www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk ISSN 2053-8715 (print) ISSN 2053-8839 (online) The Guild of St George The Companion No. 16 (2016) Beautiful Peaceful Fruitful Front cover: ‘New life in the Wyre Forest’, photograph by Lynne Roberts, 2015. The Companion is edited, designed & The charity for arts, crafts and the rural economy, founded by John Ruskin in 1871. published by the Guild’s Communications Registered charity 231758. Limited company no. 12583. Officer, Dr Stuart Eagles. <www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk> CONTENTS (Editorial) TREASURES OF THE RUSKIN COLLECTION Stuart Eagles 3 THE GUILD A LETTER FROM THE MASTER OF THE GUILD Clive Wilmer 5 Master: JOHN RUSKIN’S BOTANICAL BOOKS David Ingram 7 Clive Wilmer (Review) Eagles, Miss Margaret Knight & Sheepscombe James S. Dearden 11 Directors: RUSKIN IN SHEFFIELD 2015: AN INTRODUCTION Janet Barnes 13 Janet Barnes RUSKIN IN SHEFFIELD & FREEMAN COLLEGE Carole Baugh 17 Rachel Dickinson ON LECTURING AT WALKLEY & TOTLEY Mark Frost 19 Chris Harris POP-UP RUSKIN MUSEUM, WALKLEY Ruth Nutter 20 John Iles BOOTS, FRESH AIR AND GINGER BEER Sally Goldsmith 21 Peter Miller REMEMBERING ST GEORGE’S MUSEUM & SWAN Richard Watts 24 Jenny Robbins (Speech) THE FOUNDATION OF ST GEORGE’S MUSEUM Clive Wilmer 25 (Speech) REMEMBERING HENRY SWAN Clive Wilmer 26 Clive Wilmer COMPANIONS’ DAY, SHEFFIELD, 2015 Jacqueline Yallop 27 Robert Wilson RUSKIN, POETRY, & THE POP-UP MUSEUM Fay Musselwhite 29 NA Officer: THE THIRD JOHN RUSKIN PRIZE Peter Miller 33 Sara Atwood ON WINNING THE STUDENT PRIZE Robin Sukatorn 34 Administrator: GRANDPA’s PEACH Bob Steele 35 Martin Green AMERICAN NOTES Jim Spates & Sara Atwood 38 Communications Officer: (info box) RUSKIN ART CLUB, LA 40 Stuart Eagles THE VICTORIAN WEB Jim Spates 41 USING YOUR MONEY FOR GOOD: A SYMPOSIUM Catherine Howarth 42 The Editor would like to thank all THE SECOND WHITELANDS RUSKIN LECTURE Bernard Richards 42 contributors to this issue of the magazine—writers, photographers (Film review) MANY BEAUTIFUL THINGS Jim Spates 45 and illustrators. Special thanks are (Review) Ings-Chambers, Louisa Waterford . Sara Atwood 46 due to the editors of American Notes, (Review) Dawson, Benjamin Creswick Robert Hewison 47 Jim Spates and Sara Atwood. Sara ON GIVING THE RUSKIN LECTURE (2015) Marcus Waithe 48 has also proofread the entire THE RUSKIN LECTURE Carole Baugh 49 magazine, as have Martin Green, (Speech) IN THE MAKING [exhibition] Clive Wilmer 50 Chris Eagles, James S. Dearden, THE BELOVÉD REVISITED: RUSKIN LAND IN THE WYRE Neil Sinden 51 Peter Miller and Clive Wilmer. All PAST MASTERS: GEORGE BAKER Stuart Eagles 53 of them have been painstaking in their attention to detail. Ruth (Review) Cambridge Companion to John Ruskin ed. O’Gorman Sara Atwood 58 Nutter has provided valuable help (Review) Atwood, ‘The earth veil’: Ruskin & Environment Alan Davis 60 with the pages dedicated to the (Review) Ruskin Proust ed. & tr. Jérôme Bastianelli Cynthia Gamble 62 Ruskin in Sheffield project. Everyone (Review) Gamble, Wenlock Abbey James S. Dearden 63 has been unfailingly generous and SCUOLA SAN ROCCO VENICE IN SHEFFIELD Clive Wilmer 63 endlessly patient. The Companion is (Speech) Guardian Grando of Scuola San Rocco Franco Posocco 64 a collaborative effort that relies on (Review) Ken & Jenny Jacobson, Carrying Off the Palaces Sarah Quill 66 the goodwill and co-operation of a (Sermon) St George’s Church, Venice Clive Wilmer 69 team of people working together SECRETARIES OF THE GUILD OF ST GEORGE James S. Dearden 70 to record the Guild’s activities for posterity. Thank you. All errors OBITUARIES: Derek Hyatt Howard Hull, Helen Kippax 74 are the responsibility of the Editor Peter Emmet Luke Emmet 75 (sincere apologies). Readers’ Lord Asa Briggs John Spiers 76 feedback and contributions are Suzanne Varady Jim Spates 77 always welcome. Van Akin Burd Jim Spates 79 Please direct any queries about The Companion and the Guild of St George to the Communications Officer, Dr Stuart Eagles <[email protected]>, The Companion is typeset in Perpetua, a typeface designed by Eric Gill, and printed by Herald Graphics, 272-274 Elgar Road South, Reading, Berks, RG2 0BZ. Herald Graphics is a family-run firm accredited by the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council). The Guild is committed to using sustainable forest print stocks. Please note that all references to the Library Edition of Ruskin’s writings—The Works of John Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London, 1903–12) are in the form of vol no. and page no. only (x.x) to save space. 2 TREASURES OF THE RUSKIN COLLECTION One of the motivations behind my Calendar of Treasures of the Ruskin Collection—the daily selection of images I have been sharing on social media—is purely selfish. I have felt for a long time that I ought to know more about the Ruskin Collection. I realised that I could satisfy this need and at the same time add usefully to what is known about some of the artists whose work is represented in it. When I read in the online catalogue put together with meticulous care by Louise Pullen, Curator of the Collection, that, ‘Little is known about [Frank] Randal’ (1852-1917) -– an artist who, with at least 137 works in the Collection, was vital to its identity and history – I realised that the challenge had been set. I may not have found out much in my subsequent diggings in the genealogical soil, but I can assert with some degree of confidence that Randal’s family history throws some light on his upbringing. Members of his extended family seem to have come together in a closer-than- usual union in the face of adversity, principally as a result of a number of premature deaths. This undoubtedly had ‘At Vignetta, near Lecco, Italy’ (1885), one of dozens of beautiful studies an impact, because as a consequence by Frank Randal in the Ruskin Collection. Frank found himself surrounded by his more artistic relatives. lost their mother, Frances Randal née marriage to William Bowles, a widowed Frank Randal was born at 2 Arnold (1828-1857) when Frank was not house steward, in 1879. We know from Marlborough Place, Harrow Road, yet five years old and she was only 30. the 1851 census that she taught piano. Paddington, and was baptised at Holy Frances’s death in June 1857 was the result When she died a widow in 1906, the Trinity Church on September 8th 1852. of complications from childbirth; worse executor of her will was her nephew, He had an older brother, Charles Randal still, the baby boy, named Arthur, died four Frank Randal, the artist represented in (1851-1928) and a younger sister, Fanny months later. the Ruskin Collection, so we can Scott Randal (1856-1941). The boys lost The three children continued to live with speculate that the two were close. their younger brother, the infant Arnold their now widowed father, Charles Hayter To some extent, history had repeated Randal, in 1855, but it must have been Randal (1823-1906), who was a Collector itself in the Randal family. Frank’s an incomprehensible tragedy also to have of Rates for a Gas Company. The evidence paternal grandfather, John Randal, of the 1861 census is that he drew in seems to have died before 1841, thus his extended family to help him care beginning a pattern of family life which for the children. Both Charles’s brought distant relatives under one roof. mother, Mary Randal, née Bromley John Randal’s premature death threw (c. 1796-1878), and his maternal together his widow, Mary, and her aunt, Sophia Wilson, née Bromley sister, Sophia, many years before Frank’s (1787-1869), came to live with them own mother died so young. John Randal at their new home in Woodfield was apparently remembered as an artist, Terrace, Paddington. Sophia gives the at least on his children’s marriage first indication of the extended certificates, filled in at a time when he family’s artistic nature, as she was (or, was of course deceased. What type of more likely, had been) a dance artist he was I have been unable to teacher. A sister-in-law to Charles, ascertain. His children’s baptism records Gertrude Arnold, was also living with make for interesting reading, as they them: she was 19 and no occupation is track his changing status. He shifted listed for her. Possibly the most from being a self-declared Artist living significant member of the extended in Marylebone in 1819, to life first as an family residing with them, though, ‘Attorney’ in 1821, then as a so-called was Charles’s sister: Elizabeth Maria ‘Gentleman’ living in the district of St Randal (1828-1906) was working as a Pancras in 1823 (when Frank’s father, Ruskin and Frank Randal, detail of a sketch in a teacher of music and singing, and Charles Hayter Randal was baptised) to letter from Frank’s brother, Charles, to Fanny probably continued to do so until her life as a ‘Law Writer’ living in Gower Randal (1882). 3 Enjoy the daily posts from the Ruskin Collection on social media, and download the free monthly PDF Calendars of Treasures from the Guild’s website <www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk/the-collection/>. Street North in 1828. John and Mary’s of buildings in France and Italy that survive background reveal little of their personal daughter, Sophia Maria Randal (1818- in the Ruskin Collection. motivations and preferences, but they 44) who died before Frank was born, Frank and his brother Charles both do tell us that Frank lived among artists had been, like the maternal aunt after became artists, though Charles’s preferred of different kinds in his extended family, whom she was named, a dance teacher.