John Ruskin (1819-1900)

"Ruskin in Italy: From Art to Social Criticism"

Read the introduction to Ruskin in the Norton text or see the information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin. Also, click on the link to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood or see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Raphaelite_Brotherhood. Also read “Ruskin, Turner, and the Pre-Raphaelites: Portrait of the Critic as a Young Artist” at http://www.thecityreview.com/ruskin.html.

Read From Modern Painters “A Definition of Greatness in Art” at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/ruskin/empi/3rdedition/3b010.htm (Volume 1, part 1, section 1, chapter 2, pages 10-11); what does Ruskin believe that great art does for the viewer? Read “The Slave Ship,” a critique of Turner’s famous painting, also from Modern Painters, at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/ruskin/empi/3rdedition/3b376.htm (Volume 1, part 2, section 5, chapter 3, pages 376-77). What is Ruskin's definition of "great art"? How does Turner's The Slave Ship satisfy this definition? As you read Ruskin's description of the painting, click on the painting at http://history.hanover.edu/courses/art/turnss.html. See the work of J.M.W. Turner at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner.

Read “The Savageness of Gothic Architecture” from The Stones of Venice. Click on examples of Gothic architecture at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_architecture. What important Victorian themes or ideas do you find in the work? What does Ruskin mean by his use of the word "Gothic"? Ruskin associates social and cultural ideas with architectural styles. He denotes three systems of architectural ornament: 1) Servile, 2) Constitutional, and 3) Revolutionary. How does he differentiation these styles? How does he link cultural values with these categories? To which style does the Gothic belong and why does he admire it so?

Thomas Carlyle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Carlyle), many of whose social ideas were immensely influential on Ruskin, wrote to Emerson about John Ruskin: "No man in England has in him the divine rage against iniquity, falsity, and baseness than has Ruskin, and every man ought to have." Indeed, that leap from art to social criticism was one of singular importance to John Ruskin. He wrote of himself when comfortably ensconced in his prestigious Slade Professorship at Oxford: "The end of my whole professorship would be accomplished, if only the English nation could be made to understand that the beauty which is to be a joy forever [Keats] must be a joy for all."

Born in the same year as Queen Victoria to affluent, bourgeois parents, Ruskin led a sheltered, charmed life. He was immensely influenced by his parents. His father, was a wine merchant who had made his fortune adhering to the brutal Manchester school of economics, which his son would one day vigorously castigate ; Ruskin senior was a man who loved to travel and enjoyed art. His mother was puritanical, evangelical, and smothering to her only son, a sickly, delicate child. Mrs. Ruskin had visions of her son’s being a cleric and though religion didn't take with the lad, Ruskin's language and style was rooted in the King James Bible (which had been rooted in him). At 6, Ruskin wrote his first book, inspired by the Gothic tales of Maria Edgeworth and the poetry of Byron. At 14 he was well-traveled and had already formed a love affair with the Alps and Italian art. Because of his ill-health and sheltering parents, he was largely tutored at home. At 18, he entered Oxford (with Mom in tow)! At 24, he published a defense of J. M. W. Turner's art (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner). The defense was an immediate success, and Ruskin later expanded the essay into Modern Painters. So at a very early age his reputation as an art critic was established.

Thereafter Ruskin began to champion the work of the Pre-Raphaelites (Rossetti, Morris, Millais). (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Raphaelite_Brotherhood.) In 1848 at age 29, Ruskin married Effie Gray, in large part to please his mother. The honeymoon in Venice was prelude to the disaster of their marriage. Ruskin, who had never seen a naked woman before was horrified at the sight of Effie (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effie_Gray.) Six years later, Gray obtained an annulment from Ruskin, in what became a huge scandal, suing that the marriage had never been consummated. Shortly after, she married John Millais (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Everett_Millais), Ruskin’s protégé with whom she had had an affair while Millais was painting Ruskin’s portrait in the Lake District (http://www.abcgallery.com/M/millais/millais7.html). Humiliated, Ruskin gathered himself and his broken ego to finish his second great work, Stones of Venice, which further established his reputation and helped assuage the humiliation of the Effie Gray affair.

By this point, Ruskin had fallen under the spell of Carlyle and had already begun to evince the habit of mixing social criticism with art criticism. He also became enamored with Carlyle's ideas about the solidarity and wholeness of Medieval society. These ideas would be reflected in Stones of Venice and his defense of Gothic architecture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin).

In 1869, Ruskin accepted a prestigious Slade Professorship at Oxford (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_University) and seemed to have “arrived”; however, bouts with depression and mental anxiety began to plague him. He spent a great deal of his time at Brantwood in the Lake District (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Brantwood_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_20019.jpg), now a Ruskin Museum. He also became enamored with a little girl of 9 (he was 40)—Rose La Touche (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_la_Touche). When Rose was 18, Ruskin proposed, but his religious doubts and her religious enthusiasm were among the many chasms that separated them. In 1875 Rose died at age 25; a few years later Ruskin struggled with serious bouts with mental illness, yet periodically rising from the fog often enough to attend to writing and various social projects. Among those were to help found the working men's colleges of London and to return to his post as Slade scholar in 1883.

The last 10 years of Ruskin's long life were largely shrouded in darkness and bouts against insanity. He was cared for by Joanna Ruskin, a niece, and her husband Author Severn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin) son of Joseph Severn, who cared for John Keats in his last days in Rome). Ruskin (died in 1900, his will declining burial in Westminster Abbey.