George Lansing Raymond was born in September of 1839 to Benjamin Wright Raymond, the twice-elected mayor of Chicago, and his wife, Amelia.
He attended Phillips Academy in Andover before graduating in 1858 and moving on to Williams College, where he became a prominent member of the Kappa Alpha Society. He then studied at the Princeton theological seminary, where he studied philosophy.
After graduating from Princeton in 1865, George married Elizabeth Blake in 1872 and had one daughter, Maybelle.
He also began a long career as a professor. He taught at Williams from 1874 to 1880, then became a professor of Oratory at Princeton from 1880 to 1905, then moved on to become a professor of Esthetics at George Washington University from 1905 to 1912.
During that time, George wrote a systematic theory of art published in seven volumes between 1886 and 1900. It became one of the first comprehensive and systematic theories of art, and the New York Times even claimed that George "pierces through the manifestations of art to their sources, and shows the relations, intimate and essential, between painting, sculpture, poetry, music, and architecture."
George became famous for using psychology and biology in his theory, which helped marry art and reality. In his book, the Essentials of Esthetics, George claims that "the different arts have been shown to be developed by exactly similar methods; and these methods have been shown to characterize the entire work of artistic imagination, from the formulation of psychical concepts to that of their most physical expressions in rhythm, proportion, and harmony."
George Raymond passed away on July 11, 1929, of pneumonia. He was 89 at the time of his death and was a member of many notable clubs, including the National Arts of New York and the Authors of London.
Some scholars believe his legacy to be impactful if neglected and hope to see a resurgence of George's theories in the coming years.
We are reading from one of the few poetry books he ever wrote- Ballads, and Other Poems, published in 1886.
To learn more about this author and his works, visit the links above or check out his Wikipedia page.
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