(Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)
Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. This means that we have checked every single page in every title, making it highly unlikely that any material imperfections – such as poor picture quality, blurred or missing text - remain. When our staff observed such imperfections in the original work, these have either been repaired, or the title has been excluded from the Leopold Classic Library catalogue. As part of our on-going commitment to delivering value to the reader, within the book we have also provided you with a link to a website, where you may download a digital version of this work for free. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience. If you would like to learn more about the Leopold Classic Library collection please visit our website at www.leopoldclassiclibrary.com
Mural Painting In America: The Scammon Lectures, Delivered Before The Art Institute Of Chicago, March, 1912, And Since Greatly Enlarged, By Edwin Howland Blashfield...
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.
(Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)
Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. This means that we have checked every single page in every title, making it highly unlikely that any material imperfections – such as poor picture quality, blurred or missing text - remain. When our staff observed such imperfections in the original work, these have either been repaired, or the title has been excluded from the Leopold Classic Library catalogue. As part of our on-going commitment to delivering value to the reader, within the book we have also provided you with a link to a website, where you may download a digital version of this work for free. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience. If you would like to learn more about the Leopold Classic Library collection please visit our website at www.leopoldclassiclibrary.com
Edwin Howland Blashfield was an American mural painter. He served as President of the National Academy of Design from 1920 to 1926.
Background
Edwin Blashfield was born on December 15, 1848, in New York City, New York, United States, the oldest of seven children of William Henry and Eliza (Dodd) Blashfield. His father, who was in the wholesale dry-goods house of Claflin, Mellen & Company (later H. B. Claflin & Company), was descended from Thomas Blashfield, who settled in Beverly, Massachussets, about 1650. His mother was a Bostonian, a descendant of James Dodd, who came to Holden, Massachussets, from northern Ireland in 1724.
Education
After graduating from the Boston Latin School, young Blashfield entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His parents were amateur artists, and he himself revealed a precocious talent in drawing. In 1866, encouraged by the painter William Morris Hunt, to whom he had shown some of his work, he gave up engineering for painting and, after studying for two months under Hunt, left for further study in France. He was granted an honorary doctorate of fine arts by New York University in 1926.
Career
In Paris Blashfield entered the atelier of the figure painter Léon Bonnât, and for most of the next fifteen years his life revolved around that painter's studio. An academic impressionist, Bonnât strengthened Blashfield's draftsmanship and broadened his aesthetic horizons. In 1874 Blashfield produced the first of a succession of Paris Salon canvases, "A Poet. " His subject matter was at first mainly historical, as in his "Emperor Commodus Preceding the Gladiators from the Arena" (1878); in 1880 he shifted to modern figures, decorative subjects, and portraits. In 1881, Blashfield married in Paris Evangeline Wilbour, and soon after took up permanent residence in New York City. He and his wife wrote several magazine articles on medieval and Renaissance art, which Blashfield illustrated, and a book, Italian Cities (1900). In 1897, together with Albert A. Hopkins, they brought out an abridged edition of Vasari's Lives of the Painters.
In 1892 Blashfield received a commission which marked a turning point in his career. Up to this time he had concentrated on easel painting. But the plans for the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, under the direction of the architect Daniel H. Burnham, included a series of massive classic buildings topped by domes, the interiors of which were to be decorated with mural paintings. For this purpose a group of young artists was called upon, among them Francis D. Millet, J. Alden Weir, Edward Simmons, Kenyon Cox, Gari Melchers, and Blashfield. For a dome in the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building Blashfield painted "The Arts of Metal Working, " depicted by four winged figures in appropriate attitudes, with a large circle of sky above them filled with doves. Executed mainly in white, relieved by peacock blues and greens, it was considered one of the best domes at the Fair and established Blashfield's reputation. The World's Fair provided a tremendous stimulus to the arts in America and particularly to mural painting. Up to this time, except for a few works by Constantino Brumidi, William Morris Hunt, and John LaFarge, mural decoration for public buildings had been largely unknown in the United States.
Thus the work at Chicago had a pioneering and experimental quality. The interest in mural painting aroused by the Fair continued unabated for the next thirty years, and Blashfield worked on many of the major assignments of this period, among them murals for the state capitols of Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. He was also flooded with private commissions, including panels for the New York residence of Collis P. Huntington and for the Hotel Astoria. He was additionally qualified for this work by the extensive cultural background he had acquired in Europe and by his great enthusiasm for public art.
Scale and flatness marked Blashfield's early work, reflecting the influence of the French mural painter Puvis de Chavannes, whose work Blashfield had observed in Paris. "The Power of the Law" (1899), in the building of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, New York City, announced what he called the "grid-iron stage, " where the flatness is emphasized even more by avoiding lines leading into the picture and by keeping the horizon low. In this mural he typically juxtaposed a symbolic figure, Justice, with figures in contemporary dress. His later murals showed greater depth of perspective and more modeling of the figures. "The Edict of Toleration by Lord Baltimore" and "Washington Laying his Commission at the Feet of Columbia, " two panels in the Baltimore City Court House, finished in 1903, announced this important new period. "Minnesota, the Granary of the World" (1904), in the Minnesota State Capitol at St. Paul, was bolder and more animated, as was his "Discoverers and Civilizers Led to the Headwaters of the Mississippi" in the same building. During the first World War he prepared a number of war posters, and in 1919 he designed the tribute sent by the government to the next of kin of those who died in the service.
Blashfield continued to be active until about 1933, when he had to give up painting murals in situ - the repeated climbing of a ladder was too much for him - and instead paint canvas panels for later installation. Throughout his career Blashfield sought support for public art and especially for mural painting. In 1912 he gave the Scammon Lectures at the Art Institute of Chicago, published a year later under the title Mural Painting in America. Like many artists he relied on an independent source of income, which in his case came from his wife. Blashfield died of a heart attack at his summer home in South Dennis, Massachussets, and was buried in the Wilbour family plot in Woodlawn Cemetery, New York City.
Achievements
Edwin Blashfield was an outstanding muralist. Although trained as an easel painter, Blashfield showed great aptitude for large-scale planning, and he was remarkably adept in coordinating his designs with the surrounding architecture. His best known works are the murals on the dome of the Library of Congress Main Reading Room in Washington, DC.
Blashfield was a regular communicant of the Episcopal Church.
Membership
Blashfield was a founding member of the Municipal Art Society in New York City; president of the Society of Mural Painters and of the Society of American Artists; member of the National Academy of Design, the National Society of Mural Painters, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Personality
A gentleman of the old school, tall and slender, modest and courteous, Blashfield wore a very high stiff collar even when at work.
Interests
Blashfield was an enthusiastic mountain climber and fond of walking tours. One of his great pleasures was reading aloud, which he did extremely well.
Connections
On July 5, 1881, Blashfield married in Paris Evangeline Wilbour, daughter of Charles Edwin Wilbour, journalist, former member of the Tweed Ring, and noted Egyptologist. She died in 1918, and in 1928 he married Grace Hall. His only child, by his first wife, died in infancy.
