John Ruskin

Gifted by the artist to John Barratt in 1883
Mrs Holt, by 1912
A gift to Mary Soames by John Gilbert Winant to commemorate Winston Churchill's visit to Bristol in April 1941

Coniston, The Coniston Institute, The Ruskin Memorial Exhibition, 21st July – 8th Sept 1900, cat. no.11.

E.T. Cook & A. Wedderburn (eds.), The Library Edition of The Works of John Ruskin, Cambridge, 1912, Vol.38, cat. no.296, p.236 (as St. Mary Redcliff, Bristol).

The sheet is fully laid down onto an acidic board. The sheet appears to have discoloured and the pigments have faded. There are some small bleached flecks scattered throughout the composition and some areas where the paper surface appears to have been rubbed. These include but are not limited to an areas to the right of the house in the lower left corner and in the lower right quadrant of the composition. The work is presented in a book mount and painted frame. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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We are grateful to Professor Stephen Wildman for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.

Even at the tender age of fourteen Ruskin's drawings show his prodigious talent. In order to hone his skills, he would often make copies after engravings, particularly the work of Samuel Prout (1783-1852). If St Mary's, Bristol was not drawn from the subject itself, it is possible it is an example of such a copy, although there are currently no known engravings that directly correspond to the present work. It was typical for Ruskin to later inscribe his drawings, as with the present example. 

Mary Soames first visited Bristol with her father on 12th April 1941, when he conferred honorary degrees on the American Ambassador to Britain, John Gilbert Winant, and the Australian Prime Minister, Robert Gordon Menzies. During the visit, they witnessed the damage caused by the previous night's ‘Good Friday Raid', one of the worst bombing raids on Bristol during the Blitz.