecting nothing and selecting nothing." He later believed that the Pre-Raphaelites formed "a new and noble school" of art that would provide the basis for a thoroughgoing reform of the art world. For Ruskin, art should communicate truth above all things. However, he believed that this was not revealed by mere display of skill, but the expression of the artist's whole moral outlook. Ruskin rejected the work of Whistler because he considered it to epitomise a reductive mechanisation of art.

Rejection of mechanisation and standardization also informed Ruskin's theories of architecture. For Ruskin the Gothic style embodied the same moral truths that he sought in great art. It expressed the meaning of architecture — as a combination of the values of strength, solidity and aspiration; all written, as it were, in stone. For Ruskin, true Gothic architecture involved the whole community in its creation, and expressed the full range of human emotions, from the sublime effects of soaring spires to the comically ridiculous carved grotesques and gargoyles. Even its crude and "savage" aspects were proof of "the liberty of every workman who struck the stone; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure."John Unrau, Ruskin, the Workman and the Savageness of Gothic, in New Approaches to Ruskin, ed Robert Hewisson, 1981,pp.33-50 Classical architecture, in contrast, expressed a morally vacuous repressive standardisation. Ruskin associated Classical values with modern developments, in particular with the demoralising consequences of the industrial revolution, resulting in buildings such as The Crystal Palace, which he despised as an oversized greenhouse.

These views led to his later works attacking laissez faire capitalism, which influenced many trade union leaders of the Victorian era. He was also the inspiration for the Arts and Crafts Movement, the founding of the National Trust, the National Art Collections Fund and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

Ruskin's range was vast. He wrote over 250 works which started from art history, but expanded to cover topics ranging over science, geology, ornithology, literary criticism, the environmental effects of pollution, and mythology.

John Ruskin's Study of Gneiss Rock, Glenfinlas, 1853. Pen and ink and wash with Chinese ink on paper, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England
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John Ruskin's Study of Gneiss Rock, Glenfinlas, 1853. Pen and ink and wash with Chinese ink on paper, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England

Ruskin's views on art, wrote Kenneth Clark, "cannot be made to form a logical system, and perhaps owe to this fact a part of their value." Certain principles, however, remain consistent throughout his work and have been summarized in Clark's own words as the following:

  1. That art is not a matter of taste, but involves the whole man. Whether in making or perceiving a work of art, we bring to bear on it feeling, intellect, morals, knowledge, memory, and every other human capacity, all focused in a flash on a single point. Aesthetic man is a concept as false and dehumanizing as economic man.
  2. That even the most superior mind and the most powerful imagination must found itself on facts, which must be recognized for what they are. The imagination will often reshape them in a way which the prosaic mind cannot understand; but this recreation will be based on facts, not on formulas or illusions.
  3. That these facts must be perceived by the senses, or felt; not learnt.
  4. That the greatest artists and schools of art have believed it their duty to impart vital truths, not only about the facts of vision, but about religion and the conduct of life.
  5. That beauty of form is revealed in organisms which have developed perfectly according to their laws of growth, and so give, in his own words, 'the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function.'
  6. That this fulfilment of function depends on all parts of an organism cohering and cooperating. This was what he called the 'Law of Help,' one of Ruskin's fundamental beliefs, extending from nature and art to society.
  7. That good art is done with enjoyment. The artist must feel that, within certain reasonable limits, he is free, that he is wanted by society, and that the ideas he is asked to express are true and important.
  8. That great art is the expression of epochs where people are united by a common faith and a common purpose, accept their laws, believe in their leaders, and take a serious view of human destiny."Kenneth Clark, "A Note on Ruskin's Writings on Art and Architecture," from Ruskin Today 1964

After his death Ruskin's works were collected together in a massive "library edition", completed in 1912 by his friends Edward Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. Its index is famously elaborate, attempting to articulate the complex interconnectedness of his thought.

Legacy

Ruskin's influence extends far beyond the field of art history. The author Leo Tolstoy described him as "one of those rare men who think with their heart." Marcel Proust was a Ruskin enthusiast and translated his works into French. Mahatma Gandhi said that Ruskin had been the single greatest influence in his life.

Biographies

The defining work on Ruskin for the 20th century was "The Darkening Glass" (Columbia UP, 1960) by Columbia professor John D. Rosenberg, backed by his ubiquitous paperback anthology, "The Genius of John Ruskin." Neither book has ever been out of print. Rosenberg, who began teaching at Columbia in 1963, and is still teaching in 2006, produced countless Ruskinians who are now the Victorianists at various American universities. A definitive (and very readable) two-volume biography by Tim Hilton appeared as John Ruskin: The Early Years (Yale University Press, 1985) and John Ruskin: The Later Years (Yale University Press, 2000).

Controversies

Turner erotic drawings

Until 2005, biographies of both J. M. W. Turner and Ruskin had claimed that in 1858 Ruskin burned bundles of erotic paintings and drawings by Turner, in order to protect Turner's posthumous reputation. In 2005, these same works by Turner were discovered in a neglected British archive, proving that Ruskin did not destroy them.[The Guardian report on the discovery of Turner's drawings]

Sexuality

Ruskin's sexuality has led to much speculation and critical comment. His one marriage, to Effie Gray, was annulled after six years because of non-consummation. His wife, in her submission to her lawyer during the annulment proceedings, claimed that he found her "person" (meaning her body) repugnant. "He alleged various reasons, hatred to children, religious motives, a desire to preserve my beauty, and finally this last year he told me his true reason... that he had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening 10th April." Ruskin confirmed this in his own legal deposition. "It may be thought strange that I could abstain from a woman who to most people was so attractive. But though her face was beautiful, her person was not formed to excite passion. On the contrary, there were certain circumstances in her person which completely checked it."

The cause of this mysterious "disgust" has led to much speculation. Ruskin's biographer, Mary Luytens, suggested that he rejected Effie because he was horrified by the sight of her pubic hair. Luytens argued that Ruskin must have known the female form only through Greek statues and paintings of the nude lacking pubic hair and found the reality shocking. This speculation has been repeated by later biographers and essayists and it is now something that "everyone knows" about Ruskin.For example Gene Weingarten comments on the marriage in his book I'm with Stupid (2004) "Ruskin had it annulled [sic] because he was horrified to behold upon his bride a thatch of hair, rough and wild, similar to a man's. He thought her a monster." p.150-1 However, there is no proof for this, and some disagree. Peter Fuller in his book Theoria: Art and the Absence of Grace writes, "It has been said that he was frightened on the wedding night by the sight of his wife's pubic hair; more probably, he was perturbed by her menstrual blood." Ruskin's biographers Tim Hilton and John Batchelor agree that menstruation is the more likely explanation.

Ruskin's later relationship with Rose la Touche has also led to claims that he had paedophile inclinations, on the grounds that he stated that he fell in love with her when he met her at the age of nine.[The Guardian, review] In fact he did not approach her as a suitor until she was seventeen, and he repeatedly proposed to her for as long as she lived. Ruskin is not known to have had any other romantic liaisons or sexual intimacies.

Definitions

Coloured engraving of Ruskin
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Coloured engraving of Ruskin

Ruskin coined quite a few distinctive terms, some of which were collected by the Nuttall Encyclopedia. Some include:

Pathetic Fallacy
a term he invented to describe the ascription of human emotions to impersonal natural forces, as in phrases like "the wind sighed".
Fors Clavigera
the name given by Ruskin to a series of letters to workmen, written during the seventies of the 19th century, and employed by him to designate three great powers which go to fashion human destiny, viz., Force, wearing, as it were, (clava) the club of Hercules; Fortitude, wearing, as it were, (clavis) the key of Ulysses; and Fortune, wearing, as it were, (clavus) the nail of Lycurgus. That is to say, Faculty waiting on the right moment, and then striking in. See Shakespeare's Time and tide in the affairs of men, &c., the Flood in which is the Third Fors. The letters are represented as written at the dictation of the Third Fors, or, as it seems to the author, the right moment, or the occurrence of it.
Modern Atheism
ascribed by Ruskin to the unfortunate persistence of the clergy in teaching children what they cannot understand, and in employing young consecrate persons to assert in pulpits what they do not know.
The Want of England
"England needs," says Ruskin, "examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek, not greater wealth, but simpler pleasures; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions self-possession, and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace."

Partial bibliography

Notes

External links

See also

John Ruskin
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John Ruskin

 

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