Ruskin's Mother

Portrait of Margaret Ruskin aged 44 by
James Northcote RA, 1825 

Some understanding of Ruskin's view of the world can be found by learning more about his mother, Margaret. Some accounts state that Margaret's father was a devout puritan named Captain Cox, of Yarmouth, a master mariner who died young. 

It may surprise people to know that Margaret was in fact born on the 2^nd of September in 1781 at The King's Head Public House in Croydon where her father, William Cock, was the tenant-landlord. William was also an astute property developer, building a number of cottages that provided the family with a comfortable income. It is true that William died in a riding accident when he was only 33. Margaret's mother was able to use income from the rent of the cottages to send her to Mrs Rice's Academy for Ladies.  It was there that she became an Evangelical Protestant.

In the early 1800's Margaret went to live with her Aunt and Uncle in Edinburgh, where she met and married her cousin, John Ruskin's father, after an engagement of eight years.  John's father made his fortune as a wine importer and was often away on business, so it was his mother who became responsible for his education. His mother taught him to read every part of the Bible each year, including learning long passages by heart.  Her ambition was for him to become the Archbishop of Canterbury, but Margaret also taught John using the works of Sir Walter Scott, Byron and Shakespeare. Accounts describe Margaret as a 'strict disciplinarian' but it seems that she also indulged John, her only child. The family were wealthy and holidayed with trips through Europe. 

The impact of this on Ruskin is hinted at in his letters on education, where he wrote "the first essential point in the education given to the children will be the habit of instant, finely accurate, and totally unreasoning, obedience to their fathers, mothers, and tutors. The second essential will be the understanding of the nature of honour, making the obedience solemn and constant."

Even when John Ruskin was at Oxford for seven years, his mother lived with him, taking lodgings in the High Street to 'watch over his health'. She continued to watch over him until her death aged ninety.  John Ruskin was fifty two and was profoundly affected by her loss.  Margaret Ruskin was buried with her husband in Shirley parish church in Croydon and Ruskin had the following inscribed on her tomb:

Here

Beside my father's body

I have laid

My mother's;

Ever returned to earth,

Nor purer life

Recorded in heaven.

Ruskin's letter to The Times, 13th May 1851

Sir, Your usual liberality will, I trust, give a place in your columns to this expression of my regret that the tone of the critique which appeared in The Times of Wednesday last on the works of Mr. Millais and Mr. Hunt, now in the Royal Academy, should have been scornful as well as severe.  I regret it, first, because the mere labour bestowed on those works, and their fidelity to a certain order of truth (labour and fidelity which are altogether indisputable) ought at once to have placed them above the level of mere contempt; and, secondly, because I believe these young artists to be at a most critical period of their career—at a turning point, from which they may either sink into nothingness or rise to very real greatness; and I believe also, that whether they choose the upward or downward path may in no small degree depend upon the character of the criticism which their works have to sustain.

I do not wish in any way to dispute or invalidate the general truth of your critique on the Royal Academy; nor am I surprised at the estimate which the writer formed of the pictures in question when rapidly compared with works of totally different style and aim; nay, when I first saw the chief picture by Millais in the Exhibition of last year I had nearly come to the same conclusions myself. But I ask your permission, in justice to artists who have at least given much time and toil to their pictures, to institute some more serious inquiry into their merits and faults than your general notice of the Academy could possibly have admitted.

Let me state, in the first place, that I have no acquaintance with any of these artists, and very imperfect sympathy with them. No one who has met with any of my writings will suspect me of daring to encourage them in their Romanist and Tractarian tendencies. I am glad to see that Mr. Millais's lady in blue is heartily tired of her painted window and idolatrous toilet-table, and I have no particular respect for Mr. Collins' lady in white, because her sympathies are limited by a dead wall, or divided between some gold fish and a tadpole (the latter Mr. Collins may, perhaps, permit me to suggest, en passant, as he is already half a frog, is rather too small for his age). But I happen to have a special acquaintance with the water plant, Alisma Plantago, among which the said gold fish are swimming; and, as I never saw it so thoroughly or so well drawn, I must take leave to remonstrate with you when you say sweepingly, that these men ‘sacrifice truth, as well as feeling to eccentricity.’ For as a mere botanical study of the water lily and Alisma, as well as of the common lily and several other garden flowers, this picture would be invaluable to me, and I heartily wish it were mine.

But, before entering into such particulars, let me correct an impression which your article is likely to induce in most minds, and which is altogether false. These pre-Raphaelites (I cannot compliment them on common sense in choice of a nom de guerre) do not desire nor pretend in any way to imitate antique painting, as such. They know little of ancient paintings who suppose the works of these young artists to resemble them. As far as I can judge of their aim—for, as I said, I do not know the men themselves—the pre-Raphaelites intend to surrender no advantage which the knowledge or inventions of the present time can afford to their art. They intend to return to early days in this one point only—that, as far as in them lies, they will draw either what they see, or what they suppose might have been the actual facts of the scene they desire to represent, irrespective of any conventional rules of picture making; and they have chosen their unfortunate though not inaccurate name because all artists did this before Raphael's time, and after Raphael's time did not this, but sought to paint fair pictures rather than represent stern facts, of which the consequence has been that from Raphael's time to this day historical art has been in acknowledged decadence.

Now, Sir, presupposing that the intention of these men was to return to archaic art instead of to archaic honesty, your critic borrows Fuseli’s expression respecting ancient draperies—‘snapped’ instead of folded,’ and asserts that in these pictures there is a ‘ servile imitation of false perspective.’ To which I have just this to answer: —

Millais' ‘Mariana’ (1851)

That there is not one single error in perspective in four out of the five pictures in question, and that in Millais' ‘Mariana’ there is but this one—that the top of the green curtain in the distant window has too low a vanishing point; and that I will undertake, if need be, to point out and prove a dozen worse errors in perspective in any 12 pictures containing architecture, taken at random from among the works of the most popular painters of the day.

Secondly: that, putting aside the small Mulready and the works of Thorburn and Sir W. Ross, and perhaps some others of those in the miniature room which I have not examined, there is not a single study of drapery in the whole Academy, be it in large works or small, which for perfect truth, power, and finish, could be compared for an instant with the black sleeve of the Julia, or with the velvet on the breast and the chain mail of the Valentine of Mr. Hunt's picture; or with the white draperies on the table in Mr. Millais' ‘Mariana, ’ and of the right hand figure in the same painter's ‘Dove returning to the Ark.’

And further: that as studies both of drapery and of every minor detail, there has been nothing in art so earnest or so complete as these pictures since the days of Albert Durer. This I assert generally and fearlessly. On the other hand,

I am perfectly ready to admit that Mr. Hunt's ‘Silvia’ is not a person whom Proteus or anyone else would have been likely to have fallen in love with at first sight; and that one cannot feel any sincere delight that Mr. Millais' ‘Wives of the Sons of Noah’ should have escaped the Deluge; with many other faults besides on which I will not enlarge at present, because I have already occupied too much of your valuable space, and I hope to be permitted to enter into more specific criticism in a future letter,

I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant,

John Ruskin

Visiting John Ruskin’s House at Brantwood



John Ruskin

It was a damp day but we had been looking forward to learning more about who John Ruskin really was, having been round the Ruskin Museum in Coniston a few days before.   The museum had been the idea of his assistant, the author and artist W. G. Collingwood and was really a memorial to Ruskin that raised more questions than it answered.

Ruskin’s later life

Brantwood is Ruskin’s house on the shore of Coniston Water, in the English Lake District, where he effectively retired to after a long and varied career.  For Ruskin, art was about truth above all things and, disappointed by the popularity of Impressionism, he turned to the support of philanthropic work such as the Arts and Crafts movement and Christian socialism. Sadly it is little known in the UK that Ruskin played an important part in the creation of the welfare state, pioneering the idea that the State should intervene to regulate the economy in the service of “social economy”, supporting charitable organisations and co-operatives.

Tour of Brantwood

As you approach Brantwood it is hard to get a sense of the whole building.  Designed to face the water of the lake, you only see the side view. It is immediately obvious, however, that this is no ordinary house, as there are turrets and embellishments typical of Ruskin’s love of the Gothic style.  Oddly, visitors are given a sticky blue label to wear - presumably to make it easy for the staff, before being ushered into a tiny viewing room to see an overlong video produced by the Ruskin Society that describes him as the greatest man who ever lived. Nice.

Escaping as quickly as we could, I found myself in Ruskin’s drawing room. At last I could really get a sense of being in his presence.  Although many of the original contents of the house were auctioned when he died, a lot has been tracked down by the Ruskin Society and returned, so it is easy to imagine him sat at his desk, looking out over Coniston Water.  Even more fascinating is his room upstairs, where he spent a long time suffering from ‘fits of melancholy’.  The effect was spoiled by a small notice that said the rooms had been switched round for some reason, so the room I was seeing was a ‘reconstruction’ from one of his sketches, rather than the real thing.

Ruskin’s bath chair

For me, one of the most poignant relics of John Ruskin at Brantwood was his wicker bath chair, waiting in the hall as if he may need it at any moment.  Until then, I had in mind the young and really quite handsome Ruskin, full of life and passionate about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  I suddenly realised that this house belonged to an older man, with a long white beard, who was frail and possibly lonely despite his many friends, really quite dependent on his staff.  I put my hand on the arm of the bath chair and felt a definite connection with him that was unexpectedly emotional.

Ruskin’s garden at Brantwood
  
It was still raining when we left the house but any visitor to Brantwood has to follow the narrow meandering path Ruskin built up the hillside to his ‘water reservoirs’ at the top.  Dug out under his precise supervision by a group of friends, these water catchments supply an ingenious irrigation system for the whole garden and run back down as little bubbling brooks that emerge quite naturally along the path.  I read later Ruskin’s garden had been over run by invasive Rhododendrons but was restored so that it is now much as he would have known it.

The Jetty

Ruskin’s stables have been imaginatively converted into a café, with big pine tables in the stalls, so after a really good lunch we rounded off our visit by taking the short walk down to Ruskin’s private jetty on the lake.   In his dining room I had noted that some of the Victorian plates on display had been recovered from the water by the jetty (once again raising more questions than answers).  I stood there for a moment looking across the misty lake and thinking about John Ruskin.  It is impossible to come away from Brantwood without wanting to know more about him. Much more.  We should all be grateful to Emily Warren, John Ruskin's last pupil, who campaigned to have Brantwood made into a museum.