The Postcard
A portrait using red and black chalk of John Ruskin by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882). The work is held by the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.
John Ruskin
John Ruskin (8th. February 1819 – 20th. January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, prominent social thinker and philanthropist.
He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale.
He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation.
The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively.
In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.
He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th. century and up to the First World War.
After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960's 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 1850's, he championed the Pre-Raphaelites who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues.
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.
Ruskin's Marriage to Effie
In 1848 Ruskin married the beautiful Euphemia Gray (known as Effie), a family friend who was ten years his junior. It was a disaster, as Ruskin failed to accommodate the young woman's interests or overcome the dominant presence of his own mother.
One of the best-known stories about the marriage is that it was never consummated. Legend has it that Ruskin was unable to perform on his wedding night because he was so shocked by the revelation that his young wife had pubic hair, unlike the women in paintings he had grown up admiring.
The story is most likely apocryphal, but Effie claimed:
"My husband had imagined women were
quite different to what he saw I was, and
the reason he did not make me his wife
was because he was disgusted with my
person the first evening".
This sentiment was echoed by Ruskin who stated that:
"It may be thought strange that I could abstain
from a woman who to most people was so
attractive. But though her face was beautiful,
her person was not formed to excite passion.
On the contrary, there were certain circumstances
in her person which completely checked it".
Ruskin's friend Clive Wilmer said:
"The poor man had a bad marriage, but it takes
two to make a bad marriage. He had faults, which
one shouldn't pretend weren't there - he was very
dogmatic. He could be quite arrogant - but he was
extremely knowledgeable."
In 1852 Effie met John Everett Millais and modelled for one of his paintings, The Order of Release. Millais then accompanied the couple on a trip to Scotland to paint Ruskin. During this period Effie and Millais fell in love. Returning to London, Effie left Ruskin and filed for an annulment.
Despite causing a major public scandal, in 1854 the marriage was annulled on the grounds of "incurable impotency". The following year Effie married Millais and they went on to have eight children together.
John Ruskin's Death
John died from influenza at the age of 80 in 1900, leaving little money behind. He had inherited at least £120,000 from his father, a huge sum of money in those days, but had given most of it away.
