International studio (35.1908)

Edwin E[owland Blashfield

Blashfield went to Paris, where, as Gerome’s studio
was filled, he turned to study under Leon Bonnat.
However, the young man constantly received criti-
cisms from Gerome, gaining from him such useful
bits of advice as that he must study both his drapery
and his nude at the same time, lest his attention be-
come fascinated by portions of the nude that the
drapery would alter, and so lead him to devote him-
self to fragments wasted in the ultimate composi-
tion. In the appreciation of what he was acquiring,
Blashfield remained in Paris until 1870, just before
the siege, when he traveled in Belgium and Italy.
By that date he had become interested in costume
pictures, and in Florence, where he remained eight
months, he produced the first that he sold. Dona-
tello and Giotto affected him most at the time, while
character and clothes appealed to him far more
than technique. The following year he returned to
America. But in 1874 he again entered Bonnat’s
studio, and produced his first Salon canvas, A Poet,
which preceded the number of others hung in suc-
ceeding exhibitions. During this period such men
as Bridgeman were painting costume pictures; so
Blashfield’s growing admiration for Roman gar-
ments represented only the normal admiration of
youth for the experienced—especially normal when
youth studied under Gerome. The Emperor Com-
modius Preceding the Gladiators from the Arena
typified this style, in which Bonnat also encouraged
Blashfield, until in 1879, after his picture, The
Siege, had been well hung “on the line” at the
Salon, he experienced a revulsion of feeling and cut
it to pieces as soon as he could lay hands on it.
Finally, in 1881, he came home permanently, edu-
cated but uncontaminated by French influence,
married and established himself in New York City,
where he remained for eighteen years in the Sher-
wood studios. By 1891 his results began to assume
a marked worth that also became most popular with
his The Christmas Bells and The Angel with the
Flaming Sword. But not until 1893, when he was
called upon to decorate a dome in the “Manufac-
tories and Liberal Arts Building” in the Colum-
bian Exposition at Chicago, did he cease to paint
genre pictures and enter upon his final form, the
form which he maintains subject to the normal de-
velopment of age, the form that he upholds with an
assured and adequate method of work.
Nowadays persons often hear how Michel-
angelo painted the Sistine Chapel by this method
or by that and how the Borgia .Apartments were
decorated thus and so; they learn without realizing
it how each artist of the past obtained all the me-
chanical tricks of his generation to forward the art

of his generation; but they seldom stop to think of
the unique and rigorous conditions that face the
painter of the present time and force his art into its
“modern” channel. For instance, lately con-
structed buildings grow so rapidly that the archi-
tects deal out the decorating contracts when the
plans have but just been drawn, and before even a
single laborer points his spade at the foundations.
So the artist cannot judge of the room he will deco-
rate by examining it himself, studying the condi-
tions of light, the points of view and the surround-
ings. He may not test the action of the special con-
ditions upon his colors. He may not decide by
actual inspection on the amount of richness or aus-
terity his canvas must possess to be appropriate
with its surroundings. He must imagine the con-
ditions fronUhe descriptions of others, descriptions
never sufficiently complete and naturally oftentimes
inaccurate. Once, indeed, Blashfield worked
within the finished room, when he decorated the col-
lar of the dome of the Library of Congress in Wash-
ington; but there the necessity of painting upon
plaster annulled the benefit of this condition. So,
as a rule, after he obtains the best possible idea of
the future location of his canvases, Blashfield inau-
gurates a series of more and more developed
sketches, which he expands with his assistants until
he secures a species of underpinning which later, as
the case requires, may be built up or forced down in
color and tone and general emphasis. Next he
turns to his preliminary drawings, studying the fig-
ures with extreme care, both in the nude and
clothed. These explain better than anything else
Blashfield’s academic technique—take as an in-
stance the drawing of Military Music, a study for
part of a decoration for a grand piano for Mrs.
G. W. C. Drexel. Obviously, such drawings repre-
sent the adequate product of a man of certain pur-
pose, cautiously devoted to his task, who scorns the
use of perfunctory drapery or rigid features even in
work that will later be hidden. They never seem
soft or crumbly with overdevotion, as might be ex-
pected; on the contrary, because they will inevit-
ably be diffused by enlargement, they appear some-
times a trifle hard. Then these drawings he ex-
pands by photography to various sizes. Where-
upon, if the room to be decorated is in any way
completed, he applies thereto the photographs
themselves, first one size and then another, and
moves them about like paper dolls until he has de-
termined the proper scale. And finally, he at-
tempts the larger canvas, gores it if necessary to fit a
curving surface and when completed glues it into
place with white lead.

LXX