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

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

Ruskin's Rudimentary series, 5th ed. (1873)

Items marked 'M' are drawings "by my own Hand" (by Ruskin), P are photographs, E engravings and A by Ruskin's Assistant, Arthur Burgess.

Rudimentary 5 Cover

Ruskin's Catalogues: 1 object

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Ruskin assembled a diverse collection of artworks for his drawing school in Oxford, including watercolours by J.M.W. Turner and drawings by Ruskin himself.  He taught students to draw as a way of educating them in how to look at art and the world around them.  

Ruskin divided his Teaching Collection into four main series: Standard, Reference, Educational and Rudimentary. Each item was placed in a numbered frame, arranged in a set of cabinets, so that they all had a specific position in the Collection (although Ruskin often moved items about as his ideas changed). 

When incorporated into the Ashmolean’s collection in the last century, the works were removed from the frames and the sequence was lost.  Here, Ruskin's original catalogues, notes and instructions - in his chosen order and in his own words - are united with images of the works and links to modern curatorial descriptions.

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Enlarged Outline of a Violet Leaf, with a life-size Leaf below John Ruskin

Location

    • Western Art Print Room

Position in Ruskin’s Collection

Ruskin's Catalogues

  • Ruskin's Rudimentary series, 3rd ed. (1872)

    R|277} Outline of violet leaf (enlarged). M.
  • Ruskin's Rudimentary series 4th ed. (1872)

    R|277} Outline of violet leaf (enlarged). M.
  • Ruskin's Rudimentary series, 5th ed. (1873)

    R|277} Outline of violet leaf (enlarged). M.
  • Ruskin's revision to the Rudimentary series (1878)

    226.

    This group consists of exercises in plant-drawing, directed especially to the marking of structure. The violet leaf here drawn is represented, at the top, of its natural size, below magnified with an ordinary pocketlens. It is given as an extremely difficult example, both the branching and serration being irregular; nor have I yet been able to arrive myself at any satisfactory mode of expressing the gradation of the ribs into their cellular tissue. Yet I mean this piece to remain in the school to give what encouragement it may to the pupils who, I hope, in numbers will succeed in doing better; and also as an illustration of the special requirement in such studies. The stalk is represented as twisted because it was twisted, although for the purposes of analysis it would have been much more advantageous to have pinned it down straight, but the essential characters of plants are only to be learned by drawing them in the positions they naturally fall into, and not by forcing them into those which are convenient to us.

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