Ruskin's The Elements of Drawing 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 The Elements 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.