Department: Ruskin

Allen made this study, along with another study of thorns towards John Ruskin's book, 'Modern Painters'. While Allen later engraved the second study as a book illustration, this one wasn’t used. However it was probably meant to illustrate Ruskin's 'Law of Deflection' in which he explains the way leaves 'fall gradually back' from the top of a stem. The study didn’t need to be coloured as the book illustrations would be black and white, but Ruskin perhaps thought that drawing in monochrome would be a useful technical exercise too. He believed that students should use black and white to try capturing the gradations of shade and tone correctly, before being distracted by colour. This could only be done by ‘rapid and various practice from natural objects, during which the attention of the student must be directed only to the facts of the shadows themselves, and not at all arrested on methods of producing them.’