G.F.Watts proposed to add Ruskin's portrait to his gallery of celebrities; but he was in no mood to sit.

Rossetti did, however, sketch him this year.

In March he presented eighty-three Turner drawings to Oxford, and twenty-five to Cambridge.

The address of thanks with the great seal of Oxford University is dated March 23rd, 1861; the Catalogue of the Cambridge collection is dated May 28th.
On April 2nd he addressed the St.George's Mission Working Men's Institute, and shortly afterwards, though at this time in a much enfeebled state of health, gave a lecture before "a most brilliant audience," as the _London Review_ reported, at the Royal Institution (April 19th, 1861).

Carlyle wrote to his brother John: "Friday last I was persuaded--in fact had inwardly compelled myself as it were--to a lecture of Ruskin's at the Institution, Albemarle Street, Lecture on Tree Leaves as physiological, pictorial, moral, symbolical objects.