John Ruskin (10)
"Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for instance."
John Ruskin
1)A. E. Seaton, 'Peacock feather' - Study of a Peacock's Tail Feather (1876-9).
Courtesy Guild of St George,Museums Sheffield
2)John Ruskin-Study of a Peacock's Breast Feather. Watercolour.1875
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(1)This work is one of a number of drawings and watercolours in the collection of which curators know little of their history or provenance. An 'A E Seaton' has signed the work, but we do not know anything about the artist, except that work by 'the late Miss Seaton' was donated to the collection during the early 1900s. An 'Alice' or 'Annie' Seaton also produced works in Sheffield's Visual Art Collection and this may have been the same person.
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Ruskin discovered the peacock was frequently used in relief sculpture in the Byzantine architecture of Venice. To him, this indicated the power other civilisations found in peacocks, both as an object of beauty ('cumbrously decorative' as Ruskin put it) and in their alter-ego as a Phoenix; the symbol of resurrection. Nevertheless Ruskin said that while peacocks were one of the most beautiful things on earth, they were also the most useless.
*продолжение следует...
John Ruskin
1)A. E. Seaton, 'Peacock feather' - Study of a Peacock's Tail Feather (1876-9).
Courtesy Guild of St George,Museums Sheffield
2)John Ruskin-Study of a Peacock's Breast Feather. Watercolour.1875
*
(1)This work is one of a number of drawings and watercolours in the collection of which curators know little of their history or provenance. An 'A E Seaton' has signed the work, but we do not know anything about the artist, except that work by 'the late Miss Seaton' was donated to the collection during the early 1900s. An 'Alice' or 'Annie' Seaton also produced works in Sheffield's Visual Art Collection and this may have been the same person.
***
Ruskin discovered the peacock was frequently used in relief sculpture in the Byzantine architecture of Venice. To him, this indicated the power other civilisations found in peacocks, both as an object of beauty ('cumbrously decorative' as Ruskin put it) and in their alter-ego as a Phoenix; the symbol of resurrection. Nevertheless Ruskin said that while peacocks were one of the most beautiful things on earth, they were also the most useless.
*продолжение следует...