SOURCE: "Ruskin: Art and the Critic," in Artists and Writers in Revolt: The Pre-Raphaelites, David & Charles, 1976, pp. 16-34.

In the following essay, Williamson examines Ruskin's conflicted relationship to the social and artistic status quo of Victorian England.

Described as 'the most eloquent and original of all writers upon art', John Ruskin was the fountain-head of the most vital developments of painting up to the time of the Impressionists. He was born on 8 February 1819, the son of a wealthy Edinburgh wine merchant settled in London. There was a possible dark psychological legacy from his grandfather, John Thomas Ruskin, who committed suicide at Bowerswell in 1817, after the death of his wife; and it was the fact that Bowerswell ten years later was bought by George Gray, Writer of the Signet in Perth, that set the scene for one of the great disasters of Ruskin's life, his marriage to George Gray's...