Ruskin's first catalogue with notes containing his plans for the Standard, Reference and Educational series.
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This modern view is, as you will readily perceive, not given as admirable or exemplary, but as an exponent of opposite qualities. The contrast between Nos. 59 and 60 is partly in the real scenes, partly in the art of their representation. Practical modernism has removed, as an obstacle to traffic, the fountain which gave Prout the means of forming the whole into a good composition; (I saw it in 1835, but forget how long it has been destroyed): and has brightened and varnished the street and the old timbers of it, as best it may, to look like a Parisian boulevard. And poetical modernism exhibits the renovated city with renovated art. Yet, remember, Prout’s delight in the signs of age in building, and our own reverence for it, when our minds are healthy, are partly in mere revulsion from the baseness of our epoch; and we must try to build, some day what shall be venerable, even when it is new.
Presented by John Ruskin to the Ruskin Drawing School (University of Oxford), 1875; transferred from the Ruskin Drawing School to the Ashmolean Museum, c.1949.
Ruskin, John, Catalogue of the Educational Series (London: Smith, Elder, 1871), cat. Educational no. 30.F
Ruskin, John, Catalogue of the Educational Series (London: Spottiswoode, 1874), cat. Educational no. 60
Ruskin, John, Catalogue of Examples Arranged for Elementary Study in the University Galleries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1870), cat. Educational no. 30.B
Laran, Jean, et al., Bibliothèque Nationale, Département des estampes: Inventaire du fonds français après 1800 (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1939-)
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. Educational no. 60