Harkness, Albert Granger (1856 - 1923)
Role: Professor of ClassicsDates: 1889- 1921
Portrait Location: Annex
Artist: Frazier, John R. (1889 - 1966)
Portrait Date: 1931
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 33 1/2
Framed Dimensions: 40
Brown Portrait Number: 128
Brown Historical Property Number: 609
Born in Providence in 1856, Albert Granger Harkness was the son of Albert Harkness (class of 1842), a professor of classics at Brown (see BP 96). The younger Harkness studied at the University Grammar School until entering Brown in 1874. Following graduation in 1879, he studied Latin and Greek philology at universities in Berlin, Leipzig, and Bonn. Prior to returning to Brown in 1889 as an associate professor of Latin, he taught German and Latin at Madison College (now Colgate). Harkness was a founder of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and a resident professor in 1902-03 at the American School in Classical Studies in Rome. Harkness was remembered by President Faunce as a modest person of "penetrating intelligence" and as a conscientious professor. His back-to-back career at Brown with his father provided the university with an impressive eighty-four consecutive years of classical learning.
Harkness's likeness was executed in 1931 by John Robinson Frazier, a Providence artist who had studied and taught at the Rhode Island School of Design. Frazier was president of the Providence Arts Club from 1945 to 1947. He painted four portraits now hanging at Brown, and in 1957, he was awarded an honorary fine arts degree from the university.