Hildreth Meière Documentary Series - Watch Trailer
Hildreth Meière Documentary Series - Watch Trailer
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Commissioned by: Mayers, Murray & PhillipMedium: paintExecuted by: RambuschNonextant
Detail of map from Official Guide Book – New York World's Fair 1940 showing location of Mayer, Murray & Phillip's Medicine and Public Health, Science and Education Building Complex
To-scale model of the Medicine and Public Health, Science and Education Buildings with the placement of Meière's murals indicated as follows: (1) Modern Medicine (2) Primitive Man and Modern Man (3) Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine and the Dragon of Ignorance (4) Comte de Rochambeau (5) Tadeusz Kosciuszko (6) The Family (7) The School (8) The Picnic (9) Man between the Past and the Future
(4 & 5) Medicine and Public Health, Science and Education Building Complex filmed by Hildreth Meière, 1939. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
For the left and right sides of the facade facing Washington Square with a sixty-five-foot statue of George Washington, Meière designed portraits of Tadeusz Kosciuszko (left) and Comte de Rochambeau (right).
Facade showing Tadeusz Kosciuszko
Detail of Tadeusz Kosciuszko
Detail of Comte de Rochambeau
Meière described her design process:
My “Kosciuszko” at the Fair almost did itself, and is essentially as it was from the first sketch, whereas its companion “Rochambeau” had to be designed over and over again before it looked right.1
Meière at work on Man Between the Past and Future with studies for Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Comte de Rochambeau on the wall behind her
Although Meière did not have the time to both design and paint her own murals, she had expected to be able to touch them up as needed. The union, however, forbade her to do so. She therefore relied upon Rambusch, and in particular the company’s artist H. Morton, to execute her designs. Meière was pleased nonetheless with the result.
Meière seated in front of mural of Kosciuszko
Meière on scaffold touching up her mural before being told she was not permitted to work on it
Hildreth Meière, “Working for a World’s Fair,” Journal of the Associated Alumnae of the Sacred Heart 4 (1939-40): 38.
