John Ruskin

John Ruskin was born 8 February 1819 and spent his early career defending J. M. W. Turner in Modern Painters (1843), arguing that an artist's first duty was fidelity to the natural world — art rooted in close observation, not convention. Through the 1850s he championed the Pre-Raphaelites and wrote in an ornate style that eventually gave way to plainer prose as his focus widened. By 1860 he had turned from aesthetics to political economy; Unto This Last marked the pivot toward social reform. In 1869 he became Oxford's first Slade Professor of Fine Art and founded the Ruskin School of Drawing,…