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The Life of John Ruskin
For many years Collingwood dedicated himself to helping Ruskin, staying at Brantwood as Ruskin's assistant and travelling with him to Switzerland. In 1883 he married and settled near to Ruskin in the Lake District. Collingwood edited a number of Ruskin's texts and published a biography of Ruskin in 1893.
264 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1893
About the author
William Gershom Collingwood
94 books2 followersWilliam Gershom Collingwood was an English author, artist, antiquary and professor of Fine Arts at University College, Reading.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 6, 2026
If nothing else, The Life of John Ruskin by WG Collingwood is comprehensive. It starts as a conventional biography but later becomes more of a memoir because the author was taught by Ruskin and became a friend, and indeed nothing less than the writer’s resident assistant.
Collingwood’s book was published in 1900 soon after the polymath’s death, though he also had previously prepared a two-volume biography some years earlier and so he needed only to add chapters on the later years. He did rewrite the entire text, however.
Collingwood’s text runs chronologically through Ruskin’s long life and offers much more than mere events. He describes how Ruskin was born into a well-to-do family and how he was educated at home by his parents and private tutors. His mother, an evangelical Christian, made her son repeatedly read the Bible from beginning to end, and it was clearly she who instilled a strong work discipline into the boy, a discipline which he never lost.
It has to be said that had he not been born into relative riches, Ruskin would probably never have developed his interests and furthermore may not have survived childhood. In the nineteenth century “consumption” was a common cause of early death and Ruskin suffered from the disease. But the opportunity to travel in order to take “cures” in Alpine air was available to the boy and thus he survived to live to the age of eighty.
Indeed, it was it is this enduring sense of exceptionalism that emerges repeatedly, and thereby characterizes Ruskin’s life, interests and achievements. His studies were so broad that it is impossible to label the man as inhabiting primarily this or that discipline. At another time, he might even have been regarded as a dilettante. He became perhaps the greatest art critic in Britain in the century, but he also devoted serious study time to geology, political science, poetry, and a whole host of other disciplines. He seems to have never stopped “working”, but he always pursued what was dear to himself personally and was never, it seems, directed by others.
He became a student and then a professor at Oxford University and wrote and published many books over the years. He also set up charitable foundations devoted to workers’ education, and established a museum in Sheffield, which still exists. He also wrote Modern Painters, the first volume of which did much to enhance the reputation of JMW Turner, and later he championed the art of the Pre-Raphaelites, whilst the academic establishment was dismissing them.
But Ruskin, for all his apparently anti-establishment posturing, was no liberal. He maintained a lifelong friendship with the epitome of conservatism, Thomas Carlisle, and had rigid views on class differences in society, almost to the point of believing that social class was handed out by God and was therefore immutable. He educated workers in the hope that they would live better lives, not to change their social class.
The asceticism that his mother cultivated meant also that his ideals of beauty and form were very fixed. He had no time, for instance, for Impressionism because it was not “true to life”, too subjective. For Ruskin, there was almost a scientific desire to represent what an object presented to the world, never an impression or an emotional response to it.
One thing that Collingwood does not describe in Ruskin’s marriage to Effie Gray, recording coldly that in the end she “returned to her parents”. The reality was that Ruskin neither wanted physical contact with her, and was repulsed by her female body, despite being able to appreciate the classical beauties of Renaissance art. The paradox is revealing. Perhaps he just could not compromise on the ideals that he had been taught and which he held dear throughout.
Collingwood’s book certainly changes its style when he records the fact that he met Ruskin as an undergraduate in Oxford. Until then, as stated earlier, the reader feels that this is very much a standard biography. From then on, the contact is almost too personal and therefore both uncritical and adulatory.
There are long lists of achievements by the writer, lecturer, historian, geologist, botanist, geologist and many other guises, but what seems to be lacking is a critical analysis of the achievement. They are listed, but clearly closeness precludes criticism.
Ruskin’s achievements are undoubtedly considerable. Whether they are enduring is a different matter. He deserves ultimate respect for his achievements, but he is a quintessentially nineteenth century figure with all the presumptions which are today considered either embarrassing or objectionable. He, for instance, applauded the suppressing of the rights of slaves to emancipation.
What is evident, however, is just how strongly his mother’s influence endured. He never lost his faith in God and indeed seems to have never questioned it. The rigidity which she encouraged also never left him, and perhaps was the source of his inability to consummate his marriage.
Ruskin remains an enigma. He was a supporter of the establishment but never honoured or was adopted by it. He is still associated with a general liberalism, but he was a lifelong conservative whose dismissal of politics was profound. I am not sure we know him any better at the end of his biography. He remains on a pedestal which is difficult even to approach.
Collingwood’s book was published in 1900 soon after the polymath’s death, though he also had previously prepared a two-volume biography some years earlier and so he needed only to add chapters on the later years. He did rewrite the entire text, however.
Collingwood’s text runs chronologically through Ruskin’s long life and offers much more than mere events. He describes how Ruskin was born into a well-to-do family and how he was educated at home by his parents and private tutors. His mother, an evangelical Christian, made her son repeatedly read the Bible from beginning to end, and it was clearly she who instilled a strong work discipline into the boy, a discipline which he never lost.
It has to be said that had he not been born into relative riches, Ruskin would probably never have developed his interests and furthermore may not have survived childhood. In the nineteenth century “consumption” was a common cause of early death and Ruskin suffered from the disease. But the opportunity to travel in order to take “cures” in Alpine air was available to the boy and thus he survived to live to the age of eighty.
Indeed, it was it is this enduring sense of exceptionalism that emerges repeatedly, and thereby characterizes Ruskin’s life, interests and achievements. His studies were so broad that it is impossible to label the man as inhabiting primarily this or that discipline. At another time, he might even have been regarded as a dilettante. He became perhaps the greatest art critic in Britain in the century, but he also devoted serious study time to geology, political science, poetry, and a whole host of other disciplines. He seems to have never stopped “working”, but he always pursued what was dear to himself personally and was never, it seems, directed by others.
He became a student and then a professor at Oxford University and wrote and published many books over the years. He also set up charitable foundations devoted to workers’ education, and established a museum in Sheffield, which still exists. He also wrote Modern Painters, the first volume of which did much to enhance the reputation of JMW Turner, and later he championed the art of the Pre-Raphaelites, whilst the academic establishment was dismissing them.
But Ruskin, for all his apparently anti-establishment posturing, was no liberal. He maintained a lifelong friendship with the epitome of conservatism, Thomas Carlisle, and had rigid views on class differences in society, almost to the point of believing that social class was handed out by God and was therefore immutable. He educated workers in the hope that they would live better lives, not to change their social class.
The asceticism that his mother cultivated meant also that his ideals of beauty and form were very fixed. He had no time, for instance, for Impressionism because it was not “true to life”, too subjective. For Ruskin, there was almost a scientific desire to represent what an object presented to the world, never an impression or an emotional response to it.
One thing that Collingwood does not describe in Ruskin’s marriage to Effie Gray, recording coldly that in the end she “returned to her parents”. The reality was that Ruskin neither wanted physical contact with her, and was repulsed by her female body, despite being able to appreciate the classical beauties of Renaissance art. The paradox is revealing. Perhaps he just could not compromise on the ideals that he had been taught and which he held dear throughout.
Collingwood’s book certainly changes its style when he records the fact that he met Ruskin as an undergraduate in Oxford. Until then, as stated earlier, the reader feels that this is very much a standard biography. From then on, the contact is almost too personal and therefore both uncritical and adulatory.
There are long lists of achievements by the writer, lecturer, historian, geologist, botanist, geologist and many other guises, but what seems to be lacking is a critical analysis of the achievement. They are listed, but clearly closeness precludes criticism.
Ruskin’s achievements are undoubtedly considerable. Whether they are enduring is a different matter. He deserves ultimate respect for his achievements, but he is a quintessentially nineteenth century figure with all the presumptions which are today considered either embarrassing or objectionable. He, for instance, applauded the suppressing of the rights of slaves to emancipation.
What is evident, however, is just how strongly his mother’s influence endured. He never lost his faith in God and indeed seems to have never questioned it. The rigidity which she encouraged also never left him, and perhaps was the source of his inability to consummate his marriage.
Ruskin remains an enigma. He was a supporter of the establishment but never honoured or was adopted by it. He is still associated with a general liberalism, but he was a lifelong conservative whose dismissal of politics was profound. I am not sure we know him any better at the end of his biography. He remains on a pedestal which is difficult even to approach.
September 8, 2023
Old fashioned but thorough telling of his life. Great as a first book on Ruskin and free.
October 10, 2016
Praise great men
I'd heard of Collingwood in comparison to Maugham and he does have what the latter would see as a clear style. Essentially it is a eulogy for Ruskin though painstakingly detailed as regards formal aspects of his life and works. A serious student. might find a more modern treatment more revealing but this work exemplifies the fondness for its subject that it claims on the part of those who had close dealings with Ruskin.
I'd heard of Collingwood in comparison to Maugham and he does have what the latter would see as a clear style. Essentially it is a eulogy for Ruskin though painstakingly detailed as regards formal aspects of his life and works. A serious student. might find a more modern treatment more revealing but this work exemplifies the fondness for its subject that it claims on the part of those who had close dealings with Ruskin.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews