This important work in Ruskin studies provides for the first time an authoritative study of Ruskin’s Guild of St George. It introduces new material that is important in its own right as a significant piece of social history, and as a means to re-examine Ruskin’s Guild idea of self-sufficient, co-operative agrarian communities founded on principles of artisanal (non-mechanised) labour, creativity and environmental sustainability. The remarkable story of William Graham and other Companions lost to Guild history provides a means to fundamentally transform our understanding of Ruskin’s utopianism.

"John Ruskin's association with Camberwell began in 1823 and lasted for more than fifty years. This record describes the places where he lived, the people he knew and some of the changes that have taken place up to the present day"--Page 4 of cover.

Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud presents new writing on John Ruskin's vision of art and its relationship with modern society and a changing environment. As part of the re-evaluation of Ruskin, 200 years after his birth in 1819, art historians, scientists, geographers, artists and curators explore the critic's lifelong commitment to the painted landscapes of JMW Turner and his own artistic ambitions, as well as his prophetic concerns about the world's darkening skies, pollution and psychological turbulence. In 1884 John Ruskin spoke out against an encroaching "Storm Cloud"--a darkening of the skies that he attributed to the belching chimneys of the modern world. The imagery of the pollution-stained sky also allowed Ruskin to articulate the internal distress that seemed to engulf him. His analysis of a "blanched sun, blighted grass [and] blinded man" overwhelmed by a modern "plague-wind" expresses both the visible climatic effects of industrialization and the effects of his own worsening mental health. Propelled by bereavement and anxieties over his religious faith, Ruskin became fixated on the skies, "watching a cloud from four in the afternoon to four in the morning". This collection of essays examining Ruskin's distinctive blend of meteorology, morality and social criticism brings new perspectives to one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the nineteenth century. Ruskin's deep and personal engagement with Turner's work over many decades emerges as a recurring theme. In Turner, Ruskin found the ideal "Modern Painter"--an artist whose powerful sunrises and sunsets, mountains and storms, inspired his own critical engagement with the natural world. As an artist and critic, Ruskin consistently challenged the way others experienced the world, encouraging his audiences to recognise and record nature's transient beauty, and doing the same with his own intimately observed drawings of animals, flora and weathered buildings. As an environmentalist, he witnessed a natural world changing before his eyes, as the landscapes, buildings and skies he had seen as a young man came under threat. As an ethical provocateur ahead of his time, he condemned the throwaway culture that spoilt the towns and rivers he loved, urging his audiences to take responsibility for these changes. Responding to this rich and troubled legacy, the book brings together original contributions by artists and curators, art historians, geographers and climate change specialists, each of whom shares new insights into Ruskin's concerns about the changing weather patterns and shifting landscapes of the modern world. Individual essays reconsider Ruskin alongside a range of contemporary issues, encompassing mental health, technology, environmental pollution and climate change. The collection's diverse voices make a compelling case for the continuing relevance of Ruskin and his ways of seeing in the twenty-first century. Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud accompanies a major exhibition at York Art Gallery and Abbot Hall Art Gallery.

Reproduction of the original.

Despite professing a dislike of having his portrait taken, John Ruskin's footsteps were dogged by portrait painters, sculptors, caricaturists and photographers from the cradle to the grave and beyond. A thoroughly accessible book it lists and describes some 331likenesses made between 1822 and 1998. The three introductory chapters to this book survey Ruskin portraiture and the portraits, his general physical appearance througout his life, his hands, his mouth, his various illnesses and their effect on his appearance, his clothes, style of dress, size, tailors, their bills, etc. These opening chapters include many descriptions and reminiscences by Ruskin's friends and acquaintances, and those who portrayed him. The principal part of the book deals with the individual portraits, their history, where and why they were made, what Ruskin was doing at that time of his life and what his connection was with the artists in question. He was portrayed so regularly that this section is also effectively a potted Ruskin biography, based on the portraits. A 'catalogue raisonne' of the Ruskin portraits follows where the physical details of the works are listed, together with details of reproductions, exhibitions and provenance.

In this 1999 book, Michael Wheeler challenges critical orthodoxy by arguing that John Ruskin's writing is underpinned by a sustained trust in divine wisdom: a trust nurtured by his imaginative engagement with King Solomon and the temple in Jerusalem, and with the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. In Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice, belief in the wisdom of God the Father informed Ruskin's Evangelical natural theology and his celebration of Turner's landscape painting, while the wisdom of God the Son lay at the heart of his Christian aesthetics. Whereas 'the author of Modern Painters' sought to teach his readers how to see architecture, paintings and landscapes, the 'Victorian Solomon' whose religious life was troubled, and who created various forms of modern wisdom literature in works such as Unto this Last, The Queen of the Air and Fors Clavigera, wished to teach them how to live.