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The Evander Childs High School Murals Project

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Colorful Murals in Library Portray Panorama of Occidental Civilization

September 25, 1935

Under the supervision of the College Arts Association, and due to the interest of Miss Bebarfald of the Art Dept., Mr. James Newell, a noted artist, has been retained for the purpose of painting murals on the library walls.

The series of paintings which will take one year to complete will extend around the library walls, each one showing a step in "The Advancement of Western Civilization."

The artist is working out an original idea, one he had thought about for many years, and one he believed to be appropriate. Mr. Newell takes us many centuries into the past and presents Primitive Man awakening to the presence and force of the elements, who with his little experience and knowledge makes progress, making tools out of stone and other crude implements. He builds a home for protection and in due time a community is established. He soon discovers the necessity for order, and a code of laws is set up. This is presented vividly, in Mr. Newell's first series of panels. He continues, revealing the development of the human mind. The progress of science versus superstition is clearly shown by science removing the head of a grotesque figure, the personification of superstition, finding nothing inside but a mere spring. A period of great exploration takes place. The Norsemen, the Dutch and the English discover new lands and our continent is brought to light. Over the centuries, tribes and civilizations worked continually until the time came when both hemispheres met and exchanged ideas and thoughts.

With the knowledge of Eastern civilization, men broke away from the cloistered religion and experimented in science and medicine. The artist continues the advancement of man, depicting America's development in the electrical age. Mr. Newell's paintings show the participation of America in the fields of Science, Medicine, Engineering and television. Our country has broken its bonds, and in an open book, the artist inscribes Walt Whitman's "Freedom and Learning for All," recounting the advancement of education.

"With my fathers and mothers and the accumulation of past ages,
With all which had it not been, I would not now be here as I am...
And that where I am or you are this present day, there is the center of all days, all races ....
And there is the meaning to us, of all that has ever come of races and days, or will ever come."

The method employed in the paintings of these murals differs in that the paintings become a part of the walls, and not merely pasted canvass paintings. The walls after being stripped of plaster, are treated with a series of rough pigments, which are later finished with a coat of specially prepared frescoed plaster. In order to paint in the fresco process, it is necessary to paint while the plaster is wet. The paints used are earth pigments. They are then dissolved in distilled waters. The mixed paints are applied to the wet fresco, which in turn carbonize it deep into the mortar. Frescoing is the revival of the early Italian method of mural creations. Artists famous for frescoing are Angelo, Giotto, and Martini. Fresco has been used in China, India and in other parts of the world.

Mr. H. James Newell, the artist, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1900. He served during the war in the second division of the Marine Corps. He studied at the National Academy of Design, Art's Student's League, the Julian Academy and Beaux Arts in Paris. In 1928, he won the Fontainbleau Prize, and made an extensive research of fresco in Rome, Naples and Florence. Recently he decorated the Potomac Electric Power Company, at Washington, D.C. Many of his painting are hanging today in the White House.

Assisting Mr. Newell are Messrs. DeRocco, Koveno, Botto, Cavallone, Lagambino, Buzzelli, Van Aalton. It is estimated that the project will be completed by October of next year.

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