Old Vevay

1834–1900 · Workplace

Great Britain

1866–1872

A proposal to Rose La Touche and a final refusal

Eight years after they meet, in 1866, Ruskin proposes to Rose La Touche, but in 1872 he receives a final refusal from her parents.

August 1869

First Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford

In August 1869 Ruskin is unanimously appointed the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University, largely through the offices of his friend Henry Acland. His lectures are so popular that they have to be given twice — once for the students and again for the public.

1870s

A hereditary neurological illness worsens

Against the background of a personal crisis tied to his love for Rose La Touche, Ruskin's hereditary neurological disorder (CADASIL syndrome) worsens in the 1870s.

1871

Founds the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art

In 1871 Ruskin founds his own art school at Oxford, the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art — first housed in the Ashmolean Museum, now on High Street — and endows the drawing mastership with £5000 of his own money; for his lectures he assembles a collection of over 800 frames of drawings and watercolours. The school challenges the orthodox, mechanical methodology of the government art schools, the “South Kensington System”.

January 1871

Begins “Fors Clavigera”, letters to the workmen

In January 1871, the month before he starts lecturing the wealthy Oxford undergraduates, Ruskin begins his monthly “letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain” — ninety-six letters of “Fors Clavigera”, personal, on every subject and in a variety of styles, in which he develops the principles of his ideal society; its practical outcome will be the Guild of St George. From 1873 he has full control of all his publications, having made George Allen his sole publisher.