The Rocky Bank of a River (recto)

In Modern Painters I, John Ruskin advised young artists to “go to Nature in all singleness of heart . . . rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing.”John Ruskin, Modern Painters I, in Works, vol. 3, 624. The contemporary artists who heeded these words, most notably the...

Utterly alone against a shadowy background, the John Ruskin depicted in Frederick Hollyer’s portrait of 1894 gazes fixedly through an unseen window (cat. 69; fig. 10). The image suggests little of the frailty, madness, and despair that plagued Ruskin in his final years, presenting a resolute figure seated in the study of his...