John Ruskin

(London 1819-1900 Brantwood)

Macugnaga, Italy

Footnotes

Provenance
Collection Charles Warren (according to a label on the reverse)
With Spink, London (according to a label on the reverse)
With Garton & Co (according to a label on the reverse)
Private Collection, USA

Ruskin spent the summer of 1845 in Florence working towards the projected second volume of Modern Painters. He wrote to his father 'nothing gives me any pleasure at present, and I shall not recover spring of mind until I get on a glacier'. Seeking solitude and respite from the summer heat he moved north and rented a tiny chalet at Macugnaga near Monte Rosa in the Piedmontese alps. Here he drew, walked, read Shakespeare and turned his hand to helping the locals with haymaking.

In a letter to his friend, the Rev. Clayton he described his existence: '..living in a deal cabin..with not a soul whom I can speak to except the cows and the goats and a black puppy, and some sociable moths who came in the evening to put my candle out - I begin to feel more like St Paul or St Anthony than myself'. The sketches during this ascetic sojourn record the local scenery in analytical detail: its vegetation, the rock formations, the weather. Another study of woodland, dated 4 August, of almost identical size to the present work and presumably from the same sketchbook, was given by the artist to the Ruskin Drawing School and is now in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (WA.RS.RUD.296.a).