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Fall 2004

Personal and Public: Murals in the Library of Congress and the Boston Public Library

RICHARD MURRAY


In the mid-1890s, two vast libraries opened to the American public. In Boston, the new Public Library opened on March 11, 1895 (fig. 1). In Washington, the Library of Congress officially opened on November 1, 1897. Nothing like them had been seen in America. Each of these decorative buildings celebrated high-minded notions of Culture, the idea of the best that has been known or thought in the world, the “touchstones” of excellence as defined by the English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold. Each building declared that America had gathered these treasures and vast amounts of general and specialized knowledge into well-organized and neatly classified collections of printed and manuscript materials, available to the public through the most modern means. Although local, the Boston Public Library aimed to be universal in its collections, and its architect, Charles McKim, of McKim, Mead and White, sought to make his library symbolic of Boston’s place as the intellectual and cultural capital of America. In Washington, the Library of Congress moved out of its old quarters in the Capitol and became not only a congressional reference library but also the national library with a new mission for a new building.

Fig. 1. McKim, Mead and White, Boston Public Library, 1887-1895, detail of the Copley Square entrance. (Courtesy Library of Congress)

Fig. 2. John Singer Sargent, The Israelites Oppressed, installed 1895. (Courtesy Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston)

These buildings celebrated history, tradition, and culture through a unity of painting, sculpture, and architecture. They seemed to have collapsed time and space into useful monuments of the past and present. The buildings themselves are so heavily inscribed with the names of historical and contemporary cultural figures that the architecture becomes an index to the western canon--the Boston Public library has some 650 names inscribed on its exterior while the Library of Congress has probably a similar number, or more, with inscriptions worked into the mosaics, sculpture, and mural paintings of its interior.

Most notable was the new use of mural painting as an architectural expression of culture. But the murals in the two buildings differ significantly in how they were commissioned, in their subjects, and in their ultimate success as works of public art. Although the word public is in the Boston building’s name, it was essentially a personal statement by architect McKim, and the murals by Edwin Abbey and John Singer Sargent were those artists’ personal interpretations of religion and literature. Although the word congress is in the Washington building’s name, it is a national building with murals that are more easily readable and comprehensible to the public than those in the Boston Public Library. A brief review of the mural programs in each building will suggest why the Library of Congress, rather than the Boston Public Library, became the touchstone for mural painting in America prior to the First World War.

In May 1892, some three years before the Boston Public Library opened, a reporter for the Boston Evening Record made a shocking discovery while reviewing the building’s progress. Although the names of cultural heroes spread across the façade appeared to be placed in random order, one set of three panels seemed to have special meaning: grouped together in one panel were the names of Moses, Cicero, Kalidasa, Isocrates, and Milton. In the adjoining panel were the names Mozart, Euclid, Aeschylus, and Dante. The third panel carried the names of Wren, Herrick, Irving, Titian, and Erasmus. The dismayed reporter found that the first letters of these names conveniently spelled out the name of the library architects, McKim, Mead, and White. So while the architect Charles McKim almost accomplished a Renaissance conceit, or a personal statement known only to the artist or the patron, he was caught, and the offending inscriptions were erased and redistributed.1 The episode points out how McKim thought of the public library—as a personal work of art that he literally signed with his name, or the name of the firm, and placed in the matrix of western cultural worthies. This signals us that the architecture as well as the murals must be understood as personal works of art, turned inward, rather than public art turned toward the viewer.

From the moment McKim secured the contract for the new building in 1887, he considered murals and sculpture to be essential to the plan. He chose the artists and allowed them complete freedom in their subjects. Each in their way produced murals that express the artist’s ideas rather than ideas traditionally associated with library iconography.

From John Singer Sargent, McKim obtained the extraordinary set of murals on the general subject of Judaism and Christianity. Sargent designed an entire room—its paintings, sculptures, and architectural elements—and filled it with murals that expressed his view of the history of Christian thought. The subject is unique among murals of this period, and Sargent’s use of high relief sculpture and architectural elements is as unusual as his subject. McKim saw to it that Sargent was given complete authority in the development of his idea and his room. Sargent’s initial plan was to paint a subject taken from Spanish literature, but that quickly turned into a sweeping and visually complex review of Judaism and Christianity. He arranged the cycle in three stages, beginning with early religions, and progressing to the early church and then to the modern day, that is, late nineteenth-century humanistic interpretations of the teachings of Jesus. This, obviously, was no small undertaking. Sargent spent some fifteen years working on the project.

The series begins with the lunette of the Israelites Oppressed by primitive religions (fig. 2), which they had taken up in defiance of Jehovah; this early period was portrayed in the style of the art of the time, a historicism peculiar to Sargent’s presentation. Egyptians and Babylonians vie to punish the Hebrews, while in the vault above images of the pagan gods Astarte and Moloch add a special terror to the scene.

At the opposite end of the room, Sargent depicted The Dogma of the Redemption (fig. 3) with figures in Byzantine stylizations to suggest the era of in the early church, when councils formulated dogmatic concepts of the Trinity, The Last Judgment, and Redemption. In the center, three identical figures occupy one throne, and are overlain by an extraordinary high relief crucifixion that unites the Trinity with the row of angels bearing instruments of the passion.

Turning to the wall between these scenes, one finds an oddly blank space at the center. As Sally Promey has pointed out, Sargent’s iconographic plan, although highly individualistic, parallels the writings of the French historian and linguist Ernest Renan, professor at the Sorbonne and anathema to the established church.2 Renan’s books, such as The Life of Jesus and the History of the Origins of Christianity, depicted a religion that progressed from the turgid polytheistic primitive time, through Judaism and the prophetic period, to the formulation of Dogmatic Christianity in the early church, to the embracing of a humanistic Christ in the late nineteenth century. This thesis was central to Sargent’s cycle, which he planned to end with a modern landscape rendition of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, which proclaims, according to Renan and Sargent, the basic humanistic rather than dogmatic view of Christ and Christianity. This last panel, in the center of the room, was never completed, and the crucial element in this Christian history according to Renan and Sargent was left unknown to the general public. Even if it was completed, the public would have had a difficult time understanding the complex historical sequence; in order to understand even the incomplete series, the library published a guide, written presumably by Sargent, which omits mention of this last portion of the narrative.

Fig. 3. John Singer Sargent, Dogma of the Redemption, installed 1903. (Courtesy Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston)

Fig. 4. Boston Public Library, Delivery Room, murals by Edwin Austin Abbey, The Quest and Achievement of the Holy Grail, installed 1895-1901. (Courtesy Library of Congress)

McKim also arranged for Edwin Abbey to decorate what was known as the delivery room, where books were brought from the stacks to readers. Abbey was well connected to the library plans, being one of the most popular illustrators of his day and a friend of Sargent and a brother-in-law to William Mead--McKim’s partner. Abbey, like Sargent, had initially planned a set of murals to illustrate canonic texts from England, Germany and France. But, also like Sargent--with whom he shared a studio in Broadway, England-- Abbey quickly turned from the idea of many texts and focused on the Arthurian legend of the Quest and Achievement of the Holy Grail (fig. 4), which is found in various forms throughout western literature. As was Sargent’s subject, Abbey’s subject is an intensely Christian theme, which he recounted in fifteen panels. For visual resources, Abbey drew from Celtic designs, medieval manuscripts, Romanesque architecture, and Italian Renaissance frescos.3 For texts he used the versions published by Sir Thomas Malory in his Morte d’Arthur (1485) and Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1859-85).

The series begins with the oath of knighthood, a scene that Abbey placed in a vaguely Celtic interior filled with murals that resemble the interlacing and figures from Irish and English manuscripts, and moves to the scene of the first test of Galahad in the Court of King Arthur (fig. 5). The narrative then progresses through Galahad’s encounters with various temptations of the body, spirit, and attacks of self-doubt, in other words, all those frailties that Victorians so abhorred and sought to command through emulating medieval virtues thought to be found in the Arthurian legend. Finally, Galahad achieves the Grail at the moment of sighting the Golden Tree and attains unity with God.

Fig. 5. Edwin Austin Abbey, Round Table of King Arthur, installed 1895. (Courtesy Library of Congress)

Fig. 6. Puvis de Chavannes, Physics, Electricity, installed 1895. Courtesy, Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston. (Photograph courtesy of the author)

Much could be said about the popularity of this story in Victorian England and America, but for present purposes, it is important to note that although Abbey drew from earlier versions of the myth, he created his own version for the murals in the Boston Public Library. No longer was he content to illustrate literature by others, as he had done with Shakespeare, but to become the author and illustrator of his own work. Abbey’s version is more complex than others, so much so that Abbey needed yet another text to interpret it, which was written by no less an author than his friend Henry James.

For the staircase hall at the library entrance, McKim secured the last mural painting to be completed by the eminent French painter Puvis de Chavannes, whose work at many French public buildings, such as the Pantheon, and universities and museums in France had set the standard for how a mural in the late nineteenth century should look: grand themes expressed in pale tones and an intellectual distance from the volatile and imaginative. For the unheard of sum of $50,000 (Sargent and Abbey were initially paid $15,000 each) Puvis contracted to paint eight murals in the staircase hall, each representing an aspect of History, Philosophy, Poetry, and Science, the general areas of study represented in the holdings of the library.

But Puvis’s murals were completed late in his career when his work became highly symbolist and contemplative. When asked what subjects he would paint for Boston, Puvis replied, “I must wait until it comes. My genius lies in the unconscious.” He then noted that “each of the surfaces to be painted must be like a canto of a poem in honor of the building.”4

Puvis did, though, consider the panel of Physics (fig. 6) represented by Electricity to be well-suited to American audiences. With unfailing Gallic logic, Puvis stated that the subject of Physics calls forth the new study of Edison’s electricity, which calls forth communication, which is communication in messages of the good and the bad, hence the figures with the open and covered faces grasping the electrical lines.5 This is certainly a poem in place of a symbol, and, like the murals of Sargent and Abbey, a highly personal rendition that needs a textual narrative to explain the intricacies of the visual presentation. As if to stress the poetical and symbolic aspects of his program, Puvis added a large panel at the entrance to the reading room, Bates Hall, that summed up his lyrical and poetical view of the experience of gaining knowledge. This he called The Muses of Inspiration Hail the Spirit, The Harbinger of Light (fig. 7).

Today, the Boston Public Library murals appear to be complete units with internal consistency, excepting Sargent’s Judaism and Christianity, which we now know to be incomplete. In their own time, the programs were difficult to comprehend without texts, which, when they later appeared, were in themselves complex. And the murals were not physically complete for many years, and thus the entire program, if there was one, was not conceptually clear. When the library opened on March 11, 1895, none of the murals was in place. Puvis’s murals were installed in two stages in 1895, Sargent’s murals were placed in 1895, 1903, 1916, and 1919, and Abbey’s murals were installed in 1895 and 1901. Their explanatory texts were not available until the cycles were complete, or as complete as they would be.

Fig. 7. Puvis de Chavannes, The Muses of Inspiration Hail the Spirit, The Harbinger of Light, installed 1895. (Courtesy Library of Congress)

With this in mind, we can understand why the murals in the Library of Congress made such an impact on the course of mural painting in America. When the building opened on November 1, 1897, all of the murals were in place, and it presented the visitor with a dramatic and uncompromised view of the power of the combined effect of architecture, painting and sculpture (fig. 8).6 And for the most part, the program followed an easily understood iconography. It is important to note, too, that the process of commissioning the murals was very different from McKim’s personal choices. The process fell to a committee (a good Washington tradition) made up of Thomas Lincoln Casey, in charge of the building, his son Edward, architect, and Bernard Green, superintendent of the building. The committee, with counsel from artist-friends, wanted a representation of well-known artists, eventually choosing nineteen, and asked them to suggest themes for their murals. The artists were paid nominal amounts from $2,000 to $8,000 depending on the size of the paintings. Most considered a commission for the library to be a personal honor and were little concerned with the low payment. Some sent in numerous proposals and asked the committee to choose, hence there are few hidden agendas and the subjects cover a variety of themes that include, among others, the family, Greek mythology, the muses, symbols of literature, and depictions of the arts and sciences. There are, too, grander efforts to depict the effects of Good and Bad Government, or the Evolution of Civilization,

Such a list (and it is not comprehensive) indicates the broad range of subjects that the artists and the committee deemed appropriate for a library setting, and none of them are the sometimes turgid, personal, and symbolic subjects that were painted at Boston.

Fig. 8. Library of Congress, Great Hall, completed 1897. (Photograph by Anne Day, courtesy of the photographer)

Fig. 9. Henry Oliver Walker, Lyric Poetry, main entrance hall, first floor, south corridor, installed 1897. (Courtesy Office of the Architect of the Capitol)

Most subjects relate to a tradition of employing allegorical figures to symbolize knowledge contained in libraries. Before modern catalogs and computer databases, library collections were organized according to the medieval university system of the seven liberal arts: the Trivium—Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic and Dialectic—and the Quadrivium—Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy. Often murals with allegorical figures holding attributes of these studies were painted on library walls to signify the contents of that section. A concurrent tradition used representations of ancient philosophers and writers to designate sections: for examples, Cicero represented Rhetoric and Aristotle represented Dialectic.7 In the Library of Congress, both traditions can still be seen in an updated form. Henry Walker’s series on Lyric Poetry employs symbolic figures to represent the works of more modern writers, such as Milton, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Keats, Wordsworth, and Emerson; the main mural summarizes the series with symbolic figures representing different types of Lyric Poetry (with her lyre): Truth, Pathos, Devotion, Passion, Beauty, and Mirth (fig. 9). To the casual viewer these figures might seem to be merely a group of scantily clad young women in a grove, but they actually paraphrase a tradition that dates at least to the Renaissance.

Increasing knowledge spawned new branches of study, requiring new categories for library collections. Yet, in the modern world of the 1890s, traditional figures or allegories could still serve as representations of the branches of knowledge, or disciplines. An example is the mural by Walter Shirlaw depicting Chemistry (fig. 10), which also includes allusions to the mystical and alchemical sources of the modern day science—the snake breathing heat onto the chemical retort—and the colors of Shirlaw’s palette—purple, blue, red—are those most often encountered in chemical experiments. Note, too, that the figure, like many others in the library murals, is labeled, so that there is no confusion regarding its meaning.

Subjects relating to traditional library iconography appear throughout the building, such as Literature by George Barse, who included Erotic Literature in the nineteenth-century parlance of Love Poetry (fig. 11). Other nontraditional allegories appear, too. Robert Reid’s The Senses (fig. 12)—which include the five panels of Taste, Sight, Smell, Touch, and Hearing—reflect turn-of-the-century interest in sensory knowledge, rather than textual knowledge, and relate to the popularity of “outdoor” or impressionist paintings as well as to contemporary studies in the psychology of perception and cognition.

Fig. 10. Walter Shirlaw, “Chemistry,” from the series The Sciences, main entrance hall, second floor, west corridor, installed 1896. (Photograph courtesy of the author)

Fig. 12. Robert Reid, “Hearing,” from the series The Senses, main entrance hall, second floor, north corridor, installed 1896. (Photograph by Anne Day, courtesy of the photographer)

Fig. 11. George Barse, “Erotica,” from the series Literature, main entrance hall, second floor, east corridor, 1896. (Photograph by Anne Day, courtesy of the photographer)

Ideas regarding development, progression, and evolution, rather than single figures representing one area of study, also appear in the Library of Congress. Perhaps the most ambitious of all was Edwin Blashfield’s Evolution of Civilization, but there were others, such as the evolution of the book or the effects of good and bad government or the historical process of exploration and conquest. In each of these elaborate series, the subject remains clear, even without the use of a guidebook, which was available if one wished.

This was the case with John White Alexander’s series, the Evolution of the Book. Alexander’s six lunettes represent stages leading to the advent of the printed text, beginning with depictions of Cairn Building, Oral Tradition, and Hieroglyphics, proceeding to Picture Writing, The Manuscript Book, and The Printing Press (fig. 13). The setting, action, and gestures of the figures explain the subject, and one moves from one panel to the next recognizing the stage of development visually rather than textually. Regardless of historical accuracy in detail or in sequence—it being restricted to only six episodes because of the architectural limits—the series became the commonly accepted rendition of the entire history of the printed book as it “evolved,” according to Alexander. Postcards of the series were immensely popular with the public and large illustrations were distributed to schools. In 1909 the Art in Public School Committee of the American Federation of Arts surveyed their membership and found that Alexander’s Evolution of the Book was the most popular historical mural for schoolroom decoration reproductions.8

It is significant that Alexander titled the series the Evolution of the Book rather than the history of the book. Evolution as a principle had been so embedded in the thinking of the period that the term’s history, progress, and evolution could be used interchangeably. This was not the evolution proposed by Charles Darwin and others in the mid-nineteenth century, with the conclusion that man is one among other animals and survival adheres to the same principles as “lower” orders. For Alexander’s generation, the concept of evolution was filtered through the teachings and writings of Herbert Spencer; his interpretation became “Spencerism,” an optimistic view wherein all forms of human endeavor progress and improve.
One of the most popular and critically acclaimed mural series in the library was Elihu Vedder’s five panels representing the effects of good and bad government. He placed the series at the entrance to the reading room, where they serve as a reminder, a kind of legend for the public and its officials. The central panel of the series, Government, is based on the allegorical figure of Felicità Publica in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, a compendium of symbols and allegories published in 1604. Vedder used this image of Public Good as the basis for the several permutations into other figures in his series and freely adapted the attributes of other figures in Ripa’s book to fit his own narrative.

Fig. 13. John White Alexander, “The Printing Press,” from the series Evolution of the Book, main entrance hall, first floor, east corridor, installed 1896. (Courtesy Office of the Architect of the Capitol)

Fig. 14. Elihu Vedder, “Government,” from the series Government, main entrance hall, reading room lobby, installed 1896. (Courtesy Office of the Architect of the Capitol)

A visual narrative weaves through the entire series, connecting individual panels. At the center, Government (fig. 14) depicts the proper state of rule, symbolized by the central figure, crowned by a laurel wreath and holding a golden scepter, which signifies the “golden rule.”9 Her bench is supported by posts shaped like ancient voting urns, referring to the democratic vote, and she holds a plaque inscribed with Lincoln’s words from his Gettysburg Address. Crouching lions symbolize a state moored to strength. A winged figure to the left holds the sword of justice and protection and to the right another holds the bridle of restraint and order. In the background are oak leaves, which Vedder used as traditional symbols of strength and vigorous stability. Left of center is Corrupt Legislation, a figure sitting lasciviously upon an ornamental throne with arms of coin-filled cornucopia turned inward to herself. Against a background of idle factories, a plaintive figure with an empty distaff and spindle, representing unemployed workers (during depression of the 1890s, unemployment reached 20 percent), is waved away in favor of the bribe given on a sliding weight scale, which is a parody of the equal scales of justice. Prosperous industry churns out smoke behind the figure of Corrupting Wealth, who presides over bags of money, a strongbox, an overturned voting urn, and holds the book of law to interpret for his own interests. Behind the throne is an autumnal vine, which suggests decay.

The fruits of corrupt legislation lead to Anarchy (fig. 15), the second panel to the left. This panel received by far the most commentary, although rarely did a critic remark on its clear references to contemporary social unrest. Visually, it was certainly Vedder’s favorite panel of the group. Victorian horror of anarchy and the destruction of culture are represented by Anarchy as a wine-maddened Medusa, “destroying learning, religion, and the arts, while, raving on the ruins of civilization.” Anarchy is assisted in her work by Violence, who pries out the cornerstone of a temple, and Ignorance, who is pushing a broken cornice into a chasm. A broken gear and millstone signify the destruction of industry and agriculture. At the bottom of the composition, an ignited bomb serves to remind that “anarchy contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.” A barren tree in the background is engulfed in billowing smoke.

The panel of Good Administration, directly to the right of the central panel of Government, is an allegorical narrative of virtuous government. Contrary to her counterpart to the left of center, the figure now has an arch-topped throne and holds the stable, balanced scales of justice. A schoolboy with books in hand, dropping his vote into the urn, represents an educated electorate, while the separation of sound from unsound candidates through the democratic vote is symbolized by a woman winnowing wheat from the chaff. In the background is a bountiful field of wheat and an abundant fig tree bearing its fruit. The final panel of the series is an allegory of the products of good administration, Peace and Prosperity. Arts and agriculture are awarded the olive wreath by the figure of Peace seated on a marble bench and backed by a hearty olive tree.

Viewed from our time, Vedder’s murals might appear to be quaint and simplistic attempts to express large and complex issues. Their dialectical structure is naive when viewed with our suspicions of absolutes and polarities. And the series seems even more contrived as a moralistic structure of good and evil when we understand that the grouping was conditioned by the architecture—there were only five spaces to state the progression up and down the scale of virtue. Yet, simplicity and directness, pared down nuances, and multiple overlays of symbolism—the throne, the trees, the scales—project a message pertinent to our time, and in its time certainly one that was far more readable than Sargent’s massive and personal summation of the course of Christian thought.

I do not want to leave you with the impression that artists working in the Library of Congress avoided introducing their own thoughts into their mural paintings, or that they merely painted the conventions of library decoration. Within the strictures of public art, that is, monumentality, grand ideas clearly presented, and an intellectual and emotional distance, there could be much latitude for personal comment and stylistic variety. Two examples might demonstrate the point.

Fig. 16. Kenyon Cox, “The Arts,” from the series The Arts and The Sciences, southeast gallery, second floor, installed 1896. (Courtesy Office of the Architect of the Capitol)

Fig. 17. William Dodge, detail of Painting and Sculpture in “Art,” from the series Art, Science, Music, Literature, Pavilion of the Arts and Sciences, installed 1896. (Photograph courtesy of the author)

The subject of the Arts was a popular and traditional subject for library murals. Numerous artists proposed their formulations of the idea to the committee. Two artists, Kenyon Cox and William Dodge, painted strikingly different versions of the subject.
Cox imbued his mural depicting The Arts (fig. 16) with the idea of an exquisitely crafted, aesthetic work of art tinged with an aura of the antique or Renaissance, much like the poetry of the French Parnassian group, paintings by the French and English néo-grec artists, or writings by the English aesthete Walter Pater. Cox’s compositions include personifications of the traditional arts: like their Renaissance predecessors in iconography books, such as Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, each figure holds its appropriate attribute. From the left are Music, Architecture, Poetry, Sculpture and Painting. Cox studied traditional sources for his compositions, especially Raphael’s Parnassus (1509) in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. Although greatly simplified, Cox’s composition recalls Raphael’s graceful arabesques of draperies and figures.

In The Arts, Cox emphasized Poetry as the central figure, as did Raphael with Apollo, the god of poetry. Cox painted his murals in his New York studio using oil on canvas, but he used traditional studio methods of drawing carefully prepared finely crafted studies and combining them into a poetic, almost ethereal composition.

His final painting is filled with exquisitely drawn and painted figures, such as the figure of Music, which is the traditional emblem of the art of music, but which also symbolizes Cox’s idea of perfection, a self-contained arabesque that is itself abstract and absolute. One might easily compare this figure of Music to a poem by Theophile Gautier or another of the French Parnassian group of poets. Thus Cox’s The Arts is as much symbolic of his own drive toward the abstract, the poetic, and the aesthetic as it is a representation of the knowledge of the arts residing in the books in the library collections.

Similar subjects did not mean similar interpretations. Painting techniques and formulation of the theme could diverge radically. For example, William Dodge was given four lunettes and a large disk in the ceiling of the northwest pavilion and chose to paint the traditional library subject of the Arts. William Dodge’s rendition of The Arts differs dramatically from Cox’s rarified allegorical figures and pallid coloring. Compared to Dodge’s figures, those by Cox are ideal, disembodied symbols, like emblems. Dodge took his figures from the world around him and delighted in portraying them as if in a theatrical production. And well he might, for he was in great demand as a decorator of theaters in a time when the live performance was the most common form of entertainment.

Dodge lived in Paris when he received his commission and, like Cox, painted his murals in oil on canvas. But there any similarity ends. Dodge avidly followed the opera and after some performances would rush home and frantically sketch out the most dramatic scenes, using his wife as a model. He studied the decorations in the Paris Opera, completed by Paul Baudry in 1875, and learned from them to portray dramatic and forceful action among the gods on Parnassus, the central panel in the grand foyer of the building.

Unlike traditional allegories, or those by Cox, whose personifications merely held its attribute, Dodge painted each figure as performing their appropriate act in a play. In The Arts (fig. 17), a student sketches a buxom nude model—one wonders at the lack of complaints in the contemporary press—another figure paints a vase, while an architect studies his plans. Dodge painted his figures with vigorous brushwork and lively color combinations of rich blues, yellows and oranges. He arranged to have his pavilion in the library painted to coordinate with the colors in his paintings, rather than coordinating his palette with a predetermined color arrangement, which was the practice followed by other artists in the library. Dodge could go over the top in some of his Olympian romps, such as in his lunette depicting Music, where Dodge went a bit far in his theatrical display. There is, if I am not mistaken, a great party going on Olympus, or rather in the Library of Congress (fig. 18).

Fig. 18. William Dodge, detail of “Music.” (Courtesy Office of the Architect of the Capitol)

Fig. 19. William Dodge, Ambition, ceiling panel in the Pavilion of the Arts and Sciences, installed 1896. (Courtesy Office of the Architect of the Capitol)

Fig. 20. Elihu Vedder, Minerva, mosaic in the main entrance hall, second floor, entrance to rotunda, installed 1897. (Photograph by Anne Day, courtesy of the photographer)

Commentators often mentioned Dodge’s lunettes (he painted four lunettes for this room: Art, Music, Science, and Literature) only in passing as they hurried to describe his circular painting on the ceiling (fig. 19). No other artist working in the library painted anything like its unusual narrative. Groups spiral upward into the sky through an illusionistic oculus. At the top, a female nude holding a palm frond and laurel wreath of victory is carried upon the mythical winged horse Pegasus, while another nude holding the trumpet of victory grasps the reins. So far, this is a traditional iconographic scheme to signify achievement or Fame. But, Dodge titled the painting Ambition, and added at the lower portion figures acting out the base instincts of competition for fame and a jester observing the futility and madness of the quest. Pauline King, who wrote the first history of American murals up to 1902, interpreted the female personifications as holding the power of fame sought by grasping and murderous aspirants:

a nude woman, who holds aloft a crown, . . . rides upon a great winged horse: his bridle is held by another woman, blowing a trumpet. The three are drawn in the most violent perspective, as if they were seen from below, careening through the air. An enormous drapery floating from the horse connects them with the lower group of dissatisfied seekers after the glittering crown of ambition,—men and women with hands outstretched trying to snatch the bauble held beyond their reach. Their bodies are contorted with passion. One lies dead: the last of all is a jester with his cap and bells.10

Herbert Small, who wrote the guidebook to the library’s decorative program, failed to mention that Fame is female and dominates the desperate and turbulent scene of grasping aspirants. He did, though, relish describing the “unattainable ideal,” the “crime and lust” in the figures, and interpreted the role of women in this “scene of mad confusion” quite differently than did Pauline King:

Conspicuous figures in the mad struggle for success are a warrior, with sword, greaves, and helmet, and a sculptor, bearing a statuette of the Venus of Milo. In front of them is the seated figure of a poet, with a bandage over his eyes to indicate the abstraction and ideality of his thought. Further on, a man flings out both arms in a mad appeal, and on the moment is grasped in the arms of a woman, who drags him back to the level of her own baseness.11

To say the least, this is a most unusual reinterpretation of triumphal imagery. Traditionally, the winged horse Pegasus carries a person to fame, or symbolizes the soaring heights of artists’ thoughts. Dodge probably consulted well-known examples in Paris, but he completely changed the traditional meaning, shifting it instead to describe brutal competition for success and the vanity of the chase. If the subject of the ceiling panel were an apotheosis, or the attainment of fame, then it would summarize achievements in art, science, literature, and music as they are depicted in the lunettes below. Critics were puzzled when they viewed the large mural on exhibition in Paris and New York before it was installed in the library. French commentators thought it too violent for a library setting, while Americans looked in vain for some indication of achievement in America, which as one noted, was “the land of realized Ambitions.”12

Dodge wrote in his autobiography of competition in the art world for exhibition honors, as well as for mural commissions and steady work.13 Given his recasting of the theme of triumph into a depiction of the futility of ruthless ambition, one can surmise that Dodge painted a personal and ironic interpretation of the highly competitive world of the late nineteenth century. Dodge explained to his sculptor friend Frederick MacMonnies, “The jester is laughing at the ambitious one for he believes, as the crowned skull in his hand indicates, that fame comes only after death to those who have slaved during life.”14

The figure that defines the mural program at the Library of Congress, and which most clearly defines the differences between the Washington and Boston murals, is Elihu Vedder’s large mosaic of Minerva (fig. 20). She is the central figure in the main hall, being seen from all angles. Vedder designed her as a startling néo-grec goddess of wisdom who has removed her helmet and placed it upon the shield resting on the ground, but she still wears her aegis (breast plate) bordered with the gorgoneion (twisted snakes) symbolic of her other more war-like attribute. There is no doubt regarding her charge of protecting the knowledge and wisdom gathered in the Library of Congress. Vedder was particularity concerned that the subjects to be listed on the scroll would be, “those contained in a government library most especially.”15 He included older categories of study—many of them stem from the seven liberal arts of the medieval origin, though updated. The list also includes modern subjects protected by Minerva: economics, statistics, government as a political science, and education as it began to be a specialized area of study in the late nineteenth century. Some disciplines on the list were also the special work of congressional committees—agriculture, finance, and Army-Navy, among them.

The mural movement that swept the nation between 1900 and 1918 included works in hundreds of buildings. Artists and public commissioners sought examples to guide them and often consulted murals in the Library of Congress. Symbolic figures that typified literature, history or art, indeed Minerva herself, could be easily translated into Liberty, Justice, Law, or other figures symbolic of civic virtues. Moreover the use of narratives with evolutionary, progressive subjects, like those used in the library, could explain historical events. Murals by Sargent, Abbey, and to some extent, Puvis de Chavannes, in the Boston Public Library were deemed extraordinary works of art, so much so that no artist dared emulate them. But as works of public art, Sargent’s and Abbey’s murals were idiosyncratic, overly complicated, and demanded too much from the visitor. Public officials did not want complicated subjects that required a handbook for explanation. Thus it was that the nation’s book palace, or as it was also called, “Our National Monument of Art,”16 provided the clarity, directness, and the useful symbols for the projection of a national image into a public arena that was growing larger and more diverse.


Richard Murry is senior curator at the National Museum of American Art



Notes:

1 This incident is related in Walter Muir Whitehill, “The Making of an Architectural Masterpiece--The Boston Public Library,” American Art Journal 2 (1970): 13-35. The reporter hardly could have found this conceit on his own, sifting through 650 names; as Whitehill points out, McKim was at this time heavily criticized for his “lavish” decorations of the building, and his detractors must have pointed out the significance of the order of the names.

2 Sally M. Promey, “Sargent’s Truncated Triumph: Art and Religion at the Boston Public Library,” Art Bulletin 76 (1997): 217-50.

3 Abbey’s sources are the subject of the article by Erica Hirshler, “A Quest for the Holy Grail: Edwin Austin Abbey’s Murals for the Boston Public Library,” Studies in Medievalism 7 (1994): 35-49.

4 On Puvis’s cantos, see Louise d’Argencourt, “Decoration of the Boston Public Library,” in idem et al., Puvis de Chavannes (Ottawa, 1977), p. 228. On Puvis’s “genius,” see Charles Herbert Moore, The Life and Times of Charles Follen McKim (Boston, 1929), p. 80.

5 Francois Thiébault-Sisson, “M. Puvis de Chavannes’s New Panels for the Boston Public Library,” Harper’s Weekly, Oct. 10, 1896, pp. 1009-10.

6 Some material presented here was originally published in this author’s essay, “Painted Words: Murals in the Library of Congress,” in John Y. Cole and Henry Hope Reed, The Library of Congress: The Art and Architecture of the Thomas Jefferson Building (New York, 1997), pp. 193-225.

7 On this tradition, see André Masson, The Pictorial Catalog: Mural Decorations in Libraries (Oxford, 1981), and his earlier work Le Décor des Bibliothèques du moyen Age à la Révolution (Geneva, 1972). As Masson points out, Raphael’s monumental murals in the Vatican Stanze della Segnatura depicting Theology, Poetry, Philosophy, and Jurisprudence are essentially animated personifications of the liberal arts, and the room in which they now exist may originally have been a library.

8 Henry Turner Bradley, “The Editorial Point of View,” School Arts Magazine 12 (1913): 565. Alexander’s murals were exceeded in the vote only by the literary theme of the Quest of the Holy Grail by Edwin Abbey and the religious theme of the Frieze of the Prophets from John Singer Sargent’s murals of Judaism and Christianity in the Boston Public Library.

9 The following quotes and much of the analysis is found in the detailed description of the series by Herbert Small, Handbook of the New Library of Congress in Washington (Boston, 1901). Vedder’s own shorter description is in the letter from Carrie Vedder to Bernard Green, July 6, 1895, Library of Congress building construction records.

10 Pauline King, American Mural Painting: A Study of the Important Decorations by Distinguished Artists in the United States (Boston, 1902), p. 217.

11 Small, Handbook, p. 100.

12 Unidentified newspaper clipping, ca. 1896, William de Leftwich Dodge Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

13 The original typescript is in the William de Leftwich Dodge Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. It was published by Frederick Platt, “A Brief Autobiography of William de Leftwich Dodge,” American Art Journal 14 (1982): 55-63.

14 Dodge quoted in Sara Dodge Kimbrough, Drawn from Life (Jackson, Miss., 1976), p. 48.

15 Caroline Vedder to Bernard Green, Nov. 2, 1896, Library of Congress building construction records.

16 Royal Cortissoz, “Our National Monument of Art: The Congressional Library at Washington,” Harper’s Weekly, Dec. 28, 1895, pp. 1240-41.