The Last Ruskinians: Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Herbert Moore, and Their Circle Book

*linked to show at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum, now through July 8, 2007 *the genesis of America's Pre-Raphaelite Movement *how Ruskin's "truth to nature" art philosophy took root in the U.S in this overlooked component of American art history *beautifully produced with rarely seen works by Ruskin --Although John Ruskin, the 19th-century British writer and watercolorist, never came to the United States, he had a great influence on a group of artists who considered themselves American Pre-Raphaelites. In conjunction with an exhibition that just opened at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum and runs through July 8, 2007, The Last Ruskinians: Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Herbert Moore, and Their Circle tells the forgotten story of Ruskin's influence on American art history and artists. These artists specialized in small landscapes and floral studies and were active in New York during the 1860s. While earlier scholars surmised that the movement died out by 1870, this material examines the second flowering of the Ruskinian style in the U.S. Ruskin's influence here was largely disseminated by the legendary Charles Eliot Norton, the nation's first professor of art history, who taught at Harvard from 1874 to 1898, and through his associate and friend, Charles Herbert Moore, a drawing instructor who became the Fogg's first director. Included are a fine group of Ruskin's own drawings and watercolors, and those of two British painters he greatly admired, Joseph M. W. Turner and William Henry Hunt. Moore's works have been largely overlooked, despite his influence as one of the most important watercolorists of his day. He was one of the original American Pre-Raphaelites in New York, a co-founder in 1863 of the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art and a critic for the publication The New Path. Moore worked in watercolor to copy details from a number of early Italian Renaissance paintings and numerous works from the British Museum collection and brought these facsimiles back to Harvard, where he used them to teach art history and studio art in the days before color photography or survey texts. Included, too, are representations of the art of Henry Roderick Newman, an American in Florence whose art was widely admired, and those by a second generation of American Pre-Raphaelite painters, such as Joseph London Smith, Harold B. Warren, and George H. Hallowell. The discussion of Norton's role explores his wide-ranging influence. He never painted or drew. However, among his students and admirers were Bernard Berenson and Isabella Stewart Gardner, as well as the builders of the modern Fogg Art Museum, Edward W. Forbes and Paul J. Sachs. Norton's passion for the art helped shape the taste of Boston's (and America's) great connoisseurs and collectors. Author credits: Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., is the curator of American art, Virginia Anderson is assistant curator of American art, and Melissa Renn is a curatorial assistant, in the Department of American Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums.Read More