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

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

Browse: 1470 objects

Reference URL

Actions

Send e-mail

Contact us about this object

Send e-mail

Send to a friend

View over a City John Ruskin

  • Curator’s description:

    Description

    The sketch looks down over a row of cypress trees to a city, which Taylor suggests is Rome.

    This drawing is on similar paper to the preceding work (now the nineteenth of the unframed examples), and they may both have been removed from a sketch-book. Taylor suggests a date of April or May 1874, as Ruskin stayed in Rome between 16 and 18 April and 4 and 20 May 1874 (apart from one day in Assisi).

    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 on blue wove paper
    Dimensions
    177 x 260 mm
    Associated place
    Inscription
    Recto, bottom left, in graphite: 2 B

    Verso:
    bottom left, in graphite: p.308 Pkt A.6. lower
    centre, printed on feint ruled paper, the Ruskin School's stamp
    just below, also on the feint ruled paper, in ink: M34
    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.20
  • 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. 283

    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

© 2013 University of Oxford - Ashmolean Museum