The English critic and social theorist John Ruskin (1819-1900) more than
any other man shaped the esthetic values and tastes
of Victorian England. His writings combine enormous sensitivity and human
compassion with a burning zeal for moral value.
John Ruskin's principal insight was
that art is an expression of the values of a society. Though he sometimes
applied this insight in a narrow--even a bigoted--way, it nevertheless gave him
an almost messianic sense of the significance of art to the spiritual wellbeing
of a nation. Ruskin awakened an age of rapid change, uncertain taste, and
frequently shoddy workmanship to the meaning of art. But because art was for
Ruskin the evidence of society's underlying state of being, he gradually turned
his attention, with a reformer's zeal, more and more from art to the
transformation of society itself. Though his prose tracts were much abused,
they were important and influential contributions to radical criticism of the dominant
social and political philosophy of the age. Ruskin's art criticism found the
most likely focus to interest a people whose leading concerns were more moral
than esthetic.
Ruskin was born on Feb. 8, 1819, in London.
His parents were of Scottish descent and were first cousins. His father was a
well-to-do wine merchant with a fondness for art. His mother was stern and
devout. Both parents lavished attention and supervision on their only child,
recognizing his precociousness, but Ruskin's childhood was isolated and his
education irregular. He was encouraged in reading, however, and received some
instruction in art. In 1837 Ruskin matriculated at Christ
Church, Oxford, but his studies were interrupted by
ill health and consequent travel abroad so that he did not receive his degree
until 1842.
"Modern Painters"
Ruskin had early begun to write both poetry and prose, and by the time
he left Oxford
he had already published articles on architecture and on other subjects. After
leaving Oxford,
he undertook his first major work, Modern Painters; it testified to his
love of nature, especially of Alpine scenery, and to his reverence for J.M.W.
Turner as the supreme modern interpreter of "truth" in landscape. The
first volume of Modern Painters, published anonymously in 1843, was a
success with the discerning public, but it was attacked by professionals, who
spotted the author's tendency to dogmatize on an insufficient foundation of
experience and technical study. Ruskin then set about to
remedy his deficiencies through a firsthand study of the Italian painters,
particularly those of the Florentine and Venetian schools. Ruskin's
Italian tour of 1845 culminated in his discovery of Tintoretto, who, together
with Fra Angelico, displaced Turner to become the
heroes of volume 2 of Modern Painters (1846).
In 1848 Ruskin married Euphemia Chalmers Gray.
The parents of the bridal couple were old friends, and the match was arranged
without any bond of deep affection on either side. Ruskin and his bride
honeymooned in Normandy,
where he studied the Gothic cathedrals. The pair, unfortunately, were not suited to one another, and the marriage was
annulled in 1854. Euphemia Ruskin had by then fallen
in love with the painter John Everett Millais, whom she subsequently married.
Architectural Criticism
The weight of Ruskin's interest had now shifted to architecture as the
most public of the arts. If, as Ruskin thought, all art expresses the spirit of
its maker, architecture then most fully expresses the whole spirit of a people.
His religious emphasis was implicit in the title of his next book, The Seven
Lamps of Architecture (1849), as well as in his emphasis upon "truth
of expression" in materials and in structure. This book and its successor,
The Stones of Venice (1851-1853), a great Protestant prose epic of the
decline and fall of the Venetian
Republic, became the
bibles of the Victorian Gothic revival. Ruskin's style in this period was
powerfully evocative and readily expanded into sermonic flourishes that cloaked
many historical inaccuracies. Once again professionals, though fascinated by
his works, were moved to demur on many points where theory had replaced a
concrete knowledge of the facts of architectural practice. Perhaps Ruskin's
most enduring contribution to the development of modern style was his hostility
to classicism. He himself was too devoted to ornament and too hostile both to
the machine and to standardized construction ever to figure as a grandfather of
functionalism. However, his celebrated chapter on the nature of Gothic in The
Stones of Venice can be taken as the main testament of Victorian esthetic values.
Social Criticism
Ruskin had interrupted the composition of Modern Painters for his
architectural studies. He now returned to the earlier work, completing it with
volumes 3 and 4 in
1856 and volume 5 in
1860. He also lectured on art and defended the Pre-Raphaelites, but his
concerns were inevitably drifting further toward social criticism as a way of
transforming society. In reality, he had dropped the integument of art from his
sermons, and following the lead of Thomas Carlyle, he began to inveigh directly
against the values of the political economists. The year 1860 marks the
official turning point in his interests, for Ruskin published a series of
social essays in the Cornhill Magazine that he later collected as Unto
This Last. Ruskin's attack on the dehumanized ethic of modern industrial
capitalism drew a bitter response from readers, but it influenced the thinking
of many reformers in the developing Labour movement.
Another series of articles on economic subjects,
published in Fraser's Magazine (1862-1863) and collected as Munera pulveris
(1872), drew a similar outcry from the public. Ruskin now began to lecture
frequently, and he later published two collections derived from his lectures, Sesame
and Lilies (1865) and The Crown of Wild Olive (1866). Both volumes
circulated widely and brought him a popular following. In 1869 Ruskin was
appointed the first Slade professor of art at Oxford, a post that he held with some
interruption until 1885. These years, however, were turbulent and troublesome
for Ruskin. His religious faith had been undermined, and he was tormented by
frustrated love for Rose LaTouche, a girl 30 years
his junior, whom he had first met when she was a child.
Last Years
On the death of his father Ruskin became independently wealthy. The
variety and fever of his activities were an indication of his deeply disturbed
condition. In 1871 he began to publish Fors
clavigera, a periodical that lasted until 1884.
An attack on James McNeill Whistler in Fors in
1887 occasioned a celebrated libel suit which was decided against Ruskin. He
also endowed and led a variety of welfare and socialist schemes, thereby
consuming most of his inheritance. In 1878 Ruskin suffered his first clear
attack of mental illness. Seizures recurred until 1888, when he fell victim to a severe mental breakdown which confined him
to his house at Brantwood in the Lake
District until his death. In lucid intervals between 1885 and 1889
Ruskin worked on his unfinished autobiography, Praeterita,
one of the most moving and revealing of his works. He died on Jan. 20, 1900.
© http://www.bookrags.com/biography/john-ruskin/
Other
interesting biographies: [1]
[2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
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