Suzanne Fagence Cooper

December 29, 2018

Herkomer, John Ruskin, 1879, NPG

What can we learn from John Ruskin,
200 years after his birth?

In 2019, curators, writers and artists are responding to his legacy, through exhibitions, books and new works of art, as we show why Ruskin matters.

I have been reading his articles, admiring his drawings, and exploring Oxford, Sheffield and Chartres, Venice and Florence with Ruskin in mind, since I was teenager. Now I am Research Curator for a major exhibition, ‘Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud’ in York and Kendal, opening in March 2019.

John Ruskin, Capital of a Loggia, Venice, Lakeland Arts

This exhibition brings together dozens of watercolours and drawings by Ruskin and Turner, the artist who inspired him to draw and to write.

Using Ruskin’s 1884 lecture on ‘The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century’, we are developing his themes of climate change and mental turbulence, to offer new ways of looking at and through Ruskin.

J M W Turner, Figures in a Storm, Tate

These include specially commissioned watercolours and cyanotypes by Emma Stibbon RA, who has followed in Ruskin’s footsteps, to record the retreat of his beloved glaciers around Mont Blanc.

Alongside the exhibition, I have been drawing together my own responses to Ruskin, as an introduction to his life and work, in
‘To See Clearly: Why Ruskin Matters’.

John Ruskin, Tomb of Ilaria del Caretto: Lucca, Ashmolean

John Ruskin, View from my window, Mornex, Lakeland Arts

In our age of immediacy, I find this visionary Victorian artist and critic inspires us to look and to linger. Fierce and encouraging, Ruskin's writings transform our sense of connection to the built environment and the natural world.

Ruskin imagines new ways for ‘hand, head and heart’ to work together. He teaches us that buildings tell stories; how to travel with more care; the need to respond to our own mental fragility, and to the anxieties of others. Ruskin tells us how to work more effectively, and more fairly. Above all he challenges us to keep learning, in small ways and in great.

Ruskin guides our focus from the smallest scale, the intense blue petal of a gentian flower, to the colossal: an Alp, a Gothic cathedral, the flight of an eagle across a continent. With our eyes opened by John Ruskin, we can see more clearly how to take responsibility for our interconnected world.
To pre-order 'To See Clearly: Why Ruskin Matters', from Waterstones, click: https://www.waterstones.com/book/to-see-clearly/suzanne-fagence-cooper/9781787476981