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Study for Mural for Appellate Court Building, New York; "Statute Law", Helmet for Figure of "Force"
Kenyon Cox (born Warren, OH 1856-died New York City 1919)
ca. 1899
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 17 x 13 7/8 in. (43.2 x 35.3 cm.)
- Culture
- New York
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Ambrose Lansing
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
At the turn of the twentieth century, American artists decorated important public buildings with colorful and theatrical murals, images that were meant to enhance architectural spaces and impart lessons of good taste and moral values. In 1898 the National Society of Mural Painters nominated Kenyon Cox and nine other members to create murals for the new state appellate court building in New York City. The space given to Cox was the most challenging: Only four feet high and thirty-five feet long, it had two smaller, angled areas at each end. He chose to paint allegorical figures symbolizing the principles of law. This study for the figure of Force shows a woman wearing a helmet and looking out with a formidable expression; it is the kind of detailed sketch Cox made of each figure before beginning the mural. (Morgan, Kenyon Cox, 1856-1919: A Life in American Art, 1994)
