First day at Brantwood - A land of ferns and foxgloves

Milkwort on Yewdale

First day of a ten day residency at Brantwood, John Ruskin's Home. Sleeping in the room that Ruskin died in... we both dreamed about Ruskin. On rising, we wondered about Ruskin's relationship with Darwin - both such towering Victorian intellects, but at odds always, somehow. Yet they shared such a similar spirit of enquiry into the natural world. We met Sally Beamish, the gardener here, as we're interested to explore the plants that were so significant to Ruskin. Proserpina an source of enquiry, a strange and rambling work, in which he attempted to reclassify plants in human terms, opposing the clinical classifications of Linnaeus. Enjoyed a passage in Proserpina in which Ruskin translates Rousseau, in discussing the business of botany and the mixed value in the learning of names for plants "Before teaching them to name what they see, let us begin by teaching them to see it."

Had a wonderful converstaion with Howard Hull about Prosperina, Love's Meinie and Deucalion - Ruskin's works on the natural world. A walk around the garden, the amazing unfolding of fern leaves. Ruskin's stone seat, with the view of the rivulet totally obscured by fern growth - not what we expected, hoping for moss and stone and tumbling water. Did Ruskin actually sit there much? Did he keep the view of it open? We encountered a lovely drawing Ruskin did at Brantwood, of wild strawberries and moss in a stone crevice.

Later, we went to the Ruskin Museum at Coniston. Some wonderful Ruskin drawings. Connecting his enthusiasms for geology, cloud studies, mountains, flowers. Again the 'moss and wild strawberries' drawing - wondering where exactly it was drawn. How incredibly engaged Ruskin was, really, with Coniston as his local community - the institute, wood carving, the lace industry. Vicky Slowe, the curator, a passionately interested individual - her interest in Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Beuys alongside Ruskin. Ruskin had a local man make a tool for coppicing - he said coppicing was his favourite 'gumnastics'.

Then, a marvellous walk up to Yewdale, where Ruskin walked many times. Amazing plant life - a world of June ferns. And finding, toward the top, Butterwort, the amazingly subtle blue fowers of Milkwort (which Ruskin called Guliana in Proserpina) and the mysterious fly-eating Sundew. On the top, a marvellous boggy plateau, some wonderful reflections in the water, and the movement of white heads of Cottongrass in the wind, and mosses. Photographing emerging fern leaf heads, in different stages of unfoldment, so much earlier in development than the ferns in the valley. The views over Coniston must have changed a lot. Neither of us had ever seen such a profusion of twisted old Juniper trees before - a wonder to behold. We cracked the seeds, which smelled, unsurprisingly, of Gin. A drip falling, with unceasing regularity, from a fern leaf sticking out from the moss.

And the library here, all these words and words about his words. An interesting collection of essays, among much else, from 'John Ruskin- The Brantwood Years', a coference in 2000. In an essay by Rachel Dickinson, the idea of changefulness - the way Ruskin continually rearranged his paintings here according to the gothic principle of 'changefulness', and how we might use that idea of the ever-changing exhibition. Wondering very much about the last 10 years, the 'silent' years, of Ruskin's life. And of Joan Severn and the true nature of Ruskin's relationship with her. And did they keep him sedated for ten years to avoid any more incidents of lunacy, or just to avoid inconvenience? His creativity and his 'madness' are so closely, inextricably related. And did sedation, rather than his own mind, also destroy his ability to write, or even draw creatively?