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Lot 107
RUSKIN (JOHN) Two autograph letters signed ("J Ruskin" and "JR"), to his secretary W.G. Collingwood; together with the letter by the landscape artist Alfred William Hunt, sending Collingwood his letter of introduction to Ruskin;
25 March 2015, 11:00 GMT
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £2,250 inc. premium
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RUSKIN (JOHN)
Two autograph letters signed ("J Ruskin" and "JR"), to his secretary W.G. Collingwood; together with the letter by the landscape artist Alfred William Hunt, sending Collingwood his letter of introduction to Ruskin; (i) Ruskin's letter of January 1883 (in which he addresses Collingwood as "Darling Collie"), discussing their latest publication ("...Packet safely received with the lovely sections. I got by the same post, a proof of first cut. Brezon [i.e. one of his drawings of Brezon], very satisfactory, and have returned it, touched – for finish. Sending at the same time the other shaded one, and the double plate & sections – Have had no time to read yet. Think of nothing now but the lectures, till they're well started..."), adding: "Would you like the book to be published as part of the Shepherds library series?", 1 page, integral blank, slight foxing, 8vo, Brantwood, 18 January 1883; Ruskin's undated letter (to "Dear Collingwood"), discussing Tyndall and translation from Latin and Greek ("...I never can make out a word of Horace's dialogue satires – nor get through a page of Terence. I read Plato so constantly that I naturally fall into his format. What an utter disgrace to Oxford – not to say to England, Jowett's trans. of the Laws is!..."), 2 pages, engraved heading, integral blank, traces of mounting, 8vo, Brantwood, no date; (iii) Hunt's letter to "My dear Collingwood", then at Oxford, introducing him to Ruskin ("...I enclose note of introduction to Ruskin – I am afraid I have only expressed myself awkwardly therein...") and congratulating him on his arrival at Oxford ("...How I envy you, in very truth, your onset at Oxford! I know how I enjoyed it myself – and there was no Professor Ruskin there either..."), 4 pages, time-staining, 8vo, Capel Curig, 30 October [1872]; (iv) illustrated autograph letter by Arthur Severn, the painter and husband of Ruskin's cousin-companion Joan, to Collingwood, discussing pictures ("...I should like to talk to you on the subject of the nude in exhibitions when can we meet? – Oh my eye! Talking of the nude! Oh lor! Go to the Paris Exhibition! I have just been you never saw such a thing in yr life! it reminded me of being in a London swimming bath! in July!..."), 4 pages, dust-stained, 8vo, Herne Hill, 13 September no year
Footnotes
'I ENCLOSE NOTE OF INTRODUCTION TO RUSKIN' – two letters by Ruskin to his assistant and fellow artist W.G. Collingwood, plus the letter that brought Ruskin and Collingwood together. William Gershom Collingwood, the son of an artist, had gained a first in Greats at Oxford, where he had fallen under the spell of Ruskin, attending his lectures and breakfasts and helping build the road at Hinksey (alongside Oscar Wilde, Alfred Milner, Arnold Toynbee and others). After leaving Oxford, he honed his drawing skills at the Slade and went on to serve as Ruskin's drawing assistant and secretary. In 1875 his translation of Xenophon's Economist was the first volume in the Guild of St George's Bibliotheca pastorum, or Shepherd's Library, series. In 1893 he was to publish the first, and for many years standard, biography of his master.
In a letter to Susan Beevor of 15 December 1882, Ruskin enumerated some of the publishing projects that he had on the go at this time, and to which our letter of January 1883 may refer; these include 'writing beautiful new notes to Modern Painters' and 'getting on with Our Fathers', while seeing Frondes agrestes through the press. He not only sketched Brezon (as referred to in our letter) on several occasions, but included a diagram of its wave-like geological formation in his lectures on geology, which culminated in Collingwood's Limestone Alps of the Savoy of 1884. Ruskin contributed an introduction to Collingwood's book, hailing it as 'the fulfilment, by one of the best and dearest of those Oxford pupils to whom I have referred in the close of my lectures given in Oxford this year, of a task which I set myself many and many a year ago' and as an expansion of his discussion of 'the sculpture of mountains into the forms of perpetual beauty', first explored in the fourth volume of Modern Painters.