John Ruskin And The Victorian Eye

Susan Phelps Gordon, Curator of European Art at the Phoenix Art Museum, relates Ruskin's critical reaction to the art of his time, including the infamous Whistler vs. Ruskin libel trial of 1878 as well as Ruskin's relationships with and aspirations for the artists he supported. Anthony Lacy Gully, Associate Professor of Art History at Arizona State University, explores Ruskin's fascination with the natural world and his clashes with the scientific community. Susan P. Casteras, Curator of Paintings at the Yale Center for British Art and a lecturer in art history at Yale College, looks at Ruskin's theories on museums and their installations as he applied them in his Saint George's Museum, which he founded for the education of the miners of Sheffield

This "tour de force of analysis" (Joel Agee) examines the life and work of the prolific, visionary writer, painter and critic. Kemp finds in Ruskin's life -- which spanned the same years as Queen Victoria's and thus embodied the Victorian era itself -- a faithful mirror of the history and psychological evolution of his age.

Ruskin connects his theories of art with economic and practical life. He contends that content artists who strive to capture nature will produce fine art, while despondent artists who rely on tools of the machine age will produce inferior art.

Rather than focusing on German philosophy or the French avant-gardes, as many books on the history of aesthetics do, Teukolsky takes up British responses to modern art controversies, thus providing a unique view on the development of artistic forms and art history. She considers the canonical writing of authors like John Ruskin, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde alongside texts belonging to the rich field of Victorian print culture--gallery reviews, scientific treatises, satirical cartoons, advertisements, and early photography monographs among them. Spanning the years 1840 to 1910, her argument also adds substance to our understanding of the transition from Victorianism to modernism, a period of especially lively exchange between artists and intellectuals, here narrated with careful attention given to the historical particularities and real events that stamped their imprint on such interactions.

This volume powerfully demonstrates the range and inexhaustible vitality of Ruskin's prose and will once again become an indispensable reference for Victorianists from a range of disciplines.

John Ruskin (1819–1900) was the most prominent art and architecture critic of his time. Yet his reputation has been overshadowed by his personal life, especially his failed marriage to Effie Gray, which has cast him in the history books as little more than a Victorian prude. In this book, Andrew Ballantyne rescues Ruskin from the dustbin of history’s trifles to reveal a deeply attuned thinker, one whose copious writings had tremendous influence on all classes of society, from roadmenders to royalty. Ballantyne examines a crucial aspect of Ruskin’s thinking: the notion that art and architecture have moral value. Telling the story of Ruskin’s childhood and enduring devotion to his parents—who fostered his career as a writer on art and architecture—he explores the circumstances that led to Ruskin’s greatest works, such as Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, The Stones of Venice, and Unto This Last. He follows Ruskin through his altruistic ventures with the urban poor, to whom he taught drawing, motivated by a profound conviction that art held the key to living a worthwhile life. Ultimately, Ballantyne weaves Ruskin’s story into a larger one about Victorian society, a time when the first great industrial cities took shape and when art could finally reach beyond the wealthy elite and touch the lives of everyday people.

This important work in Ruskin studies provides for the first time an authoritative study of Ruskin’s Guild of St George. It introduces new material that is important in its own right as a significant piece of social history, and as a means to re-examine Ruskin’s Guild idea of self-sufficient, co-operative agrarian communities founded on principles of artisanal (non-mechanised) labour, creativity and environmental sustainability. The remarkable story of William Graham and other Companions lost to Guild history provides a means to fundamentally transform our understanding of Ruskin’s utopianism.