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

This exhibition of approximately 60 works explores the influence of John Ruskin on a group of American watercolorists, most with Harvard connections, who were active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their small nature studies and copies after art and architecture were painted with technical precision in rich color. The exhibition presents 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. Works by such important Americans as Henry Roderick Newman, Francesca Alexander, and Joseph Lindon Smith are included. The show also brings to light the work of Charles Herbert Moore, a distinguished artist who became the first director of the Fogg Museum.

The accompanying catalogue examines Ruskin’s significant influence on taste, collecting, and art instruction, with special emphasis on the role of his close friend and emissary in the United States, Charles Eliot Norton, Harvard’s first professor of fine arts.

Organized by Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., curator of American art, and Virginia Anderson, assistant curator of American art.

The Last Ruskinians was organized by the Department of American Painting, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts, Harvard University Art Museums, with support from the Annemarie Henle Pope Special Exhibitions Fund.