John Ruskin was an influential English art critic and social thinker of the Victorian era, who famously argued that the principal concern of the artist is 'truth to nature'.

For Ruskin, this truth entailed more than merely adept technical representation: artists should, in fact, depict the natural world as mankind experiences it, with all the sensations of both beauty and terror it elicits.

Landscapes after Ruskin explores how a joyful experience of nature is now mixed with a particular dread, as the earth and its atmosphere are increasingly touched by human activity.