John Ruskin

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John Ruskin (1819 – 20 January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian period, as well as an art critic, draughtsman, watercolourist, a leading social thinker, and philanthropist.

He wrote on a variety of topics, including geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany, and political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were also varied.

He penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides, and even a fairy tale.

He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation. In time, the intricate style that characterized his early writing on art gave way to more simple words that could help him express his thoughts more effectively.

He stressed the links between nature, art, and society in all of his writing. He was particularly influential in the second half of the 19th century and early in the First World War.

His name has steadily improved since the 1960s, after a period of relative stagnation, with the releasing of several academic studies of his work.

His thoughts and worries have been widely shared today as being concerned about climatealism, sustainability, and craft. Ruskin's first publication, Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in support of J. M. W. Turner's work, in which he argued that the artist's primary function is "truth to nature." He fought the Pre-Raphaelites, who were inspired by his beliefs from the 1850s.

His work has increasingly honed on socioeconomic and political issues.

The transition in focus was made in this last (1860-1962).

Ruskin became Oxford's first Slade Professor of Fine Art in 1869, where he founded the Ruskin School of Drawing.

He began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain" in 1871, which was published under the name Fors Clavigera (1871–1884).

He formulated the principles that underpined his ideal society in the course of this dynamic and deeply personal work.

As a result, he created Guild of St George, which is now in existence.

Early life (1819–1846)

Ruskin was the first child of first cousins. John James Ruskin (1785–1864), his uncle, founding partner and de facto business manager of Ruskin, Telford, and Domecq, was a father and a producer of sherry and wine importer John James Ruskin (1785-1864). (see Allied Domecq). John James was born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, with a mother from Glenluce and a father from Hertfordshire. Margaret Cock (1781-1871) was the daughter of a publican in Croydon. When she became Catherine James' companion, she had joined the Ruskin household.

John James had hoped to practice law and was appointed as a clerk in London. John Thomas Ruskin, his father, who seemed to be an ardent wholesaler, was an incompetent businessman. John James, whose prudence and success were in stark contrast to his father, took on all debts, settling the last of them in 1832. In 1809, John James and Margaret were engaged, but John Thomas's marriage proposal, as well as the difficulty of his debts, delayed the couple's marriage. They finally married in 1818, but without an event. John James was born on March 3rd, 1864, and is buried in the churchyard of St John the Evangelist, Shirley, Croydon.

He later wrote:

Ruskin's childhood began at 28 Herne Hill (demolished c. 1912) in South London, where the village of Camberwell was located. He had few acquaintances of his own age, but it wasn't the friendshipless and toyless encounter with which he later said it was in his autobiography, Praeterita (1885–89). He was educated at home by his parents and private tutors, including Congregationalist preacher Edward Andrews, whose children, Mrs Eliza Orme and Emily Augusta Patmore, were later credited with bringing Ruskin to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

He attended the Peckham Academy under the new evangelical Thomas Dale (1797-1870) from 1834 to 1835. In 1836, Ruskin heard Dale lecture at King's College, London, where Dale was the first Professor of English Literature. Ruskin continued to enroll and finish his studies at King's College, where he prepared for Oxford under Dale's tutelage.

Ruskin was greatly influenced by the numerous and prestigious travels he enjoyed in his youth. It inspired his taste and raised his education. He accompanied his father on trips to company clients in their country houses, which took him to English landscapes, architecture, and paintings. Families in Perth, Scotland, were taken to the Lake District (his first long poem, Iteriad, was an account of his tour in 1830) and their relatives in Iteriad. The family travelled France and Belgium as early as 1825. Their continental tours became more specific: in 1833, they visited Strasbourg, Schaffhausen, Milan, Genoa, and Turin, places to which Ruskin often returned. He developed a lifelong love of the Alps, and he saw Venice for the first time in 1835 that Venice 'Paradise of cities,' which provided the subject and symbolism of a large portion of his later work.

Ruskin was able to tour and record his impressions of nature on these tours. He wrote sophisticated, but mainly conventional poetry, some of which were published in Friendship's Offering. His early notebooks and sketchbooks are jam packed with physically advanced and technically refined drawings of maps, landscapes, and buildings, which is remarkable for a boy of his age. Samuel Rogers' poem Italy (1830), a copy of which was given to him as a 13th birthday gift, was greatly affected by his companioning illustrations by J. M. W. Turner. A large portion of Ruskin's own artwork in the 1830s was in imitation of Turner, as well as Samuel Prout, whose Sketches Made in Flanders and Germany (1833) who admired his work. His artistic abilities were refined under the tutelage of Charles Runciman, Copley Fielding, and J. D. Harding.

Ruskin's travels inspired writing. (August 1829) was his first publication, "On Skiddaw and Derwent Water," (originally titled "Lines written at the Lakes in Cumberland: Derwentwater" and published in the Spiritual Times). Three short articles for Loudon's Magazine of Natural History were published in 1834. They display early signs of their ability as a close "scient" observer of nature, particularly its geology.

The Poetry of Architecture of Ruskin's The Poetry of Architecture was serialized in Loudon's Architectural Magazine from 1937 to 1838, under the pen name "Kata Phusin" (Greek for "According to Nature). It was a analysis of cottages, villas, and other dwellings based on a Wordsworthian argument that buildings should be sensitive to their immediate environment and use local materials. It appeared in his later writings that it related to the main themes. "Remarks on the Present State of Meteorological Science," by Ruskin in 1839, was published in the Meteorological Society's Transactions.

Ruskin matriculated at Oxford University in 1836, taking up residence at Christ Church in January of the following year. He was enrolled as a gentleman-commoner and he had the same status as his aristocratic peers. Ruskin was uninspired by Oxford and suffered from bouts of illness. Perhaps the greatest advantage of his time there was in the few, close friendships he made. His mentor, Walter Lucas Brown, was always encouraged, as did Henry Liddell, the son of Alice Liddell) and a private tutor, the Rev Osborne Gordon. William Buckland, a geologist and natural theologian, was close to him. Charles Thomas Newton and Henry Acland were two of Ruskin's most influential friends.

In 1839, he became the first winner of the coveted Newdigate Prize for poetry (Arthur Hugh Clough came second). At the event, he met William Wordsworth, who was receiving an honorary degree.

During his time at Oxford, Ruskin's health was insecure, and he never became completely independent from his family. His mother stayed on High Street, where his father used to live on weekends. Adèle Domecq, the second daughter of his father's business partner's second daughter's second daughter, was devastated to learn that he had proposed to a French nobleman. He began coughing blood in April 1840, prompting fears of over consumption and a long absence from traveling with his parents in Oxford.

Ruskin responded to a challenge set to him by Effie Gray, who later married: the twelve-year-old Effie had begged him to write a fairy tale before he returned to Oxford. Ruskin wrote his only work of fiction, The King of the Golden River, during a six-week break at Leamington Spa to celebrate Dr Jephson's (1798–1878) famed salt water cure (not published until 1850; but not published until 1851), with illustrations by Richard Doyle. It is set in the Alpine landscape, which Ruskin adored and knew so well. It is a work of Christian sacrificial morality and charity. It is still the most translated of all his drawings. Ruskin sat for a pass degree in 1842 and was given an unusual honorary double fourth-class degree for his service.

Ruskin and his parents were abroad with their parents for the bulk of the 1840s to autumn 1842, mainly in Italy. George Richmond, a Keats friend, introduced the Ruskins (whose son, Arthur Severn, married Ruskin's cousin, Joan), was his primary guide in his Italian art. When he read an attack on several of Turner's photographs on display at the Royal Academy, he was compelled to write a defense of J. M. W. Turner. In Blackwood's Magazine in 1836, it related to an attack by the critic Rev John Eagles, which had prompted Ruskin to write a long essay. John James had sent the piece to Turner, who did not want it to be revealed. In 1903, it appeared for the first time.

Before Ruskin's discovery of Modern Painters, John James Ruskin had begun collecting watercolours, including paintings by Samuel Prout and Turner. Both painters were among occasional guests of the Ruskins at Herne Hill and 163 Denmark Hill (demolished 1947) to which the family moved in 1842.

What became the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), published by Smith, Elder & Co. under the pseudoneous authority of "A Graduate of Oxford," was Ruskin's reaction to Turner's critiques. Ruskin argued that modern landscape painters, and in particular Turner, were superior to the so-called "Old Masters" of the post-Renaissance period. Ruskin maintained that, unlike Turner, Old Masters such as Gaspard Dughet (Gaspar Poussin), Claude, and Salvator Rosa, prefered pictorial structure, not "truth to nature." He said he meant "moral as well as material truth" as well as material truth. The artist's job is to experience nature rather than inventing it in a studio; to paint realistically what he has seen and understood, without regard to any composition rules. Modern landscapists in Ruskin demonstrated a keen appreciation of water, air, clouds, stones, and vegetation, a deep admiration of which Ruskin displayed in his own prose. With extraordinary verbal felicity, he recalled works he had seen at the National Gallery and Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Although critics were slow to respond and the critiques were mixed, several leading literary and artistic figures were impressed with the young man's work, including Charlotte Bront and Elizabeth Gaskell. Ruskin had discovered his passion and helped redefine the field of art criticism in a single leap, combining a discussion of polemics with aesthetics, scientific analysis, and ethics. It nailed Ruskin's friendship with Turner. Ruskin collected almost 20,000 sketches from Turner, who died in 1851.

Ruskin and his family returned to Africa in 1844, visiting Chamonix and Paris, investigating the geology of the Alps and the paintings of Titian, Veronese, and Perugino among others at the Louvre. For the first time in 1845, he went without his parents for the first time. It gave him the opportunity to study medieval art and architecture in France, Switzerland, and in particular Italy. He saw the Tomb of Ilaria del Carmel, which Ruskin regarded as the exemplar of Christian sculpture (he later connected it to the then object of his devotion, Rose La Touche). He drew inspiration from what he saw at the Campo Santo in Pisa and Florence. He was particularly impressed by the works of Fra Angelico and Giotto in St Mark's Cathedral and Tintoretto in San Rocco's Scuola di San Rocco, but he was alarmed by the city's decay and modernization: "Venice is lost to me," he wrote. It finally convinced him that architectural restoration was a waste, and that the only true and faithful act was preservation and conservation.

He wrote the second volume of Modern Painters, based on his travels (April 1846). Rather than Turner, the volume concentrated on Renaissance and Pre-Renaissance artists rather than Turner. It was more theoretical than its predecessor. Ruskin specifically referred to the aesthetic and the divine, arguing that truth, beauty, and faith are inextricably linked together: "the Beautiful as a gift from God." Ruskin argued that all great artists must see beauty and then, with their imagination, communicate it in a way that symbolically represents it. Overall, critics were given this second volume a warmer reception, but some readers found Joshua Reynolds' attack on the orthodoxy associated with him difficult to accept. Ruskin and his father, who wished his son would be a poet or even poet Laureate, were both abroad in the summer, and just one of several factors contributing to the rising tension between them.

Middle life (1847–1869)

Ruskin was closer to Euphemia "Effie" Gray, the daughter of a family's cousin, in 1847. It was for her that Ruskin had written The King of the Golden River. In October, the two were engaged. They married in Perth, 1848, at Bowerswell, which was once the home of the Ruskin family. It was the place of John Thomas Ruskin's suicide (Ruskin's grandfather). Ruskin's parents were unable to attend due to this friendship and other issues. The first travels of the newlyweds were restricted due to the 1848 European Revolutions, but they did a visit to Normandy, where Ruskin adored the Gothic architecture.

Their early life together on Mayfair's 31 Park Street was spent by Ruskin's father (later addresses included nearby 6 Charles Street and 30 Herne Hill). Effie was too ill to travel on the European Tour of 1849, so Ruskin and his parents travelled the Alps in the hopes of the third and fourth volumes of Modern Painters. He was struck by the contrast between the Alpine beauty and the suffering of Alpine peasants, which prompted his growing social conscience.

Ruskin was reportedly cruel to Effie and dismissive of her, according to her. The marriage was never consummated, and it was annulled six years later in 1854.

Ruskin's growing passion for architecture, particularly in the Gothic, culminated in the creation of the first work to bear his name, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849). It contained 14 plates etched by the author. The title refers to seven moral categories that Ruskin deemed relevant to and indistinguishable from all architecture: sacrifice, truth, wealth, beauty, life, memory, and obedience. In his future jobs, they would all have recurring themes. Seven Lamps extook Gothic in a secular and Protestant sense. It was a challenge to architect A. W. Pugin's Catholicism.

In November 1849, John and Effie Ruskin, a young couple from Venice, stayed at the Hotel Danieli. Their diverse personalities are revealed by their differing priorities. Venice offered a chance to socialize for Effie, while Ruskin was engaged in solitary research. He made a point of d'Oro and the Doge's Palace, or Palazzo Ducale, because he was afraid that the occupying Austrian troops would have devastated them. Lieutenant Charles Paulizza, one of these troops, became friendly with Effie, apparently with Ruskin's permission. Ruskin, among other things, later claimed that she was intentionally encouraging the marriage to break apart as an excuse for divorce.

In the meantime, Ruskin was drawing the extensive sketches and notes he used for his three-volume work The Stones of Venice (1851–53). Stones portrayed Ruskin's vision of contemporary England, transitioning from a technological history of Venetian architecture from the Romanesque to Renaissance to a broad cultural history. It served as a warning of the social and spiritual wellbeing of society. Venice had degenerated slowly, according to Ruskin. Its cultural achievements had been harmed by the decline of true Christian faith, and its culture had been corrupted. Renaissance artists honoured themselves rather than revering the divine, rather than reinterpreting human sensuousness.

In the second volume of Stones, the chapter "The Nature of Gothic" was included. Ruskin praised Gothic ornaments, saying that it was an expression of the artisan's delight in free, creative creation. The employee must be encouraged to explore and articulate his own ideas, preferring his own hands rather than machinery.

Both an aesthetic and a sociology of, labor in particular, as well as industrial capitalism in general, were both an aesthetic attack and a sociological analysis of, job division in particular, and industrial capitalism in general. This chapter had a major effect, and it was reprinted both by the Working Men's College's Christian socialist founders and later by the Arts and Crafts pioneer and socialist William Morris.

John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti had founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. The Pre-Raphaelite's pledge to 'naturalism' – "paint[ing] from nature alone" depicting nature in a fine way was inspired by Ruskin.

After the artists made an approach to Ruskin through their mutual friend Coventry Patmore, Ruskin became acquainted with Millais. Ruskin was not impressed by Millais' Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50), a painting that was considered blaspheous at the time, but Ruskin wrote letters defending the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to The Times in May 1851. Millais' artist patronage and encouragement in the summer of 1853, when Ruskin and Effie joined Scotland, where he painted the closely observed landscape background of gneiss rock, which was later added by Ruskin.

In 1852, Millais painted a portrait of Effie for The Order of Release, 1746, which was on display at the Royal Academy. Effie was battling her husband and his ardent and overprotective parents in Scotland as a result of her increasing physical illness and acute mental instability. The Ruskin marriage was already fragile when she and Millais fell in love, and Effie left Ruskin, sparking a public scandal.

Effie filed a nullity complaint in April 1854 on the grounds of "non-consummation" owing to his "incurable impotency," a charge Ruskin denied later. "I can show my virility at once," Ruskin wrote. In July, the annulment was granted. Ruskin did not even mention it in his diary. Millais was Effie's first marriage attempt. The reasons for the Ruskin marriage's incompleteness and eventual death are a matter of enduring speculation and debate.

Ruskin continued to assist Hunt and Rossetti. Elizabeth Siddal, Rossetti's wife, received an annuity of £150 in 1855–57 to encourage her creativity (and paid for Henry Acland's medical care). Other artists influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites include John Brett, John William Inchbold, and Edward Burne-Jones, who became a good friend (he called him "Brother Ned"). His father's disapproving of such people was a contributing factor in the friction between them.

Ruskin wrote regular reports of the annual exhibitions at the Royal Academy in the 1855–1875 period (1855–1875). They were renowned, and they were able of creating or breaking names. "I paints and paints/hears no reports/And sells before I'm dry,/Then no one will buy?" Punch's satirical journal published the lines (24 May 1856).

Ruskin donated 48 Turner drawings to the Ashmolean in Oxford in March 1861, as well as 25 to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in May. Ruskin's own work was particularly distinctive, and he exhibited his watercolours in the United States, 1857–58, 1879, for example; and in England, at the Fine Art Society in 1878; and in 1879, at the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour (of which he was an honorary member) in 1879. He conducted several careful studies of natural forms based on his extensive botanical, geological, and architectural observations. In the central room of Wallington Hall in Northumberland, home of his friend Pauline Trevelyan, there are examples of his work, including a painted, floral pilaster decoration. The stained glass window in the Little Church of St Francis Funtley, Fareham, Hampshire, is reputed to have been created by him. The window was originally placed in the St. Peter's Church Duntisbourne Abbots near Cirencester and depicts the Ascension and the Nativity.

Many architects were also inspired by Ruskin's works to reimagine the Gothic style. Such buildings were described as a "Ruskinian Gothic" in the literature. Ruskin supported attempts to establish what became the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (designed by Benjamin Woodward), but Ruskin's closest thing to a model of this style, but he didn't manage to please Ruskin completely. The Museum's many twists and turns, not least its increasing cost, but also the University's less ardent support for it, were all frustrating for Ruskin.

The Museum was part of a larger initiative to enhance science education at Oxford, something the University had rejected initially. Ruskin's first formal teaching job began in the mid-1950s, when he taught drawing classes (assisted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti) at the Working Men's College, which was founded by the Christian socialists, Frederick James Furnivall and Frederick Denison Maurice. Ruskin did not endorse the founders' views, but he did agree that education workers could help with a crucially important sense of (self-fulfilment). Elements of Drawing, which was a result of Ruskin's involvement (1857), was one of the many effects of his participation. He had taught several women drawing by email, and his book represented both a response and a challenge to current drawing manuals. The WMC served as a good recruiting ground for assistants, on some of whom Ruskin would later depend on, such as future publisher George Allen.

Ruskin was a student at Winnington Hall in Cheshire from 1859 to 1868. Ruskin approved the mash-up of sports, letter-writer, and photographer of photographs and geological specimens from the school's principal, Miss Bell. The association culminated in Ruskin's sub-Socratic work The Ethics of the Dust (1866), an imagined conversation with Winnington's girls in which he portrayed himself as the "Old Lecturer." It is a rhetorical examination of socioeconomic and political ideals on the surface. Ruskin became affiliated with Whitelands College, a teacher training college, in the 1880s, where he established a May Queen Festival that continues today. (It was also replicated at the Cork High School for Girls in the 19th century.) Somerville College, one of Oxford's first two women's colleges, was also generous to other educational institutions for women. Ruskin bestowed books and gemstones on Somerville College, one of Oxford's first two women's colleges, which he visited often, and was also generous to other educational institutions for women.

In 1856, both Volume III and IV of Modern Painters were published. All great art, according to MP III, is "the expression of the spirit of great men." Only those who are physically and spiritually fit are capable of admiring the noble and beautiful and transforming them into works of art by imaginatively penetrating their essence. MP IV explores the geology of the Alps, as well as their moral and spiritual value among those living nearby. "The Mountain Glory" and "The Mountain Gloom" are two of Ruskin's sociology, highlighting the poverty of the peasants in the lower Alps.

Ruskin became a highly popular public lecturer in addition to leading more formal teaching classes from the 1850s. In November 1853, his first public lectures on architecture and painting were held in Edinburgh, Scotland. His lectures at the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester, 1857, were titled The Political Economy of Art, and later, A Joy For Ever, according to Keats' work. Ruskin talked about how to acquire art and how to use it, arguing that England had forgotten that true wealth is virtue and that art is an indicator of a nation's well-being. Individuals have a responsibility to consume wisely, boosting charitable demand. Ruskin's interventions offended his father and the "Manchester School" of economists, as shown by a hostile analysis in the Manchester Examiner and Times. Ruskin was increasingly critical of his father, particularly in letters written by Ruskin directly to him, many of whom are now unpublished, as Ruskin scholar Helen Gill Viljoen noted.

In 1858, Ruskin delivered the inaugural address at the Cambridge School of Art, an institution from which the modern-day Anglia Ruskin University has sprung. Ruskin argued in The Two Paths (1859), five lectures delivered in London, Manchester, Bradford, and Tunbridge Wells, that a "vital law" supports art and architecture, relying on the labor theory of value. (For other addresses and letters, see Cook and Wedderburn's Vol. ). p. 16 pp. (427–87) During which they visited Germany and Switzerland, 1859 marked his last tour of Europe with his ageing parents.

When he heard of Turner's death in 1851 in Venice, Ruskin had been in Venice. Ruskin politely declined but later resumed it. The Harbours of England, Ruskin's book dedicated to the sea and revolving around Turner's designs, was published in 1856 by Ruskin. Notes on the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House, 1857, was published in January 1857. He begged the National Gallery not to allow him to exhibit on the Turner Bequest of nearly 20,000 individual artworks left to the nation by the artist. Ruskin was involved in a lot of work, which began in May 1858 and involved cataloguing, framing, and conserving. In cabinets of Ruskin's own style, four hundred watercolours were displayed. Ruskin did not participate in the destruction of Turner's sexual drawings, as previously suspected, according to a new scholar, but his Bequest work changed his mind toward Turner. Turner's Erotic Drawings, see below.)

Ruskin was back in Europe in 1858. He was taken from Switzerland to Turin, where he attended Paolo Veronese's Presentation of the Queen of Sheba. He would later claim (in April 1877) that this painting, contrasting specifically with a dull sermon, resulted in his "unconversion" from evangelical Christianity. He had doubted his Evangelical Christian faith for some time, but was later shaken by biblical and geological scholarship that was supposed to have undermined the Bible's literal truth and absolute authority. "I hear the chink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses," Henry Acland wrote. A major personal crisis was precipitated by this "loss of faith." His morale had been stifled because he believed that a majority of his writing to date had been based on lies and half-truths. He returned to Christianity later in life.

Despite Ruskin's claims that in 1860, "I gave up my art work and wrote Unto This Last... my life's central work" the break was not so dramatic or conclusive. Ruskin shifted his attention away from art to social problems following his faith crisis and encouragement of political and economic work by his professed "master" Thomas Carlyle, to whom he said he owes more than any other living writer" in the late 1850s. Nevertheless, he continued to lecture and write on a variety of topics, including art and geology (The Cestus of Aglaia, 1863), art theory and decision (Proserpina and The Queen of the Air). He continued to draw and paint in watercolours and then travelled extensively around Europe with servants and friends. In 1868, his tour took him to Abbeville, and the following year, he was in Verona (study tombs for the Arundel Society) and Venice (where William Holman Hunt was invited). However, Ruskin's energies honed against industrial capitalism and the institutional interpretations of the political economy that backed it. He condemned his sometimes grandiloquent style while still writing in plainer, simpler words, in order to communicate his message clearly and simply.

Ruskin's social outlook grew from concerns over the dignity of work to questions of citizenship and notions of the ideal community. In his first writings, he had questioned aesthetics in his early writings, but John Stuart Mill's orthodox political economy dissected the orthodox political economy based on laissez-faire and competition theories derived from Adam Smith, David Rigono, and Thomas Malthus' writings. Ruskin's four essays Unto This Last rejected the division of labour as dehumanizing (separating the labourer from the product of his work) and argued that the false "science" of political economy failed to account the cultural bonds that bind communities together. He extended the metaphor of household and family, relying on Plato and Xenophon to show the intergenerational and occasionally sacrificial aspects of true economics. Both economies and societies in Ruskin are idealized by a politics of social justice. His ideas inspired the concept of the "social economy," which was portrayed by a network of charitable, co-operative, and other non-governmental organizations.

The essays were first published in successive monthly instalments of the new Cornhill magazine from August to November 1860 (and then published in a single volume in 1862). However, William Makepeace Thackeray, the Cornhill's editor, was forced to abandon the series due to the magazine's largely conservative readership and the concerns of a cynical publisher (Smith, Elder & Co.). Ruskin was "reprobated in a violent way," the national press's reaction was hostile, and Ruskin said "reprobated in a brutal manner." The father of Ruskin has also strongly opposed it. Others were enthusiastic, including Carlyle, who wrote, "I have read your Paper with excitement..." A flung half-stricken British heads would do a great deal of good, claiming that they were "henceforth in a minority of two," a suggestion Ruskin shared.

Ruskin's political ideas, as well as Unto This Last, which became more popular later. The essays were lauded and published in Gujarat by Mohandas Gandhi, a diverse group of autodidacts, but Mohandas Gandhi praised their contributions, economist John A. Hobson, and several of the British Labour Party's founding members praised them as an authority.

Ruskin believed in a hierarchical social order. "I was, and my father was before me, a virulent Tory of the old school," he wrote. He believed in man's service to God, and though he tried to improve the lives of the poor, he opposed attempts to reduce social injustice and resolved socioeconomic injustice by abandoning capitalism in favour of a co-operative system of society based on obedience and benevolent philanthropy, which is rooted in agriculture.

In the fifth and final volume of Modern Painters, Ruskin's explorations of nature and aesthetics concentrated on Giorgione, Veronese, Titian, and Turner. In a quasi-organic union, Ruskin said that the key to the greatest works of art are held together, as human societies, in a quasi-organic union. The competition is proving costly. This is the uniting of modern painters Vs. Unto. Ruskin's "Law of Help": Ruskin's "Law of Help":

Ruskin's next work on political economy, redefining some of the discipline's key terms, came too late, when Fraser's Magazine, under the editorship of James Anthony Froude, cut short his Essays on Political Economy (1862–63) (later collected as Munera Pulveris (1872). In Time and Tide (1867), Ruskin's letters to Thomas Dixon, a cork-cutter in Sunderland, Tyne, and Wear, who had a long-running interest in literary and artistic subjects, he continued exploring political subjects. In these letters, Ruskin emphasized honesty in work and exchange, noting in job and cooperation, as well as the need for cooperation.

Ruskin's political convictions were not restricted to theory. He inherited an estate worth between £120,000 and £157,000 on his father's death in 1864 (the correct figure is uncertain). This substantial fortune, which he referred to on his tombstone as "an entirely honest merchant," gave him the opportunity to participate in personal philanthropy and concrete plans of social reformation. One of his first moves was to promote Octavia Hill's housing project: he purchased a house in Marylebone to assist her with her philanthropic housing project. However, Ruskin's efforts grew to the establishment of a pure tea shop in any number required at 29 Paddington Street, Paddington (giving back to two former Ruskin family servants) and crossing-sweepings to keep the area around the British Museum clean and tidy. Modest as these innovative plans were, they were a symbolic threat to the present state of society. However, his best scientific experiments will come in his later years.

Ruskin was instrumental in the uproar surrounding Edward John Eyre's denial of the Morant Bay rebellion in 1865-66. Mill created the Jamaica Committee for the sole purpose of holding Governor Eyre accountable for what they deemed to be his unlawful, inhumane, and unnecessary quelling of the revolt. The Eyre Defence and Aid Fund was established to assist Eyre for defending his name and saving the white population from danger; Carlyle was the chairman. Ruskin allied with the Defence, delivering a letter that appeared in the Daily Telegraph in December 1865 ("they are for liberty, and I am for Lordship; they are Mob's boys, and I am a King's man"), pledging £100 to the fund, and giving a address at Waterloo Place on September 1866, as also reported in the Telegraph. Ruskin "enlisted" personnel, persuading wavers, and combating objections in addition to this.

For example, Ruskin gave the Rede lecture at the University of Cambridge in the 1860s. He spoke at the British Institution on "Modern Art," the Working Men's Institute, Camberwell on "Work" and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich on "War." Traffic, Ruskin's much-famous lecture on the relationship between taste and morality, was delivered in April 1864 at Bradford Town Hall, to which he had been invited due to a local discussion of a new Exchange building.' "I do not care about this Exchange," Ruskin told his followers, "because you don't." These last three lectures were published in The Crown of Wild Olive (1866).

The lectures in Sesame and Lilies (published 1865) were mainly concerned with education and ideal conduct, which were delivered in December 1864 at the town halls at Rusholme and Manchester. "Of Kings' Treasuries" (in favour of a library fund) investigated topics of reading comprehension, literature (books of the hour vs. books of all time), cultural value, and public education. According to "Of Queens' Gardens" (funding a school fund), women were asked to care for the family and, in turn, provide the human compassion that must balance a social order dominated by men. This book was one of Ruskin's most popular, and was consistently referred to as a Sunday School award. Its reception has shifted with time, but twentieth-century feminists have taken aim at "Of Queens' Gardens" in particular, seeking to "subvert the new heresy" of women's rights by limiting women to the domestic sphere. Ruskin was nevertheless subpoena in advocating for parity of esteem in "separate spheres" for both men and women, but it was nevertheless remarkable in seeking parity of esteem, a case based on his conviction that a nation's political economy should be modelled on that of the ideal household.

Later life (1869–1900)

In August 1869, Ruskin was unanimously named the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University, but largely through Henry Acland's offices. He spoke at the Sheldonian Theatre in 1870 for his 51st birthday. "The art of any country is the promoter of its social and political virtues," Cecil Rhodes said, "She [England] must find colonies as quickly and as far as she is able;—seizing every piece of fruitful garbage ground she can lay her foot on" "The British Empire has been cherished by his father."

John Ruskin founded The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford in 1871. It was originally housed within the Ashmolean Museum, but now occupies the High Street building. Ruskin funded the drawing mastership with £5000 of his own money. He also created a large collection of drawings, watercolours, and other photographic works that he used to illustrate his lectures. The school questioned the official, mechanical philosophy of government art schools (the "South Kensington System").

Ruskin's lectures were often so popular that they had to be given twice—once for the students and then for the public. The majority of them were eventually published (see Select Bibliography below). At Oxford, he lectured on a number of aspects of research, including wood and metal engraving (Ariadne Florentina), the relationship of science to art (The Eagle's Nest) and sculpture (Aratra Pentelici). His lectures ranged from myth, ornithology, geology, nature-study, and literature. "The teaching of all things," Ruskin wrote. Ruskin was never cautious about offending his coworkers. In a lecture in June 1871, Michelangelo was seen as an assault on the Ashmolean Museum's substantial collection.

The digging campaign on Ferry Hinksey Road near Oxford, which was initiated by Ruskin in 1874 and extended to 1875, involving undergraduates in a road-mending project was the most controversial, from the point of view of the University administrators, spectators, and the national press. The initiative was triggered in part by a desire to promote the virtues of healthy manual labour. Oscar Wilde, Alfred Milner, and Ruskin's future secretary and biographer W. G. Collingwood were all heavily influenced by the experience: particularly Arnold Toynbee, Leonard Montefiore, and Alexander Robertson MacEwen. It was instrumental in the inception of a societal service ethic that was later developed in the university agreements, and the founders of Ruskin Hall, Oxford, were keen to commemorate it.

Ruskin resigned from Oxford in 1879 but resigned as a Professor in 1883, only to resign in 1884. He cited his reason for opposing vivisection as a result of growing his Drawing School, but he had been increasingly in conflict with university authorities who had refused to expand his Drawing School. He was also suffering from increasingly poor health.

He began a series of 96 (monthly) "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain" in January 1871, the month before Ruskin began to teach the wealthy undergraduates of Oxford University. After the 87th instalment in March 1878, the letters were distributed irregularly.) These letters were personal, dealt with every aspect of his career, and were published in a variety of ways, reflecting his mood and circumstance. Ruskin had full control over all his publications from 1873, having named George Allen as his sole publisher (see Allen & Unwin).

Ruskin launched a scathing attack on paintings by James McNeill Whistler, which was on display at the Grosvenor Gallery in July 1877. In Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, he found particular fault with Nocturne and accused Whistler of asking two hundred guineas for "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." Whistler brought a libel lawsuit against Ruskin, but Ruskin was unwell when the trial began in November 1878, so the artist Edward Burne-Jones and Attorney General Sir John Holker represented him. The trial took place on November 25 and 26, and several leading figures of the art world at the time attended the trial. Artist Albert Moore was on tour for Whistler, and painter William Powell Frith appeared for Ruskin. "The nocturne in gold is not in my opinion worth two hundred guineas," Frith said. Frederic Leighton promised to testify for Whistler, but he was unable to attend because he had to travel to Windsor to be knighted. Edward Burne-Jones, who represents Ruskin, also stated that Nocturne in Black and Gold was not a serious work of art. Burne-Jones said he had never seen one painting of night that was successful, but he also acknowledged that the painting contained signs of great labour and artistic talent. Whistler prevailed in the case, but the jury decided against the artist only for the artist's derisory farthing (the smallest coin of the region). The two groups' court costs were split between the two groups. Ruskin's were paid by public subscription administered by the Fine Art Society, but Whistler was bankrupt within six months and was compelled to sell his studio. Ruskin's image was tarnished by the incident, and it may have accelerated his mental decline. Ruskin's exaggerated sense of disappointment in persuading his followers to share in his own keenly felt priorities were insignificant.

In 1871, Ruskin founded his utopian society, the Guild of St George (although it was originally called St George's Fund and then St George's Company before becoming the Guild in 1878). In Fors Clavigera, the company's goals and objectives were articulated. It was a communitarian resistance to nineteenth-century industrial capitalism, with Ruskin as its Master and dedicated members named "Companions." Ruskin wanted to show that modern life could still be enjoyed in the countryside by traditional means, in harmony with the climate, and with the availability of a minimum of mechanical assistance. He also wanted to educate and enrich industrial workers by instilling them with beautiful objects. As such, Ruskin acquired land and a collection of art treasures as a result of his tithe (or personal donation) of £7,000.

Ruskin bought land in Totley, near Sheffield, but the local communists' agricultural program met with only modest success after many challenges. Donations of land from wealthy and dedicated Companions eventually placed property and home in the Guild's care; today in Gwynedd, north of Wales; and Sheepscombe, Gloucestershire;

In principle, Ruskin devised a scheme for different grades of "Companion," wrote codes of conduct, outlined clothing styles, and even designed the Guild's own coins. Ruskin wanted to see St George's Schools established and published various volumes to support its curriculum (his Bibliotheca Pastorum or Shepherd's Library), but the schools were never established. (He benefited Francesca Alexander's publication of some of her tales of peasant life in the 1880s, which was closely related to the Bibliotheca.) The Guild, although it still exists today as a charitable education charity, has only ever operated on a small scale.

Ruskin also wished to see traditional rural handicraft revived. St. George's Mill was established in Laxey, Isle of Man, manufacturing cloth goods. The Guild also facilitated independent but affiliated efforts in spinning and weaving at Langdale, Flaming's Lake District and elsewhere, which includes linen and other products from the Home Arts and Industries Association and similar organizations.

The Guild's most notable and long-serving achievement was the creation of a remarkable collection of art, minerals, books, medieval manuscripts, architectural casts, coins, and other valuable and beautiful items. It opened in 1875 and was displayed by Henry and Emily Swan in a cottage museum on a hill in Sheffield's district of Walkley. "The most important thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a straightforward way," Ruskin wrote in Modern Painters III (1856). Ruskin's aim was to bring many of the sights and experiences of the working man to the eyes of the working man. The original Museum has been digitally recreated online. The Museum moved to Meersbrook Park in 1890. The collection is on view at Sheffield's Millennium Gallery.

Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford, had introduced Ruskin to the wealthy Irish La Touche family. Maria La Touche, a minor Irish writer and novelist, begged Ruskin to teach her daughters drawing and painting in 1858. Rose La Touche was ten years old when she was given a ticket to the University of Buenos Air. His first meeting took place at a time when Ruskin's own religious faith was under strain. The La Touche family, who remained firmly Protestant, has always had issues, and they were unable to meet at certain times. One of the few occasions they came into personal contact was a chance meeting at the Royal Academy in 1869. She died on May 25, 1875, at the age of 27 after a long illness. These events brought Ruskin's deepest bouts of mental illness that culminated in an increase in severe bouts of mental disorder involving a series of breakdowns and delirious visions. The first of these events occurred in 1871 at Matlock, Derbyshire, a town and a county that he recognized from his youth, whose flora, fauna, and minerals helped to develop and enhance his appreciation of nature.

Ruskin's journey into spiritualism began in the nineteenth century. He went to seances in Broadlands. Ruskin's growing interest in a meaningful universe and a life after death, both for him and his families, helped revive his Christian faith in the 1870s.

Ruskin continued to travel, investigating the landscapes, buildings, and art of Europe. In May 1870 and June 1872, he adored Carpaccio's St Ursula in Venice, a vision of which, attributed to Rose La Touche, would haunt him. Ruskin visited Sicily in 1874, the furthest he had ever traveled.

Ruskin embraced the new literary styles, the travel guide (and gallery guide), writing new books, and remodeling old ones "to give," he said. Ruskin urged his readers, the future traveller, to explore France and Italy's landscapes, buildings, and art. (1875–85) St Mark's Rest (1877–84) and A Guide to the Principal Photographs in Florence (1877).

Ruskin returned to some literature and subjects that had been one of his favorites since childhood in the 1880s. In Fiction, Fair and Foul (1880), he wrote about Scott, Byron, and Wordsworth, a sense Reno sees as a reflection of the Anthropocene. In his lecture The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century (1884), he referred to the apparent effects of industrialization on weather patterns. In the twentieth and 21st centuries, Ruskin's Storm Cloud has been seen as foreshadowing environmentalism and other topics. Ruskin's prophetic writings were also linked to his emotions and his more general (ethical) dissatisfaction with the modern world, with which he now felt almost completely out of sympathy.

Praeterita (1885–89) (meaning, "Of Past Things"), a highly personalized, selective, but incomplete account of his life, the preface of which was written in his childhood nursery at Herne Hill was his last great work.

The late 1880s to 2000 was a period of steady and inexorable decline. He began to travel to Europe gradually, but it became too difficult for him to travel to Europe. On his last trip, which included Beauvais, Sallanches, and Venice, in 1888, he had a complete mental breakdown. Ruskin was excluded from the modern art world after the belief of "l'art pour l'art" or "art for art's sake" was emerging. His later books were increasingly considered irrelevant, particularly because he seemed to be more interested in book illustrators such as Kate Greenaway than in modern art. With increasing violence, he also attacked Darwinian beliefs, although he knew and respected Darwin personally.

Ruskin purchased it from W. J. Linton, the then somewhat dilapidated Brantwood home, on the shores of Coniston Water in the English Lake District in August 1871, costing £1500. Brantwood was Ruskin's main home from 1872 to his death. His estate had a website to display more of his practical plans and experiments: he had an ice house built, and the gardens had been rearranged in a significant way. He oversaw the construction of a larger harbour (from where he rowed his boat, the Jumping Jenny), and he refurbished the house (adding a dining room, a turret to his bedroom, giving him a panoramic view of the lake and later extended the house to accommodate his relatives). He constructed a reservoir and redirected the waterfall down the hills, bringing a slate seat closer to the tumbling stream and craggy rocks rather than the lake so he could closely observe the fauna and flora of the hillside.

Ruskin's 80th birthday was widely celebrated in 1899 (various Ruskin families presenting him with an elaborately illuminated congratulatory address), Ruskin was only aware of it. On January 20, 1900, he died at Brantwood from influenza at the age of 80. According to his wishes, he was buried in the cathedral at Coniston five days later. He had grown weaker and suffered with chronic bouts of mental illness, so his second cousin, Joan(na) Severn (formerly "companion" to Ruskin's mother), looked after him, and his family and her extended family inherit his estate. Joanna's Caring was Ruskin's last chapter, which he devoted to her as a fitting tribute.

Executors to his will were Joan Severn, Ruskin's secretary, W. G. Collingwood, and his eminent American friend Charles Eliot Norton. The monumental 39-volume Library Edition of Ruskin's Works by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, the last volume of which, an index, aims to illustrate the intricate interconnectedness of Ruskin's thought. They all joined together to shield Ruskin's public and personal image.

In 1919, the centennial of Ruskin's birth was lauded, but his name was already tarnished and plummeted in the ensuing 50 years. In a series of auctions, Ruskin's house was auctioned, and Brantwood was purchased in 1932 by educationist and Ruskin enthusiast, philanist, and memorialist John Howard Whitehouse.

Brantwood was opened in 1934 as a monument to Ruskin and is still open to the public today. The Guild of St George continues to flourish as an educational charity and has international recognition. Throughout the year, the Ruskin Society hosts events. In 2000, on the centennial of Ruskin's birth, a number of public celebrations took place, and further celebrations have been planned throughout 2019.

Ruskin was described as thin, perhaps a little short, with an aquiline nose and stunning, piercing blue eyes in middle age and prime as a lecturer. Often sporting a double-breasted waistcoat, a high collar, and, where appropriate, a frock coat, he also wore his trademark blue neckcloth. He grew a long beard from 1878 to take on the appearance of a prophet of the "Old Testament" tradition.

An eyewitness, who was a student at the time (1884), wrote the following description of Ruskin as a lecturer:

Ruskin's charisma was demonstrated by an event where the Arts and Crafts master William Morris had amused the outrage of Dr. Bright, Master of University College Oxford, Oxford.

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