Misinterpreting Ruskin: New light on the „dark clue‟ in the basement of the National Gallery, 1857-58

Abstract

It has been suggested that Ruskin’s discovery of erotic drawings by Turner, during his work on the Turner Bequest in 1857/58, brought on a major crisis that was “the real turning point” of his life. If correct, this affects our perception and understanding, not just of Ruskin’s life, but also of his work from 1858 onwards. Like the compulsive attention given to Ruskin’s marriage, and to his supposed paedophilia, the story of Ruskin and the erotic drawings tends to distract attention away from the cultural value of his work, and therefore a particularly careful examina-tion of the case for its significance is necessary. This paper approaches the problem from a new perspective, by focusing on Ruskin’s little-known attempts to edit some of Turner’s finest compositions in the fifth volume of Modern Painters, and by seeking an explanation for these ac-tivities through his work on the Turner Bequest. Using images available online (and elsewhere) of sketches in the Bequest, it is possible to recap-ture something of what Ruskin saw in the basement of the National Gal-lery, and to seek to understand what it was that led him to dismiss a large proportion of sketches in the Turner Bequest as “entire rubbish.” Follow-ing the implications of that enquiry, this essay argues that Ruskin’s rejec-tion of these drawings can be understood purely in terms of Ruskin’s known attitude to what he considered to be inferior art; that this provides a full and adequate explanation not only for the anomalies in his etched illustrations, but also for the darkened and disillusioned perception of Turner that found expression in Modern Painters V; and that in terms of understanding Ruskin’s life and work, post-1858, his encounter with Turner’s erotica may be much less important than has been supposed.