This tab lists major collections of primary Ruskin documents, drawings, and other materials in the UK and the US and, when available, online access to the collections.

Collections in the United Kingdom

The Collection of Museums Sheffield

The Ruskin Collection is still owned by the Guild of St George, but is maintained and displayed by Museums Sheffiled. The collection is an eclectic mix that reflects Ruskin’s many interests. Early renaissance art, gothic architecture, Albrecht Dürer and JMW Turner’s engravings, mosaic decoration, Japanese cloisonné enameling, illustrations of birds, flowers, insects and landscapes all have their place. In addition, Ruskin added collections of geology and coins, and a library of illustrated books and medieval manuscripts. The Guild of St George has since added to the collection with drawings and paintings, late Victorian photographs and pieces from the Ruskin Linen Industry.

The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection

The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection contains thousands of paintings, drawings, books and manuscripts, correspondence, prints and photographs. Formed by the educator and Liberal MP John Howard Whitehouse (1873-1955), it is the largest collection of materials related to Ruskin and his circle.

See a preview of this collection here.

The Elements of Drawing: John Ruskin’s Teaching Collection at Oxford

Ruskin assembled 1470 diverse works of art for use in the Drawing School he founded at Oxford in 1871. Holdings include drawings by Ruskin and other artists, prints, and photographs. The website offers access to the collection itself, information about Ruskin’s teaching methods and background information on Ruskin’s years as Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford (1870-79; 83-84).

The Treasury: John Ruskin’s Mineral Collection

Ruskin took a great interest in geology and assembled, over the years, one of the finest privately-owned collections of minerals in the world. Much of this legacy was disbursed -- by Ruskin to the various museums and schools he supported and, later on, by his heirs to private collectors. A significant sub-collection of Ruskin’s specimens was recently acquired and returned to its original home at Brantwood, Ruskin’s estate, complete with original mahogany cabinets and catalogs.

Collections in the United States

For the story of the American Ruskin collections and their importance to Ruskin scholarship, read the essay by Prof. Jim Spates here.

John Ruskin Collection: Archives at Yale

The John Ruskin Collection contains correspondence, writings, artwork, and other material relating to the life and career of the Victorian author and art critic John Ruskin. Major correspondents include his parents, John James Ruskin and Margaret Cox Ruskin; George Allen; Edward Clayton; William Graham; Henry Jowett; Robert C. Leslie; Frederic Maynard; Susanna Miller; Sir John Naesmyth and Lady Naesmyth; Edward B. Nicholson; William Roscoe Osler; Harriette Rigbye; and Mrs. Arthur Stannard (who published as John Strange Winter). Writings include notebooks of Ruskin's juvenilia and other poems by Ruskin; autograph manuscripts of "The Mysteries of Life and its Arts" and several of his lectures; the manuscript of his autobiography, "Praeterita;" and corrected page proofs of chapters from Modern Painters and page and galley proofs of Sesame and Lilies. Artwork includes fourteen watercolors and pen and ink sketches by Ruskin. The collection also contains photographs of Ruskin; notes taken by Alexander H. M. Wedderburn at Ruskin's 1874 lectures in Oxford; and a leather postbag stamped with Ruskin's name and address

The Morgan Library and Museum

The Morgan Library, formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library, is a museum and research library in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan (NY city). The Morgan Library is one of the great repositories of Ruskin manuscripts, correspondence, and other materials related to his life and work, including a good selection of Ruskin’s drawings and watercolors and samples of his early Daguerreotypes of Venice. For researchers, the jewel in the Morgan’s Ruskin crown are the papers of 20th century Ruskin scholar Helen Gill Viljoen, whose notes, transcriptions, and chapters of her unfinished Ruskin biography constitute one of the indispensable sources for modern Ruskin studies.  

Harvard University’s Collection

Houghton Library

Houghton Library was opened in 1942 to provide a dedicated home to Harvard Library’s growing collections of rare books and manuscripts. Ruskin’s American friend, Charles Elliot Norton, Harvard’s first professor of art history, donated his sizable collection of Ruskin correspondence and other Ruskin artefacts to the university, a collection significantly enriched in recent years by the R. Dyke Benjamin (Harvard class of 1959) donation. For more information contact the Houghton Library here.

Recent Ruskin exhibitions at the Houghton Library:

Marina N. Bolotnikova, “John Ruskin, Victorian Radical and Art Historian” (2019)

Mark Feeney, “Ruskin at 200: a Victorian genius and his art” (2019)

The Fogg Museum

The Fogg Museum, founded 1895 and directed by Ruskin disciple Charles Herbert Moore (from 1896-1909) was established initially as an institution for the teaching and study of visual arts, along the lines of the Ruskin Drawing School at Oxford. It was reconfigured as an art museum and installed in its present Georgian Revival-style building in 1925. The Fogg’s Ruskin holdings include more than 100 drawings by Ruskin and his American disciples.

The Boston Public Library

The Boston Public Library houses a unique collection of more than 300 letters between Ruskin and Lucia and Francesca Alexander, members of an American family based in Florence, Italy. The correspondence maintained both personally and professionally from 1882 until Ruskin’s death in 1900 centers on Francesca’s work as Tuscan folklorist, innovative book illustrator, and author and Ruskin’s efforts to both mentor and publish her work.

Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA)

The Ruskin Collection of 866 volumes was presented in 1920 by Charles Eliot Goodspeed, well-known Boston bookseller and father of two alumnae. A comprehensive one-author collection, it contains editions of Ruskin's major works in the original parts, many rare pamphlets, autographs, presentation copies, exhibition catalogs, drawings, and watercolors, as well as biographical and critical material.

Among the collection's treasures is a watercolor self-portrait, and several unpublished sketchbooks of the American artist Francesca Alexander, whom Ruskin befriended in Florence.

The Huntington Library (San Marino, California)

The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known as The Huntington, is a collections-based educational and research institution established by Henry E Huntington (1850–1927) and Arabella Huntington (c.1851–1924) and located in San Marino, CA (near Pasadena). In addition to the library, the institution houses an extensive art collection with a focus on 18th- and 19th-century European art and 17th- to mid-20th-century American art. The property also includes approximately 120 acres (49 ha) of specialized botanical landscaped gardens, most notably the "Japanese Garden", the "Desert Garden", and the "Chinese Garden" (Liu Fang Yuan).

The Huntington’s Ruskin collection contains approximately 175 pieces of correspondence and manuscripts covering the breadth of Ruskin’s career as writer and art critic. The correspondence includes: the John Ruskin and Louise Blandy papers; the Susanna Beever letters; 61 letters, dated 1853-1873, to Louisa Anne De La Poer Beresford, a Pre-Raphaelite watercolorist; letters from William Holman Hunt, among others. Chief among the manuscript holdings: the manuscript and drawings of The Seven Lamps of Architecture (c. 1849) and the manuscript of essays three and four of Unto This Last (c. 1862).