# About John Ruskin

> John Ruskin was one of the most important voices of the Victorian Age, and his ideas remain highly relevant today. He greatly influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Ruskin achieved early success as an art critic, but became an impassioned social reformer and spent the rest of his life fighting the evils of unregulated industrial capitalism in England. He was an innovative educator at Oxford and (among other projects) established a Utopian community. Frustration with the lack of social reform, a disastrous love life, and other problems led to gradual insanity.

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# «A quick look at John Ruskin’s life (Sec 1)

Ruskin achieved early acclaim as an art critic but gave it up for an embattled life as a social reformer. Frustration with the lack of social reform, a disastrous love life, and other problems led to gradual insanity. He spent large sums of money furthering his social goals, including the founding of a Utopian community. He was one of the most important Victorians, and his ideas on social justice and environmentalism remain relevant today. He greatly influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

# «Ruskin’s upbringing (Sec 2)

Ruskin’s father, a successful businessman, loved literature and art. His mother was intensely religious. A very precocious child, Ruskin published poetry, published articles on geology, and had become an accomplished artist—all before enrolling in Oxford. He published the first volume of Modern Painters to defend E.M.W. Turner and became an acclaimed art critic.

# «The connection between aesthetics, spirituality, culture, and morality (Sec 3)

Ideas about society and morality increasingly found their way into his writing about art—and, even more so, his writing about architecture. “The Nature of Gothic” celebrates the stonemasons who worked on the cathedrals of Northern Europe because, Ruskin believed, they enjoyed artistic freedom. They did not produce “servile” ornament. Today when we prefer hand-crafted over machine-produced goods, we are drawing on Ruskin’s ideas.

# «The transition to social reformer (Sec 4)

December 1860 marked Ruskin's full transition from art critic to social reformer. He published the first of four essays in which he denounced unregulated (laissez fair) capitalism, made a plea for social justice, and challenged his era's economic theory. Ruskin's argument angered the business elites that had previous enjoyed Ruskin’s art criticism. Not until the end of the 19th Century and beyond did Ruskin’s ideas take hold.

Because UTL condemns air and water pollution, recognizes people’s need for green space, and considers the problem of sustainability, Ruskin is regarded as one of the very first environmentalists. Ruskin’s politics, however, were ultra-conservative. He rejects social equality or the political demands by workers for justice. Rather, he is paternalistic and calls upon the business owners to be generous and caring.

# «His disastrous marital and romantic life (Sec 5)

Ruskin’s marriage to Effie Gray was annulled when she filed suit for non-consummation. She then married the painter John Everett Millais. Later Ruskin fell in love with a young girl who eventually went insane and died very young. Facing the antagonism that followed his transition to social reformer, Ruskin did not enjoy the comforts of love or marriage. Indeed, his disastrous love life surely contributed to his growing mental instability.

# «His embattled years as a social reformer (Sec 6)

In the 1860s and 70s, Ruskin wrote about art, offered ideas for educational reform, and, most of all, advocated measures for social reform. Ruskin became Oxford’s first art professor, funded a new college of art, and took the radical step of taking Oxford students off campus to repair roads. During the 1870s, Ruskin established and funded St. George’s Guild, a utopian community organized and governed according to Ruskin’s idealized notion of Feudal society. Ruskin’s final 10 years were spent in seclusion and insanity. He died early in the year 1900.