The Life of John RuskinCollingwood, W. G. (William Gershom)
Philosophy
The Life of John Ruskin
Collingwood, W. G. (William Gershom)
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Ruskin, John, 1819-1900
Parallel with this movement for educating the "working-class," there was
the scheme for the improvement of middle-class education, which was then
going on at Oxford--the beginning of University Extension--supported by
the Rev. F. Temple (later Archbishop of Canterbury), and Mr. (afterwards
Sir) Thomas Dyke Acland. Ruskin was heartily for them; and in a letter
on the subject, he tried to show how the teaching of Art might be made
to work in with the scheme. He did not think that in this plan, any more
than at the Working Men's College, there need be an attempt to teach
drawing with a view to forming artists; but there were three objects
they might hold in view: the first, to give every student the advantage
of the happiness and knowledge which the study of Art conveys; the next,
to enforce some knowledge of Art amongst those who were likely to become
patrons or critics; and the last, _to leave no Giotto lost among hill
shepherds._
CHAPTER X
"MODERN PAINTERS" CONCLUDED (1838-1860)
Oxford and old friends did not monopolise Ruskin's attention: he was
soon seen at Cambridge--on the same platform with Richard Redgrave,
R.A., the representative of Academicism and officialism--at the opening
of the School of Art for workmen on October 29th, 1858. His Inaugural
Address struck a deeper note, a wider chord, than previous essays; it
was the forecast of the last volume of "Modern Painters," and it
sketched the train of thought into which he had been led during his tour
abroad, that summer.
The battles between faith and criticism, between the historical and the
scientific attitudes, which had been going on in his mind, were taking a
new form. At the outset, we saw, naturalism overpowered respect for
tradition--in the first volume of "Modern Painters;" then the historical
tendency won the day, in the second volume. Since that time, the
critical side had been gathering strength, by his alliance with liberal
movements and by his gradual detachment from associations that held
him to the older order of thought. As in his lonely journey of 1845
he first took independent ground upon questions of religion and social
life, so in 1858, once more travelling alone, he was led by his
meditations,--freed from the restraining presence of his parents--to
conclusions which he had been all these years evading, yet finding at
last inevitable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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