Supporting Documents

SD2429.  John Ruskin to Ellen Heaton

Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 364 (in part).

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[?early January 1861]

Dear Miss Heaton

I don’t like any of these subjects—nor the one I suggested either: Isobel’s child is melancholy and commonplace. The Lost Bower absurd and commonplace. I mean as expression of Mrs Brownings. If Hughes felt at all up to doing

“That was a Piedmontese; and this is the Court of the King.”

it would give a permanent and public value to the picture well worth the extra effort it would require, but I am afraid it is a little too strong for him. I’ll really think of it now, and hope to write tomorrow.

Text: Sublime & Instructive: Letters from John Ruskin, ed. Virginia Surtees (London, 1972), pp. 228–229.

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