George Lansing Raymond

George Lansing Raymond (September 11, 1839–July 11, 1929) was a prominent professor of Aesthetic Criticism at Princeton University from 1881 to 1905, and author of a new system of aesthetics. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times.

He also served as a professor at George Washington University (D.C.) and Williams College (his alma mater).

Personal life

Raymond was born in Chicago on September 3, 1839, the son of Benjamin Wright Raymond, twice Mayor of Chicago. He was educated at Phillips Academy, Andover, graduating in 1858, Williams College, where he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Society, and Princeton Theological Seminary.

He married Mary Elizabeth Blake on July 31, 1872, and they had one child.

Raymond died at Garfield Hospital in Washington, D.C., on July 11, 1929.

Career

Raymond was the author of a systematic theory of art published by G.P. Putnam, published in seven volumes during the period 1886 to 1900, and republished as a set of uniform volumes in 1909. An eighth volume was published as a summary of the seven volumes, titled, Essentials of Esthetics. A volume of excerpts of his seven books, edited by the classical scholar Marion Mills Miller, was also published by Putnam in 1920.

Raymond was an art theorist who created the first comprehensive and systematic theory of the arts. The New York Times said "In a spirit at once scientific and that of the true artist, he pierces through the manifestations of art to their sources, and shows the relations, intimate and essential, between painting, sculpture, poetry, music, and architecture."