ArtistFrank Randal (1852-1917) was born in Paddington, London, to Charles Hayter Randal and Frances (née Arnold). Little is known of Randal, but Ruskin commissioned more works from him than any other artist in the Ruskin Collection. He caught the attention of Ruskin in 1881. He started to commission work from Randal, and this continued until 1887. Over this time, he produced at least 137 drawings and watercolours for the Guild.
Randal later worked for Sir Sydney Cockerell, painting architectural records for the Society for the Preservation of Pictorial Records of Ancient Works of Art and painting commissions. This included a number for a prominent Sheffield art collector, George Parkes Wall, who was founder of the Pluto Steelworks.
Randal had a brother Charles (described in the 1881 census as a photographer, and in the 1891 census as an artist and sculptor), and a sister, Fanny Scott Randal. A sketch of W. G. Collingwood, Ruskin and Randal was drawn on a letter that Charles sent to Fanny.
Ruskin on the Northern CathedralsIn
Modern Painters V (1860), Ruskin explains the basis for what would be an enduring interest in the cathedrals of northern France and England:
'The only art work that France and England have done nobly is that which is centralized by the Cathedral of Lincoln, and the Sainte Chapelle. We had at that time (
we -- French and English -- but the French first) the incontestable lead among European nations; no thirteenth-century work in Italy is comparable for majesty of conception, or wealth of imaginative detail, to the Cathedrals of Chartres, Rheims, Rouen, Amiens, Lincoln, Peterborough, Wells, or Lichfield. But every hour of the fourteenth century saw French and English art in precipitate decline, Italy in steady ascent;' (
Works, 6, p. 436).
Ruskin on AmiensRuskin considered Amiens 'the Venice of the North' (
Works, 33. p. 5).