John Ruskin was a writer, artist and social reformer with a revolutionary view of world around him.

His deep love of nature led him to document every aspect of the natural world, from vast mountainous landscapes to the smallest plants and rocks. In doing so, Ruskin unearthed a worrying and accelerating trend. The glaciers of his beloved Alps appeared to be receding, the facades of his favourite buildings were slowly eroding away, and the air outside his window had become thick with a dark, sluggish haze, of ‘which no ray of sunshine can pierce.’

Ruskin realised he was witnessing the ravages of climate change, a phenomenon which he attributed to the ‘plague cloud of chimney smoke flying hellishly over the whole sky.’ He would dedicate his life to capturing the gradual, perishing beauty of his favourite landscapes, attempting to bring attention to what he termed ‘the Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century.’

← John Ruskin (by unknown artist)

↑ Near Interlaken

“My most intense happinesses have of course been among mountains.”

Ruskin’s enduring fascination with nature began as a young man. At the age of fourteen, he travelled with his parents across France, Switzerland and Italy, taking in the mountain ranges of the Alps and the ancient palazzos of Venice.

Mountains became a favourite subject of Ruskin’s and he continued to be drawn to them for the rest of his life – ‘it is always the same with mountains,’ he said, ‘once you have lived with them for any length of time, you belong to them. There is no escape.’

View from my Window in Mornex, Where I stayed a While 1861-2 →

‘Go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly … rejoicing always in the truth.’

At the heart of Ruskin’s artistic philosophy was a need to capture the truth of nature’s beauty. Realistically representing each and every phenomenon.

Inspired by the works of his idol, J.M.W. Turner, Ruskin made many detailed studies, attempting to capture the minute details of everything he encountered. It was through this process of truthful representation that Ruskin discovered the effects of the changing climate. Returning again and again to places he had drawn, he noticed the slow degradation of their natural environments, by what he asserted was ‘violent and definite physical action.’

← Study of Rocks and Ferns Crossmount Perthshire

Ruskin returned to Mont Blanc several times during his life, seeking to capture the unique way in which the clouds hugged its peak. In his earlier visits, he had noted how its glaciers appeared by be growing down the mountain, swallowing up the neighbouring villages and towns.

But when he returned to the mountain in the 1860’s, he was despaired to find its glaciers were now receding.

Ruskin would use his drawings, as well as earlier works by Turner, to evidence these recessions. His art became his primary tool in proving his theory: that industrial pollution was causing what could be irreparable damage to the natural world.

Chamouni, Mont Blanc de St Gervais →

No where was this threat more evident to Ruskin than in the ancient buildings of Italy. Their finely carved features seemed to be disappearing before his eyes.

As a young man, he had captured the gothic structures of Italy’s most intricate buildings. In his later years, he would grieve for their crumbling facades.

‘Our Geneva – our Como – our Verona,’ he lamented, ‘twice dead and plucked up by the roots’.

He contributed their destruction to a combination of air pollution and overzealous attempts to restore them.

← Part of the Facade of the Duomo, Lucca

Ruskin was convinced that the answer to all this destruction lay within the clouds.

In a series of lectures he gave entitled ‘the Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century’, he spoke of how the clouds of years gone by had been ‘luxuriously fine’, but that now a ‘thunderstorm; pitch dark, with no blackness’ was frequenting the sky.

Ruskin believed the belching chimneys of modern industry were creating these ‘filthy, lurid’ clouds, and that they themselves were to blame for the decline in nature’s beauty.

Sunrise Over the Sea →

In his later years, Ruskin fell into a deep depression. The anguish of the changing climate, mixed with the failure of his marriage and the loss of his parents, proved almost too much for Ruskin to bare. He retreated to Brantwood, his Lake District home on the edge of Coniston Water, where he found some solace in the beauty of the lake and the clouds.

He described the sunlight over Coniston as ‘a painted window into heaven.’

Though Ruskin spent much of his life chasing the effects of ‘the Storm Cloud’, his observations on climate change would not be proven and accepted till decades after his death. His works and writings remain an important insight into the history of Europe’s changing industrial landscape, and his philosophies have inspired many artists to continue in his stead.

← Dawn, Coniston