Zermatt

1834–1900 · Wirkungsort

Great Britain

late 1840 – autumn 1842

Italy with his parents: guided by George Richmond

For much of the period from late 1840 to autumn 1842 Ruskin is abroad with his parents, mainly in Italy, where George Richmond — introduced to the family by Joseph Severn, a friend of Keats — guides his study of Italian art. Back at Oxford in 1842 he sits for a pass degree and is awarded an unusual honorary double fourth-class degree in recognition of his achievements.

1843

In defence of Turner: the first volume of “Modern Painters”

The first volume of “Modern Painters” — an answer to Turner's critics — is published by Smith, Elder & Co. under the name “A Graduate of Oxford”; Ruskin controversially argues that modern landscape painters, above all Turner, surpass “Old Masters” such as Gaspard Dughet, Claude and Salvator Rosa in “truth to nature”, moral as well as material. Reviews are mixed, but Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell are impressed, and the book cements Ruskin's relationship with Turner.

1845

“Venice is lost to me”: restoration is destruction

Alarmed by the combined effects of decay and modernisation on the city, Ruskin writes that Venice is lost to him, and becomes convinced that architectural restoration is destruction and that the only true and faithful action is preservation and conservation.

1845

First journey without his parents

At 26 Ruskin travels without his parents for the first time to study medieval art and architecture in France, Switzerland and above all Italy: in Lucca he sees the tomb of Ilaria del Carretto by Jacopo della Quercia, which he considers the finest example of Christian sculpture; he draws inspiration from the Campo Santo in Pisa, is especially struck by Fra Angelico and Giotto in Florence, and in Venice by the mosaics of St Mark's and Tintoretto's paintings in the Scuola di San Rocco.

April 1846

The second volume of “Modern Painters”

The second volume, written on the strength of his travels, concentrates on Renaissance and pre-Renaissance artists rather than Turner and is more theoretical than the first: Ruskin links the beautiful with the divine, and critics receive it more warmly, although many find his attack on the aesthetic orthodoxy of Joshua Reynolds hard to accept. That summer he is abroad again with his father, who still hopes his son might become a poet — one of many factors raising the tension between them.