The Road to Florence

On his 1845 tour of northern Italy, Ruskin made many “chiaroscuro studies,” as he called them, using brown ink and wash. Partly echoing the appearance of Turner’s Liber Studiorum prints, these also reflected a style favoured by the professional watercolourist and drawing-master James Duffield Harding (1797/8-1863), who travelled with Ruskin at the outset of his trip.