Cathy's Art Diary

Fantastic exhibition at Two Temple Place looking at the life and work of John Ruskin to mark 200 years since his birth. This exhibition borrowed items from lots of places but was centred on Guild of St George Collection now at Sheffield Museum. It was arranged chronologically starting with his being given a book of etchings by Turner aged 13 which sparked his interest in art. He was already a child prodigy and the show included a map of Scotland her drew at 9. I was amazed at the detail in his watercolours and drawings. His style changed from trying to express the sublime in landscape to recording the detail of architecture and nature. Of course I loved the section on Venice which as well as having his drawings also included photographs he commissioned from Frederick Crawley, one of the casts of details he had made and watercolours from John Wharton Burney. I loved the latter’s huge picture of the façade of St Mark’s. It was a nice touch to have also borrowed the pictu...

Fascinating lecture at the National Portrait Gallery by Robert Hewison on the life of John Ruskin to mark 200 years since his birth. Hewison used Ruskin’s own writing and drawings to tell the story of his life and in particular the crisis points in it. He conjectured that Ruskin led a very visual life and that the crisis points were often precipitated by looking at a particular art work. I loved the description he gave at the start of Ruskin’s study in Venice as he began to write a memoir. The vivid picture Hewison painted was possible because Ruskin and listed the things in that study and decried the view.   There was a good Q&A session at the end with insightful questions and good answers but the lovely touch was that Hewison got us to sing Happy Birthday to Ruskin as the actually anniversary of his birth was the next day.