| Administrative History | John Ruskin (1819 - 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation.
The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.
He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft. [Sourced from Wikipedia]
Ruskin's links to Whitelands College date from 1877, when its principal, Rev John Pincher Faunthorpe, became acquainted with Ruskin and enlisted his interest. Ruskin would give numerous gifts of books and pictures to the College. He also introduced William Morris, leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones, the eminent Pre-Raphaelite artist. Together they designed artefacts for the newly erected College Chapel, the most notable being the Burne-Jones stained glass windows and the William Morris reredos.
In 1881 Ruskin inaugurated the annual May Day ceremonies, which endure today. It was Ruskin's wish that each year the women students should elect 'the likeablest and the loveablest' of their number to be their May Queen. In 1887 he asked Kate Greenaway to design a dress to be worn by elected May Queens and he maintained an enduring interest in May Day and the May Queens, although he never attended a ceremony himself.
|