Edwin Blashfield

     In the early years of the 20th century, Edwin H. Blashfield was a major figure in American art. In that era, he was considered the nation's most respected muralist and his works were designed and painted for state capitols, churches and couthouses - even the rotunda of the Great Reading Room of the Library of Congress, the jewel of the American Renaissance. Because of the breadth of his knowledge and erudition, Blashfield was a popular lecturer and an accomplished author and editor. Unfortunately, with a few notable exceptions, the names of the artists who have created the murals that decorate hundreds of civic buildings across the United States are little known today - even by those who work in the buildings that house the decorations or those who visit them with regularity. So, with the exception of art historians or the small number of people with a scholarly interest in mural painting, the name of Edwin Blashfield has faded into obscurity.

     My interest in the artist began long ago, as the classically trained painter that I studied with, Theodore N. Lukits (1897-1992), had known Blashfield and would often cite his work and his opinions. Now that many of the great civic buildings of the Gilded Age are undergoing renovation and the murals that decorate them are being restored, it is time once again to elevate our noted muralists to the pantheon of American art.

     The only monograph on Edwin Blashfield yet to appear is a large-format book that was published after his passing in 1937. There is a sixteen-page biographical essay written by the art critic Royal Cortissoz, who was a life-long friend of Blashfield. The essay is written in Cortissoz' sympathetic, descriptive style, and is an appreciation rather than a biography, being short on the type of facts that art historians typically rely upon. It does, however, give a strong idea of the artist's personality and character.

     There is a wide selection of reproductions from Blashfield's murals in the Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa State Capitols, the Baltimore Court House, the Essex County Court House, the Dome of the Library of Congress, the Detroit Public Library, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the City College of New York and a number of churches and private residences. There are also several studies reproduced which show Blashfield's strong draftsmanship and the monumentality of his figures. The seventy-five full-page plates made this a very expensive book when it was published, and though they are black and white, they convey the extraordinary quality and productivity of Blashfield's career.

     Mural Painting in America is a book that was prepared from the notes that Edwin Blashfield used when he delivered the Scammon Lectures at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1912. Because of Blashfield's academic background in painting and his extensive travels to the great frescoes of Italy, he was an ideal guide to mural painting. His experience as America's most prominent muralist gave him the practical experience to evaluate other muralist's work and to describe how the mural needed to be integrated into the architectural design.

     Blashfield's first chapter emphasizes the importance of mural decoration in constructing a civic culture. He felt that murals were essential to the decoration of buildings that would stand the test of time. His second chapter is about the process by which the corporation, civic organization or committee commissioning the building works hand-in-hand with their architect. Following that is a chapter about the type of experience an artist must have in order to produce a significant mural - not only the artistic skills but the ability to manage the men working under him and the project. Chapter four then describes how the painter must work in harmony with the building commissioner, the architect and his fellow mural painters.

     The fifth chapter covers the muralist's relationship with the architect and how the two must be in sympathy and be able to really cooperate, with the architect being the true leader of the project. Chapter six is about the relationship between mural painters working on the same project, which Blashfield describes as "the thorniest and most delicate question in the range of decoration." In the next chapter Blashfield uses his erudition and art history background to describe the importance of the theme or subject of the mural. He believed that there must be an idea behind a mural - that it must communicate a story, not a trivial incident.

     In chapter eight, Blashfield describes the fundamental education in art that a muralist or artist needed, and relates some of his own experiences. He asserts the difficulty of getting an art education in a time when artistic movements came in rapid succession and "anarchistic conditions have shaken the foundations of art." Chapter nine is an argument or viewers of murals to keep an open mind, to "withhold censure in favor of examination." Blashfield was a traditionalist but thanks to his exposure to a wide variety of art he was catholic in his taste and wished for this broadmindedness in others. The tenth chapter covers the question of an American style in art, which he felt that succeeding generations would be better able to recognize and assess. However, he advocates tradition when he states that "with mural painting we must follow in somebody else's footsteps."

     Chapter eleven finds Blashfield describing the evolution of American mural painting, summarizing the tremendous strides that Americans had made since the Chicago World's Fair. Chapter twelve describes the influence of the great Renaissance muralists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The next chapter is an exposition of the subject of technique, of paint handling and brushwork and its relation to mural painting.

     In Blashfield's conclusion he argues for an American civic culture that will succeed Renaissance Italy and the recent example of 19h-century France. "As it is in Paris, so, let us hope, it shall be in America when we shall have put our best art where it belongs, at the top, in the public building; for we shall have a national school when, and not until, art, like a new Petrarch, goes up to be crowned at the Capitol."