Exhibitions at Brantwood

Loving the Unloved:

John Ruskin’s Thistles

Ruskin was attracted to the humblest of plants, and although he loved plants for their flowers, he developed a particular fascination and sympathy for thistles and similar thorny or spiky plants.

With his love of architecture, Ruskin was interested in the use of plant forms in decoration, such as ironwork or stone carving. In particular, he loved the gothic style of the middle ages, studying the intricate expressions of forms derived from nature. Chief among these were the curves and twists associated with sharply serrated or pointed leaves, or, at their greatest extreme, the formation of thorns.

Ruskin did not stop there, however. He developed a theory of thistles which he called ‘States of Adversity’ in which he described the tendency of living forms to become spiky and entangled in response to adverse conditions in their evolution. Whilst not proposed as a scientific theory, he went on to develop the idea across botany, art, architecture and society.

On an autobiographical note, Ruskin considered himself to have experienced rough emotional soil in his earlier years, and he wrote of his hero, Turner (a famously thorny character), that his nurturing had been so poor that he might have been an even greater painter had it not been so. In his love for humanity and his regard for the downtrodden, Ruskin’s focus is always upon the sense in which our natural potential for generosity and collaboration is warped or negated by rough treatment or conditions.                         

When next you consider that someone is ‘a bit prickly’, you may want to think of them as one of Ruskin’s thistles!

Opening Times:

10.30am to 4.00pm, Wednesday to Sunday : until 11th March 2012*
10.30am to 5.00pm, daily : from 12th March 2012

Admission is included in the house & garden ticket.

*Closed Mondays and Tuesdays except for Monday 13th February and Tuesday 14th February (half term week)

Admission is included in the house & garden ticket.

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