Full Name: John Ruskin

Father: John James Ruskin.
Mother: Margaret Cox.
Wife: Euphemia "Effie" Chalmers Gray.
Girlfriend: Rose La Touche.

Date of Birth: 8 February 1819.
Birth Place: 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, London, England.

Date of Death: 20 January 1900 (aged 80)
Death Place: Brantwood, Coniston, England
Race or Ethnicity: White

Occupation: Writer, Draughtsman, Artist, Social Thinker.
Professor: Slade Professor of Art, Oxford University (1869-79)
Citizenship: English
Education: Christ Church, Oxford, King's College London, University of Oxford.

Artwork: Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, The Lake of Annecy, Autumn 1882, Study of Gneiss Rock, Glenfinlas, Oxalis and heather, Les Grandes Jorasses, Chamonix, Rose la Touche.

Books: 
  • Modern Painters I (1843)
  • Modern Painters II (1846)
  • The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849)
  • Pre-Raphaelitism (1851)
  • The Stones of Venice (1853)
  • Architecture and Painting (1854) 
  • Modern Painters III (1856)
  • Political Economy of Art (1857)
  • Modern Painters IV (1860)
  • Unto this Last (1862)
  • Essays on Political Economy (1862)
  • Time and Tide (1867)
English author, art critic and artist John Ruskin (1819-1900) is mainly known for his magnificent work in the field of art, literature and architecture. His writings combined enormous sensitivity and human compassion with a burning zeal for moral value. Ruskin is also remembered for his great ideas of socialism and large contribution to promoting Gothic architecture.

Early Life: John Ruskin was born on 8th February 1819, at 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, London. His father, John James Ruskin (1785–1864), was a sherry and wine importer, a founding partner and de facto business manager of Ruskin, Telford and Domecq which later became known as Allied Domecq. His mother was Margaret Cox (1781–1871). He was the only child of this couple. John Ruskin began his education at home and then entered King’s College in London. Later he took admitted to Christ Church, Oxford University to further his studies, where he won the Newdigate Prize for his poetry. In August 1829, Ruskin’s first publication was his poem On Skiddaw and Derwent Water. In 1834 three short articles for Loudon's Magazine of Natural History were published. His initial work was not of much significance and went unnoticed before his first major writing Modern Painters came in 1843.

Personal Life: In 1847 Ruskin became closer to Effie Gray (the child of whom he had written The King Of The Golden River), the daughter of family friends. The couple was engaged in October. They married on 10 April 1848 at her home, Bowerswell, in Perth, once the residence of the Ruskin family. But in 1854 the marriage was annulled and Effie later married Millais. Ruskin did not marry again. In January 1866, Ruskin, aged forty-six, proposed marriage to nineteen-year-old, Rose La Touche. She did not reject Ruskin but asked him to wait for three years. In July 1871 Rose La Touche broke off her relationship with Ruskin. It was the cause of his mental breakdown.

Later Life: In 1845 Ruskin spent time in Italy studying the work of the fourteenth and fifteenth-century artists of Pisa, Florence and Venice. It was these artists, together with Fra Angelico and Jacopo Tintoretto, who were the heroes of the second volume of Modern Painters (1846). John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti had established the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. In spite of his dispute with John Everett Millais, Ruskin continued to support the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1854 Ruskin wrote to The Times, praising the latest work of William Holman Hunt. This included The Light of the World (5th May) and The Awakening Conscience (25th May). The art critic, Patrick Conner, has argued that Ruskin's writings inspired artists such as William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.

Ruskin became interested in socialism. Between 1854 and 1858 he taught at the Working Men's College that had been founded by Frederick Denison Maurice, Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes in London. In his lectures, Ruskin denounced greed as the main principle guiding English life. In books such as Unto the Last (1862) Essays on Political Economy (1862) and Time and Tide (1867), Ruskin argued against competition and self-interest and played a key role in the growth of Christian socialism. In 1869, he became the first Slade Professor of Fine Arts. In 1870, he established a charity Guild of St George. Ruskin suffered a complete mental breakdown in February 1878. Ruskin was able to complete The Art of England in 1884. This was followed by The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century (1885). In 1885, John Ruskin established the School of Art in Sidney.

Death: John Ruskin died on 20 January 1900 at the age of 80 .in Brantwood, Coniston, England. The next year 1901, Ruskin Museum was established.