Pencil and ink sketch of a town showing its church and towers.

Towers and Turrets

1 June – 30 September 2015

“No towers are so grand as the square browed ones, with massy cornices and rent battlements: next to these come the fantastic towers, with their various forms of steep roof; the best, not the cone, but the plain gable thrown very high; last of all in my mind (of good towers), those with spires or crowns…”
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Vol. 1

A selection of landscape and architectural drawings made by John Ruskin throughout his lifetime.

A pencil and watercolour sketch of a convent. — John Ruskin, ‘Convent at Sallenches’, 1856, 1996P1484 © The Ruskin, Lancaster University

Towers and turrets remained a constant theme throughout John Ruskin’s work, both through individual studies and as part of the wider landscape. His first focused effort to observe the details of towers was in the years of 1832-1837. On his tours of 1835 and 1837, Ruskin produced copious studies of church towers and market squares across Britain and Europe. Later tours abroad fuelled his interest in detailed architectural study, especially of the churches of northern France (such as Rouen Cathedral) and the alpine towns of Germany and Switzerland; the towers of Fribourg, the walls of Lucerne and the beauty of Baden can be found time and time again in his work. Ruskin’s careful observations of “the architecture of nations” resulted in one of his earliest published works The Poetry of Architecture, published in parts in the Architectural Magazine (1837, 1838).

Watercolour of a town above a lake. — John Ruskin, ‘Assisi’, 1872, 1996P1126 © The Ruskin, Lancaster University

This exhibition showed a wealth of works from Ruskin’s tours which are held in the Museum’s Whitehouse Collection.