International studio (56.1915)

Decoration of City High Schools


THE GIFT OF FIRE

BY F. L. STODDARD

Decoration of city high
schools
The art department of New York

City high schools has made serious
efforts through the last few years to interest a
number of organizations in the decoration of city
high schools with mural paintings. The Munici-
pal Art Society has lent its aid to the decoration of
the Washington Irving High School, Manhattan,
and the Beaux Arts Society to the development of
a competition for paintings for the foyer of the De
Witt Clinton High School, Manhattan.
In addition to these the Mural Painters’ Society
has through Mr. William Laurel Harris, its one-
time president, assisted the general organization of
the Eastern District High School, Brooklyn, in
securing three large panels which have recently
been installed on the entrance stairway of the
school. These panels are the work of Mr. Fred-
erick Lincoln Stoddard, of New York City, who is
well known for his mural paintings in the City

Hall of St. Louis, his stained-glass window in St.
Michael’s Church in New York, a number of
mural panels in the St. Louis High Schools, and a
large lunette in the Hebrew Technical School
for Girls in New York City.
Mr. Stoddard was originally a designer of
stained glass, but went abroad to study in Paris
in 1891. There he took up mural work and
returned to his native city in 1896. After execut-
ing a number of commissions in the Middle West,
he came to New York City, after having com-
pleted at that time some twenty mural decorations
in different churches and public halls. He was a
silver medallist in the Exposition of 1904, in St.
Louis, and has since executed a number of com-
missions in the East, especially The, Soul of a
Rose, now owned by Mrs. Arthur James.
The three panels painted by Mr. Stoddard for
the Eastern District High School are each about
eight feet wide and twelve feet in height. They
represent the Birth and Development of Education,
the left panel showing the Gift of Fire to Man, with
Prometheus bound upon a rock in the background,
and man reaching forward toward enlightenment,
which is symbolically represented by the flame,
while the animal world is typified by a snarling
tiger shrinking from the blaze.
The central panel demonstrates the Dawn of
Civilization, with Truth holding aloft a torch, in
the foreground a man at work upon the first piece
of pottery, while the family help to subdue Brute
Force, which is here symbolically represented by a
recumbent lion wreathed in flower chains which a
child is drawing round it.
The right-hand panel shows the Birth of the
Alphabet, where the earliest student is scratching
with a broken spear the first letters upon a rock.
Behind him, warriors sneeringly look upon the first
steps of learning, while in the foreground a serpent
shrinks from the light of education which blazes
before the writer.
Friends of the Young Artists.—Following
upon exhibitions in sculpture and painting an
opportunity is now being given to young archi-
tects who will exhibit in September. The most
recent benefactor of this organization is Mr.
John Henning Fry, the artist, who donated
$1,000 to the cause. During the latter part of
the summer, it is intended to show paintings
and sculpture by the young artists in Newport
and Narragansett.

XLIII