John Ruskin
John Ruskin (February 8th 1819 - January 20th 1900) is a writer, poet, Critic painter and British art , resulting from a family of Scottish origin .
Wire of one manufacturing of Jerez, it is born with London and follows its studies to the Université of Oxford. Thanks to the fortune of which it profits, it visits many museums, studies painting. Raised in a evangelic tradition which interprets the world as the sign of divine, Ruskin sees in nature the expression of God. He knows it well remainder, and especially the mountain: in its youth it was interested in the minerals, which it collected and classified, which led it to study geology seriously.
It reveals at the great day of the talents like Turner and takes part in the public emergence of the preraphaelism, each time thanks to its critical articles. Member of the movement of the pre-raphaélites, he is the author of a book, The Stones off Venice (1853), which has an impact on the company victorienne in its attempt to connect art, nature, morality and the man, and who designates it as the founder of the movement Arts & Crafts, whereas William Morris, of which he was the mentor, became the leader about it. In its writings and its audience, by its combat for ressusciter the craft industry dying man with the the United Kingdom, it is a precursor of the Art nouveau.
John Ruskin opposes since 1849 with enthusiasm the designs of the architect Purple-the-Duke, for whom architecture must form a homogeneous whole, the contempt of the history and integrity of the monument. In the Seven Lamps of Architecture , Ruskin defines architecture as an human being which it is necessary to support (by restoring it the least possible) but that it is also necessary to let die. Thus two visions of the restoration of the built inheritance appear. Ruskin will be supported by William Morris preaching the “not-restoration” with the “Company for the protection of the old buildings”. The engagement of Ruskin against the restoration often holds of militant enthusiasm: one counts more than 1200 letters which it sends on this subject.
From 1870 to 1878, he is the first holder of the pulpit Slade of the Université of Oxford, founded in 1869 in three Université S different (Oxford, Cambridge and London), and intended for the teaching of the Art schools in Great Britain. The Slade pulpit of Oxford today is still called the “pulpit John Ruskin”. (Among the successors of Ruskin, one can quote in particular John Pope-Hennessy, Kenneth Clark and Anthony Blunt.)
Its extraordinary taste for any type of art led it to appreciate the Italian primitive painters as well as the pre-raphaélites British or Turner. He was a large propagandist of arts.
Its ideas were popularized through its books which influenced the movement Arts and Crafts - Arts and Trades - which is characterized by a return to nature, forms gracious, corrugated, delicate, of a soft charm, in which one frequently finds plants, flowers, insects, fish, sirens, dragons and birds of colors and tails spectacular.
If Ruskin is known especially like art critic, it is also a painter in watercolours of talent. It is also known for its test Unto This Last on the economy.
An anecdote on John Ruskin: Poil_pubien (section Culture/Attitude).
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