A painting of a city with buildings in front of a river and a silhouetted cathedral rising up above it in the background.

‘A Perpetual Paradise’: Ruskin’s Northern France

20 April – 15 September 2002

John Ruskin’s interest in the architecture and landscape of northern France is often disregarded, unlike his love of Italy, Switzerland and the Alps.

“The whole of Northern France (except Champagne), dull as it seems to most travellers, is to me a perpetual Paradise.”
John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Vol. 4

This exhibition gathered together a wealth of material which reflected the scope of Ruskin’s interest in northern France. It displayed not only items from the Museum’s Whitehouse Collection of Ruskin’s work but also items loaned by Museums Sheffield’s Ruskin Collection and private collectors.

A black and white sketch of a harbour with a city skyline in the background. — John Ruskin, ‘Calais Harbour’, 1884, 1996P1185 © The Ruskin, Lancaster University

Photographs from Ruskin’s own collection were displayed with his notebooks and diaries, filled with accounts of travel, architecture and history. Hung side by side were pictures by T.M. Rooke and Frank Randal, plus photographs by Arthur Burgess which were commissioned by Ruskin for the Guild of St George.