Volume 1 Number 43
ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, FOUR DOLLARS. SINGLE COPIES TWENTY 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, 1913, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC., PRESIDENT AND TREASURER, R. M. DONALDSON; VICE-PRESIDENT, W. M. SANFORD; SECRETARY, L. D. GARDNER.
Editorial
In the early part of the nineteenth century the United States Government realized the importance of having a record on canvas of the nation’s great historical events, and several painters of that day produced pictures that hold places of honor in our Government buildings. John Trumbull was the foremost of these painters.
There has been a demand for several years for new historic paintings. The feeling exists that the painters of one hundred years ago could not have the perspective to portray the Revolution correctly, no more than a historian of the same period could write its history. The time has come for modern artists in American historic art. The World’s Fair at Chicago gave an impetus to the work, especially in decorative form. As a result, public buildings erected within the past twenty years show many interesting and distinguished examples of historic art in mural decorations, by such artists as Blashfield, Kenyon Cox, C. Y. Turner, and others. There is a demand now from many sources—from galleries, Federal and state governments, and from schools—for historical pictures which shall be true and shall also be worthy examples of modern work.
This number of The Mentor contains four distinguished examples of modern historical art. Three of them are the work of Mr. Henry Mosler, and were painted within the past five years.
Mr. Mosler has been known as an artist of great distinction for a long time. As early as 1874 he won a medal at the Royal Academy of Munich, and he won the Thomas B. Clarke prize in the National Academy of Design, New York, in 1896. Mr. Mosler, therefore, brought the ripe powers of a master painter to the work, and he has produced four paintings of great art value and historic importance.