The frescoes in the House of Representatives Committee room, originally
occupied at the time of execution by the Committee on Agriculture, were
finished in 1855. This room displays two large crescent-shaped wall
frescoes, referred to as “lunettes” by Brumidi--“The Calling of
Cincinnatus from the Plow”, and “The Calling of Putnam from the Plow to
the Revolution.” Two portrait heads in imitation sculpture adorn the
other two walls of this room. Beneath the marble-like medallion head of
Washington is a choice panel showing an American harvest scene of early
date, while beneath the medallion head of Jefferson on the opposite wall
is what was then a modern threshing scene, a golden field of grain being
harvested by the new McCormick Reaper. The ceiling is light and gay and
exquisite with designs representing Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.
The blues and golds and inimitable flesh tints of the entire room seem
not to have faded one whit during the ninety years they have spread
cheer and beauty about an otherwise sombre corner of the House extension
of the Capitol.
In spite of all the beauty Brumidi painted into the old Capitol Building
the Congressional Journal for those Brumidi years records occasional
reference on the Floor of the House, criticizing the Italian artist and
his work. In 1858 Congressman Lovejoy ridiculed in the House Chamber
that “brilliant interpretation of the seasons” by Brumidi in his first
frescoed ceiling decorated for the use of the House Agriculture
Committee. Said Mr. Lovejoy in his Congressional speech,
“Overhead we have pictures of Bacchus, Ceres, and so on, surrounded with
cupids, cherubs, etc., to the end of heathen mythology. All this we
have; but not a single specimen of the valuable breeds of cattle,
horses, sheep, etc., which are now found in this country. In another
panel, we have a company of harvesters with the sickle, which is well
enough, only a quarter of a century too late. But worst of all, there is
not a single picture to represent maize. A panel ought to have been
given to this single production. It should have been represented in its
different stages; as it emerges, weak and diminutive, from the ground,
as it sways in its dark luxuriance of June and July; and then as it
waves its tasseled crest, like the plumes of an armed host; and last as
it stands in its rich golden maturity.”
We find Brumidi’s art defended, however, on the Floor of the House of
Representatives about two years later, on June 15, 1860, by Mr. Curtis
of Pennsylvania. Said Mr. Curtis,
“If you go into these committee rooms, and these galleries, of which we
have heard so much, and take any honorable and fair-minded artist with
you, he will himself do justice to the specimens of art that will be
before him, and admit its distinguished worth. What, sir, can be more
beautiful than the fresco work in the room of the Agricultural
Committee?”
Hanging on the side of a bookcase today, in this House Committee Room,
where Brumidi began his Capitol decorations, is a framed bit of verse
put on display evidently by an admirer of the artist. This attempt to
give poetic expression to the worth of Brumidi and his art was written
by Horace C. Carlisle, a present employee of the Architect’s office of
the Capitol. Seven such pieces of verse on Brumidi and his art, written
by Mr. Carlisle, were placed in the Congressional Record by Congressman
Sheppard of California, on April 7, 1944. The verses themselves are
irregular but one line in the frame beneath Brumidi’s first American
fresco is an immortal prophecy. Said Mr. Carlisle, concerning Brumidi
and that first fresco in the Capitol Building:
“Above the rebuke of the scorner he climbed to glory height there.”
In 1874 Brumidi himself referred to his first American fresco in a
statement, “Relative to his employment at the Capitol,” which is now
preserved in the Architect’s office. Said Brumidi, in part,
“The Committee Room on Agriculture in the south wing of the Capitol was
painted in 1855 as the first specimen of real fresco introduced in
America.
“In this connection can be mentioned a curious mistake common in this
country, and that is the calling all and every decoration in oil,
turpentine or glue that is put upon dry walls, real fresco.
“Fresco derives its name from fresh mortar, and is the immediate and
rapid application of mineral colors diluted in water, to the fresh
mortar just put upon the wall, thereby the colors are absorbed by the
mortar during its freshness, and repeating this process in sections day
by day, till the entire picture will be completed.
“This superior method is much admired in the celebrated works of the old
masters, and is proper for historical subjects or classical
ornamentations, like the Loggia of Raphael at the Vatican.”