The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin’s teaching collection at Oxford

The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin’s teaching collection at Oxford

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Landscape with a large Building on a Ridge John Ruskin

  • Curator’s description:

    Description

    This rapidly executed sketch shows a view across hills to what appears to be either a walled town or some kind of ruins on a ridge. The location is not specified, but Taylor has suggested Monte Cassino.

    This drawing is on similar paper to the following drawing (now the twentieth of the unframed examples), and they may both have been removed from a sketch-book. Taylor suggests a date of April or May 1874 by analogy with the companion drawing, which he believes depicts Rome, where Ruskin stayed between 16 and 18 April and 4 and 20 May 1874.

    Although not mentioned in any of Ruskin's catalogues of the collection, Cook and Wedderburn listed both drawings amongst the unframed examples in 1906, describing them as 'two landscape sketches (hurried pencil memoranda)' (XXI.308). As the unframed examples had not been given an order by Ruskin, they have been given arbitrary accession numbers based upon their position in Cook and Wedderburn's list of the unframed objects for the purposes of the current catalogue.

  • Details

    Artist/maker
    John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)
    Object type
    drawing
    Material and technique
    graphite and bodycolour on blue wove paper
    Dimensions
    176 x 261 mm
    Associated place
    Inscription
    Recto, bottom left, in graphite: 2 T

    Verso:
    bottom left, in graphite: p.308 Pkt A.6. upper
    centre left, printed on feint ruled paper, the Ruskin School's stamp
    just below, also on the feint ruled paper, in ink: M33
    Provenance

    Presumably presented by John Ruskin to the Ruskin Drawing School (University of Oxford); first recorded in the Ruskin Drawing School in 1906; transferred from the Ruskin Drawing School to the Ashmolean Museum c.1949

    No. of items
    1
    Accession no.
    WA.RS.UF.19
  • Subject terms allocated by curators:

    Subjects

  • References in which this object is cited include:

    References

    Taylor, Gerald, ‘John Ruskin: A Catalogue of Drawings by John Ruskin in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford’, 7 fascicles, 1998, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, no. 282

    Ruskin, John, ‘The Ruskin Art Collection at Oxford: Catalogues, Notes and Instructions’, Edward T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, eds, The Works of John Ruskin: Library Edition, 39 (London: George Allen, 1903-1912), 21, cat. Unframed

Location

    • Western Art Print Room

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