Profession: social theorist

Ruskin inspired and supported Hunt, Rossetti and Burne-Jones, though he turned on his former protégé Millais after his own wife found solace with him. Thackeray published his provocative essays. Carlyle was a great friend and influence, while he himself met and strongly influenced Morris. He followed his friend Carroll in ‘adopting’ the Liddell girls, and taught Wilde, who said he’d participated in his road-building schemes. Having set out promoting Turner’s work over artists of the past, he met and befriended him; deeply shocked by the erotic sketches he found after Turner’s death, he probably didn’t, as claimed, burn them.