Ruskin, John

English art and social critic. Much of his finest art criticism appeared in two widely influential works, Modern Painters (1843–60) and The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849). He was a keen advocate of painters considered unorthodox at the time, such as J M W Turner and members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His later writings were concerned with social and economic problems.

Ruskin was one of the major figures of 19th-century British intellectual life. Like his contemporaries Thomas Carlyle and Matthew Arnold, he was an outspoken critic of Victorian society, and, like them, called for a renewal of British moral, intellectual, and artistic life. His early works were concerned with architecture and painting: his support both for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Gothic Revival had a profound effect on Victorian art, architecture, and crafts.

From these aesthetic concerns he increasingly drew social and moral views, and from the 1860s he devoted himself to political and economic problems, condemning laissez-faire economics, and extolling both the dignity of labour and the moral and aesthetic value of ‘craftsmanship’. His beliefs took a practical turn, and he played a leading role in providing education and decent housing for working people.