The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (421 page)

(1819–1900).
The most influential English art critic of his time, also a talented watercolourist. His output of writing was enormous and he had a remarkable hold over public opinion, as he showed when he successfully defended the
Pre-Raphaelites
against the savage attacks to which they were being subjected. He was the son of a wealthy wine merchant and his artistic education was gained through frequent travel in Britain and on the Continent. Ruskin belonged to the
Romantic
School in his conception of the artist as an inspired prophet and teacher. He advocated a revival of the
Gothic
style, his rejection of the
classical
tradition following from his assumption that art and architecture should mirror man's wonder and delight before the visual creation of God and that this demanded a freely inspired and
naturalistic
style to which he felt that Gothic alone was really suited. Although his worship of beauty for its own sake brought him into affinity with the advocates of ‘art for art's sake’ (see
AESTHETICISM
), his strong interest in social reform and ever-increasing concern with economic and political questions during the second half of his life (he used much of his large inheritance for philanthropic work) kept him from accepting a doctrine of the autonomy of the arts in divorce from questions of social morality. His eloquence in linking art with the daily life of the workman had affinities with the views of William
Morris
and his insistence on regarding the state of the arts as a ‘visible sign of national virtue’ and his constant emphasis on their moral function have sometimes been regarded as a conspicuous instance of the ‘moral fallacy’ in aesthetics and criticism. He set himself obstinately and short-sightedly against the effects of the Industrial Revolution in supplanting the older craftsmanship and opposed all efforts to raise the standard of design in industry and to institute schools for the application of good principles of design to mass-production.
Ruskin's personal life was deeply unhappy. His marriage was annulled in 1854 on the grounds of non-consummation (his ex-wife married
Millais
in the following year) and in middle and old age he made many young girls the objects of his unhealthy affection. He proposed to one of them, the 18-year-old Rose La Touche, in 1866, but was refused; she died mad in 1875. In 1878 he lost a famous libel case against
Whistler
, whom he had accused of ‘flinging a pot of paint in the public face’, and soon after showed the first signs of the mental illness that made his final years wretched. After 1889, living in isolation in the Lake District, where he was cared for by his cousin, John Severn, Ruskin wrote nothing and rarely spoke.
Ruskin's complete works were edited in thirty-nine volumes (1903–12). His most important works of art criticism are:
Modern Painters
(5 vols., 1843–60, epilogue 1888), which began as a defence of
Turner
and expanded into a general survey of art;
The Seven Lamps of Architecture
(1849); and
The Stones of Venice
(3 vols., 1851–3). He is accorded a distinguished place amongst English prose writers of the 19th cent., and his finest flights of rhetoric, such as his descriptions of the
Tintorettos
in the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice, are classics of their kind.

 
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(1886–1953).
American painter, active mainly in Paris; with Stanton
Macdonald-Wright
he was the founder of
Synchromism
, one of the earliest abstract art movements. Russell was born in New York, where he studied sculpture at the
Art Students League
and painting under Robert
Henri
. In 1908 he settled in Paris, where he briefly attended
Matisse's
art school. By 1910 he was devoting himself increasingly to painting, and in 1911 he met Macdonald-Wright, with whom he developed theories about the analogies between colours and musical patterns. In 1913 they launched Synchromism, and Russell's
Synchromy in Orange: To Form
(Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, 1913–14) won him considerable renown in Paris. His later work, in which he reintroduced figurative elements, was much less memorable than were his pioneering abstract paintings. He lived in Paris until 1946, then returned to the USA.

 
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(1885–1947).
Italian painter and musician. He was one of the signatories of the
Futurist
painters' manifestos in 1910, but he is remembered mainly as ‘the most spectacular innovator among the Futurist musicians (
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
, 1980). In 1913 he published a manifesto, of
L'arte dei Rumari (The Art of Noises
, expanded in book form in 1916), and later in the same year he demonstrated the first of a series of
intonarumori
(‘noise-makers’), which produced a startling range of sounds. In 1913–14, he gave noise concerts in Milan (causing a riot), Genoa, and London. Others followed after the First World War. Several leading composers, notably Ravel and Stravinsky, thought they opened up interesting possibilities, and Russolo has been regarded as a pioneer of today's electronic music. Unfortunately his compositions and machines have been destroyed. As a painter Russolo made rather crude use of the Futurist device of ‘lines of force’ in his early work; after the war his style became more naturalistic.

 
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Rutter , Frank
.

See
ALLIED ARTISTS' ASSOCIATION
.

 
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(1664–1750).
Dutch still-life painter, with van
Huysum
the most celebrated exponent of flower pieces of her period. The daughter of a botanist and the pupil of Willem van
Aelst
, she worked mainly in her native Amsterdam, but also in The Hague (1701–8) and Düsseldorf, where from 1708 to 1716 she was court painter to the Elector Palatine. Her richly devised bouquets were painted in delicate colours with meticulous detail, and their artistry and craftsmanship are worthy of the finest tradition of Dutch flower painting. She continued to use the dark backgrounds characteristic of van Aelst and the older generation long after van Huysum and other contemporaries had gone over to light backgrounds.