American, 1881 - 1966
While still a teenager, and student at Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, Faulkner began studying art with his cousin, Abbott Thayer. He entered Harvard College in 1899, but after completing one year, elected to give up college to pursue the study of art. In the winter of 1900 he went to Italy in company with Thayer and his family, where he remained about a year. In 1902 he went to New York, where he studied with Frank Vincent DuMond at the Art Students League, and at William Merritt Chase's New York School of Art. He supported himself doing illustrations for magazines. Faulkner returned to Italy in 1906 as the recipient of the American Academy in Rome prize fellowship that year. He was in Rome into 1910, with the exception of the year 1908, which he spent in Florence, working under George de Forest Brush one his first mural commission, secured before his departure from America, two panels for the Arden, New York, home of E. H. Harriman.
The first of the Harriman panels, Famous Men, was completed after his return to New York, and its pendant, Famous Women, in 1912; the latter received an award in the Architectural League of New York exhibition of 1913. Thereafter, his career as a muralist was assured, and his growing success was only temporally interrupted by a year's military service, 1917-18, in the Army Camouflage Corps. A commission for a memorial to Harry Thrasher and Walter Ward, American Academy in Rome Fellows killed in World War I, took him again to Rome in 1922; he contributed fresco decorations to this project, which was a cooperative undertaking with Eric Gugler and Paul Manship. On completion of his work on the Trasher-Ward Memorial in 1923, Faulkner remained abroad another year in travel and study, with particular attention to Romanesque architecture and Italian painting of the early Renaissance. On his return to America he began to work in design for mosaic decoration. His first commission in this mural form was the entrance hall ceiling of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Ottawa, Canada, completed in 1927. Another major mosaic composition was Intelligence Awakening Mankind a seventy-nine foot wall decoration done in 1933 for west entrance of the RCA Building, Rockefeller Center, New York.
Among others of his numerous mural commissions History of New York for the Washington Irving High School, New York, 1916-1920; The Constitution and Declaration of Independence for National Archives Building, Washington, D. C., 1934-36; alter decorations for the United States Cemetery chapel, Florence.
In 1940 Faulkner received the first commission made by the Academy under the terms of the Edwin Austin Abbey Mural Fund, which was for four panels in the senate chamber of the New Hampshire State Capitol. He chose to represent the state's contribution to the nation through figures of the men responsible for them, set in appropriate surroundings. For the panel devoted to the fields of art and science he depicted Abbott Thayer in his studio explaining his theory of protective coloration to George de Forest Brush, Daniel Chester French, and several others. Following an illness in 1960, the artist retired from mural painting.
Faulkner summered in New Hampshire, but remained essentially resident in New York until 1965, when he moved permanently to Keene; he then began writing his recollections of the early twentieth century American art world. Faulkner was an active member of many arts organizations. Most notable among his affiliations were his trusteeships at the American Academy in Rome, the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, and the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire. He served on the Academy Council from 1937 to 1940, and again for the year 1958-59. He also taught a course in mural painting at the Academy school from 1944 to 1947.
The first of the Harriman panels, Famous Men, was completed after his return to New York, and its pendant, Famous Women, in 1912; the latter received an award in the Architectural League of New York exhibition of 1913. Thereafter, his career as a muralist was assured, and his growing success was only temporally interrupted by a year's military service, 1917-18, in the Army Camouflage Corps. A commission for a memorial to Harry Thrasher and Walter Ward, American Academy in Rome Fellows killed in World War I, took him again to Rome in 1922; he contributed fresco decorations to this project, which was a cooperative undertaking with Eric Gugler and Paul Manship. On completion of his work on the Trasher-Ward Memorial in 1923, Faulkner remained abroad another year in travel and study, with particular attention to Romanesque architecture and Italian painting of the early Renaissance. On his return to America he began to work in design for mosaic decoration. His first commission in this mural form was the entrance hall ceiling of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Ottawa, Canada, completed in 1927. Another major mosaic composition was Intelligence Awakening Mankind a seventy-nine foot wall decoration done in 1933 for west entrance of the RCA Building, Rockefeller Center, New York.
Among others of his numerous mural commissions History of New York for the Washington Irving High School, New York, 1916-1920; The Constitution and Declaration of Independence for National Archives Building, Washington, D. C., 1934-36; alter decorations for the United States Cemetery chapel, Florence.
In 1940 Faulkner received the first commission made by the Academy under the terms of the Edwin Austin Abbey Mural Fund, which was for four panels in the senate chamber of the New Hampshire State Capitol. He chose to represent the state's contribution to the nation through figures of the men responsible for them, set in appropriate surroundings. For the panel devoted to the fields of art and science he depicted Abbott Thayer in his studio explaining his theory of protective coloration to George de Forest Brush, Daniel Chester French, and several others. Following an illness in 1960, the artist retired from mural painting.
Faulkner summered in New Hampshire, but remained essentially resident in New York until 1965, when he moved permanently to Keene; he then began writing his recollections of the early twentieth century American art world. Faulkner was an active member of many arts organizations. Most notable among his affiliations were his trusteeships at the American Academy in Rome, the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, and the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire. He served on the Academy Council from 1937 to 1940, and again for the year 1958-59. He also taught a course in mural painting at the Academy school from 1944 to 1947.
