International studio (57.1915/1916)

Murals at Madison, Wisconsin

it has been called an extraordinary and a “rigid ”
document and often criticized by those who resent
a written code as too inflexible. The scene is
Philadelphia; Washington is in the chair behind
a table on a low dais. To the right foreground
are Madison, with cloak on arm, and Alexander
Hamilton, standing. Farther back near Washing-
ton stands Jefferson talking to another delegate
whose back is turned. In the group of four men
standing to the left in the foreground, the char-
acteristic face of Benjamin Franklin gives a
familiar look. His unpowdered hair hangs loose
about his neck.
The painter has not attempted to introduce all
or even a large part of the delegates to that

Charta in 1215, the place an open tent on the
meadows of Runnymede. The subject was
chosen as a fitting pendant to the Signing of the
American Constitution, for the partial liberties
wrung by Cardinal Stephen Langton and the
barons from King John in the thirteenth century
were added to, little by little, until perfected in
this land nearly six centuries later. King John
sits at one end of a table before the royal canopy,
and by his furious face and clenched hand ex-
presses the violence he is doing to his real thoughts,
the effort he is making while submitting to the
demands of his revolted subjects. A mail-clad
knight, standing at the other end of the table,
seems by his gesture to enforce the necessity of


Capitol at Madison, Wisconsin—Supreme Court Room

THE ENGLISH LAW

BY ALBERT HERTER

Convention to the scene, preferring for artistic
effect a central distant group and nearer groups
to right and left. The light waistcoats and
white stockings of those to right and left form
notable masses of higher light. The scheme
of colours is well adapted to the general effect of
the marble between which the picture lies.
Although Washington holds a central position
and is separate from the other figures, he has not
been given a heroic pose. On the contrary, the
painter has shown him leaning on his elbow with
left hand under his chin, in a natural, easy atti-
tude, as if to symbolize the citizen who is a presi-
dent only for a term of years.
On another wall is a picture called the English
Law, thejjexample being the signing of Magna

his yielding. Behind this knight are other barons.
Behind the seated king are the bishops of London
and Dublin and other prelates.
These groups are very happily disposed. The
painting is the finest of the four as to picturesque-
ness of setting, as to composition, and as to the
quiet expressiveness of king and rebels. Glimpses
of the still waters and verdant fields of the Thames
valley are seen behind the tent. In the im-
mediate foreground is the green sward, full of
flowers, on which the flooring has been placed.
The third picture, entitled the Roman Law,
above the door by which one enters, is taken
from a little-known episode in the life of Caesar
Augustus Octavianus, the legend of a legionary
who had fought for Augustus in his youth and

XLV