John Talbott Donoghue

The Young Sophocles Leading the Chorus of Victory after the Battle of Salamis, sculpture by John Talbott Donoghue c. 1889, Honolulu Museum of Art

John Talbott Donoghue (1853 – July 1, 1903) was an American artist who was born in Chicago. 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 on July 1, 1903, in Lake Whitney, Connecticut.

The Honolulu Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are among the public collections holding works by John Talbott Donoghue. The latter’s The Young Sophocles 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