John Ruskin was the most influential art critic to write in England between the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1792 and the publications of Clive Bell and others around 1914. It is not, in fact, too much to say that his is the most important body of art criticism in the English language. It is a useful exercise to read all of his books, in order, year by year, for in a real sense Ruskin's bibliography is his biography. He wrote every day except Sunday and published everything he wrote except his diary and some hundreds of personal letters, and he wrote it all so well that he is acknowledged to be one of the great masters of English prose.

Ruskin was also a hardworking, "hands-on" art critic. He was not a painter or a sculptor; he was a critic, and he knew the difference. Besides producing a stream...