Ruskin and Victorian Gothic

Abstract The chapter examines the impact of the major cultural figure John Ruskin (1819–1900) on the character, aesthetics, and ethics of Victorian Gothic Revival architecture. It surveys three interrelated characteristics of the style of architecture known as “Ruskinian Gothic”: mass and shadow, polychromy and ornament, and changefulness. The mass and shadow section shows how the visionary art of J. M. W. Turner deepened Ruskin's sensibility to the drama of chiaroscuro (light and shade) in architecture. It indicates how Ruskin's The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851–53) were crucial in establishing mass, breadth, and dramatic shadow, as the characteristic expression of Victorian Gothic architecture from the 1850s. The section on polychromy and ornament then describes how these architects enlivened their muscular architectural forms with colors, materials, and motifs inspired by Ruskin's meditations on the marbled “incrustation” of medieval Venetian architecture, and the striated buildings of the Pisan Romanesque. The final section, on changefulness, stresses Ruskin's radical politico‐ethical ideas, showing how his challenge to free workmanship from the slavery of the machine led to the Arts and Crafts ideals represented by William Morris, and the free‐style architecture of Philip Webb and Norman Shaw.