For pure beauty of invention, for charm of drawing and delicacy of vision, no American decoration has surpassed the two lovely panels executed by the late Robert Blum for the frieze of the assembly room of the Mendelssohn Glee Club in New York. They attracted enormous attention when they were first completed, and have been reproduced in many forms. Blum was a highly original painter, and these many figures representing “Music” and “The Dance” have a grace quite their own.
Reproductions of these paintings made by The Detroit Publishing Co.
Copyright, 1912, by The Curtis Publishing Co.
Copyright, 1914, by The Detroit Publishing Co.
THREE PANELS, by Maxfield Parrish
These three panels are part of a series called “A Florentine Fête,” which decorates the entire front of the dining room of the Curtis Publishing Company’s building in Philadelphia
Thomas W. Dewing, more identified with easel work, has nevertheless executed several charming decorations, one in the Imperial Hotel, New York, “Dawn,” ranking high indeed. It has all the man’s personal color vision, and is exquisitely dainty and graceful.
Several men were concerned in the wall decorations of the Appellate Court, among them H. Siddons Mowbray and Willard L. Metcalf. The first named chose for theme “The Transmission of the Law,” which he rendered in a scholarly as well as artistic manner. Mr. Mowbray has executed a ceiling for the library of the University Club of New York, a large work for the Newark courthouse, and many private commissions.
The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel gave early opportunities for the work of Will H. Low and Frank Fowler, both of whom carried out interesting schemes of decoration; while work in the church of the Paulist Fathers in New York offered a similar chance for William Laurel Harris. Fred Dana Marsh showed the possibilities of large engineering achievements for decorative material in a large panel in the rooms of the United Engineering Societies. It is an apotheosis[3] of labor, of the pick, the shovel, and the iron and steel worker, and Mr. Marsh was singularly original in the composition.
[3] An apotheosis celebrates and exalts a subject in ideal forms of expression.