John Ruskin
On display
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed in September 1848 in the London studio of John Everett Millais (1829–96). Although they had no clear manifesto, the members were all devoted to ‘truth to nature’ which, for the five or so years of the Brotherhood’s existence, required a meticulously detailed style of painting applied to elevated subject matter. Millais was the most precocious of the artist members, and his technique the most virtuoso.
It was John Ruskin’s father who commissioned Millais’s celebrated portrait of his son. It was begun while the author and sitter were in holiday in the summer of 1853 at Brig o’Turk, in the Trossachs near Stirling. The portrait was begun in July, with Ruskin’s old Oxford friend, Sir Henry Acland, holding the canvas. This was not the first time that Millais had painted outdoors, but it was an experience fraught with difficulties – it rained frequently and the party were plagued by midges. Millais worked very slowly, but most of the background was completed by the end of October. The figure of Ruskin was painted from life in Millais’s studio in London in the following year, and Millais returned to Brig o’Turk in June 1854 for about ten days to complete the landscape.
Millais had completed the picture with increasing reluctance, having fallen in love with Ruskin’s wife, Effie, while they were in Scotland. The affair eventually led to the dissolution of Ruskin’s marriage in April 1854, and Millais married Effie in July 1855. The portrait became distasteful to the sitter and he gave it to Sir Henry Acland in 1871.
Details
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Title
John Ruskin
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Artist/maker
John Everett Millais, (1829 - 1896) -
Associated people
John James Ruskin (1785 - 1864) (commissioner)John Ruskin (1819 - 1900) (subject) -
Associated place
The Trossachs (Brig o’Turk) (place of creation)London (place of creation) -
Date
1853 - 1854 -
Material and technique
oil on canvas
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Object type
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Dimensions
71.3 x 60.8 cm (height x width) -
No. of items
1
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Credit line
Accepted by HM Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to the Ashmolean Museum, 2013.
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Museum location
Third floor | Gallery 66 | Pre-Raphaelites -
Museum department
Western Art
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Accession no.
WA2013.67
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Further reading
Christopher Brown, ‘The Burlington Magazine, Acquisitions (1998-2014) at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford’, 1139, (2014), 22, p.717, illus. p.717
Grieve Alastair, ‘Ruskin and Millais at Glenfinlas’, (1996), p. 228, illus. p. 231 fig. 3
Harrison Colin, ‘Millais's portrait of Ruskin at Glenfillas: The Ashmolean, 66’, (2013), ---, p.20, illus. ---
Hamilton, Alexander, ‘Ruskin's Gaze: The Landscape Portrait’, 2006, ---, ---, illus. ---
Harrison, Colin, ‘Portraits of John Ruskin’, (2001), Cover
Helmreich, Anne, Nature's Truth: Photography, Paining and Science in Victorian Britain (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), illus. p. 47 fig. 8
Russell, Francis, Saved for the nation: 1991 - 2016 (London: Christie's, 2017), pp. 66-67
