John R. Baillargeon House Murals, 1939-1940

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John R. Baillargeon House Murals, 1939-1940

Date1939 - 40

Maker Mark Tobey American, born Centerville, Wisconsin, 1890; died Basel, Switzerland, 1976

Label TextThe panels enlivening this room reflect Mark Tobey's vision for large-scale murals. While painting their cresting and subsiding forms, he drew inspiration from the movement of the sea and the forms of plant and marine life along the coast. This imagery connects to larger themes in Tobey's art, revealing the influence of surrealism, Asian landscape scrolls, musical progressions, and Baha'i metaphysics. Tobey painted these murals for the Madison Park home of John and Margaret Baillargeon. In 1954 the same home, with murals intact, was sold to Dr. Richard Fuller, cofounder and director of the Seattle Art Museum, who donated the murals to the museum in 1975. They received new life when installed here in 1991, in an arrangement that closely follows their original display. Achieving fame as a muralist was one of Tobey's earliest ambitions as an artist. In this effort, he had the most success in Washington, where large-scale public works hang at Seattle's McCaw Hall and at the Pritchard Building -- formerly the Washington State Library -- in Olympia.

Object number75.77

Provenancecommissioned by Mrs. John A. Baillargeon for the drawing room of her home at 3801 East Prospect Street, Seattle, Washnigton, 1939; house sold to Dr. and Mrs. Richard Fuller,Seattle, 1953-1975; murals removed and donated to Seattle Art Museum by Fuller, 1975

Published ReferencesFuller, Richard E. "A Gift to the City." Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 1993, p. 30, reproduced (in Fuller home, 1964). Rathbone, Eliza. "The Role of Music in the Development of Mark Tobey's Abstract Style," Arts, 58, no. 4 (December 1983): p. 96, reproduced. Giese, Lucretia H. "Mark Tobey's 1939 Murals for the John A. Baillargeons: A Transition," Archives of American Art Journal 23, no. 2 (1983): pp. 3-12.

Credit LineEugene Fuller Memorial Collection

DimensionsA: 81" x 31", B: 84" x 10 1/2", C: 81" x 30", D: 84" x 10 1/2", E: 84" x 11", F: 81" x 30", G: 84" x 11", H: 80 1/2" x 31 1/4", I: 81" x 28", J: 81" x 29", K: 81" x 29", L: 84" x 10 1/2", M: 81" x 77", N: 84" x 10 1/2", O: 84" x 10 1/2", P: 80 3/4" x 76 1/4", Q: 84" x 11", R: 81 x 29 1/4"

MediumOil and gouache on muslin