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Edwin Blashfield

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Edwin Blashfield
Edwin Blashfield
Born
Edwin Howland Blashfield

December 5, 1848
Brooklyn, NY, US
DiedOctober 12, 1936
Resting placeWoodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, NY
NationalityAmerican
EducationPennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Known forPainter, muralist

Edwin Howland Blashfield (December 5, 1848 – October 12, 1936) was an American painter and muralist, most known for painting the murals on the dome of the Library of Congress Main Reading Room in Washington, DC.[1]

Biography

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US $2 obverse portrait

Blashfield was born in Brooklyn in 1848 to William H. Blashfield and Eliza Dodd.[2] He studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts after initial coursework in engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He moved to Europe in 1867 to study with Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat in Paris and remained abroad until 1881, traveling, painting, and exhibiting his work in salon shows. His academic background in painting and extensive travels in Italy to study fresco painting melded in work marked by delicacy and beauty of coloring. Following his early success as a genre painter, Blashfield became a widely admired muralist whose work ornamented the dome of the Manufacturers' and Liberal Arts building at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, in Chicago, several state capitols, and the central dome of the Library of Congress.

Edwin Blashfield designed the 1896 two-dollar note. The mural on the obverse features Science presenting Steam and Electricity. Science is seated with two boys.[3] The figures of Steam and Electricity are represented by the children and Commerce and Manufacture are portrayed by the two adults.[4] The reverse of the note features portraits of inventors Robert Fulton and Samuel Morse.[3]

He was a member of numerous arts organizations, including the National Academy of Design, the National Society of Mural Painters in which he served as President from 1909 to 1914.[5] American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Blashfield served from 1920 to 1926 as President of the National Academy of Design. Among his many honors, Blashfield was awarded a Gold Medal by the National Academy of Design in 1934, an honorary membership in the American Institute of Architects, and an honorary doctorate of fine arts by New York University in 1926. He served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1912 to 1916. His circle of friends included sculptor Daniel Chester French, painters John Singer Sargent and Maxfield Parrish, and architect Cass Gilbert.[6] His style was influenced by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Jean-Paul Laurens, and Paul Baudry. He married Evangeline Wilbour in 1881 and together they wrote Italian Cities (1900) and translated Vasari's Lives of the Painters (4 vols., 1897). Wilbour died in 1918 and Blashfield married Grace Hall in 1928.[2] He became president of the Society of Mural Painters, and of the Society of American Artists. Blashfield died in 1936 at his summer home on Cape Cod and is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

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Selected commissions

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Washington Surrendering His Commission, 1903 mural in the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse, Baltimore
The Fifth Minnesota at Corinth, c. 1912, Governor's Anteroom at the Minnesota State Capitol

References

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  1. ^ "The art education of Edwin Howland Blashfield". New-York Historical Society. 2014-10-15. Retrieved 2017-02-03.
  2. ^ a b "Guide to the Papers of Edwin Howland Blashfield 1870-1956 (bulk 1889-1936) MS 61". dlib.nyu.edu. New York Historical Society. 2011. Retrieved 2017-02-03.
  3. ^ a b "Our New Money". Burlington Gazette. 3 December 1895. Retrieved 18 October 2024.
  4. ^ Lee, Peter Y.W. (11 June 2021). "The U.S. Government's Failed Attempt to Forge Unity Through Currency". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 18 October 2024.
  5. ^ "National Society of Mural Painters". Archived from the original on 2018-10-15. Retrieved 2019-08-04.
  6. ^ Thomas E. Luebke, ed., Civic Art: A Centennial History of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 2013): Appendix B, p. 540.
  7. ^ "Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse, Courtroom 451: Washington Surrendering His Commission". Maryland State Archives.
  8. ^ "Panel in Lawyer's Club, Equitable Building, New York City", 1895, Smithsonian Institution. The Lawyers' Club had been in the old Equitable Building which was destroyed by fire in 1912. This mural by Blashfield was from that building. The new location of The Lawyers' Club was at 115 Broadway in the United States Realty Building.
  9. ^ Lawyers' Club's Sumptous [sic] New Home Ready This Week", New York Times, September 15, 1912, Sunday.
  10. ^ "New Book on Edwin Blashfield features CCNY Mural", Press Release, City College of New York, Thursday, Sep 17, 2009

Notes

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Further reading

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