Why would famed art critic John Ruskin claim to have made a bonfire of JMW Turner drawings if he didn’t? “In an essay in the British Art Journal Ian Warrell argued that there are many reasons why Ruskin might have claimed the destruction: his undoubted utter shock at the discovery that his hero had feet and other working body parts of clay; his dismay at the scandalous allegations in a biography of Turner he had backed; and, crucially, the introduction of the first Obscene Publications Act of 1857, which provoked paranoia about art images and anxiety that curators could be prosecuted for works in gallery collections.”