February 8, 1819 marked the day when a young couple in London, John James Ruskin and Margaret were blessed with a child who was christened John Ruskin. John James Ruskin was a self made man. All his father bequeathed him was a considerable amount of debt. The moral fiber of the senior Ruskin led him to shoulder the responsibility of paying off all the debts. He started his business as a sherry merchant, his sole capital being his industriousness. In due course of time his labor bore fruit and he bought a house in Hunter Street, Brunswick prospered and he could provide a decent living to his family.
The only child of John James Ruskin and Margaret, was treated with a lot of care, restriction and love. The child passed most of his childhood days in solitude, his sole companions being books. When John was four, and as the sherry business grew, the Ruskins shifted from London to Herne Hill. At his house, John persistently studied Latin Grammar and the Psalms while his mother occupied herself in taking care of her garden. As years advanced John persuaded his study of literature more vigorously.
He was educated at his mother’s discretion and his father never interrupted with her mode of teaching. After he had finished his studies for the day, John would spend some time in his garden. Mesmerized by the beauty of the sky, the trees and the birds, he felt very close to the Nature.
But his childhood years witnessed a lot of restriction from his parents. He was never allowed to have desserts, and was allowed to have fruit only at occasions. John’s parents never invited any friends or guests to their place. Thus the little boy passed major part of his childhood in seclusion. His father returned home daily at 4:30 pm to have his food. His mother accompanied his father in the parlor where they would discuss out their daily experiences. But John was strictly prohibited from going to the parlor during four to six.
In his unfinished autobiography Praeterita, Ruskin has enumerated and explained the virtues and demerits of his upbringing. The first virtue of his upbringing was peace. John never witnessed any form of violence either in speech or in action during his childhood. Secondly, he was obedient to his parents and trusted them. To him his parents’ word was the word of law. He always did what his parents asked him or expected him to do. He always trusted his parents as they always kept their promise and secondly because they never denied him the truth.
Ruskin always regretted a few shortcomings of his upbringing. Firstly, he had no other company except his parents. Secondly, his parents overprotected him and he never experienced pain or danger of any kind. Thirdly, he was never given training in social etiquettes. He considered the last shortcoming, to be the worst mistake of his parents. Throughout his life he had been accustomed to follow his parents’ guidelines. Later in his life he had to suffer and pay the price for it, as he was incompetent in taking any independent action. Apart from these idiosyncrasies of his parents, John was always encouraged to study literature. His mother also taught him to read the Bible because she wanted him to become a Bishop.
Ruskin was one of the greatest writers of England. His writings chiefly consist of criticism. After studying literature from quite an early age, Ruskin joined the Oxford University. He is chiefly famous for his criticisms which entail Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice. These books elevated his status as a critic and gained him immense popularity. Later he was elected the Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford. His last work was Praeterita, an autobiography which remained unfinished because of his illness and consequent death in 1900.
February 8,1819 John Ruskin was born in London
1836 Went to study at Oxford.
1837 Published articles, The Poetry of Architecture for the Architectural Magazine.
1839 At Oxford, he won the Newdigate prize for poetry.
1841 Wrote The King of the Golden River.
1843 Published the first volume of Modern Painters.
1846 Published the second volume of Modern Painters.
1848 Married Euphemia Chalmers Gray.
1849 Published The Seven Lamps of Architecture.
1850 Published Collected Poems and The King of the Golden River.
1851 Published the first volume of The Stones of Venice.
1853 Published second and third volumes of The Stones of Venice.
1854 Ruskin and Euphemia got divorced.
Worked as a lecturer of art at The Working Men’s College.
1856 The third and fourth volumes of Modern Painters were published.
1857 Published The Elements of Drawing and The Political Economy of Art.
1858 Met Rose La Touche.
1860 Published the last volume of Modern Painters.
1862 Published ‘Essays on Political Economy’ and Unto This Last.
1864 Death of Ruskin’s father.
1865 Published Sesame and Lilies.
1866 Published The Crown of the Wild Olive and The Ethics of the Dust.
Married Rose.
1867 Published Time and Tide.
1869 Published The Queen of the Air.
1871 Joined Oxford as a professor.
1875 Death of Rose.
1878 Established the Guild of St. George.
1879 Resigned his job at Oxford.
1880 Published A Joy For Ever.
1884 Published The Pleasures of England and The Art of England.
Published his autobiography Praeterita.
1900 Died due to influenza.
Praeterita
Most of Ruskin’s writings have a didactic tone intended to communicate a message to the reader. His autobiography, Praeterita is the sole work which is supposed to give pleasure to the reader. In this book Ruskin has given an account of only those memories which were pleasant and happy. Praeterita is written with great ease and candor. In fact, referring to this point Ruskin told Kate Greenaway (an English artist) that it was "much easier and simpler to say things face to face like that, than as an author".
His contemporary world was well acquainted with the fact that Ruskin suffered from fits of insanity. This gave them reason to reject the opinions and ideas he had communicated through his writings. In a letter that he wrote to his publisher, Ruskin said, "Whenever I say anything they don’t like, they all immediately declare. I must be out of my mind; (so) the game has to be played neatly." Ruskin resolved to prove that he was not insane so he wrote in a very simple manner though he found this form of writing quite detestable.
Ruskin was eloquent since a very young age. When he was 13, he wrote a letter to his father. "My dear Papa, I would write a short, pithy, laconic, sensible, concentrated, and serious letter if I could, for I have scarcely time to write a long one. Observe I say only ‘to write’, for as to composition, ‘tis nothing, positively nothing, I roll on like a ball, with this exception, that contrary to the usual laws of motion I have no friction to contend with in my mind and of course have some difficulty in stopping."
As the years advanced, Ruskin gained more eloquence. Curiously, in Praeterita though he mentions that his writings were successful, he never mentioned that he owed his eloquence to his perfect command over language.
The period around 1860’s saw Ruskin mature from an art critic to a critic of the society. Thereafter he started writing in a rich, elaborate style. The rich descriptions of the portraits of the Pans at Christ Church suggest that Praeterita is a work of art. It is an evidence of Ruskin’s accomplishment as a craftsman. Ruskin says that his literary work was above "as quietly and methodically as a piece of tapestry. I knew exactly, what I had got to say, put the words firmly in their places like so many stitches, hemmed the edges of chapters round with what seemed to me graceful flourishes, touched them finally with my cunningest points of color, and read the work to Papa and Mama at breakfast next morning, as a girl shows her sampler."
Modern Painters
Modern Painters is one of the earlier works of Ruskin. The first volume of Modern Painters gives us a brief idea about Ruskin’s reviews on power, imitation, truth, beauty and art. Here Ruskin has supported Turner, a famous painter of the Victorian age whose paintings were reviewed as ‘unlike nature’. Ruskin defended Turner by saying, "by thorough investigation of actual facts, that Turner is like nature, and paints more of nature than any man who ever lived". Ruskin has also discussed about the range and accuracy of Turner’s paintings of plants, trees, sky, earth and water. Ruskin has described in this book that the modern painter has a better knowledge of facts compared to the painters of the past generations. Modern Painters throws light on the fact that Ruskin had a keen eye for art and a perceptive mind that could understand the richness of nature.
In the second volume of Modern Painters Ruskin has delineated his theories of imagination and theophanic beauty. In this book Ruskin has explained beauty and its significance in human life. He explains that beauty "is either the record of conscience, written in things external, or it is symbolizing of Divine attributes in matter, or it is the felicity of living things, or the perfect fulfillment of their duties and junctions. In all cases it is something Divine". All forms of beauty reflect God. Reflecting on an object of beauty is considered similar to reading the Bible – it is an act, moral and religions in nature.
Ruskin’s theories on beauty have acquired a neo-classical as well as romantic flavor. For instance, his theory on Typical (or symbolic) beauty has a Neo-classical shade that says that beauty is created by unity of variety, symmetry and proportion. Ruskin’s theory of vital beauty includes the beauty of human beings or animals (beauty common to living organisms). It has stresses the feelings of the observer who contemplates on a thing of beauty. Ruskin’s notion of vital beauty was inspired by the Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth, and those philosophers whose ideas paved the way for Romanticism like Adam Smith, David Hume and Dugald Stewart. Thus Ruskin’s views on aesthetics are a blend of the Neo-classical, Romantic and Christian views of man and the world.
The third volume of Modern Painters could be considered as the richest of five volumes. This volume suggests a Romantic theory of painting and it deals with many features of Romanticism, including the nature of the artist, the significance of external nature and the importance of imagination, emotion and detail in art. He has defined the nature of great art and explains that he segregates art into two parts, "the art of Christian times into two great masses, symbolic and imitative".
Further, Ruskin contemplates on the greatness of art. He defies Reynold’s Neo-classical theory, which says that an artistic style emerges by imitating the beauty of nature.
Ruskin does not follow the Neo-classical or Romantic rules strictly.
He suggests that creating art is a reflection of the artist as it is based on four aspects – noble subject (something that the artist loves naturally), love for beauty, sincerity and imagination.
In this volume, Ruskin has also discussed about landscape painting and its origins. He begins by explaining the classical, medieval and modern attitudes towards nature. He further explains that landscape painting is a modern development, which entails a "romantic love of beauty, forced to seek in history, and in external nature, the satisfaction it cannot find in ordinary life".
In the fourth volume of Modern Painters Ruskin has discussed about Turner’s picturesque paintings and landscape paintings in general. He suggests that picturesque paintings are vital for the growth of landscape paintings. He has also described the geology of the mountains. He ends the volume by writing about the impact that the mountain environment has on the lives of human beings.
The fifth volume opens with a discussion of nature’s beauty. In this volume Ruskin has defined composition – "Composition may be best defined as the help of everything in the picture by everything else". He hails help as the "highest and first law of the universe – and the other name of life is, therefore, help". Thus composition could be defined as an interrelation between the different aspects of art.
Modern Painters portrays Ruskin’s interest in the relation that exists between art and life. In ‘Invention Spiritual’ (a section of Modern Painters) his focus shifts from the problems of art to those of the society. He believes that one of the ill effects of Reformation was that art reflected lack of human hope. He explains that after the Reformation when men lost hope in after-life they also lost their peace of mind. To explain this, Ruskin has given the examples of four pairs of important artists whose paintings reflect lack of hope, Salvator and Durer, Claude and Poussin, Wowerman and Fra Angelicre and Giorgione and Turner. Ruskin was particularly concerned with Turner. He described how the external environment molded Turner’s mind. He wrote a detailed chapter on two paintings of Turner that reflects his faith in England. The two paintings – Apollo and Python and The Garden of the Hesperides describe Turner’s inclination towards the destruction of beauty and his lost hope. Turner’s despair reflects the society and the phase it was passing through i.e. distrust in God.
When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.
A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.
What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second their imagination, and third, their industry.
They are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love change.
Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.
The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.
The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power.
The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.
It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.
Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscriwpts – the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.
Punishment is the best and least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.
Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalry and : or nobly, which is done in pride.
Success by the laws of competition signifies a victory over others by obtaining the direction and profits of their work. This is the real source of all riches.
The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the rain with the vain
