Focus on this artwork and discuss the Composition.
The New York Times described the statue at its unveiling:The young clergyman is represented sitting, holding an open [book] on his knee. The costume is the simple clerical garb of the seventeenth century ... low shoes, long, silk hose, loose knee breeches, and a tunic belted at the waist, while a long cloak, thrown back, falls in broad, picturesque folds.  
John Harvard's gift to the school was £780 and‍—‌perhaps more importantly[M]‍—‌his 400-volume scholar's library:
Partly under the chair, within easy reach, lie a pile of books.
That he had died of tuberculosis, at about age thirty,
was one of the few things known about John Harvard at the time of the statue's composition; as dedication orator George Edward Ellis put it:Gently touched by the weakness which was wasting his immature life,  he rests for a moment from his converse with wisdom on the printed page, and raises his contemplative eye to the spaces of all wisdom.
Historian Laurel Ulrich suggests that John Harvard's general composition may have been inspired by Hendrik Goltzius' engraving of Clio, and that  the figure's collar, buttons, tassel, and mustache may have been taken from a portrait of Plymouth Colony Governor Edward Winslow.
tuberculosis John Harvard Plymouth Colony George Edward Ellis Edward Winslow Hendrik Goltzius' engraving of Clio converse Laurel Ulrich £