“Playing with edged tools” from the 1876 “Fun”

Playing with edged tools

John Gordon Thomson (1841-1911)

Fun (29 March 1876): 141

“An undeserved snub for Sheffield. Mr. Fun cannot help thinking that there is much more good in one day’s honest labour than in years of superfine, often superficial, criticism. ”

“Edged tools” because Sheffield was known for its tool and cutlery industry. .

Courtesy of the Suzy Covey Comic Book Collection in the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.

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John Ruskin (sitemap)

Other caricatures of Ruskin

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Explanation of the cartoon’s context by James L. Spates, Class of 1964 Endowed Chair of Sociology, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Jim Dearden’s indispensable John Ruskin: A Life in Pictures (pp. 102-3 explains the context of the editorial cartoon. In 1876 the Sheffield Society of Artists had asked Ruskin to lecture when he came in April to make the arrangements necessary to get The Guild of St. George up and running. To which invitation they received the following “acid reply” (Dearden’s phrase). Presumably someone in the Society of Artists got it to Fun (likely it was published in a newspaper beforehand; that would make the cartoon make sense to a general readership). Ruskin’s return letter read:

I lose a frightful quantity of time because people won’t read what I ask them to read, nor believe anything of what I tell them, and yet ask me to talk whenever they think they can make a shilling or two at the door by me. I have written fifty times, if once, that you can’t have art where you have smoke. You may have it in hell perhaps, for the Devil is too clever not to consume his own smoke, if he wants to. But you will never have it in Sheffield. You may learn something about nature, shriveled, and stones, and iron—and what little you can see of that sort, I am going to try and show you. But pictures, never.

Acid indeed. Thus Fun’s caricature of St Rusty (!) turning his back disdainfully on the smoky place, Fun’s accompanying words having their own decidedly acidic quality!

Bibliography

“Playing with edged tools” Fun. (23 December 1865): 150. Courtesy of the Suzy Covey Comic Book Collection in the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida. Web. 2 March 2016.

Last modified 29 March 2016