In January 1858, the La Touches, County Kildare gentry of Huguenot descent, asked Ruskin to teach their daughter to draw. Yet it is one that symbolises Ruskin's extraordinary journey, from stern Victorian critic, social reformer and shaper of the pre-Raphaelite aesthetic, to spiritualist, visionary and, eventually, madman. The distance between the two lovers - the two Roses - seems an impossible divide. It is difficult to reconcile this image with the fresh-faced young girl whom Ruskin first met when she was 10 years old and he was 39. This startling drawing, more redolent of Egon Schiele than some sentimental Victorian picture, vividly records the young woman's demise in 1875, probably from anorexia. ![]() ![]() Her hair is spread out on the pillow like some latter-day Medusa her eyes stare at the artist - her fitfully requited inamorata - from a gaunt, pale face. In a recently discovered sketch, Rose La Touche, the 24-year-old lover of John Ruskin, lies on her death bed.
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