THE DESIRE OF MY EYES: The Life and Work of John Ruskin

by Wolfgang Kemp ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1990

As Kemp (Art History/Univ. of Marburg, West Germany) demonstrates in this full (544 pp.) and very fine biography, Ruskin (1819-1900)--writer, artist, art historian, social prophet, educator, political economist--became for his Victoran age an icon of its range, achievements, problems, and failures. Earnest and accomplished from childhood, emotionally deprived and overprotected as well, Ruskin saw his first marriage annulled after six years so that his wife could marry John Millais; Ruskin spent the rest of his life in tortured and unconsummated attachments to very young girls. A gifted, subtle, fastidious historian of art and architecture, he taught his generation how to look at modern art, especially at Turner, Venetian monuments, and the buildings we now call Victorian. His more spiritual side was expressed in the first original fairy tale in English, The King of the Golden River, in works on mythology and the Pre-Raphaelites, and in Ethical Dust, a child's introduction to geology. In an unprecedented shift of focus, he became a savage but influential social critic, on the order of Carlyle, exhorting industrialists and legislators to take responsibility for the welfare of the laboring classes through such schemes as a guaranteed minimum wage, nationalized industries, public education, pensions, unemployment benefits, and vocational training--inspiring the British Labour Party and such world leaders as Gandhi. But his final years were dark: withdrawn, insane, infantilized, he spent the last 11 years of his life believing that he and all of England were overwhelmed by the Evil One, a shadow he was himself casting. A lively, learned, and astute biography that affirms a talented man whose political, social, and aesthetic arguments are perenially relevant.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1990

ISBN: 0374523487

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1990

Categories: NONFICTION