The Life of John Ruskin

In the summer of 1889, at Seascale, on the Cumberland coast, Ruskin was still busy upon "Præterita." He had his task planned out to the finish: in nine more chapters he meant to...

In the book his Bertha of Canterbury was reading at twilight on the Eve of St. Mark, Keats might have been describing "Fors." Among its pages, fascinating with their golden broi...

Early in 1872, after bringing out "Munera Pulveris," the essays he had written ten years before for _Fraser_ on economy; after getting those street-sweepers to work near the Bri...

"Have you read an Oxford Graduate's letters on art?" wrote Miss Mitford, of "Our Village," on January 27, 1847. "The author, Mr. Ruskin, was here last week, and is certainly the...

Critics who are least disposed to give Ruskin credit for his artistic doctrines or economical theories unite in allowing that he taught his generation to look at Nature, and esp...

On Tuesday, 8th February, 1870, the Slade Professor's lecture-room was crowded to over-flowing with members of the University, old and young, and their friends, who flocked to h...

Sixty years of one of the busiest lives on record were beginning to tell upon Ruskin. He would not confess to old age, but his recent illness had shaken him severely. The next t...

"I begin to ask myself, with somewhat pressing arithmetic, how much time is likely to be left me, at the age of fifty-six, to complete the various designs for which, until past...

Mention has been made of an address to working men at the Camberwell Institute, January 24th, 1865. This lecture was published in 1866, together with two others,[11] under the t...

The _Times_, in May 1851, missed "those works of inspiration," as Ruskin had at last taught people to call Turner's pictures. But the acknowledged mouthpiece of public opinion f...

On January 1st, 1871, was issued a small pamphlet, headed "Fors Clavigera," in the form of a letter to the working men and labourers of England, dated from Denmark Hill, and sig...

The humble work of the drawing-classes at Great Ormond Street was teaching Ruskin even more than he taught his pupils. It was showing him how far his plans were practicable; how...

This Brantwood life came to an end with the end of 1881. Early in the next year he went for change of scene to stay with the Severns at his old home on Herne Hill. He seemed muc...

If origin, if early training and habits of life, if tastes, and character, and associations, fix a man's nationality, then John Ruskin must be reckoned a Scotsman. He was born i...

At Paris, on the way heme in 1844, he had spent some days in studying Titian and Bellini and Perugino. They were not new to him; but now that he was an art-critic, it behoved hi...

At forty years of age Ruskin finished "Modern Painters." From that time art was sometimes his text, rarely his theme. He used it as the opportunity, the vehicle, so to say, for...

The sky had been a favourite subject of study with the author of "Modern Painters." His journals for fifty years past had kept careful account of the weather, and effects of clo...

A book about Venice had been planned in 1845, during Ruskin's first long working visit. He had made so many notes and sketches both of architecture and painting that the materia...

Retirement at Brantwood was only partial. Ruskin's habits of life made it impossible for him to be idle, much as he acknowledged the need of thorough rest. He could not be wholl...

It was in the year 1855 that Ruskin first published "Notes on the Royal Academy and other Exhibitions." He had been so often called upon to write his opinion of Pre-Raphaelite p...

The series of letters published as "Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne" were addressed[13] to Thomas Dixon, a working cork-cutter of Sunderland, whose portrait by Professor Legros...

The first account of him in writing is in a letter from his mother when he was six weeks old. She chronicles--not without a touch of superstition--the breaking of a looking-glas...

Devoted as she was to her husband, Mrs. Ruskin felt bound to watch over her son at Oxford. It was his health she was always anxious about; doctoring was her forte. He had suffer...

By the end of June, 1853, "Stones of Venice" was finished, as well as a description of Giotto's works at Padua, written for the Arundel Society. The social duties of the season...

Philanthropic instincts, and a growing sense of the necessity for social reform, had led Ruskin for some years past towards a group of liberal thinkers with whom he had little o...

The main object of this journey was, however, not to study mythology, but to continue the revision of old estimates of architecture, and after seventeen years to look with a fre...

In spite of a "classical education" and the influence of Aristotle upon the immature art-theories of his earlier works, Ruskin was known, in his younger days, as a Goth, and the...

That 8th of February, 1840, when John Ruskin came of age, it seemed as though all the gifts of fortune had been poured into his lap. What his father's wealth and influence could...

The neighbour, or the Oxonian friend, who climbed the steps of the Herne Hill house and called upon Mrs. Ruskin, in the autumn and winter of 1842, would learn that Mr. John was...

Of less interest to the general reader, though too important a part of Ruskin's life and work to be passed over without mention, are his studies in Mineralogy. We have heard of...

He was now close upon seventeen, and it was time to think seriously of his future. His father went to Oxford early in the year to consult the authorities about matriculation. Me...

The first dated "poem" was written a month before little John Ruskin reached the age of seven. It is a tale of a mouse, in seven octosyllabic couplets, "The Needless Alarm," rem...

Oxford and old friends did not monopolise Ruskin's attention: he was soon seen at Cambridge--on the same platform with Richard Redgrave, R.A., the representative of Academicism...

Of all the prizes which Oxford could bestow, the Newdigate used to be the most popular. Its fortunate winner was an admitted poet in an age when poetry was read, and he appeared...

After an autumn among the Alps, hearing that the Turner drawings in the National Gallery had been mildewed, he ran home to see about them in January 1862; and was kept until the...

Early in 1836 the quiet of Herne Hill was fluttered by a long-promised, long-postponed visit. Mr. Domecq at last brought his four younger daughters to make the acquaintance of t...

Writing to his father from Manchester about the lecture of February 22, 1859--"The Unity of Art"--Ruskin mentions, among various people of interest whom he was meeting, such as...

Ready for work again, and in reasonable health of mind and body, John Ruskin sat down in his little study at Herne Hill in November, 1841, with his private tutor, Osborne Gordon...

Wider aims and weaker health had not put an end to Ruskin's connection with the Working Men's College, though he did not now teach a drawing-class regularly. He had, as he said,...

Our hermit among the Alps of Savoy differed in one respect from his predecessors. They, for the most part, saw nothing in the rocks and stones around them except the prison wall...

I. "UNTO THIS LAST" (1860-1861) II. "MUNERA PULVERIS" (1862) III. THE LIMESTONE ALPS (1863) IV. "SESAME AND LILIES" (1864) V. "ETHICS OF THE DUST" (1865) VI. "THE CROWN OF WILD...

I. FIRST OXFORD LECTURES (1870-1871) II. "FORS" BEGUN (1871-1872) III. OXFORD TEACHING (1872-1875) IV. ST. GEORGE AND ST. MARK (1875-1877) V. "DEUCALION" AND "PROSERPINA" (1877-...

I. "TURNER AND THE ANCIENTS" (1842-1844) II. CHRISTIAN ART (1845-1847) III. "THE SEVEN LAMPS" (1847-1849) IV. "STONES OF VENICE" (1849-1851) V. PRE-RAPHAELITISM (1851-1853) VI....

CHAPTER I. HIS ANCESTORS II. THE FATHER OF THE MAN (1819-1825) III. PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM (1826-1830) IV. MOUNTAIN-WORSHIP (1830-1835) V. THE GERM OF "MODERN PAINTERS" (1836) VI....