جان راسکین
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john ruskin
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جان راسکین
معنی:
جان راسکین (به انگلیسی: John Ruskin) (زاده ۱۸۱۹ - درگذشت ۱۹۰۰) شاعر، فیلسوف، منتقد هنری و نویسنده انگلیسی بود. برداشت او از هنر و معماری بسیار تاثیر پذیرفته از زیباییشناسی ویکتوریایی و زیباییشناسی ادواردی است. وی که در خانوادهای ثروتمند زاده شده بود، پس از مرگ پدرش تمام ثروت او را وقف فعالیتهای خیریه، موزه و فعالیتهای فرهنگی کرد و خود به نویسندگی اشتغال یافت. تمام آثار وی دارای رنگ و لعاب اخلاقیاند. معروفترین اثر راسکین کتاب هفت مشعل معماری است که در سال ۱۸۴۸ انتشار یافت. وی در این کتاب سخن از معماری میگوید و معتقد است معماری دارای هفت مشعل به قرار زیر است: حقیقت، ایثار، قدرت، زیبایی، زندگی، خاطره و اطاعت. در ۸۰ سالگی در حالی درگذشت که تأثیرش بر نویسندگان انگلیس انکار ناپذیر است.
↑ «مرگ "جان راسکین" نویسنده و منتقد معروف انگلیسی». سایت مبلغ.
دکتر سید محسن حبیبی و خانم ملیحه مقصودی. مرمت شهری. چاپ چاپ دوم. انتشارات دانشگاه تهران، ۱۳۸۴.
این یک نوشتار خُرد پیرامون افراد است. با گسترش آن به ویکیپدیا کمک کنید.
در ویکیانبار پروندههایی دربارهٔ جان راسکین موجود است.
ردههای صفحه: دانشآموختگان دانشگاه کینگز لندن استادان دانشگاههای انگلستان اهالی لندن خیریه درگذشتگان ۱۹۰۰ (میلادی)زادگان ۱۸۱۹ (میلادی)فیلسوفان اهل انگلستانفیلسوفان قرن ۱۹نویسندگان اهل انگلستان نظریهپردازهای معماری
قس
• جان راسکین، دانشمند و منتقد اجتماعی هنری انگلیس، از معماران نادر جهان متولد 8 فوریه 1818 در لندن نقش اساسی در تحولات فرهنگی انگلیس.
• گذراندن تحصیلات مقدماتی در خانه خویش سپس راهی دانشگاه آکسفورد
• آثار منتشر شده وی:
1- نقاشان مدرن (1843) 2- هفت مشعل معماری (1848) 3- سنگهای ونیز (1855) 4- مباحثی در معماری و نقاشی (1853)
5- تاجگذاری زیتونهای وحشی (1866) (کتابی در باب اقتصاد سیاسی مسائل اجتماعی) 6- به سوی این آخرین (1862)
• راسکین در سال 1889 از مقام تدریس و نویسندگی کنارهگیری کرد و در سال 1900 از این جهان رخت بست.
• آثار مکتوب وی: 250 اثر جمعآوری شده توسط دو تن از دوستانش در سال 1912.
نگاهی به اندیشههای راسکین
• اولین اقدام راسکین: نقد و فلسفه هنر (متأثر از: فلسفه اجتماعی)
• ریشهیابی منشأ افکار راسکین:
1. شناخت دقیق شاهکارهای اروپایی نقاشی و معماری
2. تأثیرات فراوان از تفکر پوژن (فرهنگگرا متعصب به سبک گوتیک)
• در تاریخ هر رشتهای که کنکاش کنید بالاخره نامی از راسکین خواهید یافت: او نسبت به سیاست، اقتصاد، هنر، جغرافیا، زمینشناسی و گیاهشناسی و... علاقهمند است.
• عقاید راسکین: بررسی تأثیر اصل اقتصادی و اجتماعی بر هنر- گرایش زیاد به طبیعت- خواهان کمترین دخالت در بناهای تاریخی برای اصلاح شهر نیازمند اصلاح فرهنگ شهریم- ایجاد شهرهای کوچک و متراکم شهر قرون وسطایی
• او معتقد است که انقلاب صنعتی، مردم را از فرهنگ مردمی خود دور کرده است و علت این امر را کار مداوم در کارخانجات میداند.
• راسکین متوجه از همگسیختگی هنر است و اظهار میکند به جای جستجو در هنر باید در وضع اقتصادی و اجتماعی انگلستان و مورد سئوال بردن انقلاب صنعتی آن دوره.
• در حقیقت باید چهارچوب فکری وی را در قالب چهارچوب غالب زمانه یعنی تفکر رمانیستی (دنبال نظم موجود در طبیعت) ارزیابی کرد.
• راسکین از تنزل مقام انسان از یک آفرینشگر به یک ماشین تکرار کننده که دیگر فکر نمیکند بسیار اندهگین بود و یکی از دلایل ضدیت عجیب وی با صنعت را میتوان در این موضوع جستجو کرد.
• از دیدگاه او هنر وسیلهی ارتقای زندگی روانی مردم- هنر: مانند یک فعالیت اخلاقی- انسانی.
• «گوتیک» (پذیرش بیچون و چرای قرون وسطی): آرمانیترین شیوه ساختن و خواستار بازخوانی آن و پایهریزی فرهنگ براساس سبک گوتیک متأثر شده از قرون وسطی
• «لاور» مینویسد: «دنیای مدرن، بیش از حد تصور راسکین مدیون است.
• در زمینه مرمت معماری: در تفکر راسکین توجه به سندیت بنا و سرنوشت آن و عدم دخالت و تغییر در آن و در عین حال تسلیم و سرسپردگی به طبیعت، مهمترین عناصر را تشکیل میدهند.
• انتقادات راسکین بر محصولات صنعتی زمان:
1. نمایش ظاهری استخوانبندی حمال بنا در چیزی غیر از آنچه واقعاً هست.
2. ظریفکاری و پوشاندن سطح خارجی بنا به منظور جلوه دادن آنها با مواردی چند از آن چه که واقعاً با آن ساخته شده است و چسباندن تزئینات و کندهکاریها بر روی آنها.
3. استفاده از تزئینات مختلفی که با ماشین ساخته شدهاند.
نظریات راسکین در باب معماری و شهرسازی
1. ستایش تنوع 2. شهر، نمایش بسیار جذابتر از منظره 3. شهر مجموعهای از واحدها نیست 4. علیه تکرار 5. له تنوع 6. له بیتفاوتی
7. الگوی خیابانهای قرون وسطایی 8. صاحبان حرفه 9. شهر و اجتماع 10. استقرار 11. ارزش ویژگی 12. گرایش
حاصل سخن
راسکین با سخنرانیها و نقدهای خود در زمانی که جامعه صنعتی انگلیس در حال گذر از شیوه سنتی به صنعتی بود.
1. باعث ایجاد مباحث فراوانی در شاخههای هنر و صنعت شد.
2. منشأ اصلی جنبشهای مختلف هنری در دهههای بعد
وضعی که جامعه ما پس از چندین دهه از ارائه نظریات راسکین به آن مبتلاست و به شدت نیازمند تجارب سایر جوامع که دوران تحول را سپری کردهاند تا اجتماع ایرانی کمتر آسیب ببیند.
قس
جان راسکین، دشمن سرسخت مرمت بنا
جان راسکین، منقد هنری اهل انگلستان از تاثیرگذارترین افراد بر دانش مرمت و حفاظت می باشد. با وجود راسکین است که واژه مرمت بار منفی پیدا کرده و حفاظت جایگزین آن می شود. او را می توان سردمدار جنبش حفاظت دانست.یکی از مشروط کنندگان تفکر مرمت معماری است و مخالف سرسخت آن بود. در زیر بخشی از اندیشه های او پیرامون نکوهش مرمت می آید.
«اگر حتما لازم باشد, تنها باید به صورت مرمت استحکامی باشد که انجام آن مجاز است, با هدف جلوگیری از ویرانی بیشتر به دست زمانه و بشر. هر عملی فراتر از این عدم رعایت اصالت و هنر است.»
«معنی راستین واژه مرمت، نه توسط عامه مردم، و نه توسط افراد مسئول مراقبت از یادمانهای متعلق به عامه، درک نشده است. مرمت به معنای تخریب تمام عیار یک بنای تاریخی است، تخریبی که در پی آن هیچ باقی مانده ای را نمی توان گردآوری کرد. تخریبی که با توصیف دروغین اثر نابود شده همراه است. پس بگذارید از مرمت حرفی بر زبان نرانم؛ چیزی که از آغاز تا پایان با دروغ همراه است... ممکن است مدل یک بنا را مانند مدلی از یک جنازه بسازید و شاید مدل ساخته شما دارای پوسته ای با دیوارهایی قدیمی در داخل باشد اما سود این کار چیست؟ با ساخت چنین مدلی عملا بنای قدیمی را نابود کرده اید، حتی بیرحمانه تر از آنکه آن را با خاک یکسان کرده باشید. حتی می خواهم بگویم نینوای با خاک یکسان شده به مراتب بیش از میلان بازسازی شده هویت دارد.»
راسکین اصطلاح خوش منظر بودن را برای ویرانه ها بکار می برد و حتی رسیدن بنا به این مرحله را دلیل بر انتخاب درست مصالح می داند.
«امروزه صنعتگری که تزیینات یک بنا را بوجود آورده مرده . ما به چه حقی می خواهیم به دست صنعتگری دیگرکه سلیقه ای دیگر دارد و در دنیای دیگری زندگی می کند آن را کامل و تعمیر کنیم.»
«به بهترین وجه ممکن و به هر قیمتی از هرگونه تاثیر ویرانی بر آن مراقبت کن. سنگهای آن را همانند جواهرات یک تاج بشمار. آنجا که خم است با الوار نگه دار, و به واسطه این کمک از بد شکل شدن ظاهر آن هراس مدار. »
«آخرین روز سرنوشت فرا خواهد رسید, ولی بگذارید با وضعی آشکار نزدیک شود. نگذارید که هرج و مرج, تبدیلها و ترکیب های کاذب جلو فناپذیری و مرگ اجباری بناهای تاریخی و قدیمی را بگیرند.»
آیا شما با اندیشه های راسکین موافقید؟
آیا به نظر شمامرمت می تواند ویرانگر باشد؟
خاستگاه: کتاب تاریخ حفاظت معماری نوشته یوکا یوکیلهتو
قس عربی
جون راسکن (8 فبرایر 1819- 20 ینایر 1900) کان شاعراً إنجلیزیاً و ناقداً فنیاً ومفکراً اجتماعیاً, وله العدید من المؤلفات والأعمال الأدبیة والفنیة, وقد کان لکتاباته وفنه أثر کبیر فی العصر الفکتوری و العصر الإدواردی.
وقد حاز راسکن على شهرة واسعة بعد أن قدم دعمه لأعمال جی. إم. دبلیو تیرنر ومنافحته عن المذهب الطبیعی فی الفن. کانت کتاباته الاجتماعیة الدقیقة التی تناولت الارتباطات بین القضایا الاجتماعیة والأخلاقیة والثقافیة والتی کان لها أثر فی تطور الاشتراکیة المسیحیة.
هذه بذرة مقالة عن حیاة شخصیة تحتاج للنمو والتحسین، فساهم فی إثرائها بالمشارکة فی تحریرها.
تصنیفات: موالید 1819وفیات 1900شعراء إنجلیزفلاسفة القرن التاسع عشر
قس ترکی استانبولی
John Ruskin, (d. 8 Şubat 1819 – ö. 20 Ocak 1900) XIX. yüzyılda yaşamış İngiliz yazar, şair, sanat ve toplum eleştirmenidir.
Londrada doğmuş güney Londrada yetişmiş sonradan adı Allied Domecq olan şarap ithalatçısı şirketin kurucusu olan John James Ruskinnin oğludur. Evde eğitim almıştır.
Türkçeye çevrilen eserleri
Susamlar ve Zambaklar isimli eseri Türkçeye kazandırılmıştır. Cemil Meriç, Proustun Fransızca tercümesinden Ruskinin Susamlar ve Zambaklar kitabından bazı bölümleri Türkçeleştirmiş ve Bu Ülkede alıntılamıştır.
“ İngiliz hodgâmdır, heyecansızdır. Bir millet değil, bir yığın. Yığını kolayca kandırabilirsiniz, duyguları hiçbir temele dayanmaz. Yığın düşünmez, mâruz kalır. Nezleye yakalanır gibi tutulur bir fikre. Ateşi yükselince aslanlaşır, nöbet geçince her mukaddesi unutuverir. Büyük bir milletin duyguları ölçülü, düzenli, devamlıdır. ”
“ Bir aydın dil bilmese de olur, çok kitap okumasına da ihtiyaç yok. Yeter ki ana dilini gerçekten bilsin. Kelimeleri şecereleriyle tanısın. Asıl olanları âdilerinden ayırsın. Karanlık kelimeler vardır, arılar gibi vızıldayan kelimeler. Taşıdıkları hiçbir düşünce yoktur, kimse tarafından anlaşılmazlar. Ama yine de herkesin ağzındadırlar. Onlar için yaşanır, onlar için ölünür: Hayalimizin rengine bürünürler. Göremeyiz onları, pusudadırlar. Ve bir atılışta parçalar bizi. Dilimizin her kelimesi başka bir dilden gelmiştir. Nice ülkeler dolaşmıştır bize gelinceye kadar. Ciddi olarak okumak isteyen Yunan alfabesini öğrenmeli (Ruskin İngilizlere söylüyor bunu). Her dilden lügatlar bulunmalı kütüphanemizde. Okuduğunuz metinde hiçbir karanlık kelime kalmamalı. ”
“ Felaketimizin kaynağı kültür yokluğu. Bizi helâk eden ne ahlâksızlık, ne bencillik, ne kafamızın ağır işlemesi. Bir öğrenci kayıtsızlığı içindeyiz. Hoca tanımadığımız için yardım görmemize imkân yok. ”
“ Meclisten tahıl için kanunlar geçirdiniz. Şimdi başka bir tahıl söz konusu. Daha nefis, daha besleyici bir ekmek sağlayacak, bir tahıl: susam. Bu susam, kapıları açan büyü. Harami mağaralarının kapılarını değil, hükümdar hazinelerinin kapılarını: kitap. ”
Kaynakça
^ Susamlar ve Zambaklar, John Ruskin, çeviren Türkan Turgut, Babil Yayınları, deneme, 152 sayfa
Vikisözde
John Ruskin sözleri bulunur.
Bir İngiliz şairin biyografisi olan bu madde bir taslaktır. İçeriğini geliştirerek Vikipediye katkıda bulunabilirsiniz.
İngiliz bir yazarın biyografisi olan bu madde bir taslaktır. İçeriğini geliştirerek Vikipediye katkıda bulunabilirsiniz.
Kategoriler: İngiliz şair taslaklarıİngiliz yazar taslaklarıKings College London mezunları1819 doğumlular1900 yılında ölenlerİngiliz şairlerLondra doğumlular
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded by a preference for plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation.
He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century 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.
Contents
Early life (1819–1846)
Genealogy
Ruskin was the only child of first cousins. His father, John James Ruskin (1785–1864), was a sherry and wine importer, a founding partner and de facto business manager of Ruskin, Telford and Domecq (see Allied Domecq). His mother, Margaret Cox, née Cock (1781–1871), was the daughter of a publican in Croydon. The Ruskins were English, but John James was brought up in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Margaret joined the household when she became companion to John James Ruskin’s mother, Catherine (Margaret’s aunt).
John James had hoped to practice law, but was instead articled as a clerk in London. His father, John Thomas Ruskin, a grocer, was an inadequate businessman. To save the family from bankruptcy, John James, whose prudence and success were in stark contrast to his father, took on all debts, settling the last of them in 1832. John James and Margaret were engaged in 1809, but opposition to the union from John Thomas, and the issue of the debt, delayed their wedding which was finally conducted without celebration in 1818.
Childhood and education
Ruskin as a young child, painted by James Northcote.
Ruskin was born at 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, London (demolished 1969), just south of modern-day St Pancras railway station. His childhood was characterised by the contrasting influences of his father and mother, both fiercely ambitious for him. John James Ruskin helped to develop his son’s Romanticism. They shared a passion for the works of Byron, Shakespeare and especially Walter Scott. They visited Scotts home, Abbotsford in 1838, but Ruskin was disappointed by its appearance. Margaret Ruskin, an Evangelical Christian, more cautious and restrained than her husband, taught young John to read the King James Bible from beginning to end, and then to start all over again, committing large portions to memory. Its language, imagery and stories had a profound and lasting effect on his writing.
Ruskin’s childhood was spent from 1823 at 28 Herne Hill (demolished c. 1912), Herne Hill, near the then village of Camberwell in South London. It was not, however, the friendless and toyless experience that he later claimed in his autobiography, Praeterita (1885–89). He was educated at home by his parents and private tutors, and from 1834–35 he attended the school in Peckham run by the progressive Evangelical, Thomas Dale (1797–1870). Ruskin also heard Dale lecture in 1836 at Kings College London, where he was the first professor of English Literature.
Travel
Ruskin was greatly influenced by the extensive and privileged travels he enjoyed in his childhood. It helped to establish his taste and augmented his education. His father visited business clients in Britains country houses, exposing the young John to English landscapes, architecture and paintings. Tours took them to the Lake District (his first long poem, Iteriad, was an account of his 1830 tour) and to relations in Perth, Scotland. As early as 1825, the family visited France and Belgium. Their continental tours became increasingly ambitious in scope, so that in 1833 they visited Strasbourg, Schaffhausen, Milan, Genoa and Turin, places to which Ruskin would frequently return. He developed his life-long love of the Alps, and in 1835 he first visited Venice, that “Paradise of cities” that formed both the symbol in and the subject of much of his later work.
The tours provided Ruskin with the opportunity to observe and to record his impressions of nature. He composed elegant if largely conventional poetry, some of which was published in Friendship’s Offering. His early notebooks and sketchbooks are full of his visually sophisticated and technically accomplished drawings of maps, landscapes and buildings, remarkable for a boy of his age. He was profoundly affected by a copy of Samuel Rogers’s poem, Italy (1830), which was given to him as a 13th birthday present. In particular, he admired deeply the accompanying illustrations by J. M. W. Turner, and much of his art in the 1830s was in imitation of Turner, and Samuel Prout whose Sketches and Flanders and Germany (1833) he also admired. His artistic skills were refined under the tutelage of Charles Runciman, Copley Fielding and James Duffield Harding. Gradually, he abandoned his picturesque style in favour of naturalism.
First publications
Ruskins journeys also provided inspiration for his writing. Ruskin’s first publication was his poem "On Skiddaw and Derwent Water" (originally entitled Lines written at the Lakes in Cumberland: Derwentwater and published in the Spiritual Times) (August 1829). In 1834 three short articles for Loudons Magazine of Natural History were published. They show early signs of his skill as a close “scientific” observer of nature, especially its geology.
From September 1837 to December 1838, Ruskin’s The Poetry of Architecture was serialised in Loudons Architectural Magazine, under the pen name "Kata Phusin" (Greek for "According to Nature"). This was a study of cottages, villas, and other dwellings which centred on a Wordsworthian argument that buildings should be sympathetic to their immediate environment and use local materials. It anticipated key themes in his later writings on the subject. In 1839, Ruskin’s ‘Remarks on the Present State of Meteorological Science’ was published in Transactions of the Meteorological Society.
Oxford
In Michaelmas 1836, Ruskin matriculated at the University of Oxford, taking up residence at Christ Church in January of the following year. Enrolled as a "gentleman-commoner", he enjoyed equal status with his aristocratic peers. His study of classical “Greats” might, his parents hoped, lead him to take Holy Orders and become a bishop, perhaps even the Archbishop of Canterbury. Ruskin was generally uninspired by Oxford, however, and he suffered bouts of illness. Perhaps the keenest advantage to him of his time in residence was found in the few, close friendships he made. His tutor, Rev. William Lucas Brown, was always encouraging, as was a young senior tutor, Henry Liddell (later the father of Alice Liddell) and a private tutor, Rev. Osborne Gordon. He also became close to the geologist and natural theologian, William Buckland. Among Ruskin’s fellow undergraduates, the most important friends were Charles Thomas Newton and Henry Acland.
His biggest success came in 1839 when at the third attempt he won the prestigious Newdigate Prize for poetry (Arthur Hugh Clough came second). He met William Wordsworth, who was receiving an honorary degree, at the ceremony. But Ruskin never achieved independence at Oxford. His mother lodged on the nearby High Street, where his father joined them at weekends. His health was poor, and he was devastated to hear that his first love, Adèle Domecq, the second daughter of his father’s business partner, was engaged to a French nobleman. In the midst of exam revision, in April 1840, he coughed blood, raising fears of consumption, and leading to a long break from Oxford.
Before he returned, he answered a challenge set down by the young Effie Gray, whom he would later marry. During a six week break at Leamington Spa to undergo Dr. Jephson’s (1798–1878) celebrated salt-water cure, Ruskin wrote his only work of fiction, the fairy tale, The King of the Golden River (published in December 1850 (but imprinted 1851) with illustrations by Richard Doyle). A work of Christian sacrificial morality and charity, it is set in the Alpine landscape Ruskin loved and knew so well. It remains the most translated of all his works. At Oxford, he eventually sat for a pass degree in 1842, and was awarded with an uncommon honorary double fourth-class degree in recognition of his achievements.
Modern Painters I (1843)
Much of the period, from late 1840 to autumn 1842, Ruskin spent abroad with his parents, principally in Italy. Ruskin’s studies of Italian art were chiefly guided by George Richmond, to whom the Ruskins were introduced by Joseph Severn, the friend of Keats (whose son, Arthur Severn, married Ruskins beloved cousin, Joan). But he was galvanised into writing a defence of J. M. W. Turner when he read an attack on several of Turners pictures exhibited at the Royal Academy. It recalled an attack by the critic, Rev. John Eagles, in Blackwoods Magazine in 1836, which had prompted Ruskin to write a long essay. John James had sent the piece to Turner who did not wish it to be published. It finally appeared in 1903.
Before Ruskin began Modern Painters, John James Ruskin had begun collecting watercolours, including works by Samuel Prout and, from 1839, Turner himself. Both painters were among occasional guests of the Ruskins at Herne Hill, and 163 Denmark Hill (demolished 1947) to which the family removed in 1842.
What became the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), published by Smith, Elder & Co. under the anonymous but apparently authoritative title, "A Graduate of Oxford," was Ruskin’s response to Turner’s critics. An electronic edition is available online. Ruskin controversially argued that modern landscape painters—and in particular Turner—were superior to the so-called "Old Masters" of the post-Renaissance period. Ruskin maintained that Old Masters such as Gaspard Dughet (Gaspar Poussin), Claude, and Salvator Rosa, unlike Turner, favoured pictorial convention, and not “truth to nature”. He explained that he meant “moral as well as material truth”. The job of the artist is to observe the reality of nature and not to invent it in a studio—to render what he has seen and understood imaginatively on canvas, free of any rules of composition. For Ruskin, modern landscapists demonstrated a superior understanding of the “truths” of water, air, clouds, stones, and vegetation, a profound appreciation of which Ruskin demonstrated in his own prose. He described works he had seen at the National Gallery and Dulwich Picture Gallery with extraordinary verbal felicity.
Although critics were slow to react, and reviews were mixed, many notable literary and artistic figures were impressed with the young man’s work, notably Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell. Suddenly Ruskin had found his métier, and in one leap he helped to redefine the genre of art criticism, mixing a discourse of polemic with aesthetics, scientific observation and ethics. It also cemented Ruskin’s relationship with Turner. After the artist died in 1851, Ruskin catalogued the nearly 20,000 sketches Turner gifted to the British nation.
1845 tour and Modern Painters II (1846)
Ruskin toured the continent again with his parents in 1844, visiting Chamonix and Paris, studying the geology of the Alps and the paintings of Titian, Veronese and Perugino among others at the Louvre. In 1845, at the age of 26, he undertook to travel without his parents for the first time. It provided him with an opportunity to study medieval art and architecture in France, Switzerland and especially Italy. In Lucca he saw the Tomb of Ilaria del Carretto by Jacopo della Quercia which Ruskin considered the exemplar of Christian sculpture (he would later come to associate it with the object of his love, Rose La Touche). He drew inspiration from what he saw at the Campo Santo in Pisa, and also in Florence. He was particularly impressed by the works of Fra Angelico and Giotto in San Marco, and Tintoretto in the Scuola di San Rocco. But he was alarmed by the combined effects of decay and modernisation on Venice: "Venice is lost to me," he wrote. It crystallised Ruskin’s life-long conviction that to restore was to destroy, and that the only true course was preservation and conservation.
Drawing on these travels, he wrote the second volume of Modern Painters (published April 1846). The volume concentrated more on Renaissance and pre-Renaissance artists than on Turner. It was also a more theoretical work than its predecessor. Ruskin explicitly linked the aesthetic and the divine, arguing that truth, beauty and religion are inextricably bound together: “the Beautiful as a gift of God”. (For more, see Definitions, ‘Theoria’ below). In defining categories of beauty and imagination, Ruskin was arguing that all great artists must perceive beauty and, with their imagination, to communicate it creatively through symbols. Generally, critics gave a warmer reception to this second volume, although many still found the attack on the aesthetic orthodoxy associated with Sir Joshua Reynolds difficult to take. In the summer, Ruskin was abroad again with his father who still hoped his son might become a poet, even poet laureate just one among many factors increasing the tension between them.
Middle life (1847–1869)
Effie Gray painted by Thomas Richmond. She thought the portrait made her look like "a graceful Doll".
Marriage to Effie Gray
During 1847 Ruskin became closer to Effie Gray, the daughter of family friends. It was for Effie that Ruskin had written The King of the Golden River. The couple were engaged in October. They married on 10 April 1848 at her home, Bowerswell, in Perth, once the residence of the Ruskin family. It was the site of the suicide of John Thomas Ruskin (Ruskin’s grandfather). Largely owing to this association, Ruskin’s parents did not attend. The European Revolutions of 1848 meant that the newlyweds’ earliest travelling together was limited, but they were able to visit Normandy, where Ruskin admired the Gothic architecture.
Their early life together was spent at 31 Park Street, Mayfair (later addresses included nearby 6 Charles Street, and 30 Herne Hill) secured for them by Ruskin’s father. Effie was too ill to undertake the European tour of 1849, so Ruskin visited the Alps with his parents, gathering material for the third and fourth volumes of Modern Painters. He was struck by the contrast between the Alpine beauty, and the poverty of Alpine peasants, stirring the social conscience that became increasingly sensitive.
The marriage later dissolved under discord and eventually annulment. (See The Pre-Raphaelites below.)
Architecture
Ruskin’s developing interest in architecture, and particularly in the Gothic revival, led to the first work to bear his name, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849). It contained 14 plates etched by the author. The title refers to seven moral categories that Ruskin considered vital to and inseparable from all architecture: sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory and obedience. All would provide recurring themes in his work.
Seven Lamps promoted the virtues of a secular and Protestant form of Gothic. It was a challenge to the Catholic influence of A. W. N. Pugin. Ruskin argued that restoration is destruction; ancient buildings should be preserved, but no attempt should be made to erase the accumulated history encoded in their decay.
The Stones of Venice
In November 1849, Effie and John Ruskin visited Venice, staying at the Hotel Danieli. Their different personalities are thrown into sharp relief by their contrasting priorities. For Effie, Venice provided an opportunity to socialise. Whilst she met with the Austrian 1st lieutenant, Charles Paulizza, Ruskin was engaged in solitary studies. Their London life was much the same. Returning to Venice in September 1851, Effie discovered that Paulizza was dead. Meanwhile, Ruskin recorded the Ca dOro and the Doge’s Palace, or Palazzo Ducale in drawings because he feared they would be destroyed by the occupying Austrian forces. Ruskin filled the manuscript journals and notebooks with sketches and notes that he used to write the three-volume work, The Stones of Venice (1851–53).
Developing from a technical history of Venetian architecture, from the Romanesque to the Renaissance, into a broad cultural history, Stones also reflected Ruskin’s view of contemporary England. It acted as a warning about the moral and spiritual health of society. Ruskin argued that Venice had slowly deteriorated. Its cultural achievements had been compromised, and its society corrupted, by the decline of true Christian faith. Instead of revering the divine, Renaissance artists honoured themselves, arrogantly celebrating human sensuousness.
The chapter, ‘The Nature of Gothic’ appeared in the second volume of Stones. Praising Gothic ornament, Ruskin argued that it was an expression of the artisan’s joy in free, creative work. The worker must be allowed to think and to express his own personality and ideas, ideally using his own hands, not machinery.
We want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers and miserable workers. Now it is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.
This was both an aesthetic attack on, and a social critique of the division of labour in particular, and industrial capitalism in general. This chapter had a profound impact, and was reprinted both by the Christian socialist founders of the Working Mens College and later by the arts and crafts pioneer and socialist, William Morris.
The Pre-Raphaelites
John Ruskin painted by the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais standing at Glenfinlas, Scotland, (1853–54).
John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti had established the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. The Pre-Raphaelite commitment to “naturalism” – "paint from nature only", depicting nature in fine detail – had been influenced by Ruskin.
Ruskin came into contact with Millais after the artists approached him through their mutual friend Coventry Patmore. Initially, Ruskin had not been impressed by Millaiss Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50), a painting that was considered blasphemous at the time, but Ruskin wrote letters defending the PRB to The Times in May 1851. Providing Millais with artistic patronage and encouragement, in the summer of 1853 the artist (and his brother) travelled to Scotland with Ruskin and Effie where, at Glenfinlas, he painted the closely observed landscape background of gneiss rock to which, as had always been intended, he later added Ruskins portrait.
Millais had painted Effie for The Order of Release, 1746, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1852. Suffering increasingly from physical illness and acute mental anxiety, Effie was arguing fiercely with her husband and his intense and overly protective parents, and seeking solace with her own parents in Scotland. The Ruskin marriage was already fatally undermined as she and Millais fell in love, and Effie left Ruskin, causing a public scandal.
In April 1854, Effie filed her suit of nullity, on grounds of “non-consummation” owing to his "incurable impotency," a charge Ruskin later disputed. Ruskin wrote, "I can prove my virility at once." The annulment was granted in July. Ruskin did not even mention it in his diary. Effie married Millais the following year. The complex reasons for the non-consummation and ultimate failure of the Ruskin marriage are a matter of continued speculation and debate (See Controversies: Sexuality below).
Ruskin continued to support Hunt and Rossetti. He also provided an annuity of £150 in 1855–57 to Elizabeth Siddal, Rossettis wife, to encourage the art (and paid for the services of Henry Acland for her medical care). Other artists influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites also received both critical and financial support from Ruskin, including John Brett, John William Inchbold, and Edward Burne-Jones who became a good friend (he called him “Brother Ned”). His fathers disapproval of such friends was a further cause of considerable tension between them.
During this period Ruskin wrote regular reviews of the annual exhibitions at the Royal Academy under the title Academy Notes (1855–59, 1875). They were highly influential, capable of making and breaking reputations. The satirical magazine, Punch, for example, published the lines (24 May 1856), "I paints and paints,/hears no complaints/And sells before I’m dry,/Till savage Ruskin sticks his tusk in/Then nobody will buy."
Ruskin was an art-philanthropist: in March 1861 he gave 48 Turner drawings to the Ashmolean in Oxford, and a further 25 to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge in May. Ruskins own work was very distinctive, and he occasionally exhibited his watercolours: in the United States in 1857–58 and 1879, for example; and in England, at the Fine Art Society in 1878, and at the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour (of which he was an honorary member) in 1879. He created many careful studies of natural forms, based on his detailed botanical, geological and architectural observations. Examples of his work include a painted, floral pilaster decoration in the central room of Wallington Hall in Northumberland, home of his friend Pauline Trevelyan. The stained glass window in the Little Church of St Francis Funtley, Fareham, Hampshire is reputed to have been designed by him. Originally placed in the St. Peters Church Duntisbourne Abbots near Cirencester, the window depicts the Ascension and the Nativity.
Ruskin’s theories also inspired some architects to adapt the Gothic style. Such buildings created what has been called a distinctive "Ruskinian Gothic". Through his friendship with Sir Henry Acland, from 1854 Ruskin supported attempts to establish what became the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (designed by Benjamin Woodward) which is the closest thing to a model of this style, but still failed completely to satisfy Ruskin. The many twists and turns in the Museum’s development, not least its increasing cost, and the University authorities’ less than enthusiastic attitude towards it, proved increasingly frustrating for Ruskin.
Ruskin and education
The Museum was part of a wider plan to improve science provision at Oxford, something the University initially resisted. The mid-1850s saw Ruskin’s first direct involvement in education, when he taught drawing classes (assisted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti) at the Working Mens College, established by the Christian socialists, Frederick James Furnivall and Frederick Denison Maurice. Although he did not share the founders’ politics, he strongly supported the idea that through education workers could achieve a crucially-important sense of (self-)fulfilment. One result of this involvement was Ruskin’s Elements of Drawing (1857). He had taught several women drawing by letter, and his book was both a response and a challenge to contemporary drawing manuals. It was also a useful recruiting ground for assistants, on some of whom Ruskin would later come to rely, such as his future publisher, George Allen.
From 1859 until 1868, Ruskin was involved with the progressive school for girls at Winnington Hall in Cheshire. A frequent visitor, letter-writer, and donor of pictures and geological specimens, Ruskin approved of the mixture of sports, handicrafts, music and dancing embraced by its principal, Miss Bell. The association led to Ruskin’s sub-Socratic work, The Ethics of the Dust (published December 1865, imprinted 1866), an imagined conversation with Winnington girls in which he cast himself as the “Old Lecturer”. On the surface a discourse on crystallography, it represents a metaphorical exploration of social and political ideals. In the 1880s, Ruskin became involved with another educational institution, Whitelands College, a training college for teachers, where he instituted a May Queen festival that endures today. (It was also replicated in the nineteenth century at the Cork High School for Girls.)
Modern Painters III and IV
Both volumes III and IV of Modern Painters were published in 1856. In MP III Ruskin argued that all great art is “the expression of the spirits of great men”. Only the morally and spiritually healthy are capable of admiring the noble and the beautiful, and transforming them into great art by imaginatively penetrating their essence. MP IV presents the geology of the Alps in terms of landscape painting, and its moral and spiritual influence on those living nearby. The contrasting final chapters, “The Mountain Glory” and “The Mountain Gloom” provide an early example of Ruskin’s social analysis, highlighting the poverty of the peasants living in the lower Alps.
Ruskin the public lecturer
In addition to his more formal teaching classes, Ruskin became an increasingly popular public lecturer in the 1850s. His first were in Edinburgh, in November 1853, on architecture and painting. Lectures at the Art Treasures Exhibition, Manchester in 1857, were collected as The Political Economy of Art and later under Keats’s phrase, A Joy For Ever. He spoke about how to acquire, and how to use art, arguing that England had forgotten that true wealth is virtue, and that art is an index of a nation’s well-being. Individuals have a responsibility to consume wisely, stimulating beneficent demand. The increasingly critical tone and political nature of Ruskin’s intervention outraged his father and the “Manchester School” of economists, as represented by a hostile review in the Manchester Examiner and Times. As the Ruskin scholar, Helen Gill Viljoen, notes Ruskin was increasingly critical of his father, especially in letters written by Ruskin directly to him, many of them still unpublished. It is a fact insufficiently acknowledged in the published Ruskin biographies.
Ruskin gave the inaugural address at the Cambridge School of Art in 1858, an institution from which the modern-day Anglia Ruskin University has grown. The Two Paths (1859), five lectures given in London, Manchester, Bradford and Tunbridge Ruskin argued that a ‘vital law’ underpins art and architecture, drawing on the labour theory of value. (For other addresses and letters, refer to Ruskins Works, vol. 16, pp. 427–87.) The year 1859 also marked his last tour of Europe with his aging parents, to Germany and Switzerland.
Turner Bequest
Ruskin had been in Venice when he heard about Turner’s death in 1851. Named an executor to Turner’s will, it was an honour that Ruskin respectfully declined, but later took up. In 1856 Ruskin’s book in celebration of the sea, The Harbours of England, revolving around Turner’s drawings, was published. In January 1857, Ruskins Notes on the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House, 1856 was published. He persuaded the National Gallery to allow him to work on the Turner Bequest of nearly 20,000 individual art-works left to the nation by the artist. This involved Ruskin in an enormous amount of work, completed in May 1858: cataloguing, framing and conserving. 400 watercolours were displayed in cabinets of Ruskin’s design. Recent scholarship has argued that Ruskin did not, as previously thought, collude in the destruction of Turner’s erotic drawings, but his work on the Bequest did modify his attitude towards Turner. (See below, Controversies: Turner’s Erotic Drawings)
Ruskins religious "unconversion"
In 1858, Ruskin was again travelling in Europe. The tour took him from Switzerland to Turin where he saw Paolo Veroneses Presentation of the Queen of Sheba. He would later claim (in April 1877) that the discovery of this painting, contrasting starkly with a particularly dull sermon, led to his "unconversion" from Evangelical Christianity. But in reality he had doubted his Evangelical Christian faith for some time, threatened by Biblical and geological scholarship that had undermined the literal truth and absolute authority of the Bible: "those dreadful hammers!" he wrote to Henry Acland, "I hear the chink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses." This "loss of faith" precipitated a considerable crisis. His confidence undermined, he believed that much of his writing to date had been founded on a bed of lies and half-truths.
Ruskin the Social Critic and Reformer: Unto This Last
Whenever I look or travel in England or abroad, I see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. – Modern Painters V (1860).
Although Ruskin said in 1877 that in 1860, “I gave up my art work and wrote Unto This Last ... the central work of my life” the break was not so dramatic or final. Following his crisis of faith, and influenced in part by his friend, Thomas Carlyle (whom he had first met in 1850), Ruskin’s emphasis shifted from art towards social issues from the end the 1850s. Nevertheless, he continued to lecture on and write about a dazzlingly wide range of subjects including art and, among many others, geology (in June 1863 he lectured on the Alps), art practice and judgement (The Cestus of Aglaia), botany and mythology (Proserpina, The Queen of the Air). He continued to draw and paint in watercolours, and to travel widely across Europe with servants and friends. In 1868, his tour took him to Abbeville, and in the following year he was in Verona (studying tombs for the Arundel Society) and Venice (where he was joined by William Holman Hunt). Yet increasingly Ruskin concentrated his energies on fiercely attacking industrial capitalism, and the utilitarian theories of political economy underpinning it. He repudiated his eloquent style, writing now in plainer, simpler language, to communicate his message straightforwardly. His message was stated clearly:
THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the function of his own life to the utmost, has always the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.
Ruskin’s social view broadened from concerns about the dignity of labour to consider wider issues of citizenship, and notions of the ideal community. Just as he had questioned aesthetic orthodoxy in his earliest writings, he now dissected the orthodox political economy espoused by John Stuart Mill, based on theories of laissez-faire and competition drawn from the work of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. In his four essays, Unto This Last, Ruskin rejected the division of labour as dehumanising (separating labourer from his product), and argued that the “science” of political economy failed to consider the social affections that bind communities together. Ruskin articulated an extended metaphor of household and family, drawing on Plato and Xenophon to demonstrate the communal and sometimes sacrificial nature of true economics. For Ruskin, all economies, and all societies are ideally underwritten by a politics of social justice. Ruskins ideas influenced the concept of the "social economy" characterised by networks of charitable, co-operative and other non-governmental organisations.
The essays were originally published in consecutive monthly instalments of the new Cornhill Magazine between August and November 1860 and was published in a single volume in 1862. However, its editor, William Makepeace Thackeray, was forced to abandon the series by the outcry of its largely conservative readership and the fears of a nervous publisher (Smith, Elder & Co.). The press reaction was hostile, and Ruskin was, he claimed, “reprobated in a violent manner”. His father also strongly disapproved. Others were enthusiastic, including Ruskin’s friend, Thomas Carlyle, who wrote, “I have read your paper with exhilaration... such a thing flung suddenly into half a million dull British heads... will do a great deal of good.”
Ruskin’s political ideas, and Unto This Last in particular, later proved highly influential, praised and paraphrased in Gujarati by Gandhi, a wide range of autodidacts, the economist John A. Hobson and many of the founders of the British Labour party. It is a common error, however, to mistake Ruskin himself for a socialist. Ruskin believed firmly in a hierarchical social structure, and wrote with some justification, but in exaggerated terms, “I was, and my father was before me, a violent Tory of the old school.” He believed in duties and responsibilities to, and under, God, and whilst he always sought to improve the conditions of the poor, he opposed attempts to level social differences and ideally sought to resolve social inequalities by abandoning capitalism in favour of a co-operative structure of society based on obedience and benevolent philanthropy, rooted in the agricultural economy.
Ruskin’s explorations of nature and aesthetics in the fifth and final volume of Modern Painters focused on Giorgione, Paolo Veronese, Titian and Turner. Ruskin asserted that the components of the greatest art are held together, like human communities, in quasi-organic unity. Competitive struggle is destructive. Uniting Modern Painters V and Unto This Last is Ruskin’s “Law of Help”:
Government and cooperation are in all things and eternally the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in all things, the laws of death.
Ruskin’s next work on political economy, redefining some of the basic terms of the disicipline, also ended prematurely, when Frasers Magazine, under the editorship of James Anthony Froude, cut short his Essays on Political Economy (1862–63) (later collected as Munera Pulveris (1872)). Ruskin explored further political themes in Time and Tide (1867), his letters to Thomas Dixon, the cork-cutter in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear with a well-established interest in literary and artistic matters. In these letters, Ruskin promoted honesty in work and exchange, just relations in employment and the need for co-operation.
Ruskin’s sense of politics was not confined to theory. On his father’s death in 1864, Ruskin inherited a considerable fortune of between £120,000 and £157,000 (the exact figure is disputed). This considerable inheritance from the father he described on his tombstone as “an entirely honest merchant” gave him the means to engage in personal philanthropy and practical schemes of social amelioration. One of his first actions was to support the housing work of Octavia Hill (originally one of his art pupils), by buying property in Marylebone for her philanthropic housing scheme. But Ruskin’s endeavours extended to a shop selling pure tea in any quantity desired at 29 Paddington Street, Paddington (giving employment to two former Ruskin family servants) and crossing-sweepings to keep the area around the British Museum clean and tidy. Modest as these practical schemes were, they represented a symbolic challenge to the existing state of society. Yet his greatest practical experiments would come in his later years (see “Guild of St George”, below).
Lectures in the 1860s
Ruskin lectured widely in the 1860s, giving the Rede lecture at the University of Cambridge in 1867, for example. He spoke at the British Institution on “Modern Art”, the Working Men’s Institute, Camberwell on “Work” and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich on “War”. Ruskin’s widely admired lecture, Traffic, on the relations of taste and morality, was delivered in April 1864 at Bradford Town Hall. “I do not care about this Exchange,” Ruskin told a shocked audience, “because you don’t!” These last three lectures were published in The Crown of Wild Olive (1866).
The lectures that comprised Sesame and Lilies (published 1865), delivered in December 1864 at the town halls at Rusholme and Manchester, are essentially concerned with education and ideal conduct. "Of Kings Treasuries" (in support of a library fund) explored issues of reading practice, literature (books of the hour vs. books of all time), cultural value and public education. "Of Queens Gardens" (supporting a school fund) focused on the role of women, asserting their rights and duties in education, according them responsibility for the household and, by extension, for providing the human compassion that must balance a social order dominated by men. This book proved to be one of Ruskin’s most popular books, and was regularly awarded as a Sunday School prize.
Later life (1869–1900)
Oxford’s first Slade Professor of Fine Art
Ruskin was unanimously appointed the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University in August 1869, largely through the offices of his friend, Henry Acland. He delivered his inaugural lecture on his 51st birthday in 1870, at the Sheldonian Theatre to a larger-than-expected audience. It was here that he said, “The art of any country is the exponent of its social and political virtues.” Uncharacteristically, he expressed pro-imperialist views. Cecil Rhodes cherished a long-hand copy of the lecture.
In 1871, John Ruskin founded his own art school at Oxford, The Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art. It was originally accommodated within the Ashmolean Museum but now occupies premises on “the High” (High Street). Ruskin endowed the drawing mastership with £5000 of his own money. He also established a large collection of drawings, watercolours and other materials (over 800 frames) with which to illustrate his lectures, resources that are now available online. The School challenged the orthodox, mechanical methodology of the government schools (the "South Kensington System").
His lectures were often so popular that they had to be given twice—once for the students, and again for the public. Most of them were eventually published (see Bibliography). He lectured on a wide range of subjects at Oxford, his interpretation of “Art” encompassing almost every conceivable area of study, including wood and metal engraving (Ariadne Florentina), the relation of science to art (The Eagle’s Nest) and sculpture (Aratra Pentelici). His lectures ranged through myth, ornithology, geology, nature-study and literature. “The teaching of Art...,” Ruskin wrote, “is the teaching of all things.” Ruskin was never careful about offending his employer. When he criticised Michelangelo in a lecture in June 1871 it was seen as an attack on the large collection of that artist’s work in the Ashmolean Museum.
Most controversial, from the point-of-view of the University authorities, spectators and the national press, was the digging scheme on Ferry Hinksey Road at North Hinksey, near Oxford, instigated by Ruskin in 1874, and continuing into 1875, which involved undergraduates in a road-mending scheme. Motivated in part by a desire to teach the virtues of wholesome manual labour, some of the diggers, which included Oscar Wilde, Alfred Milner and Ruskin’s future secretary and biographer, W. G. Collingwood, were profoundly influenced by the experience—notably Arnold Toynbee, Leonard Montefiore and Alexander Robertson MacEwen. It helped to foster a public service ethic that was later given expression in the university settlements, and was keenly celebrated by the founders of Ruskin Hall, Oxford.
In 1879, Ruskin resigned from Oxford, but resumed his Professorship in 1883, resigning again in 1884. He gave his reason as opposition to vivisection, but he had increasingly been in conflict with the University authorities, who refused to expand his Drawing School. He was also suffering increasingly poor health.
Fors Clavigera and the Whistler Libel Case
In January 1871, the month before Ruskin started to lecture the wealthy undergraduates at Oxford University, he began his (originally) monthly “letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain” under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–84). (The letters were published irregularly after the 87th instalment in March 1878.) These letters were personal, dealt with every subject in his oeuvre, and were written in a variety of styles, reflecting his mood and circumstances, in many ways anticipating a modern-day blog, albeit a highly literary, complex and allusive one. From 1873, Ruskin had full control over all his publications, having established George Allen as his sole publisher (see Allen & Unwin).
In the July 1877 letter of Fors Clavigera, Ruskin launched a scathing attack on 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 two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the publics face". Whistler filed a libel suit against Ruskin. Whistler won the case, which went to trial in Ruskin’s absence in 1878 (he was ill), but the jury awarded damages of only one farthing to the artist. Court costs were split between both parties. Ruskin’s were paid by public subscription, but Whistler was bankrupted within six months. The episode tarnished Ruskins reputation, however, and may have accelerated his mental decline. It did nothing to mitigate Ruskin’s consistently exaggerated sense of failure in persuading his readers to share in his own keenly-felt priorities.
The Guild of St George
Ruskin founded his utopian society, the Guild of St George, in 1871 (although originally it was called St George’s Fund, and then St George’s Company, before becoming the Guild in 1878). Its aims and objectives were articulated in, Fors Clavigera (see below). A communitarian venture, it had a hierarchical structure, with Ruskin as its Master, and dedic
john ruskin
جون روسكين
↑ «مرگ "جان راسکین" نویسنده و منتقد معروف انگلیسی». سایت مبلغ.
دکتر سید محسن حبیبی و خانم ملیحه مقصودی. مرمت شهری. چاپ چاپ دوم. انتشارات دانشگاه تهران، ۱۳۸۴.
این یک نوشتار خُرد پیرامون افراد است. با گسترش آن به ویکیپدیا کمک کنید.
در ویکیانبار پروندههایی دربارهٔ جان راسکین موجود است.
ردههای صفحه: دانشآموختگان دانشگاه کینگز لندن استادان دانشگاههای انگلستان اهالی لندن خیریه درگذشتگان ۱۹۰۰ (میلادی)زادگان ۱۸۱۹ (میلادی)فیلسوفان اهل انگلستانفیلسوفان قرن ۱۹نویسندگان اهل انگلستان نظریهپردازهای معماری
قس
• جان راسکین، دانشمند و منتقد اجتماعی هنری انگلیس، از معماران نادر جهان متولد 8 فوریه 1818 در لندن نقش اساسی در تحولات فرهنگی انگلیس.
• گذراندن تحصیلات مقدماتی در خانه خویش سپس راهی دانشگاه آکسفورد
• آثار منتشر شده وی:
1- نقاشان مدرن (1843) 2- هفت مشعل معماری (1848) 3- سنگهای ونیز (1855) 4- مباحثی در معماری و نقاشی (1853)
5- تاجگذاری زیتونهای وحشی (1866) (کتابی در باب اقتصاد سیاسی مسائل اجتماعی) 6- به سوی این آخرین (1862)
• راسکین در سال 1889 از مقام تدریس و نویسندگی کنارهگیری کرد و در سال 1900 از این جهان رخت بست.
• آثار مکتوب وی: 250 اثر جمعآوری شده توسط دو تن از دوستانش در سال 1912.
نگاهی به اندیشههای راسکین
• اولین اقدام راسکین: نقد و فلسفه هنر (متأثر از: فلسفه اجتماعی)
• ریشهیابی منشأ افکار راسکین:
1. شناخت دقیق شاهکارهای اروپایی نقاشی و معماری
2. تأثیرات فراوان از تفکر پوژن (فرهنگگرا متعصب به سبک گوتیک)
• در تاریخ هر رشتهای که کنکاش کنید بالاخره نامی از راسکین خواهید یافت: او نسبت به سیاست، اقتصاد، هنر، جغرافیا، زمینشناسی و گیاهشناسی و... علاقهمند است.
• عقاید راسکین: بررسی تأثیر اصل اقتصادی و اجتماعی بر هنر- گرایش زیاد به طبیعت- خواهان کمترین دخالت در بناهای تاریخی برای اصلاح شهر نیازمند اصلاح فرهنگ شهریم- ایجاد شهرهای کوچک و متراکم شهر قرون وسطایی
• او معتقد است که انقلاب صنعتی، مردم را از فرهنگ مردمی خود دور کرده است و علت این امر را کار مداوم در کارخانجات میداند.
• راسکین متوجه از همگسیختگی هنر است و اظهار میکند به جای جستجو در هنر باید در وضع اقتصادی و اجتماعی انگلستان و مورد سئوال بردن انقلاب صنعتی آن دوره.
• در حقیقت باید چهارچوب فکری وی را در قالب چهارچوب غالب زمانه یعنی تفکر رمانیستی (دنبال نظم موجود در طبیعت) ارزیابی کرد.
• راسکین از تنزل مقام انسان از یک آفرینشگر به یک ماشین تکرار کننده که دیگر فکر نمیکند بسیار اندهگین بود و یکی از دلایل ضدیت عجیب وی با صنعت را میتوان در این موضوع جستجو کرد.
• از دیدگاه او هنر وسیلهی ارتقای زندگی روانی مردم- هنر: مانند یک فعالیت اخلاقی- انسانی.
• «گوتیک» (پذیرش بیچون و چرای قرون وسطی): آرمانیترین شیوه ساختن و خواستار بازخوانی آن و پایهریزی فرهنگ براساس سبک گوتیک متأثر شده از قرون وسطی
• «لاور» مینویسد: «دنیای مدرن، بیش از حد تصور راسکین مدیون است.
• در زمینه مرمت معماری: در تفکر راسکین توجه به سندیت بنا و سرنوشت آن و عدم دخالت و تغییر در آن و در عین حال تسلیم و سرسپردگی به طبیعت، مهمترین عناصر را تشکیل میدهند.
• انتقادات راسکین بر محصولات صنعتی زمان:
1. نمایش ظاهری استخوانبندی حمال بنا در چیزی غیر از آنچه واقعاً هست.
2. ظریفکاری و پوشاندن سطح خارجی بنا به منظور جلوه دادن آنها با مواردی چند از آن چه که واقعاً با آن ساخته شده است و چسباندن تزئینات و کندهکاریها بر روی آنها.
3. استفاده از تزئینات مختلفی که با ماشین ساخته شدهاند.
نظریات راسکین در باب معماری و شهرسازی
1. ستایش تنوع 2. شهر، نمایش بسیار جذابتر از منظره 3. شهر مجموعهای از واحدها نیست 4. علیه تکرار 5. له تنوع 6. له بیتفاوتی
7. الگوی خیابانهای قرون وسطایی 8. صاحبان حرفه 9. شهر و اجتماع 10. استقرار 11. ارزش ویژگی 12. گرایش
حاصل سخن
راسکین با سخنرانیها و نقدهای خود در زمانی که جامعه صنعتی انگلیس در حال گذر از شیوه سنتی به صنعتی بود.
1. باعث ایجاد مباحث فراوانی در شاخههای هنر و صنعت شد.
2. منشأ اصلی جنبشهای مختلف هنری در دهههای بعد
وضعی که جامعه ما پس از چندین دهه از ارائه نظریات راسکین به آن مبتلاست و به شدت نیازمند تجارب سایر جوامع که دوران تحول را سپری کردهاند تا اجتماع ایرانی کمتر آسیب ببیند.
قس
جان راسکین، دشمن سرسخت مرمت بنا
جان راسکین، منقد هنری اهل انگلستان از تاثیرگذارترین افراد بر دانش مرمت و حفاظت می باشد. با وجود راسکین است که واژه مرمت بار منفی پیدا کرده و حفاظت جایگزین آن می شود. او را می توان سردمدار جنبش حفاظت دانست.یکی از مشروط کنندگان تفکر مرمت معماری است و مخالف سرسخت آن بود. در زیر بخشی از اندیشه های او پیرامون نکوهش مرمت می آید.
«اگر حتما لازم باشد, تنها باید به صورت مرمت استحکامی باشد که انجام آن مجاز است, با هدف جلوگیری از ویرانی بیشتر به دست زمانه و بشر. هر عملی فراتر از این عدم رعایت اصالت و هنر است.»
«معنی راستین واژه مرمت، نه توسط عامه مردم، و نه توسط افراد مسئول مراقبت از یادمانهای متعلق به عامه، درک نشده است. مرمت به معنای تخریب تمام عیار یک بنای تاریخی است، تخریبی که در پی آن هیچ باقی مانده ای را نمی توان گردآوری کرد. تخریبی که با توصیف دروغین اثر نابود شده همراه است. پس بگذارید از مرمت حرفی بر زبان نرانم؛ چیزی که از آغاز تا پایان با دروغ همراه است... ممکن است مدل یک بنا را مانند مدلی از یک جنازه بسازید و شاید مدل ساخته شما دارای پوسته ای با دیوارهایی قدیمی در داخل باشد اما سود این کار چیست؟ با ساخت چنین مدلی عملا بنای قدیمی را نابود کرده اید، حتی بیرحمانه تر از آنکه آن را با خاک یکسان کرده باشید. حتی می خواهم بگویم نینوای با خاک یکسان شده به مراتب بیش از میلان بازسازی شده هویت دارد.»
راسکین اصطلاح خوش منظر بودن را برای ویرانه ها بکار می برد و حتی رسیدن بنا به این مرحله را دلیل بر انتخاب درست مصالح می داند.
«امروزه صنعتگری که تزیینات یک بنا را بوجود آورده مرده . ما به چه حقی می خواهیم به دست صنعتگری دیگرکه سلیقه ای دیگر دارد و در دنیای دیگری زندگی می کند آن را کامل و تعمیر کنیم.»
«به بهترین وجه ممکن و به هر قیمتی از هرگونه تاثیر ویرانی بر آن مراقبت کن. سنگهای آن را همانند جواهرات یک تاج بشمار. آنجا که خم است با الوار نگه دار, و به واسطه این کمک از بد شکل شدن ظاهر آن هراس مدار. »
«آخرین روز سرنوشت فرا خواهد رسید, ولی بگذارید با وضعی آشکار نزدیک شود. نگذارید که هرج و مرج, تبدیلها و ترکیب های کاذب جلو فناپذیری و مرگ اجباری بناهای تاریخی و قدیمی را بگیرند.»
آیا شما با اندیشه های راسکین موافقید؟
آیا به نظر شمامرمت می تواند ویرانگر باشد؟
خاستگاه: کتاب تاریخ حفاظت معماری نوشته یوکا یوکیلهتو
قس عربی
جون راسکن (8 فبرایر 1819- 20 ینایر 1900) کان شاعراً إنجلیزیاً و ناقداً فنیاً ومفکراً اجتماعیاً, وله العدید من المؤلفات والأعمال الأدبیة والفنیة, وقد کان لکتاباته وفنه أثر کبیر فی العصر الفکتوری و العصر الإدواردی.
وقد حاز راسکن على شهرة واسعة بعد أن قدم دعمه لأعمال جی. إم. دبلیو تیرنر ومنافحته عن المذهب الطبیعی فی الفن. کانت کتاباته الاجتماعیة الدقیقة التی تناولت الارتباطات بین القضایا الاجتماعیة والأخلاقیة والثقافیة والتی کان لها أثر فی تطور الاشتراکیة المسیحیة.
هذه بذرة مقالة عن حیاة شخصیة تحتاج للنمو والتحسین، فساهم فی إثرائها بالمشارکة فی تحریرها.
تصنیفات: موالید 1819وفیات 1900شعراء إنجلیزفلاسفة القرن التاسع عشر
قس ترکی استانبولی
John Ruskin, (d. 8 Şubat 1819 – ö. 20 Ocak 1900) XIX. yüzyılda yaşamış İngiliz yazar, şair, sanat ve toplum eleştirmenidir.
Londrada doğmuş güney Londrada yetişmiş sonradan adı Allied Domecq olan şarap ithalatçısı şirketin kurucusu olan John James Ruskinnin oğludur. Evde eğitim almıştır.
Türkçeye çevrilen eserleri
Susamlar ve Zambaklar isimli eseri Türkçeye kazandırılmıştır. Cemil Meriç, Proustun Fransızca tercümesinden Ruskinin Susamlar ve Zambaklar kitabından bazı bölümleri Türkçeleştirmiş ve Bu Ülkede alıntılamıştır.
“ İngiliz hodgâmdır, heyecansızdır. Bir millet değil, bir yığın. Yığını kolayca kandırabilirsiniz, duyguları hiçbir temele dayanmaz. Yığın düşünmez, mâruz kalır. Nezleye yakalanır gibi tutulur bir fikre. Ateşi yükselince aslanlaşır, nöbet geçince her mukaddesi unutuverir. Büyük bir milletin duyguları ölçülü, düzenli, devamlıdır. ”
“ Bir aydın dil bilmese de olur, çok kitap okumasına da ihtiyaç yok. Yeter ki ana dilini gerçekten bilsin. Kelimeleri şecereleriyle tanısın. Asıl olanları âdilerinden ayırsın. Karanlık kelimeler vardır, arılar gibi vızıldayan kelimeler. Taşıdıkları hiçbir düşünce yoktur, kimse tarafından anlaşılmazlar. Ama yine de herkesin ağzındadırlar. Onlar için yaşanır, onlar için ölünür: Hayalimizin rengine bürünürler. Göremeyiz onları, pusudadırlar. Ve bir atılışta parçalar bizi. Dilimizin her kelimesi başka bir dilden gelmiştir. Nice ülkeler dolaşmıştır bize gelinceye kadar. Ciddi olarak okumak isteyen Yunan alfabesini öğrenmeli (Ruskin İngilizlere söylüyor bunu). Her dilden lügatlar bulunmalı kütüphanemizde. Okuduğunuz metinde hiçbir karanlık kelime kalmamalı. ”
“ Felaketimizin kaynağı kültür yokluğu. Bizi helâk eden ne ahlâksızlık, ne bencillik, ne kafamızın ağır işlemesi. Bir öğrenci kayıtsızlığı içindeyiz. Hoca tanımadığımız için yardım görmemize imkân yok. ”
“ Meclisten tahıl için kanunlar geçirdiniz. Şimdi başka bir tahıl söz konusu. Daha nefis, daha besleyici bir ekmek sağlayacak, bir tahıl: susam. Bu susam, kapıları açan büyü. Harami mağaralarının kapılarını değil, hükümdar hazinelerinin kapılarını: kitap. ”
Kaynakça
^ Susamlar ve Zambaklar, John Ruskin, çeviren Türkan Turgut, Babil Yayınları, deneme, 152 sayfa
Vikisözde
John Ruskin sözleri bulunur.
Bir İngiliz şairin biyografisi olan bu madde bir taslaktır. İçeriğini geliştirerek Vikipediye katkıda bulunabilirsiniz.
İngiliz bir yazarın biyografisi olan bu madde bir taslaktır. İçeriğini geliştirerek Vikipediye katkıda bulunabilirsiniz.
Kategoriler: İngiliz şair taslaklarıİngiliz yazar taslaklarıKings College London mezunları1819 doğumlular1900 yılında ölenlerİngiliz şairlerLondra doğumlular
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded by a preference for plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation.
He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century 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.
Contents
Early life (1819–1846)
Genealogy
Ruskin was the only child of first cousins. His father, John James Ruskin (1785–1864), was a sherry and wine importer, a founding partner and de facto business manager of Ruskin, Telford and Domecq (see Allied Domecq). His mother, Margaret Cox, née Cock (1781–1871), was the daughter of a publican in Croydon. The Ruskins were English, but John James was brought up in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Margaret joined the household when she became companion to John James Ruskin’s mother, Catherine (Margaret’s aunt).
John James had hoped to practice law, but was instead articled as a clerk in London. His father, John Thomas Ruskin, a grocer, was an inadequate businessman. To save the family from bankruptcy, John James, whose prudence and success were in stark contrast to his father, took on all debts, settling the last of them in 1832. John James and Margaret were engaged in 1809, but opposition to the union from John Thomas, and the issue of the debt, delayed their wedding which was finally conducted without celebration in 1818.
Childhood and education
Ruskin as a young child, painted by James Northcote.
Ruskin was born at 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, London (demolished 1969), just south of modern-day St Pancras railway station. His childhood was characterised by the contrasting influences of his father and mother, both fiercely ambitious for him. John James Ruskin helped to develop his son’s Romanticism. They shared a passion for the works of Byron, Shakespeare and especially Walter Scott. They visited Scotts home, Abbotsford in 1838, but Ruskin was disappointed by its appearance. Margaret Ruskin, an Evangelical Christian, more cautious and restrained than her husband, taught young John to read the King James Bible from beginning to end, and then to start all over again, committing large portions to memory. Its language, imagery and stories had a profound and lasting effect on his writing.
Ruskin’s childhood was spent from 1823 at 28 Herne Hill (demolished c. 1912), Herne Hill, near the then village of Camberwell in South London. It was not, however, the friendless and toyless experience that he later claimed in his autobiography, Praeterita (1885–89). He was educated at home by his parents and private tutors, and from 1834–35 he attended the school in Peckham run by the progressive Evangelical, Thomas Dale (1797–1870). Ruskin also heard Dale lecture in 1836 at Kings College London, where he was the first professor of English Literature.
Travel
Ruskin was greatly influenced by the extensive and privileged travels he enjoyed in his childhood. It helped to establish his taste and augmented his education. His father visited business clients in Britains country houses, exposing the young John to English landscapes, architecture and paintings. Tours took them to the Lake District (his first long poem, Iteriad, was an account of his 1830 tour) and to relations in Perth, Scotland. As early as 1825, the family visited France and Belgium. Their continental tours became increasingly ambitious in scope, so that in 1833 they visited Strasbourg, Schaffhausen, Milan, Genoa and Turin, places to which Ruskin would frequently return. He developed his life-long love of the Alps, and in 1835 he first visited Venice, that “Paradise of cities” that formed both the symbol in and the subject of much of his later work.
The tours provided Ruskin with the opportunity to observe and to record his impressions of nature. He composed elegant if largely conventional poetry, some of which was published in Friendship’s Offering. His early notebooks and sketchbooks are full of his visually sophisticated and technically accomplished drawings of maps, landscapes and buildings, remarkable for a boy of his age. He was profoundly affected by a copy of Samuel Rogers’s poem, Italy (1830), which was given to him as a 13th birthday present. In particular, he admired deeply the accompanying illustrations by J. M. W. Turner, and much of his art in the 1830s was in imitation of Turner, and Samuel Prout whose Sketches and Flanders and Germany (1833) he also admired. His artistic skills were refined under the tutelage of Charles Runciman, Copley Fielding and James Duffield Harding. Gradually, he abandoned his picturesque style in favour of naturalism.
First publications
Ruskins journeys also provided inspiration for his writing. Ruskin’s first publication was his poem "On Skiddaw and Derwent Water" (originally entitled Lines written at the Lakes in Cumberland: Derwentwater and published in the Spiritual Times) (August 1829). In 1834 three short articles for Loudons Magazine of Natural History were published. They show early signs of his skill as a close “scientific” observer of nature, especially its geology.
From September 1837 to December 1838, Ruskin’s The Poetry of Architecture was serialised in Loudons Architectural Magazine, under the pen name "Kata Phusin" (Greek for "According to Nature"). This was a study of cottages, villas, and other dwellings which centred on a Wordsworthian argument that buildings should be sympathetic to their immediate environment and use local materials. It anticipated key themes in his later writings on the subject. In 1839, Ruskin’s ‘Remarks on the Present State of Meteorological Science’ was published in Transactions of the Meteorological Society.
Oxford
In Michaelmas 1836, Ruskin matriculated at the University of Oxford, taking up residence at Christ Church in January of the following year. Enrolled as a "gentleman-commoner", he enjoyed equal status with his aristocratic peers. His study of classical “Greats” might, his parents hoped, lead him to take Holy Orders and become a bishop, perhaps even the Archbishop of Canterbury. Ruskin was generally uninspired by Oxford, however, and he suffered bouts of illness. Perhaps the keenest advantage to him of his time in residence was found in the few, close friendships he made. His tutor, Rev. William Lucas Brown, was always encouraging, as was a young senior tutor, Henry Liddell (later the father of Alice Liddell) and a private tutor, Rev. Osborne Gordon. He also became close to the geologist and natural theologian, William Buckland. Among Ruskin’s fellow undergraduates, the most important friends were Charles Thomas Newton and Henry Acland.
His biggest success came in 1839 when at the third attempt he won the prestigious Newdigate Prize for poetry (Arthur Hugh Clough came second). He met William Wordsworth, who was receiving an honorary degree, at the ceremony. But Ruskin never achieved independence at Oxford. His mother lodged on the nearby High Street, where his father joined them at weekends. His health was poor, and he was devastated to hear that his first love, Adèle Domecq, the second daughter of his father’s business partner, was engaged to a French nobleman. In the midst of exam revision, in April 1840, he coughed blood, raising fears of consumption, and leading to a long break from Oxford.
Before he returned, he answered a challenge set down by the young Effie Gray, whom he would later marry. During a six week break at Leamington Spa to undergo Dr. Jephson’s (1798–1878) celebrated salt-water cure, Ruskin wrote his only work of fiction, the fairy tale, The King of the Golden River (published in December 1850 (but imprinted 1851) with illustrations by Richard Doyle). A work of Christian sacrificial morality and charity, it is set in the Alpine landscape Ruskin loved and knew so well. It remains the most translated of all his works. At Oxford, he eventually sat for a pass degree in 1842, and was awarded with an uncommon honorary double fourth-class degree in recognition of his achievements.
Modern Painters I (1843)
Much of the period, from late 1840 to autumn 1842, Ruskin spent abroad with his parents, principally in Italy. Ruskin’s studies of Italian art were chiefly guided by George Richmond, to whom the Ruskins were introduced by Joseph Severn, the friend of Keats (whose son, Arthur Severn, married Ruskins beloved cousin, Joan). But he was galvanised into writing a defence of J. M. W. Turner when he read an attack on several of Turners pictures exhibited at the Royal Academy. It recalled an attack by the critic, Rev. John Eagles, in Blackwoods Magazine in 1836, which had prompted Ruskin to write a long essay. John James had sent the piece to Turner who did not wish it to be published. It finally appeared in 1903.
Before Ruskin began Modern Painters, John James Ruskin had begun collecting watercolours, including works by Samuel Prout and, from 1839, Turner himself. Both painters were among occasional guests of the Ruskins at Herne Hill, and 163 Denmark Hill (demolished 1947) to which the family removed in 1842.
What became the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), published by Smith, Elder & Co. under the anonymous but apparently authoritative title, "A Graduate of Oxford," was Ruskin’s response to Turner’s critics. An electronic edition is available online. Ruskin controversially argued that modern landscape painters—and in particular Turner—were superior to the so-called "Old Masters" of the post-Renaissance period. Ruskin maintained that Old Masters such as Gaspard Dughet (Gaspar Poussin), Claude, and Salvator Rosa, unlike Turner, favoured pictorial convention, and not “truth to nature”. He explained that he meant “moral as well as material truth”. The job of the artist is to observe the reality of nature and not to invent it in a studio—to render what he has seen and understood imaginatively on canvas, free of any rules of composition. For Ruskin, modern landscapists demonstrated a superior understanding of the “truths” of water, air, clouds, stones, and vegetation, a profound appreciation of which Ruskin demonstrated in his own prose. He described works he had seen at the National Gallery and Dulwich Picture Gallery with extraordinary verbal felicity.
Although critics were slow to react, and reviews were mixed, many notable literary and artistic figures were impressed with the young man’s work, notably Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell. Suddenly Ruskin had found his métier, and in one leap he helped to redefine the genre of art criticism, mixing a discourse of polemic with aesthetics, scientific observation and ethics. It also cemented Ruskin’s relationship with Turner. After the artist died in 1851, Ruskin catalogued the nearly 20,000 sketches Turner gifted to the British nation.
1845 tour and Modern Painters II (1846)
Ruskin toured the continent again with his parents in 1844, visiting Chamonix and Paris, studying the geology of the Alps and the paintings of Titian, Veronese and Perugino among others at the Louvre. In 1845, at the age of 26, he undertook to travel without his parents for the first time. It provided him with an opportunity to study medieval art and architecture in France, Switzerland and especially Italy. In Lucca he saw the Tomb of Ilaria del Carretto by Jacopo della Quercia which Ruskin considered the exemplar of Christian sculpture (he would later come to associate it with the object of his love, Rose La Touche). He drew inspiration from what he saw at the Campo Santo in Pisa, and also in Florence. He was particularly impressed by the works of Fra Angelico and Giotto in San Marco, and Tintoretto in the Scuola di San Rocco. But he was alarmed by the combined effects of decay and modernisation on Venice: "Venice is lost to me," he wrote. It crystallised Ruskin’s life-long conviction that to restore was to destroy, and that the only true course was preservation and conservation.
Drawing on these travels, he wrote the second volume of Modern Painters (published April 1846). The volume concentrated more on Renaissance and pre-Renaissance artists than on Turner. It was also a more theoretical work than its predecessor. Ruskin explicitly linked the aesthetic and the divine, arguing that truth, beauty and religion are inextricably bound together: “the Beautiful as a gift of God”. (For more, see Definitions, ‘Theoria’ below). In defining categories of beauty and imagination, Ruskin was arguing that all great artists must perceive beauty and, with their imagination, to communicate it creatively through symbols. Generally, critics gave a warmer reception to this second volume, although many still found the attack on the aesthetic orthodoxy associated with Sir Joshua Reynolds difficult to take. In the summer, Ruskin was abroad again with his father who still hoped his son might become a poet, even poet laureate just one among many factors increasing the tension between them.
Middle life (1847–1869)
Effie Gray painted by Thomas Richmond. She thought the portrait made her look like "a graceful Doll".
Marriage to Effie Gray
During 1847 Ruskin became closer to Effie Gray, the daughter of family friends. It was for Effie that Ruskin had written The King of the Golden River. The couple were engaged in October. They married on 10 April 1848 at her home, Bowerswell, in Perth, once the residence of the Ruskin family. It was the site of the suicide of John Thomas Ruskin (Ruskin’s grandfather). Largely owing to this association, Ruskin’s parents did not attend. The European Revolutions of 1848 meant that the newlyweds’ earliest travelling together was limited, but they were able to visit Normandy, where Ruskin admired the Gothic architecture.
Their early life together was spent at 31 Park Street, Mayfair (later addresses included nearby 6 Charles Street, and 30 Herne Hill) secured for them by Ruskin’s father. Effie was too ill to undertake the European tour of 1849, so Ruskin visited the Alps with his parents, gathering material for the third and fourth volumes of Modern Painters. He was struck by the contrast between the Alpine beauty, and the poverty of Alpine peasants, stirring the social conscience that became increasingly sensitive.
The marriage later dissolved under discord and eventually annulment. (See The Pre-Raphaelites below.)
Architecture
Ruskin’s developing interest in architecture, and particularly in the Gothic revival, led to the first work to bear his name, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849). It contained 14 plates etched by the author. The title refers to seven moral categories that Ruskin considered vital to and inseparable from all architecture: sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory and obedience. All would provide recurring themes in his work.
Seven Lamps promoted the virtues of a secular and Protestant form of Gothic. It was a challenge to the Catholic influence of A. W. N. Pugin. Ruskin argued that restoration is destruction; ancient buildings should be preserved, but no attempt should be made to erase the accumulated history encoded in their decay.
The Stones of Venice
In November 1849, Effie and John Ruskin visited Venice, staying at the Hotel Danieli. Their different personalities are thrown into sharp relief by their contrasting priorities. For Effie, Venice provided an opportunity to socialise. Whilst she met with the Austrian 1st lieutenant, Charles Paulizza, Ruskin was engaged in solitary studies. Their London life was much the same. Returning to Venice in September 1851, Effie discovered that Paulizza was dead. Meanwhile, Ruskin recorded the Ca dOro and the Doge’s Palace, or Palazzo Ducale in drawings because he feared they would be destroyed by the occupying Austrian forces. Ruskin filled the manuscript journals and notebooks with sketches and notes that he used to write the three-volume work, The Stones of Venice (1851–53).
Developing from a technical history of Venetian architecture, from the Romanesque to the Renaissance, into a broad cultural history, Stones also reflected Ruskin’s view of contemporary England. It acted as a warning about the moral and spiritual health of society. Ruskin argued that Venice had slowly deteriorated. Its cultural achievements had been compromised, and its society corrupted, by the decline of true Christian faith. Instead of revering the divine, Renaissance artists honoured themselves, arrogantly celebrating human sensuousness.
The chapter, ‘The Nature of Gothic’ appeared in the second volume of Stones. Praising Gothic ornament, Ruskin argued that it was an expression of the artisan’s joy in free, creative work. The worker must be allowed to think and to express his own personality and ideas, ideally using his own hands, not machinery.
We want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers and miserable workers. Now it is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.
This was both an aesthetic attack on, and a social critique of the division of labour in particular, and industrial capitalism in general. This chapter had a profound impact, and was reprinted both by the Christian socialist founders of the Working Mens College and later by the arts and crafts pioneer and socialist, William Morris.
The Pre-Raphaelites
John Ruskin painted by the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais standing at Glenfinlas, Scotland, (1853–54).
John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti had established the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. The Pre-Raphaelite commitment to “naturalism” – "paint from nature only", depicting nature in fine detail – had been influenced by Ruskin.
Ruskin came into contact with Millais after the artists approached him through their mutual friend Coventry Patmore. Initially, Ruskin had not been impressed by Millaiss Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50), a painting that was considered blasphemous at the time, but Ruskin wrote letters defending the PRB to The Times in May 1851. Providing Millais with artistic patronage and encouragement, in the summer of 1853 the artist (and his brother) travelled to Scotland with Ruskin and Effie where, at Glenfinlas, he painted the closely observed landscape background of gneiss rock to which, as had always been intended, he later added Ruskins portrait.
Millais had painted Effie for The Order of Release, 1746, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1852. Suffering increasingly from physical illness and acute mental anxiety, Effie was arguing fiercely with her husband and his intense and overly protective parents, and seeking solace with her own parents in Scotland. The Ruskin marriage was already fatally undermined as she and Millais fell in love, and Effie left Ruskin, causing a public scandal.
In April 1854, Effie filed her suit of nullity, on grounds of “non-consummation” owing to his "incurable impotency," a charge Ruskin later disputed. Ruskin wrote, "I can prove my virility at once." The annulment was granted in July. Ruskin did not even mention it in his diary. Effie married Millais the following year. The complex reasons for the non-consummation and ultimate failure of the Ruskin marriage are a matter of continued speculation and debate (See Controversies: Sexuality below).
Ruskin continued to support Hunt and Rossetti. He also provided an annuity of £150 in 1855–57 to Elizabeth Siddal, Rossettis wife, to encourage the art (and paid for the services of Henry Acland for her medical care). Other artists influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites also received both critical and financial support from Ruskin, including John Brett, John William Inchbold, and Edward Burne-Jones who became a good friend (he called him “Brother Ned”). His fathers disapproval of such friends was a further cause of considerable tension between them.
During this period Ruskin wrote regular reviews of the annual exhibitions at the Royal Academy under the title Academy Notes (1855–59, 1875). They were highly influential, capable of making and breaking reputations. The satirical magazine, Punch, for example, published the lines (24 May 1856), "I paints and paints,/hears no complaints/And sells before I’m dry,/Till savage Ruskin sticks his tusk in/Then nobody will buy."
Ruskin was an art-philanthropist: in March 1861 he gave 48 Turner drawings to the Ashmolean in Oxford, and a further 25 to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge in May. Ruskins own work was very distinctive, and he occasionally exhibited his watercolours: in the United States in 1857–58 and 1879, for example; and in England, at the Fine Art Society in 1878, and at the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour (of which he was an honorary member) in 1879. He created many careful studies of natural forms, based on his detailed botanical, geological and architectural observations. Examples of his work include a painted, floral pilaster decoration in the central room of Wallington Hall in Northumberland, home of his friend Pauline Trevelyan. The stained glass window in the Little Church of St Francis Funtley, Fareham, Hampshire is reputed to have been designed by him. Originally placed in the St. Peters Church Duntisbourne Abbots near Cirencester, the window depicts the Ascension and the Nativity.
Ruskin’s theories also inspired some architects to adapt the Gothic style. Such buildings created what has been called a distinctive "Ruskinian Gothic". Through his friendship with Sir Henry Acland, from 1854 Ruskin supported attempts to establish what became the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (designed by Benjamin Woodward) which is the closest thing to a model of this style, but still failed completely to satisfy Ruskin. The many twists and turns in the Museum’s development, not least its increasing cost, and the University authorities’ less than enthusiastic attitude towards it, proved increasingly frustrating for Ruskin.
Ruskin and education
The Museum was part of a wider plan to improve science provision at Oxford, something the University initially resisted. The mid-1850s saw Ruskin’s first direct involvement in education, when he taught drawing classes (assisted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti) at the Working Mens College, established by the Christian socialists, Frederick James Furnivall and Frederick Denison Maurice. Although he did not share the founders’ politics, he strongly supported the idea that through education workers could achieve a crucially-important sense of (self-)fulfilment. One result of this involvement was Ruskin’s Elements of Drawing (1857). He had taught several women drawing by letter, and his book was both a response and a challenge to contemporary drawing manuals. It was also a useful recruiting ground for assistants, on some of whom Ruskin would later come to rely, such as his future publisher, George Allen.
From 1859 until 1868, Ruskin was involved with the progressive school for girls at Winnington Hall in Cheshire. A frequent visitor, letter-writer, and donor of pictures and geological specimens, Ruskin approved of the mixture of sports, handicrafts, music and dancing embraced by its principal, Miss Bell. The association led to Ruskin’s sub-Socratic work, The Ethics of the Dust (published December 1865, imprinted 1866), an imagined conversation with Winnington girls in which he cast himself as the “Old Lecturer”. On the surface a discourse on crystallography, it represents a metaphorical exploration of social and political ideals. In the 1880s, Ruskin became involved with another educational institution, Whitelands College, a training college for teachers, where he instituted a May Queen festival that endures today. (It was also replicated in the nineteenth century at the Cork High School for Girls.)
Modern Painters III and IV
Both volumes III and IV of Modern Painters were published in 1856. In MP III Ruskin argued that all great art is “the expression of the spirits of great men”. Only the morally and spiritually healthy are capable of admiring the noble and the beautiful, and transforming them into great art by imaginatively penetrating their essence. MP IV presents the geology of the Alps in terms of landscape painting, and its moral and spiritual influence on those living nearby. The contrasting final chapters, “The Mountain Glory” and “The Mountain Gloom” provide an early example of Ruskin’s social analysis, highlighting the poverty of the peasants living in the lower Alps.
Ruskin the public lecturer
In addition to his more formal teaching classes, Ruskin became an increasingly popular public lecturer in the 1850s. His first were in Edinburgh, in November 1853, on architecture and painting. Lectures at the Art Treasures Exhibition, Manchester in 1857, were collected as The Political Economy of Art and later under Keats’s phrase, A Joy For Ever. He spoke about how to acquire, and how to use art, arguing that England had forgotten that true wealth is virtue, and that art is an index of a nation’s well-being. Individuals have a responsibility to consume wisely, stimulating beneficent demand. The increasingly critical tone and political nature of Ruskin’s intervention outraged his father and the “Manchester School” of economists, as represented by a hostile review in the Manchester Examiner and Times. As the Ruskin scholar, Helen Gill Viljoen, notes Ruskin was increasingly critical of his father, especially in letters written by Ruskin directly to him, many of them still unpublished. It is a fact insufficiently acknowledged in the published Ruskin biographies.
Ruskin gave the inaugural address at the Cambridge School of Art in 1858, an institution from which the modern-day Anglia Ruskin University has grown. The Two Paths (1859), five lectures given in London, Manchester, Bradford and Tunbridge Ruskin argued that a ‘vital law’ underpins art and architecture, drawing on the labour theory of value. (For other addresses and letters, refer to Ruskins Works, vol. 16, pp. 427–87.) The year 1859 also marked his last tour of Europe with his aging parents, to Germany and Switzerland.
Turner Bequest
Ruskin had been in Venice when he heard about Turner’s death in 1851. Named an executor to Turner’s will, it was an honour that Ruskin respectfully declined, but later took up. In 1856 Ruskin’s book in celebration of the sea, The Harbours of England, revolving around Turner’s drawings, was published. In January 1857, Ruskins Notes on the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House, 1856 was published. He persuaded the National Gallery to allow him to work on the Turner Bequest of nearly 20,000 individual art-works left to the nation by the artist. This involved Ruskin in an enormous amount of work, completed in May 1858: cataloguing, framing and conserving. 400 watercolours were displayed in cabinets of Ruskin’s design. Recent scholarship has argued that Ruskin did not, as previously thought, collude in the destruction of Turner’s erotic drawings, but his work on the Bequest did modify his attitude towards Turner. (See below, Controversies: Turner’s Erotic Drawings)
Ruskins religious "unconversion"
In 1858, Ruskin was again travelling in Europe. The tour took him from Switzerland to Turin where he saw Paolo Veroneses Presentation of the Queen of Sheba. He would later claim (in April 1877) that the discovery of this painting, contrasting starkly with a particularly dull sermon, led to his "unconversion" from Evangelical Christianity. But in reality he had doubted his Evangelical Christian faith for some time, threatened by Biblical and geological scholarship that had undermined the literal truth and absolute authority of the Bible: "those dreadful hammers!" he wrote to Henry Acland, "I hear the chink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses." This "loss of faith" precipitated a considerable crisis. His confidence undermined, he believed that much of his writing to date had been founded on a bed of lies and half-truths.
Ruskin the Social Critic and Reformer: Unto This Last
Whenever I look or travel in England or abroad, I see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. – Modern Painters V (1860).
Although Ruskin said in 1877 that in 1860, “I gave up my art work and wrote Unto This Last ... the central work of my life” the break was not so dramatic or final. Following his crisis of faith, and influenced in part by his friend, Thomas Carlyle (whom he had first met in 1850), Ruskin’s emphasis shifted from art towards social issues from the end the 1850s. Nevertheless, he continued to lecture on and write about a dazzlingly wide range of subjects including art and, among many others, geology (in June 1863 he lectured on the Alps), art practice and judgement (The Cestus of Aglaia), botany and mythology (Proserpina, The Queen of the Air). He continued to draw and paint in watercolours, and to travel widely across Europe with servants and friends. In 1868, his tour took him to Abbeville, and in the following year he was in Verona (studying tombs for the Arundel Society) and Venice (where he was joined by William Holman Hunt). Yet increasingly Ruskin concentrated his energies on fiercely attacking industrial capitalism, and the utilitarian theories of political economy underpinning it. He repudiated his eloquent style, writing now in plainer, simpler language, to communicate his message straightforwardly. His message was stated clearly:
THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the function of his own life to the utmost, has always the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.
Ruskin’s social view broadened from concerns about the dignity of labour to consider wider issues of citizenship, and notions of the ideal community. Just as he had questioned aesthetic orthodoxy in his earliest writings, he now dissected the orthodox political economy espoused by John Stuart Mill, based on theories of laissez-faire and competition drawn from the work of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. In his four essays, Unto This Last, Ruskin rejected the division of labour as dehumanising (separating labourer from his product), and argued that the “science” of political economy failed to consider the social affections that bind communities together. Ruskin articulated an extended metaphor of household and family, drawing on Plato and Xenophon to demonstrate the communal and sometimes sacrificial nature of true economics. For Ruskin, all economies, and all societies are ideally underwritten by a politics of social justice. Ruskins ideas influenced the concept of the "social economy" characterised by networks of charitable, co-operative and other non-governmental organisations.
The essays were originally published in consecutive monthly instalments of the new Cornhill Magazine between August and November 1860 and was published in a single volume in 1862. However, its editor, William Makepeace Thackeray, was forced to abandon the series by the outcry of its largely conservative readership and the fears of a nervous publisher (Smith, Elder & Co.). The press reaction was hostile, and Ruskin was, he claimed, “reprobated in a violent manner”. His father also strongly disapproved. Others were enthusiastic, including Ruskin’s friend, Thomas Carlyle, who wrote, “I have read your paper with exhilaration... such a thing flung suddenly into half a million dull British heads... will do a great deal of good.”
Ruskin’s political ideas, and Unto This Last in particular, later proved highly influential, praised and paraphrased in Gujarati by Gandhi, a wide range of autodidacts, the economist John A. Hobson and many of the founders of the British Labour party. It is a common error, however, to mistake Ruskin himself for a socialist. Ruskin believed firmly in a hierarchical social structure, and wrote with some justification, but in exaggerated terms, “I was, and my father was before me, a violent Tory of the old school.” He believed in duties and responsibilities to, and under, God, and whilst he always sought to improve the conditions of the poor, he opposed attempts to level social differences and ideally sought to resolve social inequalities by abandoning capitalism in favour of a co-operative structure of society based on obedience and benevolent philanthropy, rooted in the agricultural economy.
Ruskin’s explorations of nature and aesthetics in the fifth and final volume of Modern Painters focused on Giorgione, Paolo Veronese, Titian and Turner. Ruskin asserted that the components of the greatest art are held together, like human communities, in quasi-organic unity. Competitive struggle is destructive. Uniting Modern Painters V and Unto This Last is Ruskin’s “Law of Help”:
Government and cooperation are in all things and eternally the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in all things, the laws of death.
Ruskin’s next work on political economy, redefining some of the basic terms of the disicipline, also ended prematurely, when Frasers Magazine, under the editorship of James Anthony Froude, cut short his Essays on Political Economy (1862–63) (later collected as Munera Pulveris (1872)). Ruskin explored further political themes in Time and Tide (1867), his letters to Thomas Dixon, the cork-cutter in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear with a well-established interest in literary and artistic matters. In these letters, Ruskin promoted honesty in work and exchange, just relations in employment and the need for co-operation.
Ruskin’s sense of politics was not confined to theory. On his father’s death in 1864, Ruskin inherited a considerable fortune of between £120,000 and £157,000 (the exact figure is disputed). This considerable inheritance from the father he described on his tombstone as “an entirely honest merchant” gave him the means to engage in personal philanthropy and practical schemes of social amelioration. One of his first actions was to support the housing work of Octavia Hill (originally one of his art pupils), by buying property in Marylebone for her philanthropic housing scheme. But Ruskin’s endeavours extended to a shop selling pure tea in any quantity desired at 29 Paddington Street, Paddington (giving employment to two former Ruskin family servants) and crossing-sweepings to keep the area around the British Museum clean and tidy. Modest as these practical schemes were, they represented a symbolic challenge to the existing state of society. Yet his greatest practical experiments would come in his later years (see “Guild of St George”, below).
Lectures in the 1860s
Ruskin lectured widely in the 1860s, giving the Rede lecture at the University of Cambridge in 1867, for example. He spoke at the British Institution on “Modern Art”, the Working Men’s Institute, Camberwell on “Work” and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich on “War”. Ruskin’s widely admired lecture, Traffic, on the relations of taste and morality, was delivered in April 1864 at Bradford Town Hall. “I do not care about this Exchange,” Ruskin told a shocked audience, “because you don’t!” These last three lectures were published in The Crown of Wild Olive (1866).
The lectures that comprised Sesame and Lilies (published 1865), delivered in December 1864 at the town halls at Rusholme and Manchester, are essentially concerned with education and ideal conduct. "Of Kings Treasuries" (in support of a library fund) explored issues of reading practice, literature (books of the hour vs. books of all time), cultural value and public education. "Of Queens Gardens" (supporting a school fund) focused on the role of women, asserting their rights and duties in education, according them responsibility for the household and, by extension, for providing the human compassion that must balance a social order dominated by men. This book proved to be one of Ruskin’s most popular books, and was regularly awarded as a Sunday School prize.
Later life (1869–1900)
Oxford’s first Slade Professor of Fine Art
Ruskin was unanimously appointed the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University in August 1869, largely through the offices of his friend, Henry Acland. He delivered his inaugural lecture on his 51st birthday in 1870, at the Sheldonian Theatre to a larger-than-expected audience. It was here that he said, “The art of any country is the exponent of its social and political virtues.” Uncharacteristically, he expressed pro-imperialist views. Cecil Rhodes cherished a long-hand copy of the lecture.
In 1871, John Ruskin founded his own art school at Oxford, The Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art. It was originally accommodated within the Ashmolean Museum but now occupies premises on “the High” (High Street). Ruskin endowed the drawing mastership with £5000 of his own money. He also established a large collection of drawings, watercolours and other materials (over 800 frames) with which to illustrate his lectures, resources that are now available online. The School challenged the orthodox, mechanical methodology of the government schools (the "South Kensington System").
His lectures were often so popular that they had to be given twice—once for the students, and again for the public. Most of them were eventually published (see Bibliography). He lectured on a wide range of subjects at Oxford, his interpretation of “Art” encompassing almost every conceivable area of study, including wood and metal engraving (Ariadne Florentina), the relation of science to art (The Eagle’s Nest) and sculpture (Aratra Pentelici). His lectures ranged through myth, ornithology, geology, nature-study and literature. “The teaching of Art...,” Ruskin wrote, “is the teaching of all things.” Ruskin was never careful about offending his employer. When he criticised Michelangelo in a lecture in June 1871 it was seen as an attack on the large collection of that artist’s work in the Ashmolean Museum.
Most controversial, from the point-of-view of the University authorities, spectators and the national press, was the digging scheme on Ferry Hinksey Road at North Hinksey, near Oxford, instigated by Ruskin in 1874, and continuing into 1875, which involved undergraduates in a road-mending scheme. Motivated in part by a desire to teach the virtues of wholesome manual labour, some of the diggers, which included Oscar Wilde, Alfred Milner and Ruskin’s future secretary and biographer, W. G. Collingwood, were profoundly influenced by the experience—notably Arnold Toynbee, Leonard Montefiore and Alexander Robertson MacEwen. It helped to foster a public service ethic that was later given expression in the university settlements, and was keenly celebrated by the founders of Ruskin Hall, Oxford.
In 1879, Ruskin resigned from Oxford, but resumed his Professorship in 1883, resigning again in 1884. He gave his reason as opposition to vivisection, but he had increasingly been in conflict with the University authorities, who refused to expand his Drawing School. He was also suffering increasingly poor health.
Fors Clavigera and the Whistler Libel Case
In January 1871, the month before Ruskin started to lecture the wealthy undergraduates at Oxford University, he began his (originally) monthly “letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain” under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–84). (The letters were published irregularly after the 87th instalment in March 1878.) These letters were personal, dealt with every subject in his oeuvre, and were written in a variety of styles, reflecting his mood and circumstances, in many ways anticipating a modern-day blog, albeit a highly literary, complex and allusive one. From 1873, Ruskin had full control over all his publications, having established George Allen as his sole publisher (see Allen & Unwin).
In the July 1877 letter of Fors Clavigera, Ruskin launched a scathing attack on 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 two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the publics face". Whistler filed a libel suit against Ruskin. Whistler won the case, which went to trial in Ruskin’s absence in 1878 (he was ill), but the jury awarded damages of only one farthing to the artist. Court costs were split between both parties. Ruskin’s were paid by public subscription, but Whistler was bankrupted within six months. The episode tarnished Ruskins reputation, however, and may have accelerated his mental decline. It did nothing to mitigate Ruskin’s consistently exaggerated sense of failure in persuading his readers to share in his own keenly-felt priorities.
The Guild of St George
Ruskin founded his utopian society, the Guild of St George, in 1871 (although originally it was called St George’s Fund, and then St George’s Company, before becoming the Guild in 1878). Its aims and objectives were articulated in, Fors Clavigera (see below). A communitarian venture, it had a hierarchical structure, with Ruskin as its Master, and dedic
john ruskin
جون روسكين
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اطلاعات بیشتر واژه
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انگلیسی
john ruskin
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جون روسكين
تشریح نگارش (هوش مصنوعی)
جان راسکین (John Ruskin) یک نویسنده، منتقد هنری و جامعهشناس انگلیسی در قرن نوزدهم بود. در مورد نگارش اسم او در زبان فارسی، به چند نکته توجه کنید:
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نوشتن اسم: نام او به صورت "جان راسکین" نوشته میشود. در فارسی، معمولاً نامها به زبان اصلی (انگلیسی) ترجمه نمیشوند، به همین دلیل نام "جان راسکین" به این صورت باقی میماند.
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تلفظ: تلفظ صحیح این نام به زبان فارسی میتواند کمی چالشبرانگیز باشد، اما معمولاً به صورت "جان راسکین" تلفظ میشود.
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معنای نام: اگر بخواهید توضیحاتی درباره او و آثارش بدهید، میتوانید به تحلیل و بررسی مفاهیم موجود در نوشتههایش بپردازید.
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استفاده از عبارات: در نوشتارهای خود میتوانید به آثار و نظریات او ارجاع دهید و مانند هر نویسنده دیگری، به اهمیت و تأثیر او بر هنر و نقد هنری بپردازید.
- تعبیرات و جملات: هنگام نوشتن، توجه داشته باشید که اطلاعات شما باید منسجم و مرتبط با بحث باشد. این به خواننده کمک میکند تا بهتر مفهوم را درک کند.
اگر برنامه خاصی برای نوشتن دارید یا سوال دیگری دارید، لطفاً بیشتر توضیح دهید تا بتوانم به شما کمک کنم.