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

A yellow snail-shell sits on the ground in front of a small bunch of purple grapes; there is an indistinct mossy bank behind them. The drawing has been cut down the left-hand edge (see below), and as it now exists the left-hand 5 mm are an additional strip of paper providing it with a new border.

The drawing is dated by Witt to c.1850. It first appeared in the Teaching Collection in 1871, when Ruskin catalogued it as no. 142 in the Educational Series, in Case VIII, devoted to "Elementary Zoology" - it was presumably the snail-shell, rather than the grapes, which led to it being placed there. It remained in the same position, albeit renumbered as no. 192, in the 1874 catalogue of the series; it is not mentioned in Ruskin's 1878 reorganisation.

Cook and Wedderburn note (XXI.92 n. 3) that the drawing was originally larger; Ruskin cut it in two, placing the left section, which depicted more grapes and an apple, in frame 40 of the first cabinet in the Working Series; unfortunately, it can no longer be found.

Although Ruskin wrote about William Henry Hunt elsewhere, he does not seem to mention this drawing. His attitude to Hunt was contradictory, on the one hand praising his simple tastes, artless arrangements and lack of education in zoology or botany (Notes on Prout and Hunt, §§ 1-20 = XIV.373-384), on the other criticising him for his carelessness in seeking a pleasant effect rather than taking pains to understand and know his subject (Catalogue of Examples, pp. 58-60, repeated in Educational Series catalogues pp. 50-52 (1st ed.) and 48-50 (2nd ed.)). He described how 'I have placed instances of it in my Oxford school as standards of imitative (as distinguished from decorative) colour.... I am aware of no other pieces of art, in modern days, at once so sincere and so accomplished' (Notes on Prout and Hunt, § 20 = XIV.384).