Ruskin: The Surprisingly Modern Victorian at Two Temple Place

John Ruskin: a very Victorian figure in the history of art, but in many ways also a remarkably modern individual. A conservationist, a social commentator, a campaigner for the workers and the poor, and an early believer in the idea of gross national happiness. For Ruskin, a country's wealth was measured by the happiness of its people.

It's the 200th anniversary of Ruskin's birth this year, and that's the spur for an exhibition at Two Temple Place in central London exploring his legacy. John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing gives us the flavour of a remarkable but contradictory man, in a show that draws strongly on the collection of the museum he founded with the aim of improving the wellbeing of the metalworkers of Sheffield, educating them and helping them escape the smoke of the industrial city.

There's a Portrait of John Ruskin by Charles Fairfax Murray, painted in 1875, around the time the museum opened, that's one of the first things you see as you enter this exhibition, and he's looking rather stern and schoolmasterly, with a piercing stare. Ruskin was an energetic and eccentric lecturer -- he was the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, not bad for someone who graduated with a fourth-class degree -- and many attendees were attracted simply for the spectacle. Ruskin had to switch to larger venues, his talks were so popular. He spoke as if through a megaphone, with sentences that could run to more than 20 lines of type. 

Ruskin was a passionate advocate of the art of JMW Turner, and that can come across as somewhat surprising as you look around this show, which is free of charge, as always at Two Temple Place. Turner's later work in particular was so impressionistic, so abstracted, and yet Ruskin laid such store on the meticulously accurate depiction of details, whether from nature or architecture. Not just an art critic, he was also deeply interested in botany, ornithology and geology, and he wanted to disseminate that knowledge widely.

This Study of Spray of Dead Oak Leaves is typical Ruskin, the finest of detail rendered with absolute precision and exactitude. The blue background is just there to allow viewers to concentrate all their attention on the object. There's a wall filled with such depictions, by Ruskin and others, and there's also a wall to delight bird enthusiasts, with images including this wild duck.

Paintings, engravings, drawings, minerals: All were part of the collection Ruskin made available in a cottage in countryside outside Sheffield to the workers of the city, like the Buffer Girls we meet in the stairwell at Two Temple Place. It was open early in the morning, late at night and on Sundays, something unheard of at the time. Up the stairs, the curators have attempted in one room to recreate the spirit of an institution that attracted large numbers of visitors, old and young, with tightly packed exhibits.   

Before you go in there, don't miss the amusing panels detailing 15 things that Ruskin loathed. He was a man of strong dislikes. "The architecture of Palladio is wholly virtueless and despicable," he wrote, while the Houses of Parliament were "the most effeminate and effectless heap of stones ever raised by man". 

He liked the Gothic church of Santa Maria della Spina in Pisa, though, and created a watercolour, ink and graphite version of a daguerreotype of its east end, to make it more accessible to viewers. It's hard to credit that it's not an actual photograph. 

Another work in the show with almost photographic quality is this Study of Grapes and Pineapple by William Henry Hunt, with the bloom on the grapes almost tangible. Ruskin valued the delicacy of the painting of the watercolourist, which he described as "luscious". It's easy to see why.  

Ruskin also praised Turner for the precision of his preparatory work, documenting clear facts in pencil before allowing his sensitivity to light and colour to emerge in his paintings. "Turner perceives at a glance," Ruskin wrote, "the whole sum of visual truth open to human intelligence." 

Ruskin travelled widely in Italy and Switzerland in search of his own visual truth, creating long-distance views that, while still incredibly accurate, have a more fleeting appearance than his close-up depictions of plants, birds or architectural details. 

An ink-and-watercolour View of Bologna has a very ethereal, multi-layered feel. In The Towers of Thun, Switzerland, large areas of the paper are left blank, even though odd bits of foliage are depicted alongside the castle walls. 

It was Venice, though, that had the most significant effect on Ruskin. He went there in the autumn of 1848 with his young wife Effie to record details of buildings that were under threat and to reflect on the lessons to be drawn from the decay of a once-great empire that had, in his view, been successful because it had been grounded in mutual respect between its rulers and those they ruled over.

Perhaps the defining image in this section of the show is a hyper-detailed view of the Western Facade of the Basilica of San Marco by John Wharlton Bunney, a work commissioned by Ruskin.

And there's a wonderful painting from the National Gallery, this Portrait of the Doge, Andrea Gritti, by Vincenzo Catena. Ruskin bought it believing it to be by Titian, whom he regarded as being supreme among artists.

Opposite is a portrait of another Doge, Leonardo Loredan, a copy from Giovanni Bellini by a student of Ruskin, an amateur artist called Octavia Hill. She went on to co-found the National Trust, a venture Ruskin helped inspire.

This is not an all-encompassing exhibition about Ruskin's life. The Pre-Raphaelites don't get a look-in, for example, and we don't go into his dispute with Whistler or his failed marriage to Effie. But for a taste of the man, it's an extremely informative and interesting show, with some admirable artworks. And of course, you get to enjoy the stunning late 19th-century over-the-top no-expense-spared interior of the neo-Gothic Two Temple Place. Would Ruskin have loved it or loathed it?

Practicalities

John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing is on at Two Temple Place in London until April 22. It's open every day except Tuesday from 1000 to 1630, and till 2100 on Wednesday. Sunday, though, has a late start at 1100. Entry is free. The venue is just a minute away from Temple Underground station on the Circle and District Lines.

Images

John Ruskin, Study of Spray of Dead Oak Leaves, 1879. © Collection of the Guild of St George/Museums Sheffield
John Ruskin, Study of a Dead Wild Duck, 1867, British Museum
John Ruskin, Santa Maria della Spina, East End, Pisa, Italy, 1845, Collection of the Guild of St George/Museums Sheffield
William Henry Hunt, Study of Grapes and Pineapple, c. 1850, Museums Sheffield
John Ruskin, The Towers of Thun, Switzerland, 1854, Collection of the Guild of St George/Museums Sheffield

Vincenzo Catena, Portrait of the Doge, Andrea Gritti, probably 1523-31, National Gallery, London

Octavia Hill after Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan, 1859, Collection of the Guild of St George/Museums Sheffield