John Ruskin

Born Feb. 8, 1819, in London; died Jan. 20, 1900, in Brantwood, Lancashire. English art theoretician, art critic, historian, and publicist.

Ruskin graduated from Oxford University in 1839. A follower of T. Carlyle, Ruskin developed Shaftesbury’s concept of the unity of beauty and virtue. He presented a romantic critique of capitalist civilization, which he considered hostile to art as the synthesis of nature, beauty, and high morality, and he called for the revival of medieval handicrafts and collective forms of artistic creativity. These ideas were elaborated in Modern Painters (vols. 1–5, 1843–60), The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), The Stones of Venice (vols. 1–3, 1851–53), and The Political Economy of Art (1857). Ruskin’s views were the main source of the antibourgeois elements in the aesthetics of the Pre-Raphaelites, whose ideas he supported in the pamphlet Pre-Raphaelitism (1851).

Ruskin won great popularity among the British proletariat with Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Laborers of Great Britain (1879–86). He taught at the first Working Men’s College.

Pathos and refinement are characteristic of the literary style of Ruskin’s early works. Later, he strove for stylistic clarity and accessibility to the common people (the unfinished memoirs, Praeterita, 1886–1900). He took part in the organization of artistic and industrial workshops by W. Morris, his close friend. Ruskin is also well known for his sketches and watercolors.

Despite their contradictory, Utopian quality, Ruskin’s views had a significant influence on the development of European culture in the second half of the 19th century. His works were highly regarded by L. N. Tolstoy.