John Ruskin encountered Turner’s work for the first time when he was 13 years old, thanks to a gift from his father’s business partner Henry Telford. The gift was a book of poems by Samuel Rogers, titled Italy, which featured splendid illustrations by Turner. Ruskin was fascinated by them, and they inspired him and his family to travel to the Alps and Italy to see the places that Turner depicted.
Ruskin was an avid collector of Turner’s paintings, owning more than 300 of them at various points in his life. He preferred Turner’s watercolors over his oil paintings, only possessing one of the latter, The Slave Ship. At Brantwood, he displayed many of Turner’s watercolors in his bedroom.
Although all of Turner’s paintings were sold after Ruskin’s death, their original frames are still preserved at Brantwood, now containing modern reproductions of the paintings that hung in Ruskin’s bedroom. These frames have small leather flaps underneath and grooves on the side, which allowed Ruskin to store them in a specially made cabinet in his study.
The paintings in the bedroom were some of the more important to Ruskin, including Richmond Bridge which was the first of Turner’s paintings that he owned. Others are ones from Ruskin’s travels, as well as some close to home including a view over morecambe bay.