Francis OGorman - John Ruskin

Series Editor C.S. Nicholls

Highly readable brief lives of those who have played a significant part in history, and whose contributions still influence contemporary culture.

FRANCIS OGORMAN

First published in 1999

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2011

All rights reserved

Francis OGorman, 1999, 2011

The right of Francis OGorman, to be identified as the Author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied,
reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly
performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted
in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and
conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by
applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this
text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights,
and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 7492 2

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 7491 5

Original typesetting by The History Press

For the rest, I ate and drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another

Ruskin, Of Kings Treasuries (1864)

It is a pleasure to thank friends and colleagues past and present who have, in many ways, helped me with work on Ruskin. Helen Barr, Dinah Birch, Elleke Boehmer, Daniel Bone, Sandie Byrne, Elizabeth Clarke, Simon Dentith, Robert Hewison, Elisabeth Jay, Juliet John, Alison Kitson, Steven Matthews, Anthony Mellors, Helen Moore, Clare Morgan, Lynda Mugglestone, Clare Palmer, Clare Pettitt, Fiona Robertson, Corinne Saunders, Helen Small, Eric and Mary Stanley, Matthew Stiff, Katherine Turner, Angeli Vaid, Julia Wahnsiedler, Michael Wheeler and Peter Widdowson in particular. Thanks to my brother Chris and my parents for their continued interest and support. This book has profited from the careful reading and advice of James S. Dearden and Catherine Dille: I am grateful. Remaining errors and infelicities are mine.

This book is for Kathie Adare and Clark Lawlor, with love.

J ohn Ruskin is Englands greatest writer on European visual arts and architecture. He writes luminously about paintings and buildings with a power and passion unmatched by any other English author. He is a social critic of seminal importance whose ideas influenced both his own age and ours. Among other things, he is also an educationalist, architect of the welfare state, literary critic, historian, theologian, scientist, student of Greek myth, watercolourist, autobiographer, university professor and a practical builder of roads. His life is closely linked with some of the most stirring and beautiful places in Europe, such as the Alps, the English Lakes and the city Ruskin called the ghost upon the sands of the sea,1 Venice, though it is also a life, as this book will show, of intense personal anguish and disappointment. What Ruskin so triumphantly accomplished, he achieved often by overcoming pain and disillusionment. He is a great and compelling writer and, though he left no children behind him, he fathered many books, and they continue to live, vividly, and to exert a powerful and enduring influence on those who read them today.