Ruskin, John

1819 - Born on the 8th of February in London, England.

1833 - He discovered the work of Turner through the illustrations to an edition of Samuel Rogers's poem Italy given him by a business partner of his father.

1836 - He was provoked into drafting a reply (unpublished) to an attack on Turner's painting by the art critic of Blackwood's Magazine.

1842 - He returned to his abandoned project of defending and explaining the late work of Turner.

1843 - Published the first volume of Modern Painters, a book that would eventually consist of five volumes and occupy him for the next 17 years.

1843 - Became aware of another avant-garde artistic movement: the critical rediscovery of the painting of the Gothic Middle Ages.

1846 - He belatedly added an account of them to the third edition of the first volume.

1851 - He published an enthusiastic pamphlet about the PRB.

1844 - He had been involved in a major Gothic Revival building project, when George Gilbert Scott redesigned Ruskin's parents' parish church, St. Giles's Camberwell.

1848 - Newly married to Euphemia Gray, Ruskin went on a honeymoon tour of the Gothic churches of northern France.

1864 - His father's death had left Ruskin a wealthy man.

1870 - He appointment as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford was a welcome encouragement at a troubled stage of his career.

1871 - He used his wealth, in part, to promote idealistic social causes, notably the Guild of St. George, a pastoral community first planned and formally constituted seven years later.

         - He launched Fors Clavigera, a one man monthly magazine.

1880-1884 - He developed his idiosyncratic cultural theories.

1900 - Died on the 20th of January in Coniston, Lancashire.