American Mural Artists

AMERICAN MURAL ARTISTS

Mrs. Lombard's Interesting Paper Read Before

The Ladies' Union

At their Meeting Last Week--The Advance Made in this Country in a Few Years

Mrs. Lombard read a very interesting paper on "American Mural Artists" before the Ladies' Union last week, which was well worth publishing. It was in part as follows:

"Mural Decorations in America" has become in these last ten years a much too large subject for a twenty minutes talk. Therefore let us today, select from the 43 American mural artists those who have the most striking characteristics. For a better understanding of the subject we must see what has been accomplished earlier in our history and in what manner. It is also well to mention that the old masters of Florence, Venice and Rome, who had painted walls had done these with their own hands employing pupils to assist them. In America before the seventies mural decoration was the work of skillful artisans, who sometimes worked out geometrical designs with or without stencils or copied impossible cupids or nymphs disporting themselves upon puffy clouds and amusing themselves throwing flowers at one another. Now and then some real artist would make a cartoon for these artisans to copy in some hall but apart from the exact measurements for the desired picture these artists troubled themselves little or not at all to make their work agree in line, color or composition with the idea of the architect who built it. At the present day, a thorough comprehension of the surroundings is a very vital requirement of the would-be successful mural artist. In this connection perhaps it will be well to quote to you what the greatest decorator of the 19th century, Puvis de Chevannes, has said concerning his work for the Boston Public Library: "I have striven that every gesture should express something, that the color instead of contrasting, as in the past, with the whiteness of its frame, should harmonize with it. Instead of making holes in the wall as do pictures which are too much forced I have contented myself with simply decorating it." The great decorator takes into consideration the curves of an arch, its supporting uprights and his endeavor is to make his prominent figures carry out this same idea. The lighting of the hall has great influence not only as regards the color to be used but also his choice of subject. To be sure before the seventies we had but few buildings worthy of being decorated and most of our artists were either interested in landscape or portrait painting, following the conservative lead of the French school headed by Delacroix and Gericault. Consequently it was like the explosion of a bomb in their midst when William Morris Hunt came back to America fresh from the studios of Couture and Millet.

After showing how Hunt, who was born in Vermont in 1824, inherited his art from his mother, Mrs. Lombard continued:

Hunt studied in Rome in Duseldorf but he did not become interested till he reached Paris and went into the studio of Couture, of whom he became a favorite as well as most brilliant pupil. Later Hunt chanced to see a picture of Jean Francois Milet who at that time was the despised of the entire artistic clique of Paris and what is more had great difficulty in getting anybody who was willing to place his work so that the public could see it. Hunt sought out Milet at his home in Barbazon and the two men became the warmest friends and it is due to William Hunt that Milet was so early appreciated in this country. Hunt on his return to America went first to Newport, R. I., but shortly afterward he set up his studio in Boston. He had many warm friends there, but notwithstanding that it was uphill work for him to make any impression upon the public. His forceful character and originality together with his marvelous draughtmanship had at last to be taken into account attention his way, the soon fell down and worshipped. Had Mr. Hunt been less of the true artist, had his ideals been on a lower plane this adulation would have been the death to his genius and he would never have painted his great works in the Assemble Room in the Capitol in Albany. A work which should have been a glory to the state and to all America, but which has become her everlasting shame, for through political bickerings and neglect they have been completely defaced and spoiled. When Hunt was asked to do this work he felt that his health would not be equal to it, but as decoration of a large surface had always been a dream of his he accepted and for the two large surfaces he was to cover he chose as designs the "Discoverer" and the "Flight of Night."

Mr. Hunt worked so hard upon these pictures and was obliged to stand for so many hours at a time that he injured his knee and being otherwise thoroughly run down that on his return to Massachusetts he went to the Isles of Sholes where in the summer of 1879 in an attack of vertigo he fell into a pool near which he was fond of spending much of his time. Up to the very last he had the freshness of a boy and his love of play was so great that there are many amusing stories told about him. He rarely criticized a picture, but once being forced to express his opinion about a portrait he said in his funny, jerkey style, "No insides; looks like a bug which another bug had eaten up all but the shell." Hunt's influence has been very lasting and there are many artists who have never been in his studio as students who call him master.

This was the case of John LaFarge, whom we next turn to. John LaFarge, born in 1835, was a native of New York born of French parents. He had every early advantage and after leaving college he went to Paris where he also studied with Couture, who encouraged him to copy the old masters in the Louvre. On his return to New York he tried to study law but the love of art was too strong and he began his career by illustrating though, from the very first, he desired to do mural work. In 861 he received an order from the Paulist fathers to make a panel and he chose for his subject St. Paul in Athens. This work, however, was never placed in the church, so in reality the frescoes in Trinity church, Boston, in 1876, were his first works of this kind. You see by this that these Trinity pictures were completed two years before Hunt's in Albany. Mr. LaFarge's work represents the finest decorative skill. It is in distinct correspondence with the French Romanesque architecture of Mr. Richardson's design; no tone dominates another, and in color and line is it never anything but perfectly harmonious.

Edwin Austin Abbey was born in Philadelphia in 1852, and he also was intended for a profession, but he took things into his own hands and studied art. At an early age he entered Harper's establishment and after a time he became war artist, one of those who never leaves the office. Later he became a great lover of such illustrations wherein costumes play a part and from black and white he went to water colors, pastels and oils. He was acknowledged by his artist set to have full control of any material, but if it would be possible for one who paints in such a dainty manner to do something grand was a great question, a question which was soon answered by his work in the Imperial Hotel in New York representing scenes from old New York at the time of the Dutch, and of which we have a print.

In 1895 Edwin Abbey finished five picture which form the frieze of the delivery room of the Boston public library, "The Quest of the Holy Grail."

To John S. Sargent we turn next. Just why we claim him as an American painter is difficult to answer unless it is part and parcel of our new found imperialism. John Sargent was born in Florence, Italy, in 1856, and went at the age of twenty to study with Carolus Durand in Paris. In two years time he sent to this country a very remarkable portrait of his master which stirred the New York critics and artists so deeply as to draw from Fred. Crowninshield a fear that one who at so early an age had already mastered so completely his materials to have a formed style should become irresponsible and irreverent from very cleverness. To judge how unfounded this fear of Crowninshields was is seen by the work Sargent has done in the Boston public library.