Prologue: Ruskin's life

George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University

From John Ruskin, a volume originally published in 1985 by Oxford University Press in its Past Masters series and adapted for
the Victorian Web in May and June 2000 as a project supported by the University Scholars Programme of the National
University of Singapore. It was carried out by the following Student Research Assistants under the direction of the author:
Gerald Ajam of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences created the electronic text using OmniPage Pro OCR software;created
 the HTML version for the first chapter, and Tiaw Kay Siang of the Faculty of Engineering created the HTML version of the
 remainder of the volume. The original volume has no foot- or endnotes. I added all links to materials in VW [GPL].

John Ruskin was born on 8 February 1819 at 54 Hunter Street, London, the only child of Margaret and John James Ruskin.
His father, a prosperous, self-made man who was a founding partner of Pedro Domecq sherries, collected art and encouraged
his son's literary activities, while his mother, a devout evangelical Protestant, early dedicated her son to the service of God and
devoutly wished him to become an Anglican bishop. Ruskin, who received his education at home until the age of twelve, rarely
associated with other children and had few toys. During his sixth year he accompanied his parents on the first of many annual
tours of the Continent. Encouraged by his father, he published his first poem, "On Skiddaw and Derwent Water," at the age of
eleven, and four years later his first prose work, an article on the waters of the Rhine.

However, suspected consumption led him to interrupt his studies and travel, and he
did not receive his degree until 1842, when he abandoned the idea of entering the ministry. This same year he began the first
volume of Modern Painters after reviewers of the annual Royal Academy exhibition had again savagely treated Turner's
works, and in 1846, after making his first trip abroad without his parents, he published the second volume, which discussed his
theories of beauty and imagination within the context of figural as well as landscape painting. [1/2]

On 10 April 1848 Ruskin married Euphemia Chalmers Gray, and the next year he published The Seven Lamps of
Architecture, after which he and Effie set out for Venice. In 1850 he published The King of the Golden River, which he
had written for Effie nine years before, and a volume of poetry, and in the following year, during which Turner died and Ruskin
made the acquaintance of the Pre-Raphaelites, the first volume of The Stones of Venice. The final two volumes appeared in
1853, the summer of which saw Millais, Ruskin, and Effie together in Scotland, where the artist painted Ruskin's portrait. The
next year his wife left him and had their marriage annulled on grounds of non-consummation, after which she later married
Millais. During this difficult year, Ruskin defended the Pre-Raphaelites, became close to Rossetti, and taught at the Working
Men's College.

In 1855 Ruskin began Academy Notes, his reviews of the annual exhibition, and the following year, in the course of which he
became acquainted with the man who later became his close friend, the American Charles Eliot Norton, he published the third
and fourth volumes of Modern Painters and The Harbours of England. He continued his immense productivity during the
next four years, producing The Elements of Drawing and The Political Economy of Art in 1857, The Elements of
Perspective and The Two Paths in 1859, and the fifth volume of Modern Painters and the periodical version of Unto This
Last in 1860. During 1858, in the midst of this productive period, Ruskin decisively abandoned the evangelical Protestantism
which had so shaped his ideas and attitudes, and he also met Rose La Touche, a young Irish Protestant girl with whom he was
later to fall deeply and tragically in love.

Throughout the 1860s Ruskin continued writing and lecturing on social and political economy, art, and
myth, and during this decade he produced the Fraser's Magazine "Essays on Political Economy"
(1863); revised as Munera Pulveris, 1872), Sesame and Lilies (1865), The Grown of Wild Olive
(1866), The Ethics of the Dust (1866), Time and Tide, and [2/3] The Queen of the Air (1869), his
study of Greek myth. The next decade, which begins with his delivery of the inaugural lecture at Oxford as
Slade Professor of Fine Art in February 1870, saw the beginning of Fors Clavigera, a series of letters to
the working men of England, and various works on art and popularized science. His father had died in 1864 and his mother in
1871 at the age of ninety.

 In 1875 Rose la Touche died insane, and three years later Ruskin suffered
 his first attack of mental illness and was unable to testify during the
 Whistler trial when the artist sued him for libel. In 1880 Ruskin resigned his
 Oxford Professorship, suffering further attacks of madness in 1881 and
 1882; but after his recovery he was re-elected to the Slade Professorship
  in 1883 and delivered the lectures later published as The Art of England
(1884). In 1885 he began Praeterita, his autobiography, which appeared intermittently in parts until 1889, but he became
increasingly ill, and Joanna Severn, his cousin and heir, had to bring him home from an 1888 trip to the Continent. He died on
20 January 1900 at Brantwood, his home near Coniston Water.

    URL: http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/ruskin/pm/prologue.html

     ©The Victorian Web

     Página creada y actualizada por grupo "mmm".
     © a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
     Para cualquier cambio, sugerencia, etc. contactar con: fores@uv.es
     jenna little
     Última actualización : 15/01/2001
     © 1995-2000, Universitat de València Press