John RUSKIN
(London 1819 - Brantwood 1900)
Study of a Sprig of Myrtle
Sold
Watercolour over an underdrawing in pencil, with pen and brown ink and touches of white heightening.
Indistinctly inscribed Andromeda(?) on verso, laid down.
144 x 184 mm. (5 5/8 x 7 1/4 in.)
Indistinctly inscribed Andromeda(?) on verso, laid down.
144 x 184 mm. (5 5/8 x 7 1/4 in.)
John Ruskin drew constantly, and although he received some training from artists such as Copley Fielding and James Duffield Harding, his talents as a draughtsman were to a large extent the result of natural gifts. As the young Ruskin noted in a letter of his mother of 1845, ‘Architecture I can draw like an architect, and trees a good deal better than most botanists, and mountains rather better than most geologists.’
For the most part, Ruskin’s drawings were not intended for exhibition, but rather as a complement to his written work. As Paul Walton has noted, Ruskin’s voluminous writings, in the form of books, diaries, essays, articles and letters, are enriched by the study of his ‘watercolours and sketches of the mountains and skies, cottages and cathedrals, stones and flowers in which he found inscribed the messages that guided his life’s work as an interpreter of nature and art.’
Provenance
William Gershon Collingwood, Coniston, Cumbria
Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 19 March 1985, lot 138 (as ‘A Stem of Leaves in Bud’)
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 10 April 1997, lot 74
Bernadette and William M. B. Berger, Denver, Colorado
The Berger Collection Educational Trust.
Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 19 March 1985, lot 138 (as ‘A Stem of Leaves in Bud’)
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 10 April 1997, lot 74
Bernadette and William M. B. Berger, Denver, Colorado
The Berger Collection Educational Trust.
Exhibition
Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Ruskin, 1969, unnumbered.
