John Ruskin, 1819-1900
Biographical note
Writer on art, economics, and sociology, was born in London, the son of a wealthy wine merchant, a Scotsman. Brought up under intellectually and morally bracing Puritan influences, his education was mainly private until he went to Oxford in 1836; he remained until 1840, when a serious illness interrupted his studies, and led to a six months’ visit to Italy. On his return in 1842 he took his degree. In 1840 he had made the acquaintance of Turner, and this, together with a visit to Venice, constituted a turning point in his life.
In 1843 appeared the first vol. of Modern Painters, the object of which was to insist upon the superiority in landscape of the moderns, and especially of Turner, to all the ancient masters. The earnestness and originality of the author and the splendour of the style at once called attention to the work which, however, awakened a chorus of protest from the adherents of the ancients. A second vol. appeared in 1846, the third and fourth in 1856, and the fifth in 1860. Meanwhile he had published The Seven Lamps of Architecture [1849], The Stones of Venice (1851–53), perhaps his greatest work, Lectures on Architecture and Painting [1854], Elements of Drawing [1856], and Elements of Perspective [1859]. During the 17 years between the publication of the first and the last vols. of Modern Painters his views alike on religion and art had become profoundly modified, and the necessity of a radical change in the moral and intellectual attitude of the age towards religion, art, and economics in their bearing upon life and social conditions had become his ruling idea.
He now assumed the rôle of the prophet as Carlyle, by whose teaching he was profoundly influenced, had done, and the rest of his life was spent in the endeavour to turn the mind of the nation in the direction he desired. The Political Economy of Art [1857] showed the line in which his mind was moving; but it was in Unto this Last, published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1860, that he began fully to develop his views. It brought down upon him a storm of opposition and obloquy which continued for years, and which, while it acted injuriously upon his highly sensitive nervous system, had no effect in silencing him or modifying his views. There followed Munera Pulveris (Gifts of the Dust), The Crown of Wild Olive, Sesame and Lilies [1865], Time and Tide by Wear and Tyne, and innumerable fugitive articles.
In 1869 Ruskin was appointed first Slade Prof. of the Fine Arts at Oxford, and endowed a school of drawing in the University. His successive courses of lectures were published as Aratra Pentelici (Ploughs of Pentelicus) [1870], The Eagle’s Nest [1872], Ariadne Florentina [1872], and Love’s Meinie [1873]. Contemporaneously with these he issued with more or less regularity, as health permitted, Fors Clavigera (Chance the Club-bearer), a series of miscellaneous notes and essays, sold by the author himself direct to the purchasers, the first of a series of experiments — of which the Guild of St. George, a tea room, and a road-making enterprise were other examples — in practical economics.
After the death of his mother in 1871 he purchased a small property, Brantwood, in the Lake district, where he lived for the remainder of his life, and here he brought out in monthly parts his last work, Præterita, an autobiography, 24 parts of which appeared, bringing down the story to 1864. Here he died on January 20, 1900.
Ruskin was a man of noble character and generous impulses, but highly strung, irritable, and somewhat intolerant. He is one of our greatest stylists, copious, eloquent, picturesque, and highly coloured. His influence on his time was very great, at first in the department of art, in which he was for a time regarded as the supreme authority, later and increasingly in the realms of economics and morals, in which he was at first looked upon as an unpractical dreamer. He married in 1848, but the union proved unhappy, and was dissolved in 1855.
[From A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature by John W. Cousin, 1910]
Works
- Poems [1835-1846]
- The Poetry of Architecture: Cottage, Villa, etc., to which is added suggestions on Works of Art [1837-1838]
- The King of the Golden River, or The Black Brothers [1841]
- Modern Painters
- Of General Principles [1843-1844]
- Of Truth [1843-1846]
- Of Ideas of Beauty [1846]
- Of Many Things [1856]
- Mountain Beauty [1856]
- Of Leaf Beauty [1860]
- Of Cloud Beauty [1860]
- Of Ideas of Relation: – I. Of Invention Formal [1860]
- Of Ideas of Relation: – II. Of Invention Spiritual [1860]
- Review of Lord Lindsay's "Sketches of the History of Christian Art" [1847]
- The Seven Lamps of Architecture [1849]
- Letters to the Times in Defense of Hunt and Millais [1851]
- Pre-Raphaelitism [1851]
- The Stones of Venice
- The Foundations [1851]
- The Sea–Stories [1853]
- The Fall [1853]
- Lectures on Architecture and Painting: delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853
- Architecture and Painting [1854]
- The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals and Religion [1858]
- Letters to the Times in Defense of Pre-Raphaelite Painting [1854]
- Academy Notes: Annual Reviews of the June Royal Academy Exhibitions (1855-1859 / 1875)
- The Harbours of England [1856]
- "A Joy Forever" and its price in the Market, or The Political Economy of Art (1857 / 1880)
- The Elements of Drawing, in Three Letters to Beginners [1857]
- The Two Paths: Being Lectures on Art, and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, Delivered in 1858–9
- The Elements of Perspective, Arranged for the Use of Schools and Intended to be Read in Connection with the First Three Books of Euclid [1859]
- "Unto This Last": Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy [1860]
- Munera Pulveris: Six Essays on Political Economy [1862-1863 / 1872]
- Cestus of Aglaia [1864]
- Sesame and Lilies [1864-1865]
- The Ethics of the Dust: Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Chrystallisation [1866]
- The Crown of Wild Olive: Three Lectures on Work, Traffic and War [1866]
- Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne: Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work [1867]
- The Flamboyant Architecture of the Somme [1869]
- The Queen of the Air: Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm [1869]
- Verona and its Rivers [1870]
- Lectures on Art: delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870
- Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture: Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870
- Lectures on Sculpture, Delivered at Oxford, 1870–1871
- Lectures on Landscape: Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871
- Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain [4 vols., 1871-1880]
- The Eagle's Nest: Ten Lectures on the Relation of Natural Science to Art, Given before the University of Oxford in Lent Term, 1872
- Love's Meinie: Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds [1873]
- Ariadne Florentia: Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving, with Appendix, given before the University of Oxford, in Michaelmas Term, 1872
- Val d’Arno: Ten Lectures on the Tuscan Art antecedent to the Florentine Year of Victories, given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1872
- Mornings in Florence [1877]
- Pearls for Young Ladies [1878]
- Review of Paintings by James McNeill Whistler [1878]
- Fiction, Fair and Foul [1880]
- Deucalion: Collected Studies of the Lapse of Waves and Life of Stones [1883]
- The Art of England: Lectures Given at the University of Oxford [1883-1884]
- St Mark's Rest [1884]
- The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century: Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February: 4th and 11th, 1884
- The Pleasures of England: Lectures Given at the University of Oxford [1884-1885]
- Bible of Amiens [1885]
- Proserpina: Studies of Wayside Flowers while the Air was Yet Pure among the Alps and in the Scotland and England Which My Father Knew [1886]
- Præterita: Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts Perhaps Worthy of Memory in My Past Life [1885-1889]
- Dilecta
- Giotto and His Works in Padua: Being an Explanatory Notice of the Series of Woodcuts Executed for the Arundel Society after the Frescoes in the Arena Chapel
- Hortus Inclusus: Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days: to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston
- In Montibus Sanctis
- Cœli Enarrant
- Notes on Samuel Prout and William Hunt
- Guide to the Principal Pictures of the Venice Academy of Fine Arts
- Catalogue of the Drawings and Sketches of J.M.W. Turner
- An Inquiry into Some of the Conditions at Present Affecting "The Study of Architecture" in our Schools
- The Crown of Wild Olive: also Munera Pulveris; Pre-Raphaelitism; Aratra Pentelici; The Ethics of the Dust; Fiction, Fair and Foul; The Elements of Drawing
- Mornings in Florence
- On the Old Road: A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature
- Our Fathers Have Told Us: Part I. The Bible of Amiens
- Selections From the Works of John Ruskin
- Stones of Venice [introductions]
- The Two Paths
- Val d'Arno