Nine studies for 'The Elements of Drawing'

Name: JOHN RUSKIN, H.R.W.S. (LONDON 1819-1900)
Brand: Nine studies for 'The Elements of Drawing'
Price: 5500.00 GBP
Availability: SoldOut

Price Realised GBP 6,875

Estimate

GBP 5,000 - GBP 8,000

Closed: 27 Jul 2020

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JOHN RUSKIN, H.R.W.S. (LONDON 1819-1900)

Nine studies for 'The Elements of Drawing'

Price Realised GBP 6,875

Closed: 27 Jul 2020

Price Realised GBP 6,875

Closed: 27 Jul 2020

Details Lot Essay Related Articles More from

JOHN RUSKIN, H.R.W.S. (LONDON 1819-1900)
Nine studies for 'The Elements of Drawing'
variously inscribed with the artist's instructions to the engraver: 'Do this very nicely'/ 'Make the dots quite at an even distance'/ 'Do in this lower one'/ 'Dear Miss Byfold [sic]/ I have two more and a little one coming/ after this. Of course I mean the line to be drawn neatly/ round it and no touches[?] to go on the margin./ Truly yours JR'
one pencil, eight pencil, pen and brown ink, one heightened with white, another with blue wash, one with partial Whatman watermark
4¹⁄₂ x 7¹⁄₈ in. (11.4 x 18.1 cm.) and smaller

H. N. Abrams, John Ruskin and the Victorian Eye, Phoenix, 1993, p. 87-91, figs. 62 a-j.

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Lot Essay

Ruskin's was published in 1857. He had been teaching at the London Working Men's College alongside Dante Gabriel Rossetti from 1854, and also by correspondence (where his pupils included Octavia Hill, Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford, Ada Dundas and Isabella Jay) and was a way of bringing his thoughts and teachings together. His teaching methodology insisted that learning to look was more important than how a drawing was resolved: he was vehemently opposed to the mechanical methodology of the government art schools, and he went on to found his own school of drawing at Oxford in 1870. The book's instructions were illustrated with 48 wood engravings by Mary Byfield (1795-1871) after drawings by Ruskin, of which this group is a significant portion. They are inscribed with Ruskin's notes to the wood engraver clarifying the details and appear in the book as figures 4, 16, 25, 30, 33, 35, 45 and 48.
We are grateful to Stephen Wildman for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.