Mountain people

John Ruskin (1819–1900) was Britain’s leading authority on art in the 19th century, and his voluminous writings had a profound influence on both artists and public appreciation. The process of art, according to Ruskin, was one that should be founded upon the truthful perception of nature, and landscape art and its practitioners, notably Turner, were the focus of his prescriptive ideas. A work of art was not about replication or, at the other extreme, artistic expression, but an artist’s ability to respond to and capture the form, colours (hue) and tones of Nature, as perceived at certain times of day, or under key atmospheric conditions. As art was a celebration of God-given beauty, the more sublime and awe-inspiring the landscape depicted, the better. Ruskin was, therefore, drawn to mountains and both visited and chose to live in this terrain.

Several of Ruskin’s accomplished watercolour drawings, which are emblematic of his ideas, have been lent by the Alpine Club, of which the most famous is ‘Grutli uri Rostock, Lake Lucerne’.