John Ruskin and the Victorian Eye

The six accessible essays in this richly illustrated volume--companion to an exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum and the Indianapolis Museum of Art--examine John Ruskin's activities as Victorian art critic and moral sage. Ruskin scholar Robert Hewison explores how the critic's encounter with paintings by Renaissance masters led to his loss of religous faith. Brown University professor George Dandow scrutinizes the sermonizing language with which Ruskin urged readers to sharpen their own perceptive powers. Yale art historian Casteras discusses Ruskin's creation in 1871 of a utopian guild to govern Saint George's Museum in Sheffield, England. Other essays deal with Ruskin's high aspirations for modern art, his passion for geology and his drawings, which were a stimulus to his thought. Nearly 180 plates (40 in color) show paintings by Ruskin himself as well as by Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, J.M.W. Turner and others. (May)