Self Portrait

Ruskin made two portraits of himself in the spring of 1874, this pencil drawing and a watercolour (now in the Morgan Library, New York). They were made at the request of his American friend Charles Eliot Norton. The inscription – ‘se ipsum’ [by himself] – is in Norton’s hand. Norton also added on the reverse the note ‘not a good likeness’, although it seems to modern eyes a sensitive as well as an accurate image.