Edwin Blashfield

Edwin Blashfield

The Resources of Wisconsin: the dome of the Wisconsin State Capitol, 1917

The mosaic of St. Matthew from St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington DC.

Edwin Howland Blashfield (December 5, 1848 – October 12, 1936), an American artist, was born in New York City.

He was a pupil of Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat in Paris beginning in 1867, and became (1888) a member of the National Academy of Design in New York. For some years a genre painter, he later turned to decorative work, where his academic background in painting and extensive travels to study fresco painting in Italy melded in work marked by rare delicacy and beauty of coloring.

Considered a leading muralist of the late 19th century, he painted mural decorations or created mosaics in a number of places associated with the American Renaissance period.

His style is cited as an influence of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Jean-Paul Laurens, and Paul Baudr.

With his wife he wrote Italian Cities (1900) and edited Vasari's Lives of the Painters (1896), and was well known as a lecturer and writer on art. He became president of the Society of Mural Painters, and of the Society of American Artists.

Selected commissions

• in Chicago
  • a dome in the manufacturer's building at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition
  • the Elks Memorial Building
• in Washington D.C.
  • the dome of the Main Reading Room of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress
  • the mosaic of Saint Matthew in St. Matthew's Cathedral
• the Iowa State Capitol at Des Moines, Iowa
• the Minnesota State Capitol at St. Paul, Minnesota
• the Governor's office in Pierre, South Dakota
• the Wisconsin State Capitol at Madison, Wisconsin
• the federal courthouse in Baltimore
• the Mahoning County Court House, Youngstown, Ohio
• the Detroit Public Library
• in New York City
  • Appellate courthouse
  • the grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
  • the Lawyers' Club^[1][2]
  • the Great Hall of City College of New York, "The Graduate" mural,^[3]
  • the residences of WK Vanderbilt and Collis P. Huntington
  • the National Academy of Design, "Saint Michael".
• in Philadelphia
  • the residence of George W. Drexel (son of Anthony J. Drexel)
  • the chancel dome of the Cathedral Church of the Savior
• the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Many paintings by the artist are present, including "North Wall Alma Mater", "South Wall Right Panel Humanity", "North Wall Left Panel Angels in Trees", et al., all painted 1923-1930.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Cortissoz, Royal, introduction, The Works of Edwin Howland Blashfield, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1937
• The Works of Edwin Howland Blashfield", Art Inventories Catalog, Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

Further reading

• Blashfield, Edwin, Mural Painting in America: The Scammon Lectures Delivered Before the Art Institute of Chicago, March 1912, New York : C. Scribner’s sons, 1913.
• Vasari, Giorgio; Blashfield, Edwin, (editor) Lives of seventy of the most eminent painters, sculptors and architects, Volume 4, New York : C. Scribner's sons, 1902
• Weiner, Mina Rieur, (editor), Edwin Howland Blashfield: Master American Muralist, New York : W.W. Norton, 2009. ISBN 9780393732818

External links

• Morseburg Galleries. The American Renaissance: Edwin Blashfield
• Iowa State Capital mural "Westward"
• Edwin Howland Blashfield Papers, New-York Historical Society