John Ruskin was the son of a prosperous London wine shipper. His lifelong interest in art was awakened by seeing Turner's work for the first time in 1832. He graduated from Oxford in 1842, and in 1843 published his six-volume defence of Turner, 'Modern Painters'. Ruskin became the most important and influential writer on art of the Victorian era. Holman Hunt read volume two of 'Modern Painters' in 1847, and was greatly impressed by the book.

Critique of Existing Art

Modern Painters criticised much European painting since the Renaissance for its lack of truth to nature. Ruskin's opinion of "the clear and tasteless poison of Raphael" was echoed in his swingeing criticism of contemporary painters.

Doctrine of Truth to Nature

In August 1851, Ruskin published a pamphlet 'Pre-Raphaelitism' in defence of the Brotherhood. The statement (see below), which he used as a preface, was reprinted from volume two of 'Modern Painters'.

'Eight years ago, in the close of the first volume of 'Modern Painters', I ventured to give the following advice to the young artists of England:

"They should go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and frustratingly, having no other thought but how best to penetrate her meaning: rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing".

(This advice, he added, 'has at last been carried out, to the very letter...')

Doctrine of Imaginative or Symbolic Realism

Ruskin's doctrine of nature did not exclude imaginative subjects. He believed that natural and real things can be painted truthfully and can also convey a symbolic or imaginative meaning.