John Ruskin

254 Pages·2015·2.921 MB·English

by  Ballantyne, Andrew;Ruskin, John

John Ruskin
Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural figures of the modern
period. Each book explores the life of the artist, writer, philosopher or architect in question
and relates it to their major works.
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John Berger Andy Merrifield Stéphane Mallarmé Roger Pearson
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Salvador Dalí Mary Ann Caws Edgar Allan PoeKevin J. Hayes
Guy Debord Andy Merrifield Ezra Pound Alec Marsh
Claude Debussy David J. Code Marcel Proust Adam Watt
Fyodor Dostoevsky Robert Bird John Ruskin Andrew Ballantyne
Marcel Duchamp Caroline Cros Jean-Paul Sartre Andrew Leak
Sergei Eisenstein Mike O’Mahony Erik Satie Mary E. Davis
Michel Foucault David Macey Arthur Schopenhauer Peter B. Lewis
Mahatma Gandhi Douglas Allen Susan Sontag Jerome Boyd Maunsell
Jean Genet Stephen Barber Gertrude Stein Lucy Daniel
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Derek Jarman Michael Charlesworth Richard Wagner Raymond Furness
Alfred Jarry Jill Fell Simone Weil Palle Yourgrau
James Joyce Andrew Gibson Ludwig Wittgenstein Edward Kanterian
Carl Jung Paul Bishop Frank Lloyd Wright Robert McCarter
John Ruskin
Andrew Ballantyne
reaktion books
À Cyrille Capelli et son équipe
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
33Great Sutton Street
London ec1v 0dx, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2015
Copyright © Andrew Ballantyne2015
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission
of the publishers
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by Bell & Bain, Glasgow
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
isbn 978 1 78023 429 8
Contents
Introduction 7
1 A Start in Life 11
2 Turner and the Picturesque 48
3 The Pre-Raphaelites 80
4 The Seven Lamps of Architecture 118
5 Lapping Waves, Living Stones 143
6 Reform 165
7 Influence 203
References 223
Bibliography 241
Acknowledgements 249
Photo Acknowledgements 251
John Ruskin, c. 1879, at the age of 60, frontispiece to Ada Earland, Ruskin and his
Circle(1910).
Introduction
I remember as a teenager going round an exhibition of water-
colours in Kendal with an aged great-aunt, who in the family was
known as Tante. She was not well educated – her father had not
believed in educating girls – but she had a well-developed sense of
her own gentility. At the time of my visit she had cataracts and did
not see particularly clearly. We came to a study of rocks and trees
by John Ruskin: roots of trees fused with rocks, intensely detailed
but not composed into a conventional image.
‘I don’t like this modern stuff’, said Tante.
‘That’s not modern,’ I said, ‘it’s by Ruskin.’
‘Oh well,’ she said with a sigh, ‘it must be marvellous.’
She said it without a trace of irony: she knew Ruskin’s reputation,
and she knew that the image in the frame must be good if he had
done it, but she could not see the goodness and the cataracts served
to cloud the issue of whether it was her eyes or her critical faculties
that were letting her down.
Ruskin’s reputation in Kendal was then, and I think remains, that
of a faded celebrity. He had lived at Brantwood, about 30miles
away, by a winding road that has to go round the largest lake in
England – half that distance for a bird. In the other direction,
at Kirkby Lonsdale, there is a plaque to commemorate the fact
that Ruskin once admired the view there. By Derwentwater, near
Keswick, there is a monument on the spot where Ruskin said he
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could first remember seeing the world. Locally he has a reputation
for being famous that outweighs actual contact with his works. His
writings are still with us, but they are little read. The big ideas are
diffused across his writings, often appearing as lengthy ‘asides’,
digressing from the topic that is announced in the title, such as the
lengthy geological treatment of the Matterhorn in Modern Painters.
His rhetoric can have tumultuous power. He could call on all the
agencies of Heaven to make the Earth tremble and to persuade you
to change your mind.
There is much careful quiet thought besides, and the moments
of grandstanding are less admired now than when Ruskin wrote
them. The writings made Ruskin’s one of the key voices in
nineteenth-century culture. He made pronouncements on
art and architecture, and their roles in a worthwhile life – and
people listened. They went to his lectures, bought his books,
read his letters to the newspapers. Ruskin’s life was unusual and
privileged, but his thoughts reached a mainstream audience. The
eccentricity of his personal life has attracted film-makers, and he
has done duty as a conspicuous example of the Victorian prude.
His life was in the nineteenth century, and his behaviour unfolded
in the bourgeois circles of that time. He did not always manage to
conform with all the proprieties, but he absolutely belonged to his
own time and culture – as we all do. The really remarkable thing
about Ruskin’s thoughts and deeds are how often they escaped
his own rarefied circumstances to speak to others outside his
class and time. He was a profound moralist and very religious
in his outlook; he tried to do the right thing for humanity rather
for himself; he inherited a great fortune, and one way or another
gave most of it away. He tried to bring wonder and an appreciation
of beauty to the lives of the working classes in the new industrial
towns. He decried mechanization and railways, and loved crafts-
manship. He praised art that had good moral character, taking
for granted that artists would strive for a flawless technique.
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