John Ruthven, "20th Century Audubon," to Receive Honorary Doctorate from UC

Internationally renowned wildlife artist, author, lecturer and naturalist John A. Ruthven, 89, will receive an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Cincinnati December Commencement exercises set for

9 a.m., Saturday, Dec. 14

, at Fifth Third Arena.

An honorary degree represents the highest award from the university.

A lifelong resident of the Cincinnati region, Ruthven grew up in Walnut Hills and was often found on the banks of the Ohio River during his boyhood, with sketch pad in hand.

Over his long career since, he has been called the “20th Century Audubon,” heir to great 19th century American wildlife artist James John Audubon. In fact, in his depictions of wildlife, Ruthven uses the same techniques once employed by Audubon: He studies and researches his subjects thoroughly, sketches to strict specifications, and then renders original paintings and limited-edition prints in great detail.

The resulting paintings depicting nature and wildlife have been exhibited globally at such sites as the White House; the Smithsonian Institution’s Preservation and Research Center; the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia; the President’s Palace in the Philippines; the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum; the Capitol Rotunda in Columbus, Ohio; the Cincinnati Art Museum and many other locales. His works are also in a number of corporate collections, including those of Deere & Company, Proctor & Gamble and the Cincinnati Bengals. In 2004, Ruthven was awarded a National Medal of Art by President George W. Bush.

The artist’s contributions to his native Cincinnati go back decades, since the time he opened his first commercial studio in 1946. For instance, in the 1960s, he made it possible to save UC’s irreplaceable collection of bird specimens and helped to instigate the transfer of that collection to the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, where it is still key to avian research.

In 1974, Ruthven conceived of, designed and raised the funds to create the Passenger Pigeon Memorial at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden.

In the year 2000, Ruthven’s research helped to find and appropriately mark the Spring Grove Cemetery grave of Joseph Mason, a Cincinnati teenager in the early 1800s who traveled the Ohio and Mississippi rivers with James John Audubon. Mason painted the floral backgrounds to 50 of the works appearing in Audubon’s monumental work, “Birds of America.”

And this past summer, Ruthven was often found in downtown Cincinnati, at Eighth and Vine streets, scaling six-story scaffolding while contributing to a large-scale mural of passenger pigeons to commemorate the 100th anniversary (in 2014) of the death of the last passenger pigeon, Martha, at the Cincinnati Zoo.

Ruthven is a graduate of the Cincinnati Art Academy. His original art work can be found in the form of original paintings, limited-edition prints and notecards, and – at one time – a U.S. Postal Service stamp. In 1960, the postal service, in partnership with the U.S. Department of the Interior, issued a “Redhead Duck” stamp, a work by Ruthven.

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