The Mentor Association

ESTABLISHED FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF A POPULAR INTEREST IN ART, LITERATURE, SCIENCE, HISTORY, NATURE, AND TRAVEL

THE ADVISORY BOARD

JOHN G. HIBBEN	President of Princeton University
HAMILTON W. MABIE	Author and Editor
JOHN C. VAN DYKE	Professor of the History of Art, Rutgers College
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART	Professor of Government, Harvard University
WILLIAM T. HORNADAY	Director New York Zoölogical Park
DWIGHT L. ELMENDORF	Lecturer and Traveler

THE PLAN OF THE ASSOCIATION

The purpose of The Mentor Association is to give its members, in an interesting and attractive way, the information in various fields of knowledge which everybody wants and ought to have. The information is imparted by interesting reading matter, prepared under the direction of leading authorities, and by beautiful pictures, produced by the most highly perfected modern processes.

The object of The Mentor Association is to enable people to acquire useful knowledge without effort, so that they may come easily and agreeably to know the world’s great men and women, the great achievements and the permanently interesting things in art, literature, science, history, nature, and travel.

The purpose of the Association is carried out by means of simple readable text and beautiful illustrations in The Mentor.

The annual subscription is Three Dollars, covering The Mentor Course, which comprises twenty-four numbers of The Mentor in one year.

THE MENTOR

SUBSCRIPTION, THREE DOLLARS A YEAR. SINGLE COPIES FIFTEEN CENTS. FOREIGN POSTAGE 75 CENTS EXTRA. CANADIAN POSTAGE 50 CENTS EXTRA. ENTERED AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N.Y., AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER. COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC. PRESIDENT AND TREASURER, R. M. DONALDSON; VICE-PRESIDENT, W. M. SANFORD; SECRETARY, L. D. GARDNER

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The Mentor Association, Inc.
52 EAST 19th STREET, NEW YORK, N. Y.

THE PLEIADES, by Elihu Vedder. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

American Mural Painters
ELIHU VEDDER

Monograph Number One in The Mentor Reading Course

Elihu Vedder said of his parents, “My mother went to church; but I know that wherever a fish was to be found my father went fishing,” and of his mother he said further, “It had always been my mother’s wish that I should be a great artist, and for her sake I wish it could have been so.”

Vedder was born in New York City on February 26, 1836, and as a boy attended the Brinkerhoff School in Brooklyn. In this institution the greatest virtue was a good memory; the pupil who could best memorize his lessons stood highest. Consequently Vedder, who always had a bad memory, stood at the foot of his class. Nevertheless he showed early evidences of his talent.

He first studied under the genre (jonr) and historical painter Tompkins H. Mattison, at Sherburne, New York. Then he went to Paris to study in the atelier of the French painter Picot. He went to Italy in 1857, where he worked for some years, and then returned to the United States and remained there until 1865. In that year he was elected to full membership in the National Academy of Design, New York City. He went back to Paris and spent one winter there; but in January, 1867, moved to Rome, where he has ever since resided. He has made many visits to the United States; but Italy is his favorite dwelling place.

At first Vedder devoted himself to the painting of genre pictures. These, however, attracted only a little attention until 1884, when he illustrated the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. This immediately gave him a high place in the art world. His important decorative work came later. These subjects are principally imaginative.

A pen picture by H. T. Carpenter, of Vedder in his Italian home, gives a good idea of the personality of the man: “The picturesque personality of the painter would impress one, whatever and wherever the surroundings. As he came down those stone steps” (of his studio in Rome), “a bunch of large keys in his hand to open the gate, explaining the while the reason for the absence of the porter and attendant of all work, with a gentleness born of a natural sympathy for the under dog, he looked the man one might imagine the creator of such work as is shown in the series of drawings of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, or the Congressional Library and the Bowdoin College decorations, or the mural work in the Huntington house, with its incomparable central figure, Luna,—his abundant wavy white hair, features of marked strength, penetrating blue eyes, which alternately twinkled and analyzed, a long, flowing white mustache, a striking head on massive shoulders, tall in height; in fine, a picture of rugged picturesqueness that stood out even in that land of artistic individuality, but never for a moment taken for anything but a fine type of American. His manner was cordial, frank, sincere, and unaffected, and one soon found out he was a good hater of shams.”

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 2, No. 15. SERIAL No. 67
COPYRIGHT, 1914. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION. INC.

DETAIL OF THE ANTHONY DREXEL MEMORIAL CHANCEL, by E. H. Blashfield.

In the Church of the Savior, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

American Mural Painters
EDWIN HOWLAND BLASHFIELD

Monograph Number Two in The Mentor Reading Course

Edwin Howland Blashfield has a place in the front rank of American mural painters through his elevation of thought and his masterly execution. His imagination is fertile and his treatment of subjects highly decorative. He has been able to paint both history and legend, and has placed them side by side in the same compositions.

He was born on December 15, 1848, in New York City. He is a son of William Henry Blashfield, and a brother of Albert Dodd Blashfield, the illustrator.

Blashfield studied first at the Boston Latin School. Then, in 1867, he went to Paris to study under Leon Bonnât. He also received valuable advice from Gérôme and Chapù. He exhibited for many years at the Paris Salon, and also at the Royal Academy in London. In 1881 he returned to the United States and married.

For some years he was a painter of genre pictures; that is, pictures of common life and its associations. Then he turned to decorative work, which was marked by rare delicacy and beauty of color. At the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 he painted mural decorations for a dome in the Manufacturers’ Building. Later he did the great central dome of the Congressional Library at Washington, the drawing room for the Huntington residence, the decoration for the courtroom in the courthouse at Baltimore, the decoration of the entire chancel in the Church of the Savior at Philadelphia, and many other masterpieces of mural art.

Blashfield is well known as a lecturer on art, and has written many articles dealing with the subject. With Mrs. Blashfield he wrote, in 1900, “Italian Cities,” and together, with A. A. Hopkins, they edited Vasari’s “Lives of the Painters.”

At one time Blashfield was president of the Society of American Artists. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and many other societies. He makes his home in New York City.

Blashfield has received many honors and medals, including a bronze medal at the Paris Exposition in 1900, a gold medal at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, a Carnegie prize in 1911, and others.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 2, No. 15. SERIAL No. 67
COPYRIGHT, 1914. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION. INC.

From a Copley Print. Copyright by Curtis & Cameron, Inc.

THE APOTHEOSIS OF PENNSYLVANIA, By E. A. Abbey. IN THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE CAPITOL AT HARRISBURG

American Mural Painters
EDWIN AUSTIN ABBEY

Monograph Number Three in The Mentor Reading Course

Walk into the Public Library at Boston, and you will find yourself in the midst of some of the most magnificent mural decorations in America. There we find the great frieze of The Prophets, by John Sargent, and in the delivery room is the great decoration by Edwin Austin Abbey which is called “The Quest of the Holy Grail.”

In the early part of his life Edwin Abbey was an illustrator, celebrated chiefly for his pen drawings. In later life his work became larger in character, and he turned naturally to mural painting.

Edwin Austin Abbey was born in Philadelphia, April 1, 1852. He studied first at the schools of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; but at the age of nineteen left this and entered the art department of the publishing house of Harper & Bros., New York City, where he became successful as an illustrator. Associated with him were such artists as Howard Pyle, C. S. Reinhart, and Joseph Pennell. In 1878 Harpers’ planned to publish the poems of Robert Herrick, and sent Abbey to England to gather material for the illustrations. These were published in 1882, and attracted much attention. Illustrations for Goldsmith’s “She Stoops to Conquer,” for a volume of old songs, and for the comedies and a few of the tragedies of Shakespeare, followed. His water colors and pastels were successful in the same degree.

Abbey by this time had become closely identified with the art life of England. In 1883 he was elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colors. His first oil painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1890, which was called “A May Day Morning.” He became a full Royal Academician in 1898.

His mural decoration called “The Quest of the Holy Grail,” in the Boston Public Library, on which he was occupied for several years, deserves special mention. In 1901 King Edward VII commissioned him to paint a picture of the coronation. During his life many honors were showered upon him. Abbey died in 1911.

In “The Apotheosis of Pennsylvania,” below to the left are Sir Walter Raleigh, who had a grant in Pennsylvania; Henry Hudson, who discovered and sailed up the Delaware River; Captain Minuit, the explorer and navigator, and others. To the right are a pioneer and representatives of various religious sects that settled in Pennsylvania. Below these, beginning at the left, are ships on the stocks, the city troopers, General Wayne, Atkinson (the first American judge), the first provost of the University of Pennsylvania, Bishop White (the first American bishop), and others, among them Dr. Caspar Wistar, Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, and Robert Morris. At the left are Governor Curtis and Thaddeus Stevens cheering the soldiers of 1861 marching to defend the state, officered by Generals Hancock and Meade. On the right are miners and workers in steel and iron, machinery, and so forth.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 2, No. 15. SERIAL No. 67
COPYRIGHT, 1914. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION. INC.

From a Copley Print. Copyright by Curtis & Cameron, Inc.

RETURN OF THE BATTLE FLAGS, by Edward Simmons. In the Massachusetts State House. Boston, Massachusetts.

American Mural Painters
EDWARD EMERSON SIMMONS

Monograph Number Four in The Mentor Reading Course

Edward Emerson Simmons had many disappointments to contend with during the early part of his life; but he overcame them all, and has made for himself a place in the foremost rank of American artists.

He comes from good old Massachusetts stock. His mother was a sister of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famous American poet and essayist. Simmons was born at Concord, Massachusetts, on October 27, 1852. He went to Harvard University, and graduated from there in 1874 with great honor. It is a fact worthy of remark that the class of 1874 contains many men who have achieved distinction.

After graduating Simmons went to Paris to study art, where his teachers were Lefebvre and Boulanger. At the schools he was very popular, and his easel was the favorite loafing place for the other members of his class.

In 1881 he exhibited at the Salon a portrait of a gentleman in Highland costume, which attracted great attention. The following summer he went to Brittany, where he remained for sometime. He made his home at Concarneau in Finistère, a fishing port famous for its sardines. There Simmons experimented with all kinds of painting,—landscape, marine, and figure,—and took the lead in the art life of the colony, among whom were painters from France, England, and America.

In 1882 he sent to the Salon a painting called “La Blanchisseuse,” a picture of a Breton girl carrying the clothes from the brookside, where she had been washing them, which is a custom in Brittany. The picture received honorable mention.

In 1891 his class at Harvard decided to give a memorial window, and Simmons got the commission. Then came the World’s Fair at Chicago in 1893, and Simmons obtained the commission to decorate the dome of the Liberal Arts Building. He chose for his subject four objects of American labor,—wood, iron, stone, and fiber. This painting shows strength, directness, simplicity, and dignity. It was his first mural decoration, and was a good experience. He saw his opportunity and made the most of it.

Almost immediately came the commission to decorate the Criminal Court Buildings of the Courts of Oyer and Terminer in the city of New York, which he worked out with enthusiasm. The subject represented is Justice, in the shape of a stately, dignified figure with a globe in one hand and the scales in the other. He draped this figure in an American flag; a hard problem, but cleverly worked out. The side panels to the right represent the Three Fates; those to the left, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

Then came the commission for decorating the Congressional Library at Washington. He chose as his subject the nine muses.

Following this he received many commissions for work in private residences, and for a series of paintings for the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City.

Simmons was one of the original members of the Ten American Painters, and is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 2, No. 15. SERIAL No. 67
COPYRIGHT, 1914. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION. INC.

FROM A COPLEY PRINT. COPYRIGHT BY CURTIS & CAMERON, INC.

HOSEA—DETAIL OF THE PROPHETS, by John Sargent

IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY. BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

“Hosea,” a detail of the frieze of “The Prophets,” by John Singer Sargent, in the Public Library, Boston, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “American Mural Painters.”