Upper:
Steel-plate engraving of Ruskin as a young man, made circa 1845, scanned from
print made circa 1895.
Middle: Ruskin in middle-age, as Slade Professor of Art at
Bottom: John Ruskin in old age, 1894, by photographer Frederick Hollyer. 1894 print. All public domain.
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January
1900) is best known for his work as an art critic, sage writer, and social
critic, but is remembered as an author, poet and artist as well. Ruskin's
essays on art and architecture were extremely influential in the Victorian and Edwardian
eras.
Ruskin was born in
His first work, serialised in Loudon's Architecture
Magazine in 1836-7, under the pen name "Kata
Phusin" (Greek for "according to
Nature") was The Poetry of Architecture. This was a study of
cottages, villas, and other dwellings which centred around a Wordsworthian argument
that buildings should be sympathetic to local environments, and should use
local materials. Soon afterwards, in 1839, he published, in Transactions of
the Meteorological Society (pages 56-59), his "Remarks on the present
state of meteorological science". He went on to publish the first volume
of one of his major works, Modern Painters, in 1843, under the anonymous
identity "An Oxford Graduate". This work argued that modern landscape
painters—and in particular J.M.W. Turner—were superior to the so-called "Old
Masters" of the post-Renaissance period. Such a claim was controversial,
especially as Turner's semi-abstract late works were being denounced by some
critics as meaningless daubs. The degree to which Ruskin reversed an anti-Turnerian tide may have been overemphasised
in the past, as Turner was a renowned and major figure in the early Victorian
art world and a prominent member of the
Ruskin considered
some Renaissance masters, notably Titian and Dürer,
to have shown similar devotion to nature, but he attacked even Michelangelo as
a corrupting influence on art. The second half of Modern Painters I
consists of detailed observations by Ruskin of exactly how clouds move, how
seas appear at different times of day, or how trees grow, followed by examples
of error or truth from various artists.
Ruskin had already
met and befriended Turner, and eventually became one of the executors of his
will. Many long believed that, as an executor, Ruskin took it upon himself in
1858 to destroy a large number of Turner's sketches because of their
'pornographic' subject matter. More recent discoveries cast doubt on this idea
(see below).
Ruskin followed Modern
Painters I with a second volume, developing his ideas about symbolism in
art. He then turned to architecture, writing The Seven Lamps of Architecture
and The Stones of Venice, both of which argued that architecture cannot
be separated from morality, and that the "Decorated
Gothic" style was the highest form of architecture yet achieved.[1]
By this time, Ruskin
was writing in his own name and had become the most famous cultural theorist of
his day. In 1848, he married Effie Gray, for whom he wrote the early fantasy
novel The King of the Golden River. Their marriage was notoriously
unhappy, eventually being annulled in 1854 on grounds of his "incurable impotency,"
a charge Ruskin later disputed, even going so far as to offer to prove his
virility at the court's request[3]. In court, the Ruskin family
counter-attacked Effie as being mentally unbalanced. Effie later married the
artist John Everett Millais, who had been Ruskin's protegé,
in July of 1855.
Ruskin came into
contact with Millais following the controversy over Millais's painting Christ
in the House of his Parents, which was considered blasphemous at the
time. Millais, with his colleagues William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, had established the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. The
Pre-Raphaelites were influenced by Ruskin's theories. As a result, the critic
wrote letters to The Times defending their work, later meeting them.
Initially, he favoured Millais, who travelled to
During this period
Ruskin wrote regular reviews of the annual exhibitions at the
Ruskin also sought to
encourage creation of architecture based on his theories. He was friendly with Sir
Henry Acland, who supported his attempts to get the
new Oxford University Museum of Natural History built as a model of modern
Gothic. Ruskin also inspired other architects to adapt the Gothic style for
modern culture. These buildings created what has been called a distinctive
"Ruskinian Gothic" style.
Following a crisis of
religious belief, and under the influence of his great friend Thomas Carlyle,
Ruskin abandoned art criticism at the end of the 1850s, moving towards
commentary on politics. In Unto This Last, he expounded theories about
social justice, which influenced the development of the British Labour party and Christian socialism. On his father's
death, Ruskin declared it was not possible to be a rich socialist, and gave
away most of his inheritance. He founded the charity known as the Guild of St
George in the 1870s, and endowed it with large sums of money and a remarkable
art collection. He gave money to enable Octavia Hill to begin her practical
campaign of housing reform. He attempted to reach a wide readership with his
pamphlets Fors Clavigera,
aimed at the "working men of
While at
During this period Ruskin became enamoured
of Rose
In 1878, he published
a scathing review of 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[ing] two hundred guineas for
throwing a pot of paint in the public's face." [6] Whistler filed a libel suit against
Ruskin. Whistler won the case, but the jury awarded him only one farthing for
damages; it split court costs between Ruskin and Whistler. The episode
tarnished Ruskin's reputation, and may have accelerated his mental decline.
The emergence of the Aesthetic
movement and Impressionism alienated Ruskin from the art world, and his later
writings were increasingly seen as irrelevant, especially as he seemed to be
more interested in book illustrators such as Kate Greenaway than in modern art.
He continued to support philanthropic movements such as the Home Arts and
Industries Association
Much of his later
life was spent at a house called Brantwood, on the
shores of Coniston Water located in the Lake District of England. His assistant
W. G. Collingwood, the author, artist and antiquarian lived nearby and in 1901
established the
© http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin
Other
interesting biographies: [1]
[2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
Página creada y actualizada por grupo "mmm".
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
Universitat
de València Press
