John Ruskin: 1819 - 1900

John Ruskin was a Victorian writer, critic, scientist, poet, artist, environmentalist and philosopher. As the most important art critic of his time, he gained respectability for the Pre-Raphaelites and rescued J. M. W. Turner from obscurity. After trips to France and Italy, where Ruskin sketched the romantic beauty of medieval architecture and sculpture, he wrote a book on Gothic Architecture entitled The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) which documented and characterized a generation of medieval architectural work. In the fall of 1849, he traveled to Venice and applied the general principles of The Seven Lamps of Architecture to Venetian architecture and how it related to the rise and fall of spiritual forces. This research was published in The Stories of Venice (1851). He is unsurpassed in his connection of architecture, morality, and duty.

Ruskin became a champion of the Gothic Revival style in Britain, a style which drew its inspiration from medieval architecture such as he had studied in Europe. Besides his continuing work on his volumes of Modern Painters and sorting and arranging the work that Turner had left to the National Gallery, one of Ruskin's chief interests was the construction of the Oxford Museum of Natural History. He worked with the support of his old friend, Sir Henry Acland, then Regius Professor of Medicine, to bring his vision of Gothic beauty to this building. Despite considerable opposition from Oxford traditionalists and financial constraints, the museum remains one of the finest example of the middle Victorian Gothic Revival style in Britain.