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

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

Ruskin's revision to the Rudimentary series (1878)

Unpublished manuscript catalogue for proposed re-organisation of the Rudimentary series.

Rudimentary manu 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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Engraving of the Ceiling of the north-east Vault of the Loggia of the Villa Madama Baldassare Peruzzi

Location

    • Western Art Print Room

Position in Ruskin’s Collection

Ruskin's Catalogues

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

    R|115–R|119} Examples of Decoration, designed by Raphael, Giulio Romano, and their scholars. The arts devoted entirely to the pleasure of the eye, and caprice of fancy: perfect in skill by the practice of ages; but now entirely destructive of morality, intellectual power, and national character. E.
  • Ruskin's Rudimentary series 4th ed. (1872)

    R|115 – R|119} Examples of Decoration, designed by Raphael, Giulio Romano, and their scholars. The arts devoted entirely to the pleasure of the eye, and caprice of fancy: perfect in skill by the practice of ages; but now entirely destructive of morality, intellectual power, and national character. E.
  • Ruskin's Rudimentary series, 5th ed. (1873)

    R|115 – R|119} Examples of Decoration, designed by Raphael, Giulio Romano, and their scholars. The arts devoted entirely to the pleasure of the eye, and caprice of fancy: perfect in skill by the practice of ages; but now entirely destructive of morality, intellectual power, and national character. E.
  • Ruskin's revision to the Rudimentary series (1878)

    105.

    The richest possible condition of this decorative school, indicating the time when the pleasure of their newly invented style, and the superb power of the captains of it, Perugino, Raphael, and Correggio led the entire mind of Italy to conceive pleasure to be the only end of art. Therefore, finding it more pleasurable to contemplate nymphs R. and satyrs than saints and patriarchs, she fills her picture panels with these more attractive subjects, and from that day she and her arts perished together. The floral decoration in this example is still exquisitely beautiful but its larger paintings base, and the tone of colour gradually becoming violent & vulgar. The oval nearest the white rosettes, however, of Achilles seizing the sword, must be a pretty realization of the subject.

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