Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T02:36:28.646Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ruskin's Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Jeffrey L. Spear
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In a fragmentary preface to St. Mark's Rest, now in Princeton University's Firestone Library, Ruskin gives a brief history of his Venetian experiences, emphasizing the reading that conditioned his early responses to the city that proved so important to his life and work:

My father had trained me well in Shakespeare I knew the Two Gentlemen, & the Merchants of Verona and Venice, better than any gentlemen or merchants in London. had learned most of Romeo and Juliet, by heart; and all the beautiful beginnings of Othello. From Byron though with less reverence, I had received even deeper impressions – nor can I to this day be enough thankful for the glorious ideal of Venetian womanhood and Venetian patriotism which he gave me in Faliero and the Foscari, as I became capable of receiving it in later years Add to these Rogers poems, with Turner Vignettes – and Shelleys Julian & Maddalo, Prouts drawings in the Watercolour Rooms of its Old Society and the list of my first tutors in Venetian work will be full.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 12 , Spring 1984 , pp. 73 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. “An Unused Preface by John Ruskin for St. Mark's Rest,” ed. Spear, Jeffrey L. and Hunt, John Dixon, Princeton University Library Chronicle, 44 (Winter, 1983), 122–23.Google Scholar

2. “Ruskin and Venice” at the J. B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, the catalogue, by Hewison, Robert, Ruskin and Venice (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978)Google Scholar; Clegg, Jeanne, Ruskin and Venice (London: Junction Books, 1981).Google Scholar

3. Praeterita, in The Works of John Ruskin, ed. Cook, E. T. and Wedderburn, Alexander, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), xxxv, 29Google Scholar, hereafter cited in the text by volume and page.

4. Italy, a Poem (London: Moxon, 1842), p. 10.Google Scholar

5. “Ruskin's Fireflies,” in The Ruskin Polygon, ed. Hunt, John Dixon and Holland, Faith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), p. 216.Google Scholar

6. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, IV, xviii–xix.Google Scholar

7. Ruskin's Letters from Venice, ed. Bradley, John L. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), p. 199.Google Scholar

8. Poems (London: T. Cadell and E. Moxon, 1834), p. 7.Google Scholar Rogers met Gilpin in 1792 and a friendship developed; see Barbier, Carl Paul, Samuel Rogers and William Gilpin: Their Friendship and Correspondence (London: Oxford University Press for Glasgow University, 1959).Google Scholar Turner's illustration of the half-blasted oak at sunset overpowers the lines.

9. Quoted by Hales, J. R. in The Italian Journal of Samuel Rogers (London: Faber and Faber, 1956), p. III.Google Scholar I have also drawn upon Hales's excellent chapter on “English Travelers in Italy, 1814–21.”

10. Hales, , p. 111.Google Scholar

11. Byron fell out with Rogers in 1818 and lampooned him in “Question & Answer.” The fact that Rogers had introduced Byron to his lady had doubtless ceased to recommend him.

12. “May 3rd. [1844], Something of the effect of Rogers's remarks depends on his bitter and quiet manner. Speaking of a portrait which Blake was pointing to, he said: ‘Sitting! Umph! He doesn't sit like a gent-leman,’ This would have been little enough from anyone else but came finely from him.” Diaries, ed. Evans, Joan and Whitehouse, John Howard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 274.Google Scholar

13. Ruskin in Italy, ed. Shapiro, Harold I. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 56, 194.Google Scholar

14. “Ruskin's Fireflies” in The Ruskin Polygon.Google Scholar

15. Italy, p. 108.Google Scholar

16. “The Fire-fly,” Italy, p. 174.Google Scholar