Neal Auction 2012

50 175. John Ruskin (English, 1819-1900) , “A Weathered Dressed Stone in a Minimal Landscape”, c. late 1830s/early 1840s, graphite and white gouache on buff wove paper, initialed “J.R.” at right center, 3 15/16 in x 6 3/4 in., (right edge irregular, though with uniform traces of attachment: probably a page from a notebook); hinged to cream-colored mount, 7 1/4 in. x 10 3/8 in. $1200/1800 Provenance: James R. Lamantia Jr., New Orleans and New York. Exhibited: James Lamantia, Drawing and Architecture, Art Department, Sophie Newcomb College, Tulane University, New Orleans, 15-26 March 1965, no. 26. Note: This is manifestly an early drawing by Ruskin, whose lifelong credo it was to examine meticulously every element of “Nature,” by which he meant both the human and the natural environments. This sheet, evidently from a small notebook of regular size, may even have been a study for a finished drawing (fully signed, with the initials in the same form as here, and dated 1841) now in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. That big sheet, some three times larger in each direction, depicts a distant view of the Aventine Hill in Rome, from the Ponte Rotto on the Tiber; and—in Ruskin’s panorama—the remnant of a Papal monument on the near shore is composed of dressed ashlar blocks, some dozen of which are exactly synchronous with the one studied here, and are even shown in the same perspective. (After an ill-fated Papal restoration in 1575, the Ponte Rotto finally collapsed in 1598, a date which accords well with the weathering of the block sketched here.) Even if Ruskin did not encounter this block in Rome— though a hint of the herbage around the base of the ruined Papal feature, in the Kansas City drawing, may well be the reason for the grass or weeds around the stone in this sketch—the date inscribed on the larger sheet, when the artist was twenty-two years old, accords remarkably well with the early drawing presented here. References: Roger Ward and Mark Weil, Master Drawings from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, St. Louis, 1989, p. and pl. 56; Guida d’Italia, Roma e dintorni, Milan, 1977, p. 464. 176. Very probably John Ruskin (British, 1819-1900) , “Bones of a Female Foot”, 1844, graphite, watercolor, and gouache, on gray wove paper, laid down; unsigned, 7 1/16 x 12 in., in a modern mount; inscribed in a later hand en verso, “156-22-62”. $2000/3000 Provenance: Sir Henry Acland (1815-1900), Surgeon, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, 1844; Sir Henry Wentworth Dyke Acland; Sir William Henry Dyke Acland, Baronet, by 1965; his sale, Christie’s London, 22 March 1966, lot 62, sold to Alister Matthews, Bournemouth and Poole; purchased from the latter by James R. Lamantia Jr., New Orleans and New York. Published: William R. Cullison III and James Lamantia, An Eye for Architecture, Tulane University Library (Southeastern Architectural Archive), New Orleans, 1984, p. 24, no. 22. Note: This drawing has been somewhat ambiguous of attribution from its very inception. On 27 November 1844 the young Ruskin wrote to the Oxford surgeon Dr. Henry Acland (who had loaned Ruskin a box of human bones, purportedly but not accurately containing a full skeleton) that “[George] Richmond has lent me a lady’s foot—the contours of which are exquisite—finished to perfection—I am drawing it for the book—tried to foreshorten it twice and couldn’t[;] but the profile is finest, luckily” (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS. Acland d. 72, folio 4 c). The book to which Ruskin refers was a volume containing anatomical drawings as well as very early and valuable vintage photographs, being compiled by Dr. Acland (the invention of photography had only been announced by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1839). That album was given to the Bodleian in 1983 (MS. Photogr. b. 34) by his descendant Mrs. Peter Tabor, after her father Sir William Henry Dyke Acland had removed the non-photographic items from it, and sold them at Christie’s as recorded above. Since this sheet thus has both an unbroken chain of ownership and a clear statement by Ruskin himself, not only that he drew it but that he drew it in the profile view we see here, there should certainly be no question as to his documented authorship. But ironically Ruskin had also given drawing lessons to Dr. Acland himself; and a suspicion lingers that this sheet, precisely though it may match its description in Ruskin’s letter, might possibly have been executed instead by that very Dr. Henry Acland (whose sketchbooks surviving at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, unfortunately offer no useful testimony as to this question). The reasons for which such a suspicion is probably not warranted are the very fact that the foot in question did not belong to Acland himself, but rather to George Richmond in London, who loaned it directly to Ruskin. Second, the young artist’s self-avowed difficulties of rendering the foot in foreshortened views could very well have occasioned the heavy un-Ruskinian crosshatching behind it—so effective as an obliteration—that has engendered the uncertainty (albeit expressed only verbally) of such critics as Tim Hilton (Ruskin, The Early Years, London, 1985). Certainly this sheet was always recognized to be an autograph drawing of Ruskin’s by the Acland family, and confirmed as such when it was offered in the Acland sale in 1966: it was paired there with a Rhine Landscape inscribed by Ruskin to “Dear Acland,” and the two sheets even at that early date fetched 100 guineas (£105). It should also be said that no less a luminary (and fellow early photographer) than Professor Charles Lutwidge Dodgson of Oxford University—the immortal Lewis Carroll, 1832-1898—noted in his diary (Thursday 12 November 1857, published by The Lewis Carroll Society, 1993) that he had attended “an evening party at Dr. Acland’s,” where he had been shown what seems to be this same skeletal image, and judged it to be “an exquisite drawing by Ruskin.” Documentation: Dossier of 2000-2005 compiled for The Maas Gallery Ltd., London, by Rupert Maas, Jeremy Maas, Stephen Wildman, Colin Harrison and Giles Hudson, annotated by James R. Lamantia. 175 176