The National Society of Mural Painters (NSMP) is an American artists' organization originally known as The Mural Painters. The charter of the society is to advance the techniques and standards for the design and execution of mural art for the enrichment of architecture in the United States.
The NSMP was founded in 1895, in an era of Beaux-Arts architecture in the United States, a time when public architecture was integrated with murals, sculpture, mosaics and other artwork, coordinated and themed to assert the identity of the building. Parallel organizations associated with the same principles of integrated public art include the National Sculpture Society, which originally included a large percentage of architectural sculptors, and the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, founded in 1916 as the teaching wing of the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects.
Still in existence after more than a hundred years, the society presents exhibitions and organizes competitions. The NSMP is a member of the Fine Arts Federation of New York.
Art Nouveau is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and flowers. Other characteristics of Art Nouveau were a sense of dynamism and movement, often given by asymmetry or whiplash lines, and the use of modern materials, particularly iron, glass, ceramics and later concrete, to create unusual forms and larger open spaces. It was popular between 1890 and 1910 during the Belle Époque period, and was a reaction against the academicism, eclecticism and historicism of 19th century architecture and decorative art.
Albert Herter was an American painter, illustrator, muralist, and interior designer. He was born in New York City, studied at the Art Students League with James Carroll Beckwith, then in Paris with Jean-Paul Laurens and Fernand Cormon.
Charles Follen McKim was an American Beaux-Arts architect of the late 19th century. Along with William Rutherford Mead and Stanford White, he provided the architectural expertise as a member of the partnership McKim, Mead & White.
Beaux-Arts architecture was the academic architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, particularly from the 1830s to the end of the 19th century. It drew upon the principles of French neoclassicism, but also incorporated Renaissance and Baroque elements, and used modern materials, such as iron and glass, and later, steel. It was an important style and enormous influence in Europe and the Americas through the end of the 19th century, and into the 20th, particularly for institutional and public buildings.
Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue was an American architect celebrated for his work in Gothic Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival design. He also designed notable typefaces, including Cheltenham and Merrymount for the Merrymount Press. Later in life, Goodhue freed his architectural style with works like El Fureidis in Montecito, California, one of three estates he designed.
Alexander Stirling Calder was an American sculptor and teacher. He was the son of sculptor Alexander Milne Calder and the father of sculptor Alexander (Sandy) Calder. His best-known works are George Washington as President on the Washington Square Arch in New York City, the Swann Memorial Fountain in Philadelphia, and the Leif Eriksson Memorial in Reykjavík, Iceland.
The Nebraska State Capitol is the seat of government of the U.S. state of Nebraska and is located in downtown Lincoln. Designed by New York architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue in 1920, it was constructed of Indiana limestone from 1922 to 1932. The capitol houses the primary executive and judicial offices of Nebraska and is home to the Nebraska Legislature—the only unicameral state legislature in the United States.
Hildreth Meière (1892–1961) was an American muralist active in the first half of the twentieth century who is especially known for her Art Deco designs. During her 40-year career she completed approximately 100 commissions. She designed murals for office buildings, churches, government centers, theaters, restaurants, cocktail lounges, ocean liners, and world’s fair pavilions, and she worked in a wide variety of mediums, including paint, ceramic tile, glass and marble mosaic, terracotta, wood, metal, and stained glass. Among her extensive body of work are the iconographic interiors at the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln, the dynamic roundels of Dance, Drama, and Song at Radio City Music Hall, the apse and narthex mosaics and stained-glass windows at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church (Manhattan), and the decoration of the Great Hall at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
Kenyon Cox was an American painter, illustrator, muralist, writer, and teacher. Cox was an influential and important early instructor at the Art Students League of New York. He was the designer of the League's logo, whose motto is Nulla Dies Sine Linea or No Day Without a Line.
The Baroque Revival, also known as Neo-Baroque, was an architectural style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term is used to describe architecture and architectural sculptures which display important aspects of Baroque style, but are not of the original Baroque period. Elements of the Baroque architectural tradition were an essential part of the curriculum of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the pre-eminent school of architecture in the second half of the 19th century, and are integral to the Beaux-Arts architecture it engendered both in France and abroad. An ebullient sense of European imperialism encouraged an official architecture to reflect it in Britain and France, and in Germany and Italy the Baroque Revival expressed pride in the new power of the unified state.
The Beaux-Arts Institute of Design was an art and architectural school at 304 East 44th Street in Turtle Bay, Manhattan, in New York City. It was founded in 1916 by Lloyd Warren for the training of American architects, sculptors and mural painters consistent with the educational agenda of the French École des Beaux-Arts. The building is now home to Egypt's mission to the United Nations.
Ernest Clifford Peixotto (1869–1940) was an American artist, illustrator, and author. Although he was known mainly for his murals and his travel literature, his artwork also regularly appeared in Scribner's Magazine. His 1916 work Our Hispanic Southwest is famous for including the first written appearance of the ethnic slur "spic".
René-Paul Schützenberger was a French Post-Impressionist painter.
William Dean Fausett was an American painter. His career spanned over six decades. He painted notable figures like Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Grandma Moses, Ezra Taft Benson, and Sir Alexander Fleming. His brother Lynn Fausett was also a painter. Fausett also purchased the historic house of Cephas Kent, Jr. in Dorset, Vermont and was instrumental in it the forming of the Kent Neighborhood Historic District.
Edmond Thomas Quinn was an American sculptor and painter. He is best known for his bronze statue of Edwin Booth as Hamlet, which stands at the center of Gramercy Park in New York City. His larger-than-lifesize bronze bust of Victor Herbert stands near The Pond in Central Park, New York City.
Ethel Carrick, later Ethel Carrick Fox was an English Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painter. Much of her career was spent in France and in Australia, where she was associated with the movement known as the Heidelberg School.
The Cresson Traveling Scholarship, also known as the William Emlen Cresson Memorial Traveling Scholarship, is a two-year scholarship for foreign travel and/or study awarded annually to art students at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Louise Howland King Cox was an American painter known for her portraits of children. She won a number of prizes throughout her career, notably a bronze medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition and a silver medal at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo.