John Ruskin, H.R.W.S. (London 1819-1900 Brantwood, Coniston)

Ruskin travelled to Germany in 1859 to visit the galleries and museums in the main cities and report back to a Government commission into the organisation of the National Gallery. In his diary Ruskin records studying works of art that he might previously have been expected to dismiss, works by artists such as Rembrandt, Correggio and Veronese. The Van Dyck portrait from which Ruskin made the present study, is in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (fig. 1). Until the 1930s it was wrongly identified as the wife of the Antwerp sculptor André Colyns de Nole and her daughter (S.J. Barnes, N. de Poorter, O. Millar, Van Dyck, a complete catalogue of the paintings, New Haven and London, 2004, III, p. 122). It is characteristic of Ruskin’s drawings that he focuses on a peripheral element in the composition, the little girl’s attention being distracted by something outside the frame.