Robert Ellis Cunliffe (ca. 1848–1902)

Cunliffe assembled a collection of drawings by Ruskin, which the editors of the Library Edition described in 1912 as “the choicest and most representative” among “private collections” (Ruskin, Works, 38:224). The collection is significant to ERM because it was representative in the sense chronologically inclusive, with examples dating from as early as 1833 (see Drawings from the Tour of 1833). Cunliffe appears therefore to have been motivated by the biographical approach that characterized late‐century collecting (see Collecting of Modern Authors in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries). According to James S. Dearden, Cunliffe acquired most of his drawings from Joan Severn at Brantwood (Dearden, “The Cunliffe Collection of Ruskin Drawings”, 238).

Dearden numbers 74 drawings in the collection at the time of Cunliffeʼs death, 66 of which he found listed in the Library Editionʼs “Catalogue of Ruskinʼs Drawings” (Dearden, “The Cunliffe Collection of Ruskin Drawings”, 237). In the “Catalogue”, items from the collection are credited to “Mrs. Cunliffe”, because her husband had died prematurely a decade earlier, at age 54, from scarlet fever. He was a Manchester solicitor, retired in 1899 to an estate named the Croft in Ambleside. In Manchester, he had been active in the Literary and Philosophical Society, interested mainly in scientific pursuits (J.C.M., Obituary of Robert Ellis Cunliffe). He and subsequently his wife loaned drawings to early exhibitions, such as the 1901 Ruskin Exhibition at the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours [Old Water Colour Society].