John Ruskin

John Ruskin
John Ruskin was a prominent 19th-century English writer, art critic, and social thinker known for his influential works on art, architecture, and society. His notable works include "Modern Painters," where he defended the work of J.M.W. Turner, and "The Stones of Venice," which analyzed Venetian art and architecture. Ruskin's ideas on social justice and the role of art in society had a profound impact on the Victorian era and beyond, inspiring movements such as the Arts and Crafts Movement.

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SECTION I. PRINCIPLES OF ART. 1. Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral nature in its purity and perfection; but why we receive pleasure from some forms and colours, and not from others, is no more to be asked or answered than why we like sugar and dislike wormwood. 2. The temper by which right taste is... more...

LECTURE I. NICHOLAS THE PISAN. 1. On this day, of this month, the 20th of October, six hundred and twenty-three years ago, the merchants and tradesmen of Florence met before the church of Santa Croce; marched through the city to the palace of their Podesta; deposed their Podesta; set over themselves, in his place, a knight belonging to an inferior city; called him "Captain of the People;"... more...

LETTER I. THE TWO KINDS OF CO-OPERATION.—IN ITS HIGHEST SENSE IT IS NOT YET THOUGHT OF. Denmark Hill, February 4, 1867. My Dear Friend, 1. You have now everything I have yet published on political economy; but there are several points in these books of mine which I intended to add notes to, and it seems little likely I shall get that soon done. So I think the best way of making up for the want of... more...

PREFACE. The following addresses, though spoken at different times, are intentionally connected in subject; their aim being to set one or two main principles of art in simple light before the general student, and to indicate their practical bearing on modern design. The law which it has been my effort chiefly to illustrate is the dependence of all noble design, in any kind, on the sculpture or painting... more...

Fors Clavigera!—to the ignorant a stumbling-stone, to the Philistines a laughing-stock, but to the Initiate a sweet remembrance of many a happy hour passed in informal chat with the Master. The real Ruskin enthusiast has read every word of Fors, and reckons it not least among the precious treasures of the Master's pen. But it remains a fact that to the vast majority of those who have heard of... more...

Introduction Two conflicting tendencies in Ruskin. It is distinctive of the nineteenth century that in its passion for criticising everything in heaven and earth it by no means spared to criticise itself. Alike in Carlyle's fulminations against its insincerity, in Arnold's nice ridicule of Philistinism, and in Ruskin's repudiation of everything modern, we detect that fine dissatisfaction... more...

PREFACE. The following lectures, drawn up under the pressure of more imperative and quite otherwise directed work, contain many passages which stand in need of support, and some, I do not doubt, more or less of correction, which I always prefer to receive openly from the better knowledge of friends, after setting down my own impressions of the matter in clearness as far as they reach, than to guard... more...

I. ATHENA CHALINITIS.*(Athena in the Heavens.) * "Athena the Restrainer." The name is given to her as having helpedBellerophon to bridle Pegasus, the flying cloud. LECTURE ON THE GREEK MYTHS OF STORM, GIVEN (PARTLY) IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON, MARCH 9, 1869. 1. I will not ask your pardon for endeavoring to interest you in the subject of Greek Mythology; but I must ask your permission to... more...

LECTURE I. Bertha to Osburga. In the short review of the present state of English Art, given you last year, I left necessarily many points untouched, and others unexplained. The seventh lecture, which I did not think it necessary to read aloud, furnished you with some of the corrective statements of which, whether spoken or not, it was extremely desirable that you should estimate the balancing weight.... more...

PREFACE. I was in hopes that this volume might have gone its way without preface; but as I look over the sheets, I find in them various fallings short of old purposes which require a word of explanation. Of which shortcomings, the chief is the want of reference to the landscape of the Poussins and Salvator; my original intention having been to give various examples of their mountain-drawing, that it... more...

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