John Donoghue
Donoghue, John Talbott (1853-1 July 1903), sculptor, was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of immigrants from western Ireland whose names and occupations are unknown. Details of his early life are also unavailable. A change of city administration forced Donoghue out of his job as a clerk in the recorder's office and signaled the beginning of his career as an artist. In 1875 he enrolled in classes at the Academy of Design in Chicago and there was awarded a scholarship for his bust of a vestal virgin. In 1879 Donoghue applied to follow a course of study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, though he may have been training in Paris as early as 1877. Donoghue contributed a plaster bust, Phaedra (present location unknown), to the Salon of 1880. He exhibited in the prestigious annual five times during his career.
Donoghue came back to the United States in 1881 and set up a studio in Chicago, where he completed commissions for bronze portrait reliefs. At that time, he met Oscar Wilde, then on an American lecture tour. After seeing the reduced model for Young Sophocles Leading the Chorus of Victory after the Battle of Salamis, Wilde called it a "piece of the highest artistic beauty and perfect workmanship" (Lloyd Lewis and Henry Justin Smith, Oscar Wilde Discovers America [1936], p. 180). He sang the sculptor's praises and garnered patronage for him. His influence on Donoghue was considerable, as evidenced by the latter's adoption of Wilde's eccentric dress and personality traits. The Collector mentions that Donoghue "took to wearing dark green Roman togas lined with shrimp pink. . . . And [his] hats were wonderful to behold" (1 Feb. 1894, p. 111). Wilde's support probably helped to attract a patron, enabling the sculptor's return to Paris in 1882 or 1883, where he studied with Alexandre Falguière. While there Donoghue completed a bronze bas-relief, Seraphim (1883), and sent it to the Salon of 1884.
By 1885 Donoghue had moved to Rome, and in that year he executed a heroic-sized plaster of Young Sophocles. The piece, which is unquestionably the triumph of his otherwise spotted career, is based on Edward Hayes Plumptre's translations of the Greek dramatist's writings. One writer for the Studio paid Donoghue a high compliment, writing in 1893 that he "has modelled his statue in a manner which sends the mind back to the statues of antiquity." The original plaster was shown in the Paris Salon of 1886, where it received an honorable mention. At the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, it was accorded a first-place prize. The Art Institute of Chicago, the St. Louis Art Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art have full-size bronze casts. Around 1890 Donoghue commissioned the Barbedienne foundry of Paris to cast 44½-inch reductions (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston).
Following several years in Rome, Donoghue's peregrinations found him completing portraits in Boston between 1887 and 1888. Bronze busts of Hugh O'Brien (1888) and John Boyle O'Reilly (1897) are in the collection of the Boston Public Library. Donoghue executed a statue, The Boxer (1887; present location unknown), based on the contemporary boxing legend John L. Sullivan. The sculptor conceived the piece as emblematic of perfect manhood. Early in 1888 he displayed three works--Young Sophocles, The Boxer, and Hunting Nymph--in Boston's Horticultural Hall. Hunting Nymph (present location unknown) had been previously exhibited in plaster at the Salon of 1887.
For two years around 1890 Donoghue was in London, where, in addition to submitting Young Sophocles to the Royal Academy exhibition, he included a bust of Mrs. Ronalds (present location unknown). He then moved to Rome in order to model a colossal figure for the World's Columbian Exposition. According to contemporary accounts, he even rented part of the Baths of Diocletian to complete his foremost intellectual effort, The Spirit Brooding over the Abyss. The seated winged figure, thirty feet high, was based on a line from Milton's Paradise Lost. Donoghue's efforts yielded only fierce disappointment, as the piece never reached its intended destination. Instead, when he was unable to pay for the cost of shipping, half the sculpture sat deteriorating on a Brooklyn dock; the rest remained in Rome. The entire piece was eventually destroyed. Three works--Young Sophocles, Hunting Nymph, and Kypros--were exhibited in Chicago in its stead.
Donoghue lived in New York during the 1890s, completing ornamental and architectural sculpture. Among his projects were statues for the decorative programs of two major monuments: St. Paul for the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis of France for New York's Appellate Court House (1896-1900). On a smaller scale, he experimented with the production of tinted Tanagra-like statuettes, small figures in action, produced in ancient Greece and popularized in the mid- to late nineteenth century, with the hope that they would provide a steady income. He also took up painting, completing landscape and figure subjects. Toward the end of his life he became interested in psychic processes; the April 1897 issue of Art News announced that he had authored a book, X Rays with Religions. Donoghue's ultimate frustration was the rejection of his ambitious plan for the proposed McKinley Memorial in Philadelphia due to expense. Defeated and financially insolvent, the artist committed suicide on 1 July 1903 on the shores of Lake Whitney, near New Haven, Connecticut. He had never married or had children. Although Donoghue's limited oeuvre consists of only a few portraits and ideal subjects, his contribution to American sculpture is measured in his skilled appropriation of classical themes and contemporary French formal properties.
Bibliography
S.[adakichi] H.[artmann], "John Donoghue," Camera Work 21 (Jan. 1908): 223-26, recounts his life, stressing its tragic aspects. J. C. McCord, "Pathos of the Career of John Donoghue, Sculptor," Brush and Pencil 12 (Aug. 1903): 364-68, provides a summary of the artist's career and details his most ambitious work, The Spirit; biographical details are occasionally inaccurate. "Romance of a Baffled Genius: Crosses and Losses Endured by the Sculptor John Donoghue, Which Ended in Suicide," New York Herald, 2 Aug. 1903, is one of several newspaper articles that assess the circumstances leading to Donoghue's demise. "Donoghue's Young Sophokles," Art World (Jan. 1917): 236-38, is an account of the artist's greatest sculpture. Obituaries are in the New York Herald and the New Haven Evening Register, both 6 July 1903.
Thayer Tolles
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