Ruskin 's first encounter with Turner 's work was through his illustrations to Rogers's Italy, as he records in Praeterita:
on my thirteenth (?) birthday, 8th February, 1832, my father's partner, Mr. Henry Telford, gave me Rogers' Italy, and determined the main tenor of my life. [.. .] I had no sooner cast eyes on the Rogers vignettes than I took them for my only masters, and set myself to imitate them as far as I possibly could. ( Works, 35.79)
Ruskin gives another assessment of the seminal importance of Telford's gift of Rogers's Italy in Fors Clavigera:
This book was the first means I had of looking carefully at Turner's work: and I might, not without some appearance of reason, attribute to the gift the entire direction of my life's energies. But it is the great error of thoughtless biographers to attribute to the accident which introduces some new phase of character, all the circumstances of character which gave the accident importance. The essential point to be noted, and accounted for, was that I could understand Turner's work when I saw it; not by what chance or in what year it was first seen.
Poor Mr Telford, nevertheless, was always held by papa and mamma primarily responsible for my Turner insanities.' ( Works, 28.387-88)
Ruskin's high regard for Turner's vignettes for Rogers's works, including those for Rogers's Poems continued throughout his life. (See Ruskin's lifelong admiration of the Rogers illustrations.)