that you had invited a draughtsman to come to Washington to help me with my cartoons. Some days after, in the beginning of last year (1857), Mr. Oertel presented himself and told me he was the artist intended to assist me with my designs. I inquired of him if he could paint. He answered no, that he was only a draughtsman. In proof of this assertion he showed to me an oil painting of small dimension, representing the head of St. Paul. Such was his only experiment in coloring.
“After this I gave him the measure of six circles on the pilasters in the Navy Room, to make a corresponding number of portraits of celebrated men in the American Navy, intending to paint them myself. After that day I did not again see Mr. Oertel, because he had received orders from you to make the designs for the stained glass in the House of Representatives. In consequence of which order I could not have his services. I have never yet received the designs for the aforesaid portraits, therefore, I made them myself, also the cartoons for my other work, intending to execute them when the weather was favorable.
“Not being able to work in the room of the Committee of War, as it is at present occupied, nor in the ante-chamber of the Senate as there are many workmen employed there, I commenced in the Senate Library not having received any information that the frescoes there were intended for Mr. Oertel nor could I think that an artist who himself has confessed that he had no practice in painting could think of executing pictures in fresco which is undoubtedly the most difficult of all varieties of painting.
“If for about fifteen months Mr. Oertel had been under your immediate orders, I could not again employ him without a new order from you, notwithstanding I have only painted one panel in the Library, and if you desire that Mr. Oertel shall make his first experiment in fresco in the aforesaid room, there still remain three vacant panels.
“In everything concerning the work in the Capitol Extension, it is my duty to receive orders and whatsoever observations may be needed only from you. So that I pray you please to make known to Mr. Oertel that neither he nor any other person has authority to send me such an insolent letter, containing as it does a direct reproach on the discharge of my duty, and I consider he has done me a serious injury.”
Although this Senate Library was begun by Brumidi in 1858 it would seem that only one lunette was finished at that time and that negotiations for its completion were again resumed on August 12, 1866, when Mr. Brumidi wrote the following letter to Architect Clark itemizing the completion costs:
“...The three panels in the ceiling, painted in real fresco representing allegorical subjects, corresponding to the original plan, and to the other already painted by myself, for $1,500 each, making an amount of $4,500—and 500 dollars more for painting all the figures and ornaments in the same ceiling in correspondence with the others, making a total cost of $5,000.
“The enclosed account at the old price of daily wages was presented by me to put under consideration what would have been the cost of the work if it had been completed six years ago. The mentioned persons, Peruchi and Geier were employed expressly one to help me as an artist, and the other to serve me in preparing the cartoons, the colors, and to assist me in my private studio as well as in the Capitol, and they having nothing to do with the plasterer who fixes the mortar in the wall, always furnished by the government.”
Architect Clark’s reply a few days later was short and to the point, “I do not consider there is three times as much to do as has already been done.”