John Raught, born at Dunmore, Pennsylvania on September 9, 1857, studied at the National Academy of Design and was living in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1885 when he exhibited a still-life at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Later he enrolled at the Académie Julian under Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre.

In 1889, when he spent some time at Pont-Aven, he exhibited The Great Road; Brittany in the Paris Salon and Bords de l'Oise appeared in the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts' 1897 exhibition.

Mainly, Raught exhibited at the Boston Art Club (1892-1903) and at the National Academy of Design (1891-1901). From these records we learn that Raught lived in New York City at various addresses and that he exhibited only landscapes.

The Everhart Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania established a memorial to Raught, who died in January of 1931. His Summer Landscape with Stream, dated 1904 (Private collection), shows delicate and sensitive brushwork, a limited but bright plein-air palette and a simplified two-part composition, often used by the impressionists. There is, however, no use of broken color and no blue or purple shadows.

SOURCES:
Fink, Lois Marie, American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons. Cambridge University Press and the Smithsonian Institution, 1990, p. 383.


Written and submitted by Michael Worley, PhD

Born on September 9, 1857, John Raught was a native of Dunmore, Pennsylvania. At the age of 24, he enrolled in the Academy of Design in New York City. He then went on to study abroad at the Academie Julien in Paris, remaining in Europe for seven years. Upon his return to the United States, he opened a studio in New York for several years before returning to live in Dunmore. He primarily painted landscapes of Scranton and the local area, and the Everhart Museum has the largest public collection of Raught's work.

Raught's work demonstrates a turning point in American art from realistic painting to impressionistic techniques, inspired by the artists in Paris. His famous paintings of the region's coal breakers marked a change from natural scenes to industrial ones.

Raught was a member of the Salmagundi Art Club in New York City, a prestigious organization that included such members as N.C. Wyeth, Charles Dana Gibson, Childe Hassam, Howard Pyle, and William Merritt Chase.