Editing John Ruskin (section)

==Middle life (1847–1869)==
[[File:Euphemia ('Effie') Chalmers (née Gray), Lady Millais by Thomas Richmond.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.9|Effie Gray painted by [[Thomas Richmond]]. She thought the portrait made her look like "a graceful Doll".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait.php?LinkID=mp07473&rNo=0&role=art |title=NPG 5160; Effie Gray (Lady Millais) – Portrait |publisher=National Portrait Gallery |website=Npg.org.uk |date=26 December 2016 |access-date=18 July 2017 |archive-date=17 September 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170917033512/http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait.php?LinkID=mp07473&rNo=0&role=art |url-status=live }}</ref>]]

===Marriage to Effie Gray===
During 1847, Ruskin became closer to [[Effie Gray|Euphemia "Effie" Gray]], the daughter of family friends. It was for her that Ruskin had written ''[[The King of the Golden River]]''. The couple were engaged in October. They married on 10 April 1848 at her home, [[Bowerswell]], in [[Perth, Scotland|Perth]], once the residence of the Ruskin family.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.perthshirediary.com/html/day0507.html |title=May 7th 1828 |publisher=Perthshire Diary |access-date=18 July 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171019211655/http://www.perthshirediary.com/html/day0507.html |archive-date=19 October 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref> It was the site of the suicide of John Thomas Ruskin (Ruskin's grandfather). Owing to this association and other complications, Ruskin's parents did not attend. The European [[Revolutions of 1848]] meant that the newlyweds' earliest travels together were restricted, but they were able to visit [[Normandy]], where Ruskin admired the [[Gothic architecture]].

Their early life together was spent at 31 Park Street, [[Mayfair]], secured for them by Ruskin's father (later addresses included nearby 6 Charles Street, and 30 Herne Hill). Effie was too unwell to undertake the European tour of 1849, so Ruskin visited the [[Alps]] with his parents, gathering material for the third and fourth volumes of ''[[Modern Painters]]''. He was struck by the contrast between the Alpine beauty and the poverty of Alpine peasants, stirring his increasingly sensitive social conscience.

The marriage was unhappy, with Ruskin reportedly being cruel to Effie and distrustful of her.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Rose|first=Phyllis|title=Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages|publisher=[A. Knopf]|year=1984|isbn=0-394-52432-2|pages=52-71, 82-89|language=English}}</ref> The marriage was never [[Consummation|consummated]] and was annulled six years later in 1854.<ref>For the wider context, see Robert Brownell, ''A Marriage of Inconvenience: John Ruskin, Effie Gray, John Everett Millais and the surprising truth about the most notorious marriage of the nineteenth century'' (Pallas Athene, 2013).{{page needed|date=December 2020}}</ref>

===Architecture===
Ruskin's developing interest in architecture, and particularly in the [[Gothic revival|Gothic]], led to the first work to bear his name, ''[[The Seven Lamps of Architecture]]'' (1849).{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=8.3-274}} It contained 14 plates etched by the author. The title refers to seven moral categories that Ruskin considered vital to and inseparable from all architecture: sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory and obedience. All would provide recurring themes in his future work. ''Seven Lamps'' promoted the virtues of a secular and Protestant form of Gothic. It was a challenge to the Catholic influence of architect [[A. W. N. Pugin]].

===''The Stones of Venice''===<!-- A link within this page points to this section; avoid renaming it. -->
In November 1849, John and Effie Ruskin visited [[Venice]], staying at the Hotel Danieli.<ref>Mary Lutyens, ''Effie in Venice'' (John Murray, 1965); reprinted as ''Young Mrs. Ruskin in Venice: Unpublished Letters of Mrs. John Ruskin written from Venice, between 1849–1852'' (Vanguard Press, 1967; new edition: Pallas Athene, 2001).</ref> Their different personalities are revealed by their contrasting priorities. For Effie, Venice provided an opportunity to socialise, while Ruskin was engaged in solitary studies. In particular, he made a point of drawing the [[Ca' d'Oro]] and the [[Doge's Palace, Venice|Doge's Palace, or Palazzo Ducale]], because he feared that they would be destroyed by the occupying Austrian troops. One of these troops, Lieutenant Charles Paulizza, became friendly with Effie, apparently with Ruskin's consent. Her brother, among others, later claimed that Ruskin was deliberately encouraging the friendship to compromise her, as an excuse to separate.

Meanwhile, Ruskin was making the extensive sketches and notes that he used for his three-volume work [[The Stones of Venice (book)|''The Stones of Venice'']] (1851–53).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/ruskinlib/eSoV/index.html |title=Ruskin's Venetian Notebooks 1849–50 |website=Lancs.ac.uk |date=20 March 2008 |access-date=18 July 2017 |archive-date=8 October 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121008172602/http://www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/ruskinlib/eSoV/index.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>For [[The Stones of Venice (book)|''The Stones of Venice'']] see Cook and Wedderburn vols. 9–11.</ref> Developing from a technical history of Venetian architecture from the Byzantine to the Renaissance, into a broad cultural history, ''Stones'' represented Ruskin's opinion of contemporary England. It served as a warning about the moral and spiritual health of society. Ruskin argued that Venice had degenerated slowly. Its cultural achievements had been compromised, and its society corrupted, by the decline of true Christian faith. Instead of revering the divine, Renaissance artists honoured themselves, arrogantly celebrating human sensuousness.

The chapter, "The Nature of Gothic" appeared in the second volume of ''Stones''.{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=10.180–269}} Praising Gothic ornament, Ruskin argued that it was an expression of the artisan's joy in free, creative work. The worker must be allowed to think and to express his own personality and ideas, ideally using his own hands, rather than machinery.

{{Quote|text=We want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers and miserable workers. Now it is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.|author=John Ruskin|source=''The Stones of Venice'' vol. II: Cook and Wedderburn 10.201.}}

This was both an aesthetic attack on, and a social critique of, the [[division of labour]] in particular, and [[capitalism|industrial capitalism]] in general. This chapter had a profound effect, and was reprinted both by the [[Christian socialist]] founders of the [[Working Men's College]] and later by the [[Arts and Crafts movement|Arts and Crafts]] pioneer and socialist [[William Morris]].<ref>Fiona MacCarthy, ''William Morris'' (Faber and Faber, 1994) pp. 69–70, 87.</ref>

===Pre-Raphaelites===
[[File:Millais Ruskin.jpg|thumb|''[[John Ruskin (painting)|John Ruskin]]'' painted by the [[Pre-Raphaelite]] artist [[John Everett Millais]] standing at [[Glen Finglas]], Scotland, (1853–54).<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 886970|title = Ruskin and Millais at Glenfinals|journal = The Burlington Magazine|volume = 138|issue = 1117|pages = 228–234|last1 = Grieve|first1 = Alastair|year = 1996}}</ref>]]

[[John Everett Millais]], [[William Holman Hunt]] and [[Dante Gabriel Rossetti]] had established the [[Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood]] in 1848. The Pre-Raphaelite commitment to 'naturalism'&nbsp;– "paint[ing] from nature only",{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=12.357n}} depicting nature in fine detail, had been influenced by Ruskin.

Ruskin became acquainted with Millais after the artists made an approach to Ruskin through their mutual friend [[Coventry Patmore]].<ref>[[Derrick Leon]], ''Ruskin: The Great Victorian'' (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949), pp. 137–49.</ref> Initially, Ruskin had not been impressed by Millais's ''[[Christ in the House of His Parents]]'' (1849–50), a painting that was considered blasphemous at the time, but Ruskin wrote letters defending the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to ''[[The Times]]'' during May 1851.{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=12.319–335}} Providing Millais with artistic patronage and encouragement, in the summer of 1853 the artist (and his brother) travelled to Scotland with Ruskin and Effie where, at [[Glen Finglas]], he painted the closely observed landscape background of [[gneiss]] rock to which, as had always been intended, he later added [[John Ruskin (painting)|Ruskin's portrait]].

Millais had painted a picture of Effie for ''[[The Order of Release|The Order of Release, 1746]]'', exhibited at the [[Royal Academy]] in 1852. Suffering increasingly from physical illness and acute mental anxiety, Effie was arguing fiercely with her husband and his intense and overly protective parents, and sought solace with her own parents in Scotland. The Ruskin marriage was already undermined as she and Millais fell in love, and Effie left Ruskin, causing a public scandal.

During April 1854, Effie filed her [[annulment|suit of nullity]], on grounds of "non-consummation" owing to his "incurable [[impotence|impotency]]",<ref>Mary Lutyens, ''Millais and the Ruskins'' (John Murray, 1968) p. 236.</ref><ref>Sir William James, ''The Order of Release, the story of John Ruskin, Effie Gray and John Everett Millais'', 1946, p. 237</ref> a charge Ruskin later disputed.<ref>Phyllis Rose, ''Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages'', 1983, p. 87</ref> Ruskin wrote, "I can prove my virility at once."<ref>Mary Lutyens, ''Millais and the Ruskins'' (John Murray, 1968) p. 192.</ref> The annulment was granted in July. Ruskin did not even mention it in his diary. Effie married Millais the following year. The complex reasons for the non-consummation and ultimate failure of the Ruskin marriage are a matter of enduring speculation and debate.

Ruskin continued to support [[William Holman Hunt|Hunt]] and [[Dante Gabriel Rossetti|Rossetti]]. He also provided an annuity of £150 in 1855–1857 to [[Elizabeth Siddal]], Rossetti's wife, to encourage her art (and paid for the services of [[Henry Acland]] for her medical care).<ref name="ReferenceA">''ODNB'': "Critic of Contemporary Art".</ref> Other artists influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites also received both critical and financial assistance from Ruskin, including [[John Brett (artist)|John Brett]], [[John William Inchbold]], and [[Edward Burne-Jones]], who became a good friend (he called him "Brother Ned").<ref>W. G. Collingwood, ''Life and Work of John Ruskin'' (Methuen, 1900) p. 402.</ref> His father's disapproval of such friends was a further cause of tension between them.

During this period Ruskin wrote regular reviews of the annual exhibitions at the [[Royal Academy]] with the title ''Academy Notes'' (1855–1859, 1875).{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=vol. 14}} They were highly influential, capable of making or breaking reputations. The satirical magazine ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'' published the lines (24 May 1856), "I paints and paints,/hears no complaints/And sells before I'm dry,/Till savage Ruskin/He sticks his tusk in/Then nobody will buy."<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=udKymsQhKMEC&q=I+paints+and+paints%2C%2Fhears+no+complaints%2FAnd+sells+before+I%E2%80%99m+dry%2C%2FTill+savage+Ruskin+sticks+his+tusk+in%2FThen+nobody+will+buy&pg=PA31] {{dead link|date=January 2018|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref>

Ruskin was an art-philanthropist: in March 1861 he gave 48 [[J. M. W. Turner|Turner]] drawings to the [[Ashmolean]] in [[Oxford]], and a further 25 to the [[Fitzwilliam Museum]], [[Cambridge]] in May.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/turner/info.htm |title=Fitzwilliam Museum Collections Explorer |website=Fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk |access-date=18 July 2017 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140903031532/http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/turner/info.htm |archive-date=3 September 2014  }}</ref> Ruskin's own work was very distinctive, and he occasionally exhibited his watercolours: in the United States in 1857–58 and 1879, for example; and in England, at the Fine Art Society in 1878, and at the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour (of which he was an honorary member) in 1879. He created many careful studies of natural forms, based on his detailed botanical, geological and architectural observations.<ref>The relation between Ruskin, his art and criticism, was explored in the exhibition Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites (Tate Britain, 2000), curated by Robert Hewison, Stephen Wildman and Ian Warrell.</ref> Examples of his work include a painted, floral pilaster decoration in the central room of [[Wallington Hall]] in Northumberland, home of his friend [[Pauline Trevelyan]]. The [[Stained glass|stained glass window]] in the ''Little Church of St Francis'' Funtley, [[Fareham, Hampshire]] is reputed to have been designed by him. Originally placed in the ''St. Peter's Church'' Duntisbourne Abbots near [[Cirencester]], the window depicts the Ascension and the Nativity.<ref>Malcolm Low & Julie Graham, ''The stained glass window of the Little Church of St. Francis'', private publication August 2002 & April 2006, for viewing Fareham Library reference Section or the [[Westbury Manor Museum]] Ref: section Fareham, hants; [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.low1/funtley/funtleychurch.htm The stained glass window of the Church of St. Francis. Funtley, Fareham, Hampshire] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930232049/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.low1/funtley/funtleychurch.htm |date=30 September 2007 }}</ref>

Ruskin's theories also inspired some architects to adapt the [[Gothic architecture|Gothic style]]. Such buildings created what has been called a distinctive "Ruskinian Gothic".<ref>J. Mordaunt Crook, "Ruskinian Gothic", in ''The Ruskin Polygon: Essays on the Imagination of John Ruskin'', ed. John Dixon Hunt and Faith M. Holland (Manchester University Press, 1982), pp. 65–93.</ref> Through his friendship with [[Henry Acland]], Ruskin supported attempts to establish what became the [[Oxford University Museum of Natural History]] (designed by [[Benjamin Woodward]]) — which is the closest thing to a model of this style, but still failed to satisfy Ruskin completely. The many twists and turns in the Museum's development, not least its increasing cost, and the University authorities' less than enthusiastic attitude towards it, proved increasingly frustrating for Ruskin.<ref>Michael Brooks, ''John Ruskin and Victorian Architecture'' (Thames and Hudson, 1991), p. 127.</ref>

===Ruskin and education===
The [[Oxford University Museum of Natural History|Museum]] was part of a wider plan to improve science provision at Oxford, something the University initially resisted. Ruskin's first formal teaching role came about in the mid-1850s,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.infed.org/thinkers/john_ruskin.htm |title=John Ruskin on education |website=Infed.org |access-date=18 July 2017 |archive-date=29 October 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121029115422/http://www.infed.org/thinkers/john_ruskin.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> when he taught drawing classes (assisted by [[Dante Gabriel Rossetti]]) at the [[Working Men's College]], established by the [[Christian socialists]], [[Frederick James Furnivall]] and [[Frederick Denison Maurice]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.infed.org/walking/wa-wmenc.htm |title=The Working Men's College |access-date=5 September 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110805231329/http://www.infed.org/walking/wa-wmenc.htm |archive-date=5 August 2011  }}</ref> Although Ruskin did not share the founders' politics, he strongly supported the idea that through education workers could achieve a crucially important sense of (self-)fulfilment.{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=13.553}} One result of this involvement was Ruskin's ''Elements of Drawing'' (1857).{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=15.23-232}} He had taught several women drawing, by means of correspondence, and his book represented both a response and a challenge to contemporary drawing manuals.<ref>''ODNB''.</ref> The WMC was also a useful recruiting ground for assistants, on some of whom Ruskin would later come to rely, such as his future publisher, [[George Allen (publisher)|George Allen]].<ref>Robert Hewison, ''Ruskin and Oxford: The Art of Education'' (Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 226.</ref>

From 1859 until 1868, Ruskin was involved with the progressive school for girls at [[Winnington Hall]] in Cheshire. A frequent visitor, letter-writer, and donor of pictures and geological specimens to the school, Ruskin approved of the mixture of sports, handicrafts, music and dancing encouraged by its principal, Miss Bell.<ref>''The Winnington Letters: John Ruskin's correspondence with Margaret Alexis Bell and the children at Winnington Hall,'' ed. Van Akin Burd (Harvard University Press, 1969) {{page needed|date=August 2012}}</ref> The association led to Ruskin's sub-Socratic work, ''The Ethics of the Dust'' (1866), an imagined conversation with Winnington's girls in which he cast himself as the "Old Lecturer".{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=18.197–372}} On the surface a discourse on crystallography, it is a metaphorical exploration of social and political ideals. In the 1880s, Ruskin became involved with another educational institution, [[Whitelands College]], a training college for teachers, where he instituted a [[May Queen]] festival that endures today.<ref>Malcolm Cole, ''"Be Like Daisies": John Ruskin and the Cultivation of Beauty at Whitelands College (Guild of St George Ruskin Lecture 1992)'' (Brentham Press for The Guild of St George, 1992).</ref> (It was also replicated in the 19th century at the [[Cork (city)|Cork]] High School for Girls.) Ruskin also bestowed books and gemstones upon [[Somerville College]], one of [[University of Oxford|Oxford]]'s first two [[women's college]]s, which he visited regularly, and was similarly generous to other educational institutions for women.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Manuel|first1=Anne|title=Breaking New Ground: A History of Somerville College as seen through its Buildings|page=12|date=2013|publisher=Somerville College|location=Oxford}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/4054/History%20of%20the%20library.html |title=History of the Library – Somerville College |access-date=15 September 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150108093838/http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/4054/History%20of%20the%20library.html |archive-date=8 January 2015 }}</ref>

===''Modern Painters III'' and ''IV''===
Both volumes III and IV of ''[[Modern Painters]]'' were published in 1856.<ref>Respectively, Cook and Wedderburn vols. 5 and 6.</ref> In ''MP'' III Ruskin argued that all great art is "the expression of the spirits of great men".{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=5.69}} Only the morally and spiritually healthy are capable of admiring the noble and the beautiful, and transforming them into great art by imaginatively penetrating their essence. ''MP'' IV presents the geology of the Alps in terms of landscape painting, and their moral and spiritual influence on those living nearby. The contrasting final chapters, "The Mountain Glory" and "The Mountain Gloom"<ref>Francis O'Gorman, "Ruskin's Mountain Gloom", in Rachel Dickinson and Keith Hanley (eds), ''Ruskin's Struggle for Coherence: Self-Representation through Art, Place and Society'' (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006), pp. 76–89.</ref> provide an early example of Ruskin's social analysis, highlighting the poverty of the peasants living in the lower Alps.{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=5.385–417, 418–68}}<ref>Alan Davis, "Ruskin's Dialectic: Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory", in ''Ruskin Programme Bulletin'', no. 25 (January 2001), pp. 6–8</ref>

===Public lecturer===
In addition to leading more formal teaching classes, from the 1850s Ruskin became an increasingly popular public lecturer. His first public lectures were given in Edinburgh, in November 1853, on architecture and painting. His lectures at the [[Art Treasures Exhibition]], Manchester in 1857, were collected as ''The Political Economy of Art'' and later under [[Keats]]'s phrase, ''A Joy For Ever''.{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=16.9-174}} In these lectures, Ruskin spoke about how to acquire art, and how to use it, arguing that England had forgotten that true wealth is virtue, and that art is an index of a nation's well-being. Individuals have a responsibility to consume wisely, stimulating beneficent demand. The increasingly critical tone and political nature of Ruskin's interventions outraged his father and the [[Manchester School of economics|"Manchester School" of economists]], as represented by a hostile review in the ''[[Manchester Examiner and Times]]''.<ref>J. L. Bradley (ed.), ''Ruskin: The Critical Heritage'' (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 202–205.</ref> As the Ruskin scholar Helen Gill Viljoen noted, Ruskin was increasingly critical of his father, especially in letters written by Ruskin directly to him, many of them still unpublished.<ref>Most of Viljoen's work remains unpublished, but has been explored by Van Akin Burd and James L. Spates. [http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/spates/vanburd1.html An Introduction to Helen Gill Viljoen's Unpublished Biography of Ruskin by Van Akin Burd] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110214221201/http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/spates/vanburd1.html |date=14 February 2011 }}; [http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/spates/spates1.html Editor's Introductory Comments on Viljoen's Chapter by James L. Spates] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110214221152/http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/spates/spates1.html |date=14 February 2011 }} and [http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/spates/viljoen.html Ruskin in Milan, 1862": A Chapter from Dark Star, Helen Gill Viljoen's Unpublished Biography of John Ruskin by James L. Spates] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110212140033/http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/spates/viljoen.html |date=12 February 2011 }}.</ref>

Ruskin gave the inaugural address at the Cambridge School of Art in 1858, an institution from which the modern-day [[Anglia Ruskin University]] has grown.<ref>For the address itself, see Cook and Wedderburn 16.177–206, and for the wider context: Clive Wilmer, "Ruskin and Cambridge" in ''The Companion'' (Newsletter of The Guild of St. George) no.7 (2007), pp.8–10. [Revised version of inaugural Ruskin Lecture, Anglia Ruskin University, 11 October 2006)]</ref> In ''The Two Paths'' (1859), five lectures given in London, [[Manchester]], [[Bradford]] and [[Royal Tunbridge Wells|Tunbridge Wells]],{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=16.251–426}} Ruskin argued that a 'vital law' underpins art and architecture, drawing on the [[labour theory of value]].{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=16.251}} (For other addresses and letters, Cook and Wedderburn, vol. 16, pp.&nbsp;427–87.) The year 1859 also marked his last tour of Europe with his ageing parents, during which they visited [[Germany]] and [[Switzerland]].

===Turner Bequest===
Ruskin had been in Venice when he heard about [[J. M. W. Turner|Turner's]] death in 1851. Being named an executor to Turner's will was an honour that Ruskin respectfully declined, but later took up. Ruskin's book in celebration of the sea, ''The Harbours of England'', revolving around Turner's drawings, was published in 1856.{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=13.9–80}} In January 1857, Ruskin's ''Notes on the Turner Gallery at [[Marlborough House]], 1856'' was published.{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=13.95–186}} He persuaded the [[National Gallery]] to allow him to work on the Turner Bequest of nearly 20,000 individual artworks left to the nation by the artist. This involved Ruskin in an enormous amount of work, completed in May 1858, and involved cataloguing, framing and conserving.<ref>For the catalogues, Cook and Wedderburn 19.187–230 and 351–538. For letters, see 13.329-50 and further notes, 539–646.</ref> Four hundred watercolours were displayed in cabinets of Ruskin's own design.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Recent scholarship has argued that Ruskin did not, as previously thought, collude in the destruction of Turner's erotic drawings,<ref>Ian Warrell "Exploring the 'Dark Side': Ruskin and the Problem of Turner's Erotica", ''British Art Journal'', vol. IV, no. 1 (Spring 2003), pp. 15–46.</ref> but his work on the Bequest did modify his attitude towards Turner.<ref>Alan Davis, "Misinterpreting Ruskin: New light on the 'dark clue' in the basement of the National Gallery, 1857–58" in ''Nineteenth-Century Prose'', vol. 38, no. 2 (Fall 2011), pp. 35–64.</ref> (See below, [[#Turner's erotic drawings|Controversies: Turner's Erotic Drawings]].)

===Religious "unconversion"===
In 1858, Ruskin was again travelling in Europe. The tour took him from [[Switzerland]] to [[Turin]], where he saw [[Paolo Veronese]]'s ''Presentation of the [[Queen of Sheba]]'' at the [[Galleria Sabauda]]. He would later claim (in April 1877) that the discovery of this painting, contrasting starkly with a particularly dull sermon that he had listened to at a [[Waldensian]] church in Turin, led to his "unconversion" from [[Evangelicalism|Evangelical Christianity]].{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=29.89}} He had, however, doubted his Evangelical Christian faith for some time, shaken by Biblical and geological scholarship that was seen as undermining the literal truth and absolute authority of the Bible:<ref>{{cite book|first=Michael|last=Wheeler|title=Ruskin's God|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1999|isbn=0521574145}}{{page needed|date=August 2012}}</ref> "those dreadful hammers!" he wrote to [[Henry Acland]], "I hear the chink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses."{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=36.115}} This "loss of faith" precipitated a considerable personal crisis. His confidence undermined, he believed that much of his writing to date had been founded on a bed of lies and half-truths.<ref>{{cite web |author=George P. Landow |url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/atheories/4.2.html |title=The Aesthetic and Critical Beliefs of John Ruskin. Chapter Four, Section II. Loss of Belief |website=The Victorian Web |date=25 July 2005 |access-date=15 December 2019 |archive-date=14 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191214095711/http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/atheories/4.2.html |url-status=live }}</ref> He later returned to Christianity.<ref name="victorianweb.org">{{cite web |author=George P. Landow |url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/atheories/4.2.html |title=The Aesthetic and Critical Beliefs of John Ruskin. Chapter Four, Section III. The Return to Belief |website=The Victorian Web |date=25 July 2005 |access-date=15 December 2019 |archive-date=14 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191214095711/http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/atheories/4.2.html |url-status=live }}</ref>{{failed verification|date=March 2025}}<!--This isn't really stated clearly in the text.-->

===Social critic and reformer: ''Unto This Last''===
{{Quote box |width=380px |align=right |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right
|quote=Whenever I look or travel in England or abroad, I see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. |source=<small>John Ruskin, ''[[Modern Painters]] V'' (1860): Ruskin, Cook and Wedderburn, 7.422–423.</small> }}

Although in 1877 Ruskin said that in 1860, "I gave up my art work and wrote ''[[Unto This Last]]''… the central work of my life" the break was not so dramatic or final.<ref>E. T. Cook, ''The Life of John Ruskin'' (2 vols., 2nd edn., George Allen, 1912), vol. 2, p. 2.</ref> Following his crisis of faith, and urged to political and economic work by his professed "master" [[Thomas Carlyle]], to whom he acknowledged that he "owed more than to any other living writer", Ruskin shifted his emphasis in the late 1850s from art towards social issues.{{Sfn|Cook and Wedderburn||loc=17.lxx}}{{Sfn|Cook and Wedderburn||loc=14.288, 24.347, 34.355, 590}}{{Sfn|Cook and Wedderburn||loc=12.507}} Nevertheless, he continued to lecture on and write about a wide range of subjects including art and, among many other matters, geology (in June 1863 he lectured on the Alps), art practice and judgement (''The Cestus of Aglaia''), botany and mythology (''Proserpina'' and ''The Queen of the Air''). He continued to draw and paint in watercolours, and to travel extensively across Europe with servants and friends. In 1868, his tour took him to [[Abbeville]], and in the following year he was in [[Verona]] (studying tombs for the [[Arundel Society]]) and [[Venice]] (where he was joined by [[William Holman Hunt]]). Yet increasingly Ruskin concentrated his energies on fiercely attacking [[industrial capitalism]], and the [[utilitarian]] theories of [[political economy]] underpinning it. He repudiated his sometimes grandiloquent style, writing now in plainer, simpler language, to communicate his message straightforwardly.<ref>On the importance of words and language: Cook and Wedderburn 18.65, 18.64, and 20.75.</ref> 

{{Critique of political economy sidebar}}

{{Quote box |width=380px |align=right |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right
|quote=There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has always the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.
|source=<small>John Ruskin, ''[[Unto This Last]]'': Cook and Wedderburn, 17.105</small>}}

Ruskin authored several works on political economy.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Stimson |first=F. J. |date=1888 |title=Ruskin as a Political Economist |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1879386 |journal=The Quarterly Journal of Economics |volume=2 |issue=4 |pages=414–445 |doi=10.2307/1879386 |jstor=1879386 |issn=0033-5533}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Fain |first=John Tyree |date=1943 |title=Ruskin and the Orthodox Political Economists |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1053391 |journal=Southern Economic Journal |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=1–13 |doi=10.2307/1053391 |jstor=1053391 |issn=0038-4038}}</ref> Ruskin's social view broadened from concerns about the dignity of labour to consider issues of citizenship and notions of the ideal community. Just as he had questioned aesthetic orthodoxy in his earliest writings, he now dissected the orthodox political economy espoused by [[John Stuart Mill]], based on theories of [[laissez-faire]] and competition drawn from the work of [[Adam Smith]], [[David Ricardo]] and [[Thomas Malthus]]. In his four essays ''[[Unto This Last]]'', Ruskin rejected the [[division of labour]] as dehumanising (separating the labourer from the product of his work), and argued that the false "science" of [[political economy]] failed to consider the social affections that bind communities together. He articulated an extended metaphor of household and family, drawing on [[Plato]] and [[Xenophon]] to demonstrate the communal and sometimes sacrificial nature of true economics.<ref>For the sources of Ruskin's social and political analysis: James Clark Sherburne, ''John Ruskin or The Ambiguities of Abundance: A Study in Social and Economic Criticism'' (Harvard University Press, 1972 {{page needed|date=August 2012}}</ref> For Ruskin, all economies and societies are ideally founded on a politics of [[social justice]]. His ideas influenced the concept of the "[[social economy]]", characterised by networks of charitable, co-operative and other [[Non-governmental organization|non-governmental organisations]].

The essays were originally published in consecutive monthly instalments of the new ''[[Cornhill Magazine]]'' between August and November 1860 (and published in a single volume in 1862).{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=17.15–118}} However, the ''Cornhill'''s editor, [[William Makepeace Thackeray]], was forced to abandon the series by the outcry of the magazine's largely conservative readership and the fears of a nervous publisher ([[Smith, Elder & Co.]]). The reaction of the national press was hostile, and Ruskin was, he claimed, "reprobated in a violent manner".<ref>Cook and Wedderburn 4.122n. For the press reaction: J. L. Bradley (ed.) ''Ruskin: The Critical Heritage'' (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 273–89.</ref> Ruskin's father also strongly disapproved.{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=36.415}} Others were enthusiastic, including Carlyle, who wrote, "I have read your Paper with exhilaration… Such a thing flung suddenly into half a million dull British heads… will do a great deal of good", declaring that they were "henceforth in a minority of ''two''",<ref>Cate, George Allen, ed. (1982). ''The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin''. Stanford, California: [[Stanford University Press]]. p. 89.</ref> a notion which Ruskin seconded.{{Sfn|Cook and Wedderburn||loc=37.15 | ps= Ruskin, in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 20 August 1870: "I have not yet received so much encouragement from anything as from what you tell me respecting the feelings of other workmen. For up to the present time I have literally felt that, as Carlyle once wrote to me—'We are in a minority of two,' and that, whatever sympathy here and there people might feel either with his genius or with my poor little art-gift, there was no one who would or could believe a word of what we said touching the vital laws and mortal violations of them which regulate and ruin states, and are not doing the first for us in England."}}

Ruskin's political ideas, and ''[[Unto This Last]]'' in particular, later proved highly influential. The essays were praised and paraphrased in [[Gujarati language|Gujarati]] by [[Mohandas Gandhi]], a wide range of autodidacts cited their positive impact, the economist [[John A. Hobson]] and many of the founders of the [[Labour Party (UK)|British Labour party]] credited them as an influence.<ref>For the influence of Ruskin's social and political thought: Gill Cockram, ''Ruskin and Social Reform: Ethics and Economics in the Victorian Age'' (I.B. Tauris, 2007) and Stuart Eagles, ''After Ruskin: The Social and Political Legacies of a Victorian Prophet, 1870–1920'' (Oxford University Press, 2011).</ref>

Ruskin believed in a hierarchical social structure. He wrote "I was, and my father was before me, a violent Tory of the old school."<ref>Cook and Wedderburn 27.167 and 35.13.</ref> He believed in man's duty to God, and while he sought to improve the conditions of the poor, he opposed attempts to level social differences and sought to resolve social inequalities by abandoning capitalism in favour of a co-operative structure of society based on obedience and benevolent philanthropy, rooted in the agricultural economy.

{{Quote|text=If there be any one point insisted on throughout my works more frequently than another, that one point is the impossibility of Equality. My continual aim has been to show the eternal superiority of some men to others, sometimes even of one man to all others; and to show also the advisability of appointing such persons or person to guide, to lead, or on occasion even to compel and subdue, their inferiors, according to their own better knowledge and wiser will. |source=<small>John Ruskin, ''[[Unto This Last]]'': Cook and Wedderburn 17.34</small>}}

Ruskin's explorations of nature and aesthetics in the fifth and final volume of ''[[Modern Painters]]'' focused on [[Giorgione]], [[Paolo Veronese|Veronese]], [[Titian]] and [[J. M. W. Turner|Turner]]. Ruskin asserted that the components of the greatest artworks are held together, like human communities, in a quasi-organic unity. Competitive struggle is destructive. Uniting ''[[Modern Painters]]'' V and ''[[Unto This Last]]'' is Ruskin's "Law of Help":<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/ruskin/empi/notes/galib64.htm |title=Ruskin MP I Notes |website=Lancs.ac.uk |date=6 July 2002 |access-date=18 July 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121008172638/http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/ruskin/empi/notes/galib64.htm |archive-date=8 October 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

{{Quote|text=Government and cooperation are in all things and eternally the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in all things, the laws of death. |source=<small>John Ruskin, ''[[Modern Painters]]'' V and ''[[Unto This Last]]'': Cook and Wedderburn 7.207 and 17.25.</small>}}

Ruskin's next work on political economy, redefining some of the basic terms of the discipline, also ended prematurely, when ''[[Fraser's Magazine]]'', under the editorship of [[James Anthony Froude]], cut short his ''Essays on Political Economy'' (1862–63) (later collected as ''Munera Pulveris'' (1872)).{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=17.129–298}} Ruskin further explored political themes in ''Time and Tide'' (1867),{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=17.309–484}} his letters to Thomas Dixon, a cork-cutter in [[Sunderland, Tyne and Wear]] who had a well-established interest in literary and artistic matters. In these letters, Ruskin promoted honesty in work and exchange, just relations in employment and the need for co-operation.

Ruskin's sense of politics was not confined to theory. On his father's death in 1864, he inherited an estate worth between £120,000 and £157,000 (the exact figure is disputed).<ref>Francis O' Gorman gives the figure as £120,000, in idem, ''John Ruskin'' (Sutton Publishing, 1999) p. 62 as does James S. Dearden (who adds that property, including paintings, was valued at £3000), in idem, ''John Ruskin'' (Shire Publications, 2004), p. 37. Robert Hewison's ''Oxford [[Dictionary of National Biography]]'' entry for Ruskin, however, states £157,000 plus £10,000 in pictures (section: "A Mid-Life Crisis"). The National Probate Calendar states simply, 'under £200,000.</ref> This considerable fortune, inherited from the father he described on his tombstone as "an entirely honest merchant",{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=17.lxxvii}} gave him the means to engage in personal philanthropy and practical schemes of social amelioration. One of his first actions was to support the housing work of [[Octavia Hill]] (originally one of his art pupils): he bought property in [[Marylebone]] to aid her philanthropic housing scheme.<ref>Gillian Darley, ''Octavia Hill: A Life'' (Constable, 1990) {{page needed|date=August 2012}}</ref> But Ruskin's endeavours extended to the establishment of a shop selling pure tea in any quantity desired at 29 Paddington Street, [[Paddington]] (giving employment to two former Ruskin family servants) and crossing-sweepings to keep the area around the [[British Museum]] clean and tidy. Modest as these practical schemes were, they represented a symbolic challenge to the existing state of society. Yet his greatest practical experiments would come in his later years.

In 1865–66, Ruskin became involved in the controversy surrounding [[Edward John Eyre]]'s suppression of the [[Morant Bay rebellion]]. Mill formed the Jamaica Committee for the purpose of holding Governor Eyre accountable for what they perceived to be his unlawful, inhumane, and unnecessary quelling of the insurrection. In response, the Eyre Defence and Aid Fund was formed to support Eyre for having fulfilled his duty to defend order and save the white population from danger; Carlyle served as the chairman. Ruskin allied with the Defence, writing a letter which appeared in the [[The Daily Telegraph|''Daily Telegraph'']] in December 1865 ("they are for Liberty, and I am for Lordship; they are Mob's men, and I am a King's man"), donating £100 to the Fund, and giving a speech at Waterloo Place on [[Pall Mall, London|Pall Mall]] in September 1866, also reported in the ''Telegraph''. In addition to this, Ruskin "threw himself into" personal work for the Defence, "enlisting recruits, persuading waverers, combating objections."{{Sfn|Cook and Wedderburn||p=|loc=18.xlv–xlvi, 550–554}}

===Lectures in the 1860s===
Ruskin lectured widely in the 1860s, giving the [[Rede lecture]] at the [[University of Cambridge]] in 1867, for example.{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=19.163-94}} He spoke at the [[British Institution]] on 'Modern Art', the Working Men's Institute, [[Camberwell]] on "Work" and the [[Royal Military Academy, Woolwich]] on 'War.'<ref>Dearden, James S.(2018)."Why are there so few 'Wars'? A John Ruskin Rarity."[[The Book Collector]] 67 no.1 (spring):79–82.</ref> Ruskin's widely admired lecture, ''Traffic'', on the relation between taste and morality, was delivered in April 1864 at [[Bradford]] Town Hall, to which he had been invited because of a local debate about the style of a new Exchange building.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/block1.html |title=Moral Taste in Ruskin's "Traffic" |website=Victorianweb.org |date=13 November 2006 |access-date=18 July 2017 |archive-date=23 March 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110323023231/http://www.victorianweb.org//authors/ruskin/block1.html |url-status=live }}</ref> "I do not care about this Exchange", Ruskin told his audience, "because ''you'' don't!"{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=18.433}} These last three lectures were published in ''The Crown of Wild Olive'' (1866).{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=18.383–533}}

[[File:Library Walk 29.JPG|thumb|"For all books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hour, and the books of all time" – ''Sesame and Lilies'']]
The lectures that comprised ''Sesame and Lilies'' (published 1865), delivered in December 1864 at the town halls at [[Rusholme]] and [[Manchester]], are essentially concerned with education and ideal conduct. "Of Kings' Treasuries" (in support of a library fund) explored issues of reading practice, literature (books of the hour vs. books of all time), cultural value and public education. "Of Queens' Gardens" (supporting a school fund) focused on the role of women, asserting their rights and duties in education, according them responsibility for the household and, by extension, for providing the human compassion that must balance a social order dominated by men. This book proved to be one of Ruskin's most popular, and was regularly awarded as a [[Sunday School]] prize.{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=18.19-187}} Its reception over time, however, has been more mixed, and twentieth-century feminists have taken aim at "Of Queens' Gardens" in particular, as an attempt to "subvert the new heresy" of [[women's rights]] by confining women to the domestic sphere.<ref>Kate Millett, ''Sexual Politics'' (New York: Doubleday and Co.), 1970, p. 91.</ref> Although indeed subscribing to the Victorian belief in "separate spheres" for men and women, Ruskin was however unusual in arguing for parity of esteem, a case based on his philosophy that a nation's political economy should be modelled on that of the ideal household.