John Ruskin

John Ruskin was the most influential art critic of Victorian Britain and a fine draughtsman and watercolourist in his own right. His book Modern Painters began as a defence of Turner, and he also championed the young Pre-Raphaelites; The Stones of Venice set out his ideas on Gothic architecture and the dignity of craft. His careful drawings of buildings, rocks, plants and birds are held by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where he was the first Slade Professor of Fine Art and founded a drawing school. He spent his last years at Brantwood, his house above Coniston Water, now open to visitors.