John Fuller Russell

John Fuller Russell (1814–1884), was a priest in the Church of England, a writer, mostly on theological subjects, especially religious ritual, and a notable art collector. He was a member of the committee of the Ecclesiological Society and had close connections to the High Church Oxford Movement.

Russell was born on 18 August 1813, the son of Thomas Russell, a Congregationalist minister, whose surname was originally Cloutt.Arthur Tozer Russell was his brother. He was educated at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, where he read civil law. He became one of the first sympathisers with the Oxford movement at Cambridge, and in 1836, while still an undergraduate at Peterhouse, he began a correspondence with Edward Bouverie Pusey, in which he expressed a desire to revive much of the disused ritual of the Church. In 1837 he visited Pusey at Christ Church.

In 1838 he was ordained deacon and appointed to the curacy of St. Peter's, Walworth. The next year he graduated LL.B., and was admitted into priest's orders. He held the perpetual curacy of St James, Enfield Highway, from 1841 to 1854. On 2 October 1843 he married Rosalie Croshaw at the church. In 1856 he became rector of Greenhithe, Kent.

He was a member of the council of the Society of Antiquaries, of the central committee of the Royal Archæological Institute, and of the committee of the Ecclesiological Society.

When the German art historian Gustav Waagen visited Russell at Eagle House near Enfield, he found the walls "so richly adorned with specimens of the 14th century, that the spectator feels as if transported to a chapel at Siena or Florence." He described Russell as "one of the most enthusiastic admirers of the grandeur and high significance of the ecclesiastic art from the 13th to the 15th century that I met with in England".

His collection included the "Diptych of Jeanne of France" (now in the collection of the Musée Condé in Chantilly), believed in his lifetime to be by Hans Memling six of the seven panels from the predella of Ugolino da Siena's altarpiece for Santa Croce in Florence, bought from the sale of the William Young Ottley collection, Abrecht Altdorfer's Christ taking Leave of His Mother (National Gallery, London) and Simone Martini's St Geminianus, St Michael and St Augustine, each with an Angel above (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge)

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