International studio (35.1908)

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INTERNATIONAL
STUDIO
VOL. XXXV. No. 139 Copyright, 1908, by John Lane Company SEPTEMBER, 1908

Edwin howland blashfield
BY HOMER SAINT-GAUDENS
Edwin Howland Blashfield has

won his place in the fore of mural deco-
rators through an elevation of thought and execu-
tion, a love of beauty and the simple forms of sym-
bolism, a knowledge of the possibilities of his craft
and a care for its limitations in relation to the sur-
rounding architecture. His restraint speaks out in
a day when many of his associates attempt to force
their ideas into an advertised popularity. Yet by
no means does he stand as a classicist who bodily
accepts cold-blooded formulae regarding the restric-
tions of architectural surroundings and who abhors
the representation of the third dimension upon a
wall. His work makes it obvious that he believes
that rules exist for art, not art for rules. Therefore,
since the “Principles of Mural Painting” are far
from being settled, in this country at least, even by
the painters themselves, Blashfield should be judged
only in so far as he fulfils his standards, provided his
standards are such as to give refined visual pleasure
to the onlooker.
Blashfield’s standards or ideals of decoration are
the noble result of diligent attention and studied
refinement. To him a painting must first have
beauty, then it may have significance. Mural
work commonly discovers its significance in allegory
or symbolism; and the marked preference Blash-
field expresses for the word symbolism over the
word allegory presents a clear idea of the trend of
his results. He realizes that however well the
people of days gone by understood the figurative,
now the figurative, if complicated in form, con-
founds the understanding of the present generation.
He appreciates that long-winded and fine-spun
allegory where every wand delivers a meaning and
every color may be construed becomes a mere
tangle and a weariness to the spirit to those who
pass us this way and that. Accordingly, rather in

his painting he would like to celebrate for the most
part two dominant and easily grasped motives, the
soldier of the Civil War—that is, the patriot—and
the workingman. For the first motive, when as a
boy he sat on the pickets of the Boston Common
fence and watched the troops departing to the front
he received a thrill which has never left him, a
thrill that he chiefly delights to gratify by intro-
ducing the soldier of the Union in such compo-
sitions as that for the Wisconsin State Capitol.
For the second motive, and very much on the other
hand, he would bind the fact of facts with his sym-
bolism. He would deal with the American who
labors with his hands, the man who as a unit so
often makes our lives miserable, and yet who as a
class is so noble in conception.
Such ideals, then, Blashfield lives up to with the
serenity of assured ability. To give them their full
power, to exalt vrhat is truly beautiful in the com-
monplace, and to exalt it without confusion or over-
crowding, he prunes from nature the accidental and
the ineffective. And, by bringing beauty to his
treatment of modern appliances, he represents his
time, as other masters have represented their
epochs, through assembling the details of their
epochs in the alembic of their personalities.
The course of education that established Blash-
field upon the elevation where he now stands dif-
fered but slightly from what would be expected for
any American youth. Blashfield, though born in
New York City in 1848, received his first instruction
in the Boston Latin School, where he employed his
time drawing Napoleonic soldiers in his text-books
and yearning to become a battle painter. In 1866
William Morris Hunt, on seeing the young man’s
results, suggested that the youth go abroad at once,
since if he were to amount to anything he would
have to unlearn what he then was acquiring in this
country. A cousin of Blashfield’s also carried a
few of his drawings to the French master Gerome,
who in turn urged a trip to Europe. Accordingly,

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