John Talbott Donoghue

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John Talbott Donoghue was an American artist who was born in Chicago in 1853. Although he produced figural sculpture, bas reliefs and paintings, his fame rests primarily on a single bronze sculpture, “The Young Sophocles”. This bronze was originally cast in 1885, but later castings are known to exist. It is a full-length nude sculpture of the Greek dramatist Sophocles playing a lyre while leading the chorus of victory after the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE. John Talbott Donoghue died July 1, 1903 in Lake Whitney, Connecticut.

The Honolulu Academy of Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are among the public collections holding works by John Talbott Donoghue. The latter’s Sophocles playing a lyre while leading the chorus of victory after the Battle of Salamis is on long-term loan to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

References

* Hartmann, Sadakichi & Jane Calhoun Weaver, “Sadakichi Hartmann: Critical Modernist: Collected Art Writings”, University of California Press, 1991, p. 308 ff