(1877-1882) by John Wharlton Bunney (1828-1882).

Bunney's painting of San Marco served as the centre-piece of the Ruskin Collection's first home in the St George's museum at Walkley, and it remains a popular work in the collection today.

Commissioned by Ruskin for the fee of £500, it is a large painting, measuring more than 6 feet across; the unusual level of detail reflecting the painting's intended function as an accurate architectural record.

Cook and Wedderburn, editors of Ruskin's Complete Works, recorded that 'the artist spent upon it no less than six hundred days' constant labour' (Works, 10, p. lxiii).

Watch a short film about the painting made by Sheffield Museums HERE.

by John Ruskin

Pen, ink, and watercolour on paper

Painted over a four-year period, this small work is a beautiful example of Ruskin's ability to find profound wonder and spiritual beauty in nature's smallest, most easily overlooked elements.

In 2019, it was described by The Guardian's art critic Jonathan Jones as 'a mesmerising portrayal of green life entwined in the ancient scars and turbulent strata of a steep rocky mass.'

Read a Country Life article about this picture and the artist HERE.

The Ruskin Collection contains relatively few drawings and watercolours by Ruskin himself. This is arguably the gem of that small grouping, however. John Ruskin, "The Matterhorn from the Moat of the Riffelhorn" (1849) [Mont Cervin/ Monte Cervino]. This is one of several Matterhorn studies that Ruskin made in order to illustrate his book MODERN PAINTERS, Volume IV, which he sub-titled "Of Mountain Beauty". He drew it from different angles so that readers could trace the contours around the mountain. Ruskin later wrote that his drawings for MP IV were "the first faithful drawings" of the Alps. He felt that geologists had made their studies of the Matterhorn "under the influence of considerable excitement" owing to its unusual shape. He therefore photographed the mountain, too, checking the accuracy of his studies. At that time, no one had ever climbed the Matterhorn, so illustrations of it were necessarily imprecise. Nevertheless, Ruskin's mentor in geological studies, James Forbes, had encouraged him to take a scientific interest in its rock structure and Ruskin tried to show that the act of spending time drawing mountains from different angles and distances helped one to see them with greater understanding.

Ruskin considered Tintoretto's "Paradiso" (or “The Paradise”) "the most precious thing Venice possesses" and the greatest work Tintoretto ever created. It is over 10 metres tall and 25 metres wide and covers an entire wall of the council chamber in the Doge's Palace. This painting depicts only a detail.

Ruskin wrote, "I have to draw a peacock's breast-feather, and paint as much of it [as] I can, without having heaven to dip my brush in." This "Study of a peacock's breast feather" (1873) is an exercise in understanding by close observation and drawing. In the process, Ruskin saw that the tips of each filament were composed of "glowing" tones and "rainbow iridescence". Unsurprisingly, this image makes for our most popular greetings card