Clive Aslet reflects on the art critic’s attitude to aesthetics and the legacy of his radical views today, the subject of a new exhibition celebrating his bicentenary.
JOHN RUSKIN knew how to hate. His list of allbut-unendurable objects includes iron railings, the Houses of Parliament, lawyers, money-making, railways and their stations, cycling, the English Constitution, King’s College Chapel and The Hunch-back of Notre-Dame.
‘Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboonblooded stuff,’ Wagner’s Meistersingers beat everything he had seen on stage. ‘I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember, in my life, by the stopping of any sound—not excepting railroad whistles—as I was by the cessation of the cobbler’s bellowing.’ It’s unlikely that Mrs Burne- Jones, to whom the letter was addressed, mistook it for praise.
However, he was equally extreme in his enthusiasms. Turner was one—‘the greatest of the age… in every faculty of the imagination’. After a pampered if restricted childhood, Ruskin wanted to share his loves with the rest of the world.
Arriving in Venice for his honeymoon in 1848, the Year of Revolutions, he feared that the resumption of Austrian control would lead to destruction. Consequently, he began a campaign to record precious and vulnerable details.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 27, 2019-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 27, 2019-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Give it some stick
Galloping through the imagination, competitive hobby-horsing is a gymnastic sport on the rise in Britain, discovers Sybilla Hart
Paper escapes
Steven King selects his best travel books of 2024
For love, not money
This year may have marked the end of brag-art’, bought merely to show off one’s wealth. It’s time for a return to looking for connoisseurship, beauty and taste
Mary I: more bruised than bloody
Cast as a sanguinary tyrant, our first Queen Regnant may not deserve her brutal reputation, believes Geoffrey Munn
A love supreme
Art brought together 19th-century Norwich couple Joseph and Emily Stannard, who shared a passion for painting, but their destiny would be dramatically different
Private views
One of the best ways-often the only way-to visit the finest privately owned gardens in the country is by joining an exclusive tour. Non Morris does exactly that
Shhhhhh...
THERE is great delight to be had poring over the front pages of COUNTRY LIFE each week, dreaming of what life would be like in a Scottish castle (so reasonably priced, but do bear in mind the midges) or a townhouse in London’s Eaton Square (worth a king’s ransom, but, oh dear, the traffic) or perhaps that cottage in the Cotswolds (if you don’t mind standing next to Hollywood A-listers in the queue at Daylesford). The estate agent’s particulars will give you details of acreage, proximity to schools and railway stations, but never—no, never—an indication of noise levels.
Mission impossible
Rubble and ruin were all that remained of the early-19th-century Villa Frere and its gardens, planted by the English diplomat John Hookham Frere, until a group of dedicated volunteers came to its rescue. Josephine Tyndale-Biscoe tells the story
When a perfect storm hits
Weather, wars, elections and financial uncertainty all conspired against high-end house sales this year, but there were still some spectacular deals
Give the dog a bone
Man's best friend still needs to eat like its Lupus forebears, believes Jonathan Self, when it's not guarding food, greeting us or destroying our upholstery, of course
