Background
Marie Hildreth Meiere was born on September 3, 1892 in New York City, the daughter of Ernest Meière, a man of independent means, and of Marie Hildreth.
Marie Hildreth Meiere was born on September 3, 1892 in New York City, the daughter of Ernest Meière, a man of independent means, and of Marie Hildreth.
Meière's mother had entertained thoughts of becoming a professional artist and in her youth had studied under the painter William Merritt Chase. When Marie exhibited an interest in art, her mother urged her to pursue the career that she herself had foregone in favor of marriage. In 1911, following Meière's graduation from Convent of the Sacred Heart, mother and daughter embarked for Florence, where the latter studied under the English painter Gordon Carmichael. On her return to New York in 1912, Meière enrolled at the Art Students League. When her family moved to San Francisco in 1913, she continued her studies at the California School of Fine Arts.
In 1916, encouraged by actress Margaret Anglin, who had much admired an exhibition of her portrait sketches of actors in costume, Meière moved back to New York to become a theatrical designer. Although she was successful, she was disillusioned when credit for her work on an opera production went to another, and she remained in this occupation only briefly. Shortly after America's entry into World War I, Meière went to work for the mapmaking division of the U. S. Navy, where she acquired skills in scale drawing, an experience that proved invaluable to her subsequent career. In 1919 she renewed her studies at the New York School of Applied Design for Women and, later, at the Beaux Arts Institute of Design, where her mural designs earned her several first-place medals in student competitions. Meière's first paid mural commission, a depiction of Norse folktales, was executed for actor Alfred Lunt's home in Wisconsin. In 1922 she met architect Bertram Goodhue, who, though unimpressed with her samples of mural work and building decoration, was taken with her costume sketches. Soon Goodhue was regularly employing Meière to design decorative elements for his buildings. Among her earliest efforts for him were reredos panels in St. Mark's Church, Mt. Kisco, New York, and St. Martin's Church, Providence, Rhode Island. One of Goodhue's most original accomplishments was the Nebraska State Capitol, constructed in the 1920's. The success of the building's interior owed much to Meière, who designed a large portion of the decoration, including ceiling and floor mosaics, portraying the state's heritage, for the main halls, and tapestry and wall ornamentation for the legislative chambers. This work won a gold medal from the Architectural League of New York in 1928. Also during the 1920's Meière designed the mosaics of painted and gilded gesso for the dome at the new National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D. C.
In 1932 she was hired to do four massive art deco plaques in enameled metal for the exterior of Rockefeller Center's Music Hall. In the following year her mural "Onward Progress of Women, " commissioned by the National Council of Women and later given to Smith College, was unveiled at Chicago's Century of Progress. In 1928 Meière and other artists met in her New York City studio to found the Liturgical Arts Society, for the purpose of fostering interest in church art. In the early 1930's she also directed a mural painting atelier for the Beaux Arts Institute, and in 1935 she chaired the National Society of Mural Painters exhibition at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York City. Because Meière's works were meant to complement predetermined architectural settings, the stylistic inspiration for her undertakings came from sources ranging from ancient Roman mosaics and Renaissance frescoes to twentieth-century modernists. To obtain ideas she frequently went abroad to study the decoration of noted buildings. Regardless of whether her designs took traditional or modern forms, she constantly had to adapt their execution to new building technologies. Meière relished this challenge and experimented tirelessly with new materials and techniques. For the New York World's Fair of 1939, Meière completed six commissions, one of the largest being the metal relief figures over the entrance of the Education and Science Building. During World War II she served on the Citizens Committee for the Army and Navy and made it her special concern to supply chaplains with triptychs for use in their services. Over the next fifteen years, Meière's work included mosaic murals for the Travelers Insurance Building in Hartford, Connecticut, altar decorations for St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, and mosaics for the crypt at the National Cathedral in Washington, D. C. When she died in New York City, she was working on dome mosaics for St. Louis Cathedral, St. Louis, Missouri.
A deeply religious Catholic, Meière took particular satisfaction in the church commissions, and for the remainder of her life, ecclesiastical design constituted a substantial part of her work.
Quotations: “You cannot maintain your career in an ivory tower and expect to succeed. You must get out there and work with the others. ”
Meière married Richard A. Goebel on May 3, 1929; they had one daughter. Two years later the marriage was annulled.