An influential writer, critic and artist, Ruskin was considered the voice of artistic taste in Victorian England. A champion of landscape painter J. M. Turner, Ruskin’s first major work on art, Modern Painters  (1843), is a defence of the artist. Ruskin endorsed the Gothic style in architecture, and his books The Seven Lamps  of Architecture  (1849) and The Stones of Venice  (1851-53) support the Gothic Revival. In later life Ruskin turned toward economic issues and the plight of the working man.