John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist.

1. JOHN RUSKIN
John Ruskin in 1863
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2. INTRODUCTION
Born 8 February 1819
Died 20 January 1900 (aged 80)
Occupation
Writer, art critic, draughtsman, water
colourist, social thinker, philanthropist
Citizenship English
Period Victorian era
Notable works
Modern Painters 5 vols. (1843–60),
The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849),
The Stones of Venice 3 vols. (1851–53),
Unto This Last (1860, 1862),
Fors Clavigera (1871–84),
Praeterita 3 vols. (1885–89).
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3. JOHN RUSKIN TIMELINE
1819: John Ruskin was born in London on 8 February 1819.
1836: John first wrote for an Architecture Magazine in 1836-7.
1839: The Transactions of the Meteorological Society was published.
1843: His first major writing Modern Painters came in 1843.
1848: John Ruskin married Effie Gray.
1854: The marriage broke up in 1854.
1858: He met Rose La Touché in 1858.
1869: He became the first Slade Professor of Fine Arts in 1869.
1870: He established a charity Guild of St George.
1878: He was sued by James McNeill Whistler in 1878.
1885: John Ruskin established the School of Art in Sidney.
1900: He died on 20 January 1900.
1901: Ruskin Museum was established.
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4.  John first wrote for an Architecture Magazine in 1836-7 which was published as The
Poetry of Architecture.
 In 1839, his work the Transactions of the Meteorological Society was published.
 His first major writing Modern Painters came in 1843. The work, which was published
under the unspecified identity, became promoter of modern landscape painters-
specifically J.M.W. Turner, who in Ruskin’s opinion, were far greater than several old
artists of that era.
 For Ruskin, modern painters, like Turner, showed a much more profound
understanding of nature, observing the 'truths' of water, air, clouds, stones, and
vegetation.
His thought is based on the following principles:
1. Beauty and Art are closely connected.
2. Beauty has a moral function: it helps us develop a high moral sense;
3. Art contributes to the spiritual health of man.
4. All great art derives from deep morality.
5. Industrial society, lacks spiritual values, so cannot produce great art;
6. the Middle Ages society is characterized by deep morality.
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5. Art, architecture and literature
 Theorists and practitioners in a broad range of disciplines acknowledged their debt
to Ruskin.
 Architects including Le Corbusier, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter
Gropius incorporated Ruskin’s ideas in their work.
 Writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, T. S. Eliot, W.
B. Yeats and Ezra Pound felt Ruskin’s influence.
 The American poet Marianne Moore was an enthusiastic Ruskin reader. Art
historians and critics, among them Herbert Read, Roger Fry and Wilhelm Worringer
knew Ruskin's work well.
 Admirers ranged from the British-born American water colourist and engraver, John
William Hill to the sculptor-designer, printmaker and utopianist, Eric Gill.
 Aside from E. T. Cook, Ruskin's editor and biographer, other leading British
journalists influenced by Ruskin include J. A. Spender, and the war correspondent,
H. W. Nevinson.
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6. Some of the main works of John Ruskin are listed below :-
1) MODERN PAINTERS 1 – (1843)
2) 1845 TOUR AND MODERN PAINTERS –(1846)
3) THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE
4) THE STONES OF VENICE –(1849)
Houses and
Cathedral
Spire, Ulm
John Ruskin
1835
Ancient Maison, Lucerne,
Ulm
John Ruskin
1835
Ruskin, here in his sixteenth
year, deep in his Prout
phase, emulating his
teacher who created the
urban picturesque.
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7. Famous books by
JOHN RUSKIN
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8. •Ruskin’s early enjoyment of a picturesquely decaying Venice gave way to
increasingly serious study of its history, and to developing his own principles
governing the moral and social purpose of architecture – and of expressing
those principles in the design of a brand new building in his old college city –
The Oxford Museum
•Ruskin was not the inventor of Pre-Raphaelitism or the Gothic Revival
•Ruskin argued for the secularization of the Gothic and for its use in new
domestic buildings and churches. The Oxford Museum showed its modernity
with its use of iron and its dedication to Science, or the "natural sciences" as
they were called
•In addition to the large notebooks, Ruskin kept numerous small "pocket"
notebooks, used for "on the spot" gathering of material as he moved around
the city – they were labeled "House Book," "Door Book," "Palace Book,"
"Gothic Book," "Bit Book," (a miscellaneous notebook) and "St.M" book,
which was reserved exclusively for St. Mark’s.Sarthak Kaushal SOAP KRMU

9. •"The Poetry of Architecture," written while Ruskin was still an undergraduate, he made the
connection, through landscape, between God and man.
•The organic forms of Gothic architecture represented a type of landscape, and he theorized
that when Renaissance buildings replaced the Gothic, landscape painting developed to
replace the images of nature the cities now lacked.
• Nature was the model for good architecture and a good society.
•In 1849, Ruskin had turned to Gothic with ‘The Seven Lamps of Architecture,’ brought on
by the destructive work of ‘the Restorer, or Revolutionist’ – economically or politically. The
"lamps" were the moral tenets governing good building design
•. The real life illustration he used were the threatened Pre-Renaissance buildings of Venice.
His romantic impression of this most beautiful cities gave way to an in-depth study of the
medieval builders and the values of their society.
• As a result his own drawings became more accurate and he constructed an architectural
history in his notebooks
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10. John Ruskin Sayings
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