born Feb. 8, 1819, London, Eng.
died Jan. 20, 1900, Coniston, Lancashire
English art critic.
Born into a wealthy family, Ruskin was largely educated at home. He was a gifted painter, but the best of his talent went into his writing. His multivolume Modern Painters (1843–60), planned as a defense of painter Gothic architecture . His other writings include The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851–53). He was also a defender of the Pre-Raphaelites . In 1869 he was elected Oxford's first Slade professor of fine art; he resigned in 1879 after {{link=Whistler, James Abbott McNeill">James McNeill Whistler won a libel suit against him. In later years he used his inherited wealth to promote idealistic social causes, but his powerful rhetoric, which still contained striking insights, became marred by bigotry and occasional incoherence. Ruskin remains the preeminent art critic of 19th-century Britain.
Ruskin, detail of an oil painting by Sir John Everett Millais, 1853–54; in a private ...
By courtesy of the Royal Academy of Arts, London