Mr. W. L. Dodge, in the Pavilion of Art and Science, has grappled with his problem in a big way; exhibiting an eager acceptance of difficulty, and a resolute choice of intricate interest. For instance, he has arranged the light to fall upon his figures at short range, so that, instead of a simple scheme of light and shade, there is a multiplicity of unexpected effects. This purpose has expanded under the influence of the various subjects. The panels of Art and Music are crowded with sensations. We feel that here the painter is consciously and unconsciously reproducing the sensations of his Art life. In Literature, however, he has emerged into a more impersonal atmosphere. In Science the reproduction of sensations even more clearly yields to the creation of thought. Lastly, the ceiling is the climax of this growing artistic and intellectual effort. Here the problem is at its biggest, and the technical solution most successful. It is not by this or that accident of professional attainment that Mr. Dodge wins us here. It is because we feel that here the technique finally becomes the handmaid of real creative faculty.
In Mr. Melchers’s War and Peace, it is not beauty, in the popular acceptation of the term, that attracts us. Our interest is seized by their masterful character, held by their strong technique, and confirmed by their deep human significance. The brush-work is simple and sure, applied with breadth and in few tones, imitating the manner of frescoes in the old manner, painted rapidly while the plaster was still damp. Everything counts, and the artist’s thought is brought close to us. The composition varies with the subjects. In Peace, Mr. Melchers has relied on smooth masses balanced athwart a pleasing leafy background. Movement is suspended. War, however, shows the vigorous construction of moving forms: solid masses and a tangle of gnarled limbs displayed naked against a harsh landscape. We have muscular and mental tension. We see only the horror and hideousness of war, and none of its pomp and circumstance. Laurel, indeed, crowns the leader’s head, but his son is stretched a corpse upon the rude bier. One man blows a trumpet, but none of the dogged faces kindles. Only the hounds show eagerness, and they are straining at the leash to get home. The religious procession is in its way just as strong. It is entirely unsentimental. These simple folk are entering naturally into what is merely a part of their life and thought.
A great deal of the charm of Mr. McEwen’s panels is due to the landscapes, which are instinct with poetical imagination. The artist has given them an atmosphere which sets them back in the past, when the world was in its youth and full of promise rather than fulfilment. In the episodes selected, it is not the heyday of heroic achievement that he has commemorated, but the first impulses, such as those of Jason and Paris, or the reverses and inadequate results of human effort as illustrated in the other heroes. Stripped of its glamor, this is perhaps the true story of heroism in all ages.
Mr. Gutherz in his seven panels on the ceiling of the House Reading Room, has symbolized Light in its physical and metaphysical aspects. The starting-point of the scheme is the central panel—“Let there be light”—and the others follow in prismatic sequence. He has not painted the clearness of light, but its subtle play upon various surfaces. For example, from the central figure, “whose face no man hath seen and lived,” radiates a pale saffron glow, struggling through the formless void of primeval chaos, and piercing it with stars and splinters of light. In the next panel of Progress light is burnishing the dry atmosphere of an eastern sky; while in that of Research it acts and re-acts upon the particles of deep water, and spends itself in a soft suffused luminousness.
Mr. Dielman has adopted in his History an almost sculptural design; in Law rather a pictorial. In the latter the group on the spectator’s right is an especially attractive portion of the composition. In the case of the centre figure, it is well worthy of notice how the flexible lines on one side woo the figures, while on the other the drapery as well as the figure of Fraud slinks away from the hard line of the sword and the strong angle of the arm.
Mr. Simmons’s Muses exhibit a certain restless power, tempered by the sensibility of drawing and color. The first impression is of a vivid blue or red spot. The note is at once daring and original and in time irresistibly persuasive. For these panels are daring, not only in color but in the treatment of the subject. The painter has infused into the old Greek conception some of the intricacy of modern thought, without, however, losing the classic character. Observe, for instance, his representation of Tragedy. Greek tragedy was concerned with facts, the sin and the vengeance, not with psychological considerations. The actor’s mask covered even his face. But in the panel before us is a suggestion of the whole perplexing problem of human sin and suffering. Or note the conception of Calliope, with the hands uplifted like Aaron’s, partly in supplication, partly in encouragement, and with the shadow across those pitying eyes; it would be unintelligible but for the Inferno or Paradise Lost. In the thought and execution we feel a certain quality of what one may be allowed to call, perhaps, diablerie. Sometimes it becomes palpable to sight, as in the pale yellow flame in the panel of Polyhymnia. It is something more than technique—it is a spark struck out of the artist’s personal consciousness.
A few words in conclusion upon the significance of this Library. The union of sculpture and painting with architecture has always marked the brilliant period of a country, not only in arts and sciences, but in material and social advancement. The movement in this country, begun by Richardson and John la Farge, in Trinity Church, Boston, has been steadily fostered by our leading architects, gained an immense impulse at the World’s Fair, was endorsed by the Trustees of the Boston Public Library, and may now in the Library of Congress be said to have received the sanction of Government. It is a pre-eminently democratic movement, for art so directed becomes an idealized embodiment of the national life, and is brought within the reach of millions. And the benefit will react upon Art itself, since her domain is thereby widened, her opportunities increased, and an incentive supplied to higher and nobler work. Studied in connection with the great buildings of Europe, this Library, representing the various aims and methods of so many men, working from different points of view towards the same purpose, will afford an opportunity for analysis and comparison that should yield rich fruit. One may even venture to predict that, properly used, it will lead to that artistic ideal, the formation of a distinctively American School of Mural Painting. A school, founded upon the methods of the past; but differing in its animating impulse; no longer catering, as in the Italian Renaissance, to the cultivated caprice of a few powerful patrons, or reflecting an age when faith and civic virtues had waned, but broadening out to express the aspirations of a self-governing People, who profess belief in Religion, Country, Home, Themselves, and Humanity at large.