John G. Hutton, beloved husband, father, teacher, and friend, passed away on Wednesday 28 November 2007, at the age of 58. His memorial service was held at the Parker Chapel on the campus of Trinity University on 4 December 2007. The faculty and students of the department of Art and Art History will miss this wonderful, indeed, inspirational man.
Dr. Hutton received his B.A. in Political Science from Indiana University; he pursued graduate studies in Political Science at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. After working as supervisor of the Art Book Collection in the Northwestern University Library, he obtained a Ph.D. in Art History from Northwestern. In 1984-85 he was awarded a Samuel Kress National Fellowship. After serving as a Visiting Lecturer at Barat College in Lake Forest, Illinois, he came to Trinity University in 1986. During his career at Trinity Dr. Hutton was known across campus as a gifted teacher. He was twice chair of the department.
Dr. Hutton’s research focused on the relationship of art to social and political movements. At Trinity, he taught courses on 18th and 19th century European and American art, on Late Classical art and architecture, Museum Studies, and seminars on Edouard Manet, Surrealism, arts of the 1960s, and visual representations of evil. At the time of his death Dr. Hutton was exploring the development of satirical art in the 19th century and the development of the Fauves during World War II, particularly under the Nazi Occupation of France. Dr. Hutton was the author of Neo-Impressionism and the Search for Solid Ground: Art, Anarchism, and Social Crisis in Fin-de-siècle (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994). Among other topics, he published essays on Edoaurd Manet, the Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt, William Blake, the anarchist image of the vagabond, and shortcomings of the Alamo Quarry shopping center in San Antonio. He wrote the lead essay for a joint French-Japanese exhibition catalog, Georges Seurat et le Nèo-impressionnisme, 1885-1905 (Kochi: The Museum of Art, 2002).
John Hutton was known for his sense of humor, his unpretentious demeanor, and his kindness and sympathy toward his students and coworkers. He loved teaching, and even as his health declined he worked diligently to prepare his classes. His great loves were his family, his teaching, and Trinity.