Talk:John Ruskin

message: A discussion on the Victoriana mailing list re the "pubic hair" myth and a reference there to Wikipedia as propagating the myth persuaded me to come here and work on the article. I have included the gist of the discussion on Victoriana (a list inhabited primarily by English professors) re tracing the rumor to Mary Lutyens. I should cite Lutyens in the references, and give a page ref as well. I don't know if I will be able to get a copy of the book; anyone else who can supply the missing information is welcome to do so!
I also took the liberty of reorganizing the article, which seemed to be somewhat jumbled and hard to read. I separated the life and work, and added separate sections for biographies (which should be expanded), legacy, and controversies. I think putting the article into sections makes it more readable -- however, there could be BETTER ways of defining and organizing them. Other sections could be added, too. So I'm not going to make a fuss if other editors rearrange yet again. 
The prose in both sections does not flow cleanly, and there are many gaps in the information given. Both the life and the work could use some amplification. I don't know if I will be able to do this -- I am working on too many Wikipedia articles as it is. The regular editors may be able to fill this gap, if I can't. 
I hope I haven't stepped on too many toes. I just wanted to make sure that if any of the English professors on Victoriana stopped here again, they'd find a spiffed up article with Lutyens' speculation clearly marked as such. Zora 22:32, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added a quote from Kenneth Clark on Ruskin's artistic principles.  I would like to add more over the next few weeks.  This, I believe, is where the article is weakest: we're told about his career, marriage, controversies and so on, but hardly anything about his actual views on art, religion, society, economics, education; nor is there much about his prose style, his artwork or his influence on contemporaries.   InvisibleSun 23:56, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Agreed. He's a major figure and deserves better coverage. Links to those of his works that are available for free, online, as e-books, would help too. I'll see if I can do that. Zora 00:02, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revision 

message: We can't really think that the issue of whether Ruskin was repulsed by his first wife's pubic hair is sufficiently noteworthy to be so dominantly included in such a short summary of his work and life as it is now, can we?  Does anyone object to reducing this to more of a passing reference so that it assumes a more appropriate place in the context of his work?  Alternately, can someone volunteer facts demonstrating what meaningful impact, if any, this biographical speculation has on the interpretation of his writing?
: I entered that material following a discussion on the Victoriana mailing list, by English professors for the most part, re what everyone "knew" about Ruskin, which was the pubic hair rumour, and what a shame it was that Wikipedia repeated it uncritically.
: I think WP should respond to the misconceptions that users bring to subjects of the articles, and debunk them if necessary. Since all too many students are consulting Wikipedia, it's a service to the English professors to challenge misconceptions. 
: I agree that the subject has too much prominence now, just because the rest of the article is so sketchy. If we bulked up the rest of the article, the material re his marriage wouldn't be as salient. Zora 22:34, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Agreed.  I will try to add substantial information regarding his writing and historical context over the next week so that we can focus the article on his work rather than his curious, yet distracting, purported sexual proclivities. Wm. Terpening 00:37, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you really think Ruskin did not have pubic hair? Do you really think he had not studied and drawn many tens of nudes????? This is just faulting his wife for being a human - pubic hair - he drew nudes - ignorance on menstrual blood - he went to Oxford University, he was either asexual or a paedophile.This is just sexist blaming of the woman for the man's problem and male english teachers getting their students cheap thrills.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.89.73.107 (talk) 19:04, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: This is an encyclopaedia article not about condemnation or praise of Ruskin. The article notes and sources what the man was like. If he did have a problem with pubic hair, it's a reflection on Ruskin not women.  Span (talk) 19:21, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

text: Plenty of sources are given, multiple biographies. Span (talk) 19:35, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

text: Of course they didn't speak of it at the time. They were Victorians, so what do you expect? It's speculation by later writers. For some reason you appear to think this is insulting to women, which seems a very odd view to me. I'm sure that no one contributing to this article blames women for having pubic hair. If anyone is being blamed, if is Ruskin. The blame may be misplaced, if that was not the cause of his "disgust", but the fact remains that he found her genitalia repulsive in some way, and of course no one, man or woman, can be blamed for the shape of their body parts. BTW, there is no evidence that I know of that Ruskin drew any nudes at all. Paul B (talk) 21:28, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

text: I've just read the dumb comments by Hewison in the Guardian article "The idea that he did not know what women looked like is a nonsense. It is frankly irritating." Well if it's nonsense why did Effie herself write "he had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person (person = body)." So presumably Effie had no idea what she was taking about! Paul B (talk) 19:01, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ruskin's aversion to pubic hair. 

message: Well yes, why not write something about his amazing talents as a teacher. Claude Monet once stated that "ninety percent of the theory of Impressionist painting is in Ruskin's Elements of Drawing (1857)"
(Contemporary Review - March 1911  see: Lawrence Campbell's introduction to Ruskin's "The Elements of Drawing." -Dover ed. 1971)
(84.193.174.59 11:46, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This relates to Ruskin's contention that an artist should reproduce the visual image that is felt through a sense impression. The artist should not presuppose anything about the perceived object as object. An artist should be concerned only with sense impressions, such as areas of color. In other words, draw or paint your sense impression and don't think about the object. In so doing, the artistic representation of the object is more correct and results naturally. This influence may not be generally known because not many have read Elements of Drawing. The common understanding may be that Ruskin's influence on the Impressionists resulted merely from his suggestion that they paint outdoors rather than in the studio.Lestrade (talk) 02:13, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why not ?

message: Couldn't title that better, somehow.  It may have only been in the preface to the selected Ruskin in Pelican that I used to have, but I think it was a comment from another source that tweaked me to get the Pelican anthology anyway.  Thing is, I'm from Ruskin, B.C. so always had the curiosity; wound up in a cultural geography course years later and clued in to why the Ruskin powerhouse has a gothic flavour that other BCER powerhouses don't have; "the epitome of modern architecture" in was pronounced in the Vancouver rags in, um, 1931 (bit of art deco in there, come to think of it).  So somewhere in my asking and reading around about the guy, since his followers were a part of the history a few addresses down the road (past the swamp and the drive-in theatre, now a pair of trailer parks), something I read said something or other about Ruskin's writing being the epitome of English prose, the finest-wrought though not in fiction or poetry, more in pure description; the citation was in ref to passages of The Stones of Venice, I think.  I didn't just want to add, on the main article, "his writing is considered to be among the finest prose written in English", especially if there might be an actual quote/cite out there.  Anyone recognize this and might know the cite, or at least the critic whose opinion it was?Skookum1 05:44, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  anecdote re quality of writing? 

message: ...best known for his work as an art critic and social critic, but is remembered as an author, poet and artist as well...
By whom?  I know him as an author and poet, but not as a critic or artist.  Joe down the road may have some other viewpoint on the man, his life and his works.  This bald statement, coming as it does right at the start of the article, gives it a rather subjective tone.  Better, I think, to list what makes Ruskin famous, without giving precedence to some aspects of his work over others.  Later in the piece, assuming there is documentary support for the opinions, the better-knownedness of some fields could be mentioned, if the contributor considers it important.--King Hildebrand 17:50, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I really think it is very well established that he is best known as a writer on art and as a social critic. It is usual practice to list what is most notable about a figure at the top of the page. The great majority of books on him are about these aspects of his thinking (if we include architecture under the general concept of "art"). His poetry is hardly ever read these days. Can you find any book about him as a poet? "Author" is rather ambiguous, since all his works are the product of an "author", but I assume this is intended to mean "creative writer", possibly being a reference to The King of the Golden River. Again, you'd be hard put to find anything like as much literature on this as on his work as a theorist of art and architecture. Paul B 18:07, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Best known as... 

message: Why is there no mention of Ruskin's positive contribution to the creation of the concept of common welfare, and the welfare state?
:It is mentioned, but it could be expanded. Do it. Paul B 12:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contributions to Political Thought: Welfare 

message: An obscure (?) american documentary called "the capitalist conspiracy" claims that ruskin is supposed to have advocated "the rule of one man over all others", an idea similar to enlightened ... what's the expression in english again.
anyone know anything of this quote?
I guess Ruskin was too early to anticipate Hitler etc.
but seems he should have, living with enough despots and powerful not so benevolent ruling monarchs at the time.
I feel a greater paragraph on his politics is needed, especially on a man that has influenced people like Tolstoj, Oscar wilde, the british Labour Party and so on. I'm no expert on ruskin but I'll try dig up some more that can shed light on why he was considered so important by his close contemporaries. 
- John Smith (nom de guerre) 09:57, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's difficult to be clear about Ruskin's politics. He described himself as a Tory, but he influenced Socialism. He was very close to Thomas Carlyle, who did, in his later work, promote a sort of proto-fascist ideology. The expression is "enlightened despotism". Paul B 10:57, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Critics of Ruskin 

message: There is a Ruskin Street in West Roxbury (Boston) MA US, which is also the home of Brook Farm community.  Perhaps this street was named after John Ruskin.  Are there any sources to pin this down?
-69.87.204.40 (talk) 01:53, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This would be more relevant to the aims of the Brook Farm community, if you have a soiurce for how and when the street was named. At John Ruskin it is merely trivial. --Wetman (talk) 04:24, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

text: There are many streets named after him (London has a "John Ruskin Street" and a "Ruskin Road"). You'd have to contact the local historians in Boston to identify the source of that particular street, but it's very likely it took its name from him. Paul B (talk) 12:56, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Any other Ruskin would be an unlikely coincidence. My thought was simply that the figure of John Ruskin had particular resonance with the Brook Farm community, which aimed to "combine the thinker and the worker...by opening the benefits of education and the profit of labor to all.”: see Brook Farm. --Wetman (talk) 08:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: On the other hand, Brook Farm is mentioned in the WP article as having gone defunct by 1847, at which time Ruskin had not yet written his books on the structure of society, the nature of education, the value of labor and so on.  In the 1840s he was famous as the author of Modern Painters, in which his views on these subjects had not  coalesced.  He hadn't written The Stones of Venice, Unto This Last, Fors Clavigera, etc. - InvisibleSun (talk) 06:44, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ruskin Street in West Roxbury 

message: Recently the file :File:John Ruskin by James Northcote.jpg (right) was uploaded and it appears to be relevant to this article and not currently used by it. If you're interested and think it would be a useful addition, please feel free to include it. It shows John Ruskin as a 3-year-old child in 1822. Dcoetzee 23:36, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  New file [[:File:John Ruskin by James Northcote.jpg]] 

message: Rich Farmbrough, 03:16, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: In Our Time

message: It looks to me like this revision [revision] may be vandalism. It adds an unsourced "letter to his physician", containing some implausible innuendo and a bizarre reference to Connie Gilchrist (not born until the early 20th century), and is from an IP address known to have committed vandalism in the past. Maybe someone better informed could take a look?
--87.114.11.116 (talk) 21:42, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately the letter looks and probably is genuine. However you are correct the Connie Gilchrist is incorrectly included - the original letter says Gonnie Gilchrists clearly a different person. I will make the appropriate change, good catch. I am moving this thread to the bottom of the page...Modernist (talk) 22:26, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the letter has a reliable seeming source. The second page of the article does actually cite a Connie Gilchrist. I don't know if Gonnie was a nickname. The dates are wrong for the Connie featured on Wikipedia, although she was also a London stage actress, famed for pantomime. I can see how the mistake was made.  There is considerable evidence that Ruskin had a penchant for small children. Best wishes Span (talk) 23:56, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is that this is just too long, plonked in the middle of the text as an undigested lump of primary material. We should be including long quotes like that. Paul B (talk) 08:45, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It's two lines long… Seems fine to me. Span (talk) 21:29, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible vandalism

message: The phrase "especially its geologist" in the article strikes me as probably containing a typographical error, but I'm not sure how its author intended it to read.  Would its author care to correct it (or explain here why it's correct as it stands)? Tonydwyer2001 (talk) 00:46, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It was a recent change. The typo is fixed. Span (talk) 04:36, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  especially its geologist 

message: The very bottom of the article has a table of information about Ghandi.  The only connection with Ruskin is that Ruskin was one of Ghandi's influences.  I don't think that this was the only person Ruskin influenced, nor the only person who influenced Ghandi.  Maybe someone who knows how may want to unlink this table.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.126.138.44 (talk) 13:57, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: No mention of any "Ghandi" is made in the article. Chenopodiaceous (talk) 17:48, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Ruskin had a real penchant for wearing a loin cloth and sandals. Liquid Gumption (talk) 19:05, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Ghandi

message: 'For Effie, Venice provided an opportunity to socialise. Whilst she met with the Austrian 1st lieutenant, Charles Paulizza, Ruskin was engaged in solitary studies. Their London life was much the same. Returning to Venice in September 1851, Effie discovered that Paulizza was dead.'
:There is no further mention of Paulizza, so his significance is unknown. And a rather disjointed para altogether. Valetude (talk) 11:56, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Paulizza is significant for two reasons. One is that he was responsible for bombing Venice during the Austrian attack on the city, so Effie'a friendship with him is often presented as rather ironic since her husband was writing a book all about the need to preserve its buildings. Effie's apparently unconcerned tone in her accounts of Paulizza's doings is sometimes offered as evidence of her lack of sympathy with her husband's ideas. However, Rusking seems to have had no problem with Paulizza. The other reason is that Ruskin was later accused by Effie's brother of intentionally pushing Effie and Paulizza together in order to compomise her. This was later said by Effie's supporters to be one of his strategies for either getting rid of her or contolling her, by intentionally throwing her at various attractive men of which Paulizza was the first. Of course neither of these points are made in the current article text, and the first one is rather minor. The second point is rather more significant in the context of the deteroriorating relationship between Effie and John, so it could be developed in a sentence or so. Paul B (talk) 14:39, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I've altered the relevant paragraph, to make it more understandable. The previous version did not say whether there was any significance in her discovery of Paulizza's death on her (their?) return visit in 1851, so I'm assuming it's off-topic. Valetude (talk) 17:39, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Paulizza 

message: In the Oxford section, you say 'Before he returned, he answered a challenge set down by Effie Gray, whom he later married.' This does not really tell us anything. It should say who she was, and how they had met. And what sort of 'challenge' was this anyway? Valetude (talk) 03:53, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It's slightly clearer in context. The challenge was to write a fairy story. As Derrick Leon puts it: "She was shown his minerals and his drawings, she saw the architectural articles in Loudon's Magazines: but she would have been far better pleased to know that he wrote fairy stories like Grimm--and frankly told him so. At which Ruskin, always eager to give pleasure, in particular to charming and intelligent young girls, told her that he would see what he could do, while she laughed delightfully, and assured him that she was quite sure he would fail. Thus teased and flattered, he set to work on The King of the Golden River, which he finished a few weeks later" (Ruskin: the Great Victorian, p.66). Paul B (talk) 21:19, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  First mention of Effie 

message: Nothing on his influence by Max Muller, and the Vedas?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.30.55.165 (talk) 16:55, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nothing on Max Muller? 

message: Somebody really ought to do something about that. Rayner-hills (talk) 19:26, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Which one, and why do you think it's reversed? Andy Dingley (talk) 19:59, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  The gravestone images appear to be the wrong way round. 

message: The article tells us:
Barony House in Edinburgh is home to a descendant of John Ruskin who has designed and hand painted various friezes in honour of her ancestor and it is open to the public.
This tells us nothing about John Ruskin. However benevolently intended, it reads like an ad for a B&B. I'm about to delete it. -- Hoary (talk) 01:25, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: "Barony House in Edinburgh"

message: Ruskin was a LL.D and DCL. There's not a word about it in the article. 31.173.82.4 (talk) 00:28, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: In #Oxford it is said:  "Back at Oxford, in 1842 Ruskin sat for a pass degree, and was awarded an uncommon honorary double fourth-class degree in recognition of his achievements."  This doesn't make sense to me.  (1) If he sat for a regular degree at pass level and did extraordinarily well in examinations, he could have been awarded honours in that degree, not an honorary degree.  (2) How did sitting for a pass degree come out as a double degree?  (3) A fourth-class degree, so far as I'm aware, is/was awarded to a jolly good chap who'd been mucking about in boats. Errantius (talk) 13:44, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

text: Assume you mean DCL. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:40, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Degrees 

message: In my studies of Carlyle, I have come across several sources that identify Ruskin as having been embraced in the Third Reich. From "Hitler, Adolf" in The Carlyle Encyclopedia (2004), "Carlyle and his student John Ruskin were seen as early British National Socialists." And "In 1941 William McGovern's From Luther to Hitler identified both Carlyle and Ruskin as thinkers who made Nazism possible." From the Carlyle chapter of Victorian Prose: A Guide to Research (1973), "G. I. Morris in 'Divine Hitler' (NS [Die Neueren Sprachen], 1935) cites his own experience ... A headmaster had told his students that 'Ruskin and Carlyle were the first National Socialists.'"
This seems substantial enough to place in the article, perhaps under "Legacy, Politics and critique of political economy". It can hardly belong under "Controversies", as this is rather obscure information. The reason I am creating this new section is to see if more knowledgable editors can show me that this has been addressed elsewhere, perhaps outside of Carlyle Studies, to get a clearer picture of the Nazis' reading of Ruskin. Sinopecynic (talk) 10:44, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ruskin in the Third Reich 

message: The article reads 
"In addition to this, Ruskin "threw himself into" personal work for the Committee..."
which makes no sense. The Committee opposed Eyre's suppression of the uprising. Ruskin was a contributor to the Fund, which supported Eyre's action.
Does the writer mean the Fund instead of the Committee? Chenopodiaceous (talk) 17:46, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conflicting description of Ruskin's involvement in the Eyre affair 

message: While I respect the desire of admirers of Ruskin not have him labelled a child molester, I find the concluding quotation on Ruskin's sexuality  bizarre. This reads: "when it comes to matters of sexual capability and interest, there is every reason to conclude that John Ruskin was physically and emotionally normal". At the very least the article indicates that he was neurotic:  Ruskin was repulsed by the idea of intercourse, and preferred the company of pre-pubescent girls, and looking at naked, or scantily clad, pictures of them. The article describes him falling love with Effie Gray when she was 12, but after marrying her, when she was 19, failing to consummate the marriage. There is, however, no indication of criminal behaviour by Ruskin and he would probably be disgusted by the idea of any overt sexual relationship with a child. However, words like 'voyeurism' and 'nympholepsy', do suggest themselves. I recognize that there is a problem in using the word paedophilia, because of the criminal connotations associated with it, but it does seem that Ruskin fits the definition of this psychological disorder, because he was sexually attracted to young girls, even though here's no evidence he molested any child. It is worth remembering that prior to 1875, the age of consent was 12 and only in1885 was it raised to 16. So Ruskin could have legally married Effie Gray when she was 12! I have read the Victorian web article on this topic, which fails to adequately explore the topic. Rwood128 (talk) 16:48, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Physically and emotionally normal