Murals were all the rage in the 1930s in North America
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Murals were large in the 1930s. In the US, Construction progress management (WPA) commissioned thousands of murals through the Federal Art Project. Many were in post offices, others in public spaces like Coit Tower in San Francisco.
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The murals were also popular in Canada. On October 21, 1933, The Vancouver Sun announced that it had commissioned the artist Julius Griffith to paint a couple of murals in the lobby of their headquarters at 125 West Pender Street.
One was called “The West” and “describes the wealth and opportunity in this section of Canada.” The second was called “La Prensa” and showed “the collection, printing and distribution of news.”
Sadly, the mural appears to have been lost when The Sun building was devastated by fire on March 22, 1937. The newspaper moved across the street in what became known as the Tower of the sun .
Nor do there appear to be any photos of the mural, apart from the reproductions on the paper. But it drew praise the moment it was done.
Sun writer Julia Henshaw she was impressed by the “boldness and brilliance” of the West, which she said was a “very pleasant and remarkably reasonable adaptation of the modernist school.”
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Henshaw spoke eloquently through each part of the mural: “The golden sunset!” “The mountains!” “The forest!” – with exaggerated writing and exclamation marks.
“Port!” she wrote. “Griffith shows us a symbolic (not modernistly diabolical) ship of transport, which indicates travel for pleasure and business, cargoes of grain and merchandise, of wood, minerals and agricultural products; it is an effect of the solid and impassive industry of the Dominion, and we remind ourselves that, despite the rivalry of other rival nations, Great Britain rules the seas. “
The Sun was quite pleased: it ran an ad for staff that said “It is a brand of good culture and an attentive family interest to be a reader of The Vancouver Sun”.
He also urged other companies to do the same with their own murals.
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“Vancouver is full of artistic talent,” read one story. “It is also full of blank walls. How to bring the two together and get young Vancouver artists to work drawing pictures on blank walls is the theme that captivates hundreds of people in this city … who are interested in promoting the cause of beauty. “
Charles Scott of the Vancouver School of Art agreed.
“’This city and this province are crying out to be pictorialized,’” Scott said. “There is a great opportunity to make schools more attractive. Elementary classrooms could illustrate nursery rhymes and children’s stories. The walls of our Sunday School room are a means of illustrating the Bible stories that are taught to students.
“Take for example our hundreds of downtown business offices, the grain exchange, the stock exchange – there are wonderful possibilities in those places for decorative art, with their high, unadorned walls.”
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In fact, in 1930-31, the San Francisco Stock Exchange had turned to the great Mexican painter Diego Rivera make a mural, The Allegory of California , in its tower.
“California, a heroic figure of a woman, holds the symbols of her fertility in her arms,” read a description of the mural in the San Francisco Examiner on January 14, 1931.
“There is gold under the ground – and the miners who found it. Fruits and flowers from the surface of the earth and the men who cultivate them. There is science, power, dispatch, and youth, all represented in drawings that captivate the viewer. “
Rivera’s mural was famous at the time, and may have led to the owner of The Sun Robert Cromie commission the West. Rivera’s 1932 mural because New York’s Rockefeller Center was more overtly political and controversial, so it probably wouldn’t have been an inspiration.
Griffith was commissioned to do another mural at the Shawnigan Lake School for Boys in 1934, shortly after having a solo show at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
In 1935, he went to England to study at the Royal College of Art. During World War II, he joined British intelligence. He was sent to Russia, where he secretly made sketches.
In 1946 he moved to Toronto, where he was known for his engravings; some of his engravings are in the collection of the National Gallery of Ottawa. He died in 1997 at the age of 85.
Reference-vancouversun.com