John Ruskin | Autograph manuscript signed, on the wood-engraver and illustrator Arthur Burgess, 1887

John Ruskin

Autograph manuscript signed, on the wood-engraver and illustrator Arthur Burgess

describing Ruskin first receiving a letter and woodcut from the Burgess (“I can cut wood like this and am overworked and cannot make my living - can you help me?"), their subsequent working relationship (“and soon we got into a quiet and prosperous work together”), and detailing their various projects, 6 pages, folio, Brantwood, 28 February 1887

This article on Arthur Burgess, more in the manner of an obituary, was originally published in The Century Guild Hobby Horse, 1887. Burgess (?1844-1887) collaborated with Ruskin on several projects, beginning with botanical illustrations after the Flora Danica to illustrate Proserpine. In 1869 Burgess accompanied Ruskin to Verona and then to Venice, where “his small room opening on a stagnant canal, he fell into a fit of delirious fever”, after which it seems he was never the same. The piece goes on to become tinged with regret at Ruskin’s treatment of his illustrator. After resigning his post at Oxford (for which Burgess provided illustrations for lectures) Ruskin sets returns to Italy alone “in the habit fixed in me from childhood of thinking out whatever I cared for silently, partly also not in states of sadness which I did not choose to show, or express, was all done without companions; poor Arthur suffering more than I knew, (though I ought to have known) in being thus neglected”.