FIRE.—BY R. L. DODGE.
STATE AND TREASURY.—BY W. B. VAN INGEN.
The paintings in the tympanums are by Mr. W. B. Van Ingen, and illustrate the seals of the various Executive Departments of the United States Government. The disc of the domed ceiling was designed by Mr. Garnsey, and shows the Great Seal of the United States surrounded by allegorical emblems.
Mr. Van Ingen’s Paintings.—As in the previous pavilions on this floor, the general arrangement of the decoration is the same in all four tympanums. In each the artist has introduced a low terrace or wall of masonry running from end to end, thus serving both to ballast the picture, as it were, and to bind its parts more strongly together. A recess in the centre of the terrace allows space for a circular tablet, painted to represent wood, about six feet in diameter, or nearly the height of the tympanum. On this are inscribed, as if in raised letters, one or more quotations from the writings or speeches of great American statesmen. These were selected by the Librarian, Mr. Spofford, mainly for their general patriotic application, but, of course, as far as possible with some special reference to the subject of the decoration. The border of each tablet, as of the decoration itself, is a band of laurel-leaves, suggested by the laurel-roll which outlines the disc of the ceiling.
On either side of the tablet is a female figure, seated against the terrace, personifying a Department of the Government, in token of which she supports a shield or cartouche on which the seal of that Department is conspicuously displayed. The visitor will notice that these figures (in this respect like Mr. Reid’s in the Entrance Hall) illustrate the American type of woman, and wear modern gowns and not conventional Greek or Roman drapery.
The two figures and the tablet between form the necessary central pyramidal composition. For a limit and balance to the decoration the artist has painted, at either end, a cypress-tree and, in all but one of the tympanums, one or two nude children or geniuses, usually engaged in some action which shall be useful in explaining the purport of the picture, the meaning of which is still further brought out, in most cases, by introducing into the background a well known monument or building, or some conventional object, suggestive of the functions of the Department represented.