Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource : The Collection

Coal Merchant's House in Market Street, Croydon

By John Ruskin

1830 – 1840

Accession number: 1907P141

Pencil, watercolour and bodycolour on paper.

Width: 242 mm

Height: 175 mm

A house on the end of the street with a door on the right and three windows. On the wall outside are two signs for coal and two advertising the use of a horse and cart. Under these is a collection of baskets and other objects.

Information

This early study appears to have been executed when Ruskin was a boy. It depicts the view from his aunt's house in Croydon. In his memoirs Ruskin wrote of his early memories of Market Street and the influence it had upon his art: 'I will sum up once for all the places, and mark the times ... which thus formed my instincts and sense of nativity for ever. First - Market Street, Croydon, and its lovely rough wooden pump with rude stones around it, and tiled cottage roofs. Thence all my steady love of cottages, lattices, littlenesses, roughnesses, humilities ('The Works of John Ruskin, XXXV, Praeterita and Dilecta,' E.T. Cook and A. Wedderburn, eds., 1908, p. 609).

Presented by an anonymous donor, 1907.
© Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

Makers

Association	Artist	Organisation
Artist	John Ruskin	-

Exhibitions

Catalogue No.	Venue	Date(s)
Ruskin Exhibition
186	Royal Society of Painters in Water Colour, London	1901-02-04 - 1901-03-02

Ruskin Exhibition
11	Fine Art Society, 148 New Bond Street, London	1907-03 - 1907-04

Ruskin Drawings and Watercolours
1	Arts Council of Great Britain	1954 - 1954

Ruskin and his Circle
13	Arts Council of Great Britain	1963 - 1963

John Ruskin: The Last Chapter
-	Ruskin Gallery, Sheffield	1989-09-02 - 1989-12-22

John Ruskin and Victorian Art
102	Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo	1993-02-25 - 1993-03-30
102	Ishibashi Museum of Art, Kurume	1993-04-04 - 1993-05-09
102	Nara Sogo Museum of Art	1993-05-12 - 1993-06-06
102	Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Art, Utsunomiya	1993-06-13 - 1993-08-15

Literature

Author(s)	Date(s)	Publisher	Pages
The Works of John Ruskin, I, Early Prose Writings 1834-1843
Alexander Wedderburn, E T Cook	1903	George Allen, London	repr. as frontispiece

Ruskin Exhibition: Catalogue of an Exhibition of Water-Colours and Drawings by the late John Ruskin
	1907	The Fine Art Society, London	p. 10

Works of Ruskin, XXXVIII, Catalogue of Drawings
Alexander Wedderburn, E T Cook	1912	George Allen, London	p. 247, no. 576

John Ruskin and Victorian Art
	1993	Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo	pp. 288-289; repr. p. 152

Associated places

Name	Type
Market Street, Croydon, London, England	Depicted

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