After the Old Man, or 2/3rds of the Old Man, I visited the Ruskin Museum in Coniston. John Ruskin was the great Victorian artist/critic/educator/social reformer, one of Britain's most impressive and influential thinkers. It is another small, provincial museum, but it conveyed, at least for me, much of what the man was about, as well as the intersections between his interests and mine (Turner, mountains (“nature's cathedrals”), landscapes, geology, touring, representation and interpretation, preservation, education and the people, and on and on). On display were many of his notebooks and sketches and drafts. The man's industry—he must never have spent a waking moment not sketching or writing—is incredible. After the museum I visited his gravesite in the Coniston churchyard. He was offered Westminster Abbey but stayed in the Lake country.
We drove back to Hawkshead to buy a winter Tilley hat I had been admiring (I am a Tilley man, and it was 45 degrees last night) and then camped, as it nearly always were, at a tarn trail carpark on the summit "High Cross" between Hawkshead and Coniston.
 |
Ruskin Museum
|
 |
Portrait
|
 |
In his study, in Coniston; sort of a St. Jerome pose...
|
 |
Rock Band; well, Ruskin's harmonicon, a rock (hornfel)
dulcimer, made for him by the Till family in Coniston,
who were touring world-wide to popularize this form of
music; evidently it was not Elvis who invented Rock
|
 |
Grave at Coniston churchyard
|
No comments:
Post a Comment