The enraptured tourist: Ruskin and France

In this illustrated talk, Ruskin scholar Robert Hewison discusses John Ruskin’s life-long experience of France, its culture politics and architecture. Setting out as an early 19 th century tourist, Ruskin visited the country many times over a sixty year period. He learned from it, and taught the lessons he learned to the British and French alike.

Robert Hewison has spent a lifetime working on aspects of Ruskin. His first book, John Ruskin: The Argument of the Eye, was published in 1976, his most recent in this field is Ruskin and his Contemporaries, published in 2018. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford and co-curator of the Tate Britain exhibition Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites in Ruskin's centenary year, 2000. He is the author of a series of books on post-war British culture, the most recent, Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain, was published by Verso in 2014. He has held chairs at Lancaster and City Universities. He is chair of Ruskin To-Day, the informal umbrella organisation promoting discussion of the ideas and values of John Ruskin.