Four Parishes Arts Society - April 2010

Prophetic Ruskin and the Origins of the National Trust

Talk by Michael Wheeler - Tuesday 9 March

Michael Wheeler is a visiting Professor of English Literature at the University of Southampton. He was formerly the founding Director of the Ruskin Programme at Lancaster University, where he led the project to build the award-winning Ruskin Library to house the world’s greatest collection of Ruskin material and subsequently Director of Chawton House Library, home of Early English Women’s Writing with which the University of Southampton is formally linked. Michael now lives in Amport.

With Michael’s vast knowledge and study of John Ruskin, the Society enjoyed a memorable evening. John Ruskin, the son of a prosperous merchant, was born in London in 18l9. After being educated at home, he studied at Oxford University where he won the Newdigate prize for poetry. He is considered to be one of Britain’s leading writers on culture and society. He wrote on subjects from art and architecture here in England and on the Continent, politics, religion and economics, and it was his writing that influenced social reformers and political activists. He had a great influence on William Morris. He is also remembered as a poet and artist who supported the work of J.M.W. Turner, in his view the greatest landscape painter of all time, and the Pre-Raphaelites. 

Three founders of the National Trust in 1894 were deeply influenced by his writings and projects. There is a memorial to Ruskin at Friar’s Crag in the Lake District, close to the National Trust sign of the oak leaf designed by Joseph Armitage. Ruskin bought Brantwood in the Lake District overlooking Coniston: it is now open to the public.

Ruskins’s father died, leaving him a fortune that he subsequently gave away for educational purposes. 

On a more personal note, John Ruskin married Effie Gray in 1848. The marriage was notoriously unhappy and was annulled in l854. She went on to marry artist John Everett Millais, who had been Ruskin’s protégé. Later Ruskin fell in love with Rose la Touche. When she was 18 he proposed to her but she rejected him. She died in 1874 and Ruskin was plunged into despair that led to bouts of mental illness and he suffered many breakdowns.

After a very rich and industrious public life, John Ruskin died in 1900, mourned throughout the English-speaking world.

Future Events Next meeting – Tuesday 13 April – Grateley Hall – Life under the Veil in Iran by Sandra Simmonds.

May 8 & 9 – Four Parishes Arts Society Summer Exhibition. Entry application forms have now been given or sent out. If you would like a form or have not received one please phone: Joan Bryant on 01264 772574 or Jose Taylor on 01264 324552

Visit To Tyntensfield - Tuesday 8 June If you are planning to come on this outing, please send your completed booking forms with a bus deposit of £20 per person, to Norman Green by 13 April or hand them in at the next meeting on 13th April.