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Pre-Raphaelitism
This Is A New Release Of The Original 1875 Edition.
- GenresArt History
136 pages, Hardcover
First published May 30, 2006
About the author
John Ruskin
3,899 books501 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art historian, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
Ruskin was heavily engaged by the work of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc which he taught to all his pupils including William Morris, notably Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionary, which he considered as "the only book of any value on architecture". Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.
Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J.M.W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s, he championed the Pre-Raphaelites, who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art historian, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
Ruskin was heavily engaged by the work of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc which he taught to all his pupils including William Morris, notably Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionary, which he considered as "the only book of any value on architecture". Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.
Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft.
Ruskin first came to widespread attention with the first volume of Modern Painters (1843), an extended essay in defence of the work of J.M.W. Turner in which he argued that the principal role of the artist is "truth to nature". From the 1850s, he championed the Pre-Raphaelites, who were influenced by his ideas. His work increasingly focused on social and political issues. Unto This Last (1860, 1862) marked the shift in emphasis. In 1869, Ruskin became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. In 1871, he began his monthly "letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain", published under the title Fors Clavigera (1871–1884). In the course of this complex and deeply personal work, he developed the principles underlying his ideal society. As a result, he founded the Guild of St George, an organisation that endures today.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 7, 2025
”No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort ; a great thing can only be done by a great man, and he does it without effort.”
✨
”Understand this thoroughly ; know once for all, that a poet on canvas is exactly the same species of creature as a poet in song, and nearly every error in our ways of teaching will be done away with.”
✨
”The man who can best feel the difference between rudeness and tenderness in humanity, perceives also more difference between the branches of an oak and a willow than any one else would ; and, therefore, necessarily the most striking character of the drawings themselves is the specialty of whatever they represent—the thorough stiffness of what is stiff, and grace if what is graceful, and vastness of what is vast ; but through and beyond all this, the condition of the mind of the painter himself is easily discoverable by comparison of a large number of drawings.”
✨
”Composition! As if a man were not composing every moment of his life, well or Ill, and would not do it instinctively in his picture as well as elsewhere, if he could.”
✨
”should make them dazzling with the splendour of wandering light, and involve them in the unsearchableness of stormy obscurity: should restore to the divided anatomy its visible vitality of operation, clothe the naked crags with soft forests, enrich the mountain ruins with bright pastures, and lead the thoughts from the monotonous recurrence of the phenomena of the physical world, to the sweet interests and sorrows of human life and death.”
🔥
✨
”Understand this thoroughly ; know once for all, that a poet on canvas is exactly the same species of creature as a poet in song, and nearly every error in our ways of teaching will be done away with.”
✨
”The man who can best feel the difference between rudeness and tenderness in humanity, perceives also more difference between the branches of an oak and a willow than any one else would ; and, therefore, necessarily the most striking character of the drawings themselves is the specialty of whatever they represent—the thorough stiffness of what is stiff, and grace if what is graceful, and vastness of what is vast ; but through and beyond all this, the condition of the mind of the painter himself is easily discoverable by comparison of a large number of drawings.”
✨
”Composition! As if a man were not composing every moment of his life, well or Ill, and would not do it instinctively in his picture as well as elsewhere, if he could.”
✨
”should make them dazzling with the splendour of wandering light, and involve them in the unsearchableness of stormy obscurity: should restore to the divided anatomy its visible vitality of operation, clothe the naked crags with soft forests, enrich the mountain ruins with bright pastures, and lead the thoughts from the monotonous recurrence of the phenomena of the physical world, to the sweet interests and sorrows of human life and death.”
🔥
April 10, 2021
3,5. Lembranças de Proust.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews