Architectural Study at Caudebec

1834–1900 · Virkested

Great Britain

April 1846

The second volume of “Modern Painters”

The second volume, written on the strength of his travels, concentrates on Renaissance and pre-Renaissance artists rather than Turner and is more theoretical than the first: Ruskin links the beautiful with the divine, and critics receive it more warmly, although many find his attack on the aesthetic orthodoxy of Joshua Reynolds hard to accept. That summer he is abroad again with his father, who still hopes his son might become a poet — one of many factors raising the tension between them.

October 1847

Engagement to Effie Gray

During 1847 Ruskin grows closer to Euphemia “Effie” Gray, the daughter of family friends, for whom he had once written “The King of the Golden River”; they become engaged in October.

10. april 1848

Married: Effie Gray

1849

“The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, the first book to bear his name

His growing interest in Gothic architecture produces a book with fourteen plates etched by the author: seven moral categories — sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory and obedience — that Ruskin considers vital to and inseparable from all architecture. It promotes a secular and Protestant form of Gothic and challenges the Catholic influence of the architect A. W. N. Pugin.

November 1849

In Venice with Effie: the sketches behind “The Stones of Venice”

In November 1849 the couple stay at the Hotel Danieli: Effie looks for company, while Ruskin works alone and hurries to draw the Ca' d'Oro and the Doge's Palace, fearing that the occupying Austrian troops will destroy them. These sketches and notes will grow into “The Stones of Venice”.