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

The drawing is dominated by a single pine tree, surrounded by others, smaller and less well-defined. An uneven path leads down the hillside, and the sea and a distant coastline can be glimpsed through the trees. On 29 April 1845 Ruskin wrote home that he planned to 'make studies of stone pine' (H.I. Shapiro, Ruskin Family - Ruskin in Italy: Letters to his Parents, Oxford (Clarendon Press): 1972, letter 19). His next letter relates that he had been 'working like a horse, and have got a most valuable study of stone pine ... Air all scented by the pines and wild flowers - and the birds singing so loudly you can hardly hear the sea'. (Shapiro, letter 20)

Ruskin first catalogued the drawing in 1870, listing it as no. 10 in the Educational series in the "Catalogue of Examples". The following year, he moved it to frame 13 in case I of the series, "Introductory Subjects, and Exercises in Flower Drawing" (Educational Catalogue, 1st edition). By 1874, the drawing had been re-numbered as no. 22, although its position remained the same (Educational Catalogue, 2nd edition). In the 1878 reorganisation of the collection, however, Ruskin intended to move the drawing to the Rudimentary Series where, as no. 295, it would have been part of a series showing how to depict plants. It seems, from his description in the catalogue, that the drawing was originally partly obscured by its mount (Rudimentary Series, manuscript catalogue).

Ruskin included the drawing in the collection both as an example of speedy but accurate depiction, and because of the association of the stone pine with Poseidon. He wrote to his father in 1852 that, in 1845, 'I went into Italy with a new perception of the meaning of the words drawing and chiaroscuro. My first attempts with my new perception were those of the stone pines at Sestri, now in your bedroom' - the drawing he later placed in the Drawing School (XXXVI.131).