Ruskin's earthly treasures
Theodore Simmons views a mineral treasure trove at Brentwood House
COVERING Brantwood's latest exhibition in writing is difficult. The house's original owner, the celebrated Victorian polymath John Ruskin, famously thought drawing possesses a power of description 'greater in most instances than that of words'.
Luckily, there was something Ruskin found even more powerful: geology. Ruskin obsessed over rocks like some rock stars obsess over drugs, and his habit formed early.
Ruskin's father spotted his son was an artist 'from boyhood' but a geologist 'from infancy'. When Ruskin was twelve, he gave him a set of semi-precious minerals purchased for five shillings from a local Keswick dealer. Fifty years on, Ruskin wrote that 'no subsequent possession had so much influence' on his life'. It's this fascination that's the focus of Treasures of the Earth.
Ruskin was elected to London's Geological Society aged 21, and by the end of his life had gathered one of the largest private collections of minerals in the world. The collection then fragmented across public and private holdings. But its surviving core was purchased by Lancaster University in 2019, and with the university's museum closed until 2028, the exhibition's curators have seized the opportunity to bring these treasures home to Brantwood alongside pieces from further afield.
Brantwood's craggy Lake District surrounds and endlessly changing weather make it the perfect location. The house allowed Ruskin to observe nature's processes through the seasons, looking out over Coniston Water towards the slightly pockmarked fells that today still hide the remains of copper mines. The day I visited, in late August, the sky above the fells was a wash of deep blue and the lake glittered with noon sunlight.
Entering the exhibition, it didn't take long to encounter the beauty available outside in miniature. A diagram of Ruskin's colour theory tells us he saw the sky at midday as sapphire-coloured, the 'fulfilment of all joy and love in heaven'. The display reveals a wheel of gemstones and wildflowers in which Ruskin identified nature's fundamental colours, describing it as 'the rainbow-coloured eye of the earth'.
There are also plenty of real sapphires on display. A jewel made from stones gifted by Ruskin to Somerville College, Oxford, features seven of them alongside a glimmering ruby. Another magnificent ruby from the mines of Myanmar demands close attention. As does a 12th-century New Testament whose jewelled binding is inset with pagan gems.
But not everything in the exhibition has been polished up. Ruskin was fascinated by the raw beauty of minerals and two jagged rose fluors remind us why. They look almost alive, with sections of shiny pink crystal emerging from gnarled areas of dull grey-brown. Ruskin presented them to the British Museum in honour of the friend who discovered them, Chamonix mountain-guide Joseph Couttet.
This spirit of rugged discovery pervades the exhibition. Drawings and watercolours on display show Ruskin and his peers' searching obsession with recording geologies' dynamism and exploring the beauty of both polish and process. Ruskin's 1853 study of a Scottish gneiss rock at Glenfinlas is suitably free-handed. Nearby, a drawing by Ruskin's secretary and biographer William Collingwood features a large diamond loosely emerging towards us from its pure white background.
The wonderful thing about studies of process is that they never end. This leaves artists visiting 'Treasures of the Earth' with plenty of inspiration to uncover. Most visitors are welcomed by a team member, which provides opportunities to ask questions. On the day I visited, this meant an interesting chat with Millie Beaty, a fine art student at Loughborough University coming to the end of a placement in collections care at Brantwood. Millie helped the museum's director Howard Hull and curator Professor Sandra Kemp put the exhibition together.
As a practising artist herself, with a focus on land art, Millie thinks you can 'really learn a lot from studying small things'. She's been inspired by the view that Ruskin put forward in his Elements of Drawing (1857) that a small rock is actually 'a mountain in miniature'. Although looking after these mini mountains during a summer of historic heatwaves has been challenging.
'We're still finding, even with precautions, that the humidity can get very high', she notes. But she's enjoyed feeling part of something ongoing. 'Preservation is mostly stopping things from getting worse. Whereas restoration is fixing things that have already gotten worse'. At what point, she wonders, 'are you also becoming part of the artwork?'
Treasures of the Earth: The Mineral World of John Ruskin runs from July 3 to October 25, 2026, Blue Gallery, Brantwood, Coniston
