John Ruskin
John G. de la Mothe Borglum American
Cast by Gorham Manufacturing Company American
In 1897, while Borglum was working in London, he visited the English art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) at Ruskin’s home in the Lake District. By this time Ruskin's health was failing rapidly and Borglum found him withdrawn, although confident of his own self-worth and strength. Several years later Borglum modeled a statuette of Ruskin, endowing it with a monumental quality befitting his subject. The Rodinesque figure, book in hand, is seated in a blocklike chair, with a heavy lap robe over his legs. Borglum’s stylistic debt to Auguste Rodin is also evident in the boldly striated tool marks. In 1906, when the Metropolitan Museum was making a special effort to collect smaller bronzes by American sculptors, it purchased “John Ruskin” directly from Borglum.
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