Beyond Proust: The Legacy of Ruskin’s Thought in France

Abstract

Marcel Proust’s translation of Ruskin’s works was the primary reason why the latter’s thoughts and writings crossed the Channel back and forth so easily at the turn of the last century. As recent research has shown, the Victorian sage’s silhouette also looms large in other, more remote quarters, from social politics to contemporary French art history. This essay retraces the critical reception of Ruskin’s writings in France from 1864 to the twentieth century, with a particular focus on art history. It then goes on to explore the way in which Ruskin’s aesthetic stance may have found new echoes in the art criticism of the eminent French art historian Daniel Arasse’s new “philosophy of art.”