John Ruskin: Volume 1. The Early Years

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He was the most famous and influential art critic of his age, and not so incidentally a stern critic of 19th-century English society, but John Ruskin (1819-1900) was so deeply Victorian in thought and expression that he has been out of fashion virtually since his death. British art historian Tim Hilton introduces Ruskin to modern readers in a meticulously researched biography that elucidates his groundbreaking contributions to the study and appreciation of art without mincing words about his personal problems. The Early Years covers the writing of Modern Painters, whose first volume made the 24-year-old Ruskin’s reputation as a champion of contemporary artists like J.M.W. Turner, and of The Stones of Venice, which spearheaded England’s Gothic revival. Hilton also examines Ruskin’s close relationship with his parents and disastrous six-year marriage to Effie Gray, who received an annulment in 1854 because her husband had refused to consummate their union. (Hilton later concludes that Ruskin was sexually attracted only to preadolescent girls.) Lengthy quotations from Ruskin’s diaries and letters vividly convey his personality: passionate in intellectual and social matters, argumentative, often insensitive, and prone to crippling depression. Closing in 1859, a time of frustration and stagnation for Ruskin, Hilton looks forward to his subject’s mellowing of character and deepening of convictions in the half-century to come. —Wendy Smith