TitleStudy for Mural Painting in Cunard Steamship Office
Artist
Ezra Augustus Winter
(1886 - 1949)
Date1921
MediumWatercolor
DimensionsSheet size: 25 15/16 × 28 1/4 in.
Mat size: 31 3/4 × 35 7/8 in.
SignedSigned lower left: "Ezra Winter 1921"
SubmissionNA diploma presentation
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number39-W
Label TextWinter painted murals throughout the northeast and mid-west, including for Radio City Music Hall in New York City, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and the Clark Memorial in Vincennes, Indiana. Winter believed that “the mural painter, is, first of all, a decorator, I mean that he is more interested in beautiful, thrilling color combinations, the shapes and sizes of forms, and in patterns and their complimentary relation to each other, than he is in the realistic representation of an event, an object, or a place.”In about 1920, Winter joined the team assembled by architect Benjamin Wistar Morris to decorate the Cunard Steamship Line’s new headquarters at 25 Broadway in lower Manhattan. The team also included the painter Barry Faulkner, sculptors C. Paul Jennewein and John Gregory, and metalworker Samuel Yellin. The decorative program celebrated the lure of travel, and includes polychrome stucco, painted murals, and metalwork. The most stunning feature of the space is the ceiling mural by Winter, which includes four roundels with painted nautical scenes. The National Academy’s watercolor was originally created as a study for the roundel featuring Winter’s mural of a mermaid and centaur dashing through the sea.
