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, and two years later began Fors Clavigera, a series of monthly letters to British workers that ran until 1884 and laid out his vision of an ideal society - one that led to the Guild of St George, which survives. He died 20 January 1900, his reputation eclipsed for decades, then restored as the world caught up to his warnings about industry, craft, and what we now call sustainability.