THE ALBANY MURALS OF WILLIAM MORRIS HUNT. (VOLUMES I AND II) (LEOPOLD EIDLITZ, AMERICAN ART, ARCHITECTURE; NEW YORK).
Item
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Title
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THE ALBANY MURALS OF WILLIAM MORRIS HUNT. (VOLUMES I AND II) (LEOPOLD EIDLITZ, AMERICAN ART, ARCHITECTURE; NEW YORK).
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Identifier
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AAI8515670
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identifier
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8515670
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Creator
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WEBSTER, SARA BEYER.
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Contributor
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William H. Gerdts | Barbara Weinberg
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Date
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1985
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Fine Arts
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Abstract
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The focus of this dissertation is on the Albany murals of William Morris Hunt (1824-1879). Completed in 1878, they were painted directly on the stone walls of the north and south tympanums of the Assembly Chamber, Albany State Capitol, New York. These two murals, The Flight of Night and The Discoverer, were the last major paintings of Hunt's career, and reflect his full maturity as an artist and the impact of his European training and knowledge of the great masterpieces of the past. Today they are in ruinous condition and no longer visible. The purpose of this dissertation, then, was to recover, evaluate and explore their meaning, insuring that their importance will not be lost.;Hunt did not leave an interpretation of his murals and today their meaning is obscure--Columbus as the figure of the Discoverer is linked with the Persian goddess Anahita, the central figure of The Flight of Night. His contemporaries explained them in different ways. Some saw them as an allegory of the triumph of civilization; others as illustrating the battle between good and evil. A close examination of Hunt's early travel and training in Europe, and of his career and associations in Boston during the 1860s and 1870s, reveals that Hunt connected these two murals by linking a subsidiary figure, Fortune, in The Discoverer, to Anahita who was also called Luna or goddess of the moon. In this way Hunt sought to illustrate the role of destiny and fate in the affairs of men.;Several related but important areas of research have been incorporated. These include the history of the design and construction of the Albany State Capitol, the career of Leopold Eidlitz, architect of the Assembly Chamber, and an appended outline of the history of the nineteenth-century mural painting revival that began in Europe and spread to the United States in the 1850s.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Art History
