Octavia Hill's doge is on show in London exhibition
A copy of a celebrated portrait painted by Wisbech-born Octavia Hill is being displayed in a new John
Ruskin exhibition, which has opened in London to mark the bicentenary of Ruskin's birth.
The show, ‘John Ruskin: the power of seeing’, marks the first time that Ruskin’s collection
has been shown en masse outside Sheffield, where the leading English art critic of the Victorian era
founded St George’s Museum as an educational resource to make art, books and cultural treasures
available to all. Built on a hilltop to entice people out of the smoky city, the museum offered views
of the Derbyshire landscape and a space to inspire creative thought.
Recognizing the artistic abilities of a kindred spirit, who would go on to become a co-founder
of the National Trust, Ruskin trained Octavia Hill as a copyist from 1855 to 1865 and she daily visited
the National Gallery or Dulwich Art Gallery to explore the techniques of the masters.
The portrait in the exhibition is Octavia Hill’s copy of a painting by the Renaissance artist,
Giovanni Bellini, of the steely-eyed tactician, ‘The doge Leonardo Loredan’, one of the foremost chief
magistrates and leaders of the Republic of Venice during the 1000-year history of the city-state.
Bellini’s original 1501 portrait showing the doge in his official state robes with ornate
buttons and horn-shaped ducal cap hangs in the National Gallery, and Octavia’s copy forms part of
the Guild of St George’s Ruskin Collection, which is showcased in the new exhibition curated by
Museums Sheffield.
Painted in the style of sculpted portrait busts, Bellini’s masterpiece was ground-breaking
because the doge was presented face-on, a mode generally reserved in the Middle Ages for sacred
portraiture, rather than in the usual profile for mere mortals.
Ruskin’s artistic connection with Octavia Hill subsequently branched out into social reform
when he came into a large inheritance on the death of his father in 1864. That year, at Hill’s
persuasion, Ruskin bought a trio of run-down properties in Paradise Place, Marylebone, a London
slum known locally as ‘Little Hell’, where her programme of housing reform was born.
Octavia Hill’s aim was to make ‘lives noble, homes happy and family life good’ and her
approach, which was made possible by the connection she had established with Ruskin, became a
model for housing associations around the world.
Mr Peter Clayton, chairman of the Octavia Hill Birthplace Museum Trust, said: “Once again
Octavia Hill’s achievements can be seen as of national and international interest in this major
exhibition. In our Birthplace House displays we have always shown reproductions of the two
paintings – Bellini’s original and the copy featured in the exhibition – side by side with a figure of
Octavia at work as an artist in a room dedicated to her art.”
‘John Ruskin: the power of seeing’ is an unticketed exhibition being mounted at Two Temple
Place, formerly known as Astor House, the London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, the American-
born attorney, politician and newspaper publisher, on London’s Victoria Embankment.
The show, which is free of charge, runs from January 26 to April 22 and is open each week
on Monday and from Thursday to Saturday from 10am to 4.30pm. On Wednesdays the doors open
from 10am to 9pm and on Sundays visitors are admitted from 11am to 4.30pm. The exhibition is
closed on Tuesdays and on Easter Sunday.
The Birthplace House at 7 South Brink, Wisbech, re-opens with a series of events centred on
International Women’s Day on Friday, March 8.
ends
