Russell Sturgis - Author and Critic

Author and Critic

Sturgis was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and of the National Academy of Design; an honorary fellow of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences; a fellow in perpetuity of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; life member of the American Numismatic and Archaeological Society; honorary member of the National Society of Mural Painters; and a member of the Architectural League of New York (president in 1889-93), the Grolier Club, the Municipal Art Society, Archaeological Institute of America, National Sculpture Society, the Japan Society, the Fine Arts Federation of New York (first president, 1895–97); member of the University, Century and Players clubs of New York City; and a member of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in London.

He lectured on art at Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Peabody Institute of Baltimore and the Art Institute of Chicago; his Scammon Lectures of 1904-05 in Chicago were published under the title The Interdependence of the Arts of Design (1905). Sturgis received the honorary degrees of MA from Yale in 1870 and PhD from the College of the City of New York in 1893. A disciple of John Ruskin, Sturgis intensely disliked the trend toward neoclassic eclecticism at the end of the 19th century and hailed Louis H. Sullivan's work as the most significant that was being done in America.

A leading authority on the history of architecture and art, Sturgis was editor for decorative art and medieval archaeology of the Century Dictionary, editor of architecture and fine art for Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia (1893–95), author of European Architecture: A Historical Study (1896); compiler (for the American Library Association) of the Annotated Bibliography of Fine Art (1897); and author of The Etchings of Piranesi (1900). In January 1897 he became editor of The Field of Art, a department of Scribner's Magazine, which he continued until his death.

He is best known as a writer on art and architecture, making many contributions to dictionaries, encyclopedias and periodicals. He was editor-in-chief of A Dictionary of Architecture and Building (3 vols, 1901–1902). Sturgis edited and revised the English version of Wilhelm Luebke's Outlines of the History of Art (2 vols, 1904), and was editor on fine arts for the Encyclopedia Americana (1904–05). He wrote How to Judge Architecture (1903), The Appreciation of Sculpture (1904), The Appreciation of Pictures (1905), A Study of the Artist's Way of Working in the Various Handicrafts and Arts of Design (2 vols, 1905), Ruskin on Architecture (1906), and History of Architecture (4 vols., 1906–1915; Vols. III and IV were completed by A.L. Frothingham, Jr.).

During his last years he was nearly blind. He died on February 11, 1909, at his long-time home, 307 East 17th Street, in New York City. Sarah Sturgis died there on May 1, 1910.