Handbook of the new Library of Congress

by Unknown

Somewhat similar must have been the motive of Mr. Warner. He has made the interest of his doors ascend, but on reaching the top has spread it throughout the lunette. In the latter the balance of raised and hollow parts, and the mingled repetition and contrast in the direction of his lines are admirable.

THE PAINTING.

The general painted decoration, as carried out for the architect by Mr. Garnsey, is always loyal to the architecture, and yet asserts the essential and peculiar value of color. First and foremost the constructional value of color is fully realized. In the central Reading Room, for instance, not only have the white walls and stucco been brought into color harmony with the rich red and yellow of the Numidian and Sienna marbles, but the tints have been so distributed and their strength graduated in relation to the spaces they cover, that a strictly structural fabric of color has been constructed in and around the architectural edifice. The grand suite of rooms running round the entire second story is a charming example of color sequence. The keynote is yellow, the most joyous of all colors—the hue of sunshine. The note is struck positively in the four pavilions, where the yellow has been carried as far as possible in the two directions of red or blue. These positive colors are connected by the tertiary tints in the intervening rooms, where the walls are dull yellow or olive, relieved by red and green in the frieze. In the room on the north side the painter has suffused the olive-green with a neutralized bloom of the complementary violet, thus securing a harmony of opposition as well as of similarity. In the central room on the east side, the scheme for a brief space swings to blue, with yellow in the frieze, and the more important rooms on the west side echo some of the brilliancy of the adjacent stair-hall. To name but one other phase of this work in which the decorator has worked so well for the architect, the emotional value of color or its quality of expression is exhibited in numerous instances. Above the high oak wainscot of the Librarian’s Room, the panels are a deep blue, enamelled with subdued arabesques. Age seems to have dimmed them. There is a patina of green rust upon the ivory ceiling, the tender touch of time upon the owls and lamps, that hints at the antiquity of thought. Compare with this the robustness of the design of the ceiling in the Pavilion of the Seals. The first impression is of a turbulence of gorgeous clouds veiled in a golden haze. Gradually the details of form and color grow, and we discover an elaborate harmony in which the great Seal of the United States and the American flag, are predominating features.

Of the special paintings which complete and accentuate this great general scheme of architecture, Mr. Blashfield’s occupy the most important position.[13] The problem was a conflicting one. The space demanded a noble theme and stately treatment, conforming to the monumental majesty of the structure, and yet responding to the tenderness and airiness of the cobweb of arabesque. It was necessary to continue and also to conclude the converging ribs; to solidify and also to disperse them; to create a design subordinate to the architecture and yet completing it and dominating it. His treatment is geometrical. Four figures crown the axial spaces, conspicuously white, full fronted, self-contained, emphasizing the spaciousness and symmetry of the structure, and symbolizing the four basic constituents of civilization. Each of these is supported by a figure to the right and left, which are so subtly posed that they prolong the converging lines of the ribs of the dome. While the eye is thus continually carried up, it is diverted horizontally by the interlacing lines of the limbs, the necklace of recurring banderoles and cartouches, and finally by the majestic sweep of wings, the sculpturesque simplicity of which merges the painting into the architecture above. To this wreath of form the artist has imparted a suffused bloom, tenderly iridescent; giving quiet distinction to each figure and a satisfying harmony to the whole composition. His intellectuality reveals itself, not only in the technical solution of his problem, but also in the depth and comprehensiveness with which he has interpreted his theme. It matters not which figures one selects; all are beautiful and richly suggestive. Compare the representation of Religion and of Philosophy; the yearning of the one for outside strength and light with the calm, passionless scrutiny of the other; or the dreamy transcendentalism of Islam, and his rounded limbs, with the square strenuous determination of the young giant, America. This composition, however, is not a circle, the recognized geometrical symbol of eternal completeness, but a concave ring whose lines converge toward a centre outside of and above itself. That centre is the figure in the Lantern, representing that Higher Wisdom to which the wisest are always striving to attain. This concave ring represents Civilization, which, kept in perfect balance by the harmony of the various elements of human life, spins easily and surely upon its axis. This is the greatest good of all; but it is impossible to maintain Civilization without Progress; it must forever speed upward to the Higher Wisdom.

Mr. Pearce’s panels in the north corridor are notable examples of decorative color. The positive tints are clear and fresh against soft backgrounds of secondary greens and violets. The composition, except in the panel of The Standard-Bearers, leans to the pictorial rather than to the decorative method. Perhaps Labor and Religion combine the two methods most happily. In the former the lines of the limbs repeat and relieve each other most agreeably. There is enough sameness of movement to emphasize the sharing of toil, sufficient difference to suggest individual effort. There is a suggestive contrast in Religion between the man’s awe and the woman’s placid confidence. He recognizes the mystery, she the comfort of fire. A germ of the love of the beautiful is shown in the choice for an altar of the curious stone which they have propped up so unstably, and yet with so much affectionate care.

In the east corridor, Mr. Alexander’s six panels are to be taken as so many fragments cut from the picture of the ages. They are terse and vigorous; they compel our interest. The figures are dramatic, in the true sense that they are doing something simple and natural, while their local surroundings, like the old chorus, interpret the significance—in some cases, from the standpoint of to-day, the insignificance—of the act. For, by the exercise of keen imagination, and through the resources of his technique, the artist has rendered with pathetic vividness the dumbness and isolation of early man and the unresponsiveness of his surroundings. With the skill of an expert dramatist, he has developed the growing permanence of the record, and the widening of the circle of influence, and led up to the climax when the written speech of one becomes the property of all.

In Mr. Walker’s panels, Nature and not Humanity is the inspiration. In his largest panel, she is exhibited in the unrestraint of stream and rock and verdure. Yet she is represented in Mr. Walker’s paintings not so much for her own sake as for the inspiration which she lends to the mind of the poet. It is Nature viewed through the medium of the imagination—Nature refined by the alchemy of human emotion.

In the opposite panel, man’s relation to Nature is introduced; in a suggestion of the old idyllic, pastoral life, with a hint, too, on one side of the panel, of man’s creative genius, the stately edifice into which, working upon Nature’s plan, he has built his own personality. The scheme is completed by the smaller panels in which the artist has suggested the various moods of lyric poetry, as illustrated by the special genius of Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, Emerson, Keats, and Wordsworth.

Mr. Vedder, in his Government series, has played upon a simple scale of low-toned reds, blues, greens, and yellows, thus responding in his work to the mosaic and marble which surround it. Each composition has a separate geometrical motive, built up by the distribution of the colors, the balance or contrast of light and dark, the flow of the lines, and, not least, by the arrangement of the spaces. The central panel succeeds completely in its twofold purpose of giving dignity and height to the entrance, and of expressing the solidity and elevation of Government. The use of line is throughout remarkable. In the panels of Good Administration and Peace and Prosperity the lines of direction are downward from the zenith. In the former, these lines fall in tenderly embracing curves; in the latter they widen out and form that strongest of all structures, a broad-based pyramid. In Corrupt Legislation, the eye is first arrested by the tilted leg and slovenly slipper, and follows down to the money-bag. We know it all: the shamelessness, shiftlessness, and corruption. It is a compression of multiplied experience into one illuminating flash. The direction of the picture is diagonal, and the masses of form and color purposely accentuate its lop-sidedness. Yet the picture seems evenly balanced, for the simplicity and distinctness of the standing figure attracts one’s eye from the intentional confusion of the opposite side. In the spaces one will notice the harsh gashes made by the chimneys, and the unpleasant parallelism of the smoke wreaths, so suggestive of the dead monotony of sordid lives. The triumph of ordered disorder is reached in the panel of Anarchy, which is based on a reversal of geometric methods. The masses of dark and light tumble diagonally across the picture towards the desolate space with the broken wheel. The spaces at the top are shattered and splintered as if by an explosion. But most remarkable is the jagged space near the centre. It is as if a shot had ploughed its way through the chaos and allowed a glimpse of the void beyond.