Historic Homes of England
The last home of the Victorian polymath, John Ruskin, now stands as a moving tribute to him. Isobel King finds out more.
John Ruskin’s home, Brantwood
OF all the lovely things about Brantwood, and there are many, the most defining is its situation. Set overlooking Coniston Water, which mirrors the soft mountains and high skies of the Lake District, it is a view so picturesque and tranquil that in gazing upon it your mind becomes as still as the water below.
One doesn’t just look at this view but almost becomes it, the profound quiet and majestic calm seeping into your heart.
“I raise my eyes to these Coniston Fells and see them, at this moment imaged in their lake, in quietly reversed and perfect similitude, the
sky cloudless above them, cloudless beneath, and two level lines of blue vapour drawn across their sunlighted and russet moorlands, like an azure fesse across a golden shield,” wrote John Ruskin (1819-1900) of this view in 1878.
Brantwood is famous for being the Victorian polymath’s last home. As an artist, art critic, leading thinker in the field of architecture, teacher and lecturer, geologist and social reformer, Ruskin cut a remarkable figure.
In the arts, he was largely responsible for introducing Tintoretto and Italian medieval painters to the English public, championing the Pre-raphaelites and defending other misunderstood and therefore pilloried
artists of the day such as J.M.W Turner. He was also the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford.
In architecture “he gave new direction and intelligence to the Gothic revival . . . established the modern tendency in architectural conservation . . . [and] was the presiding spirit of the Arts and Craft movement,” says Kevin Jackson in his book, “The Worlds of John Ruskin”.
He was also an influence in the foundation of the National Trust.
In terms of social reform, Ruskin called for an end to the unrestrained capitalism of newly industrialised England which sanctioned child labour, inhuman working hours and disgraceful conditions.
Instead, he proposed universal education for the young, housing and care for the old and destitute, public libraries and minimum wages – ideas for which, at the time, he was ridiculed.
“I will suppose your successes absolute: that from shore to shore the whole of the island is to be set as thick with chimneys as the masts stand in the docks of Liverpool: and there shall be no meadows in it; no trees; no gardens . . . that the smoke having rendered the light of the sun unserviceable, you work always by the light of your own gas,” he said in a lecture published in “The Two Paths” (1859).
Already famous therefore and keen to escape his own celebrity, Ruskin moved to Brantwood in 1872 at the age of 53. He paid £1500 for what was then just a cottage and purchased it without seeing it.
Ruskin wasn’t buying blindly, however; he already knew the view, having drawn it as an 18-year-old on a visit to the Lakes.
It was also known to others, having been highlighted in a popular guide book as a “station” from which one of the best vantage points could be enjoyed.
Like many other artists and writers before him, Ruskin had fallen in love with the Lake District.
“He had absorbed the whole spirit of Romanticism [often associated with this area] and Wordsworth’s poetry meant a huge amount to him,” says Howard Hull, Director of Brantwood and font of knowledge on all things Ruskinian.
For all this, Brantwood is in truth a funny-looking house – “almost like a set of crystals grown up around itself,” as Howard describes it.
It started out as a modest 18thcentury cottage and was added to sporadically throughout the course of Ruskin’s 28 years there until his death in 1900.
The additions were sometimes instigated by Ruskin himself, as in the case of the dining-room and the famous turret which adjoins what was his bedroom, and sometimes by his cousin Joan Severn, who lived with him there and who had ambitions of a house on a much grander scale.
Joan and her family moved in with Ruskin after he suffered the first in a series of mental breakdowns. Overwhelmed by the volume and power of his own thoughts, Ruskin suffered from bouts of ill health when his creative outpourings reached fever pitch.
Their relationship was at times strained. She was raising children and enjoyed the trappings of life while Ruskin remained very aware of the cost of his own comforts.
She did her best, too, in Ruskin’s interests, perhaps, to keep visitors from the house, though friends, pupils and acquaintances did come; most
notably Charles Darwin who dined there three times.
In fairness, Ruskin did not “seek out high levels of sociability, partly because his business – what he did – just involved him with lots and lots of people,” Howard explains.
When he was unwell, he found most solace in his geology collection – geology, as a child, was his first passion. “Give me a broken rock, a little moss . . . And I would ask no more, for I would dream Of greater things associated with these, Would see a mountain river in my stream, And, in my rock, a mountain clothed in trees.” Indeed, as this verse written by Ruskin shows, perhaps his most extraordinary talent was an ability to see both on a visionary level and a granular level, studying the detail of all living and natural things, be it a peacock feather or a stone and translating this into words or pictures.
As the Slade Professor of Fine Art, his colourful and dynamic lectures were famous both for what he said and for his huge illustrations that brought his subjects to life, long before projection.
There is, of course, a certain amount of irony that the day’s leading authority on architecture lived in such a higgledy-piggledy home.
It is perhaps a compliment to Ruskin’s character that he was so apparently uninterested in status as to be completely untroubled by this.
Even with its additions, the house is simple and without ostentation. There are roughly 11 rooms open to the public including, on the ground floor, a modest hallway which leads on to a drawing-room, study and diningroom.
Upstairs, one can walk around Ruskin’s small bedroom and gaze at the panoramic views from the turret.
While appearing modest, Brantwood is filled with extraordinary treasures – many of the sort money can’t buy – from Ruskin’s luminous drawings and paintings on the walls (his own talent as an artist can sometimes be overlooked in the light of his monumental legacy on social reform) to his beautiful shell collection.
Every item tells a story, too, from the cabinet in the study that contained Ruskin’s beloved Turner watercolours to effects that belonged to Rose La Touche – a lady with whom Ruskin fell hopelessly and agonisingly in love.
This complex relationship was unfulfilled; mainly due to the fall-out from Ruskin’s former marriage to Effie Gray which was annulled on the grounds of non-consummation, as well as Rose’s own family who were hostile to the match.
Overall, the feel of the house is one of a welcome gentleness – Brantwood feels lived in and loved. The atmosphere is, in fact, “what visitors comment on more than anything else,” Howard tells me, and has without doubt been achieved through the sensitivity and understanding of the team.
“We try to keep it ‘living’ as a space. We don’t rope things off. We don’t always keep things in exactly the same place because in a home people move things about.
“We don’t put lots of heavy interpretative labels on everything. I mean, we try to let people know what it is that they are looking at, and we put information out so that people can
see it and read it if they want to.” But ultimately nothing gets in the way of just experiencing Brantwood as Ruskin wished all along.
It was a wish that almost didn’t come to fruition. Ruskin died in 1900 at the age of 81, eschewing a place at Westminster Abbey to be laid to rest in the churchyard of St Andrew’s Church in Coniston.
He expressed in his will that Brantwood should be opened for 30 days a year so that visitors could see the house and collection, though sadly things were not so straightforward and, as Howard admits, “We’re really lucky that so much of the house still survives.”
Joan was Ruskin’s only surviving family and so inherited everything. The house and estate eventually passed to her children and by 1931, there was only her daughter left living there.
“She’d run out of money and the house was getting into very, very bad repair so she was persuaded to sell,” Howard says.
In the big sale that followed the house was pretty much stripped.
Fortune, however, did not turn its back on Ruskin entirely. Brantwood was bought by a man called John Howard Whitehouse, an MP and a headmaster of his own school on the Isle of Wight.
He was a great advocate of Ruskin’s ideas on education and, as well as the house, bought many things at the sale which he used to set up a Ruskin Collection at the school, to help the children understand Ruskin’s views.
“It had the effect of preserving many things,” Howard observes.
Another fortunate thing that happened was that a lot of the contents sold locally, particularly Ruskin’s furniture. At that time furniture was expensive to move and there wasn’t a great demand for it so it was possible to find quite easily and return to the house.
“In fact about 85% of everything that you see in the rooms is authentic Ruskin material,” Howard summarises. “It’s not just a replica or something that we’ve brought in that is of the period, it actually belonged to him.”
Touchingly, items that belonged to Ruskin keep returning to Brantwood, so the collection continues to grow.
Howard’s team also ensure that Brantwood continues to look outwards and engage with the world as it is today. “All of the art that hung on the walls in Ruskin’s time, virtually all, was contemporary,” Howard points out, “and his motto was actually ‘To-day’.”
Therefore, one of the issues which the team manages to balance is simultaneously honouring Ruskin’s legacy while maintaining a strong programme of contemporary art exhibitions, inviting artists to respond to Ruskin in some way.
This year, there is a packed programme of events to celebrate the bicentenary of Ruskin’s birth from dance performances to the unveiling of Ruskin’s 2000 specimen geological collection, as well as a large exhibition of Turner’s work. The space above Brantwood’s café and restaurant (this building was once Ruskin’s Coach House), is regularly used for exhibitions, activities, lectures and talks.
In some instances, the similarity with how the house is now and how it was when Ruskin was alive is eerie: you see a photograph of Ruskin sitting in a green leather armchair hanging by the fireplace, only to turn and see exactly the same chair in exactly the same place.
Ruskin was a vigorous man as well as an artist and intellectual.
As well as his extreme output he found time to turn his attention to the 250 acres of the estate, creating numerous gardens, a pond where he observed fish and an ice house where he wished to store ice for the use of local people in times of sickness.
He built a jetty for his boat, the Jumping Jenny, and was known to like crossing Coniston Lake in her during periods of wild weather, relishing no doubt the physicality of the challenge.
Brantwood was a refuge, yes, but far from a retirement.
Despite all his achievements, “history has not been kind to Ruskin,” says Howard. “The black and white Victorian images we see of him with a long beard and steely look make him seem rather severe and he can sound quite angry when he’s talking about society.” What, then, was Ruskin really like? “By all accounts he was very softly spoken. He had very soft, kindly blue eyes and he was quietly witty – not a belly-laugh guy, but actually very playful.
Like all great people he was somewhat driven and he was a tireless workaholic.”
Perhaps the greatest misunderstanding about Ruskin is the idea that he was a utopian.
“William Morris was a utopian,” Howard clarifies. “He believed that there was a particular order to a society that you could build. But Ruskin was more about values – he didn’t have a model society.
“What he did have was a set of ideas that guide the way that we all approach life, and through which you would get the type of world that you deserved.”
Chief of these ideas and most often quoted was his evaluation of the true meaning of wealth.
“There is no wealth but life,” he states in “Unto This Last”, a series of essays on the political economy written in 1860.
He expands this bold statement to say that once man has taken care of his own necessities, what matters most is how we turn our lives to helping others so that we don’t just acquire endlessly for ourselves.
“Ruskin himself was apolitical: he was neither Socialist nor Tory . . . and had a much broader, encyclopaedic and philosophical view of humanity,” says Howard.
Kevin Jackson goes as far to say that by his own – highly idiosyncratic – definition, Ruskin was in fact a Tory.
“A believer in Kings and Queens, hierarchy and obedience, piety and chivalry.” And that his straddling of political models is “one of the fascinating paradoxes of Ruskin’s career.”
The man was, and clearly still is, beyond categorisation and political affiliation and upon a visit to Brantwood “everybody discovers their own Ruskin,” concludes Howard.
Infused with Ruskin’s history and legacy, the house thrums with the very life he valued above all else and the poignant calm renders the space a creative haven to this day.
Of course as well as his immense influence which also endures, Brantwood is part of what Ruskin left us as a nation – a place where we can reflect.
He encourages us to look at ourselves in the dark glass of the lake and understand what it is we see.
In the words of Leo Tolstoy, Ruskin “was one of the most remarkable of men, not only of England and our time, but of all countries and of all times. He was one of those rare men who think with their hearts.”