Evening Star Newspaper, February 22, 1931, Page 75

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, FEBRUARY 22, = 1031, 71 Permanently Placed in the Nation’s Capitol fng His Commission as Commander in Chief of the Army,” shows the general in the center of the picture making his resignation speech. The Washington of this painting is a tall, hand- some man of s'ender and graceful build. In the gallery, watching the ceremony, is Mrs. Washington and her three granddaughters. In “The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis,” also by Trumbull, Washington is riding a black horse betwe:n Gen. Lincoln and the American flag. This historical painting represents the moment when the highest officers of the de- feated British for es were being led by Gen. Lincoln botween tue lines of the victorious French and American soldiers. Thus, the lead- ing officers of the thre: nations are shown in the foreground of the picture. JOHN TRUMBULL, the painter, was born in Connecticut in 1756 and died in New York in 1843. His father was Jonathan Trumbull, a Governor of Cocnneciicut. Young Trumbull graduated from Harvard at the age of 17, and he served in the Revolulionary War as aide de camp to Washington. -When he was 24 years old he went to London to study painting. While there h> was arrested by the British as & spy. This son of a Yankee governor was thrown into a prison where for eight months he shared a cell with a common highwayman. He was finally releas>d upon condition that he leave England at once. Trumbull is the most celebrated painter of the Revolution. He was 15 years younger than Charles W lison Peale and only a few months older than Stuart. The lives of Peale and Trumbull show an interesting similarity. Both hegan painting without instruction, both went to Coply for assistance, both served un- der Washington in the War of the Revolu- tion and both went to London to study under their fellow countryman and artist, Benja- min West. After having attained recognition abroad both artists returned to America to paint men prominently connected with the Revolution and the new Republic. Trumbuil was one of the most industrious artists this country has ever produced. He painted hundreds of pictures, some of which were canvases of mammoth proportions. Shortly after the death of his wife he gave all his paintings to Yale College for a life pension of $1,000 a year. Beneath the gal- lery where his pictures are hung is the tomb of the American artist and his beloved wife. The inscription on the tomb reads, in part: “To his country he gave his pencil and his sword.” The State of Virg'nia has honored, not only her most illustrious son, but herself as well, by placing the statue of Washington in the United States Capitol, where his right to a place of honor is obvious and unquestioned. The tall bronze statue of the Father of His Country in Statuary Hall was copied by Wil- liam James Hubard from Houdon's marble statue of Washington in the State Capitol at Richmond. Hubard was permitted to copy the statue by a special act of the Legislature of Virginia. Jean Antoine Houdon was an eminent Prench sculptor who came to America in 1785 to model a statue of Washington for Virginia. The sculptor lived two weeks at Mount Ver- non. During this time he made a cast of Washington's face from which the bust was modeled. The artist made very minute and painstaking measurements of the person of the great Virginian. The statue was com- pleted in Paris in 1788 and erected at Rich- mond May 14, 1796, three years before Wash- ington’s death. THE Houdon statue is considered a master- piece, and it is said to be as perfect a pesemblance of the subject as could be made ROYAL EGYPTIAN FURNITURE SHOWS EFFECT OF BY DOROTHY HUNTT. ROM out of the dark recesses of an Egyptian Queen’s tomb has come a wonderful story of the durability and lasting qualities of wood. From among the heaps of gold sheet and rare inlays, gold drinking cups, alabaster toilet jars and vessels of copper, the first royal furni- ture ever found of the period of Dynasty IV emerged from neirly 5,000 years of oblivion. At Giza, Egypt, the tomb of Queen Hetep- heres, beloved motber of Cheops, was discovered secreted 100 feet below the surface of the earth among the pyramids of his queens and the mastaba t-mbs of his royal family. Its wealth of historical material and data depicting the Egyptian arts and crafts has greatly en- riched the archeological knowledge of the world. It is believed Queen Hetep-heres died during the first half of the reign of Pharaoh Cheops, who succeeeded to the throne upon the death of his fither, Sneferuw. Queen Hetep-heres was buried, in accordance with Egyptian custom, in a tcmb at Dahshur beside the pyramid of her husband. Soon after, grave robbers entered the tomb and ransacked it of its most valuable con- tents. In the process, the beautiful alabaster saracophagus was opened and the body was probably dragged up to the surface, where it was unwrapped and the jewelry and other gold ornaments torn from her body. In this man- ner, the mummy of Queen Hetep-heres wis br-kxen up and her bones scattered beyond re- covery. It is not conceded that Cheops had any idea the precious body of his mother had been s0 mutilated when he ordered the remains of the burial transferred to his cemetery at Giza, where it had withstood for 5,000 years the un- ceasing ravaging of the royal tombs. ’I‘HE excavation of the Giza Pyramids began 4 in 1902, when the Egyptian government granted the Giza concession to an expedition supported by Mrs. Phoche A. Hearst, in the name of the University of California. After Virginia’s Gift of a Bronze Likencss—The Story of Charles Willson Peale—T1rumbull Served in War of Revolution Under Washington. Portrait of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale, on gallery floor of the Senate wing of the Capitol. in marble. Thomas Jefferson, who was largely responsible for Houdon's commission to make the statue, was entirely satisfied with the work. Jefferson was particularly elated over the fact that Washington had posed in his usual attire instead of classic Roman drapes, which were popular with many noted artists of that time. three years of exploration the work was taken over by the Harvard University and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and financed by friends and trustees of the museum. The discovery by this expedition of the unique, hidden tomb of Que2n Hetep-heres was announced by the Egyptian government on March 9, 1925. It took 305 working days to complete the exploration of the tomb and record the confused mass of funerary equip- ment. Among the heaps of gold and miscel- laneous vessels of copper and red pottery many interesting and curious relics of the pyramid age were unearthed. The priceless furniture with which this beautiful Qu2en lived is sup- posed to be the oldest in existence in the world today and well illustrates the effects of time on the durability of wood. This furniture has been completely restored and is now on ex- hibition in the Museum of Cairo, Egypt. The great golden carrying-chair in which the mother of Cheops was transported, shoulder high, through the streets of Memphis was a royal piece of splendid quality. The framework and ends of the carrying poles were cased in heavy gold, but the panels were of plain wood. The mat pattern seen in the gold had been carved in the wood and the gold presced or beaten to fit it. On the back ot the chair were four ebony strips inlaid with solid gold hieroglyphics in similar inscriptions, which read: “Mother of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, follower of Horus, guide of the ruler, favorite lady whose every word is done for her, daughter of the god of his body, Hetep-heres.” This inscription indicates that the carrying-chair was a gift of Cheops and presented after the death of Sneferuw. The wood of this chair was found to be in a better state of preservation than that of any other piece found in the tomb, and one of its paneld lying exposed in the tomb was perfectly pre- served, although it had shrunk to one-sixth its normal volume. The carrying-chair's deli- cate grace of form makes it one of the monu- mental pieces of Egyptian furniture. Houdon's statue shows Washington to be a tall man, a little over six feet, dressed in the style of a gentleman of his time. He stands beside a plow with his left arm resting on the mace of authority, from which hangs a sheathed sword. The ancient mace, or lictor, was a bundle of rods bound together and used by the Dynasty IV, it is believed, was the culmina- tion of the great creative period of the Egyptian craftsmen. The magnificence of the Queen mother’s armchair is a fitting tribute to this age. Like the carrying-chair, this majestic piece was encased in moderately stiff sheets of gold. Under its rilled arms the exquisite design of three papyrus flowers, “of which the stems of the side flowers curved outward to fill the space between the arm and the chair,” served as its only decoration. Its gold-cased legs were carved like the four legs of a lion, each facing the front of the chair. The chair, of medium size, was covered with a cushion. The gold-cased bed upon which Queen Hetep- heres reposed was an object of intrinsic value. Its beauty of structure, while simply designed, testifies to the great artistic sense of the Egyp- tlans. The bed is broad and rather short and slopes from head to foot. The footbhoard, which kept the mattress in place, had decayed, but its incrusted pattern of gold and faience, in the design of flowers and feathers, was well preserved and prac..cally intact. The four circular end knobs ~nd four lion legs were found to be well p_ - erved, and the restored bed contains the original wood in two of its legs. This unique bed probably stood under a goid-cased, wooden canopy in the palace of the Queen. IN these venerable antiquities so expressive of the substantial materialism and high tech- nical dexterity of the Egyptians, we see a rich and picturesque civilization, energetic and full of artistic and practical ideas. Gold, rare jewels and valuable wood were lavishly combined in the construction of objects of art. Wood was imported for large and small work, for beams and for year labels, and was used extensively in construction work in conjunction with brick and stone. Wood played an important part in the life of the Egyptians, and with minor ex- ceptions all of it had to be brought long dis- tances. The kinds used In the furniture found in the tomb of Queen Hetep-heres could not be LART ) Romans to denote authority. Houdon's statue represents Washington as a gentleman, & farmer, a soldier and a man of the highest power and authority. The plaster cast of Washington in the rotunda of the Capitol is Hubard's model from which the bronze statue in Statuary Hall and six other copies were cast. Hubard proposed to furnish a copy to each State, but this was never done. The bronze replicas were cast about five years before the Civii War. The sculptor was born in England in 1810, but he came to America when he was 19 years old, after traveling about the world with a man who had hired him to cut silhouettes and paint landscapes as they traveled together. When they reached this country the young artist's work had netted his companion more than $10,000. Soon after arriving in America the ruthless man disappeared, leaving the artisé alone and penniless. However, he was soon able to provide fof himself by cutting silhouettes. He again wen$ abroad and studied sculpture and later returned to Virginia, where he married Marie Masoni Todd. He allied himself with the Confederates during the Civil War, and his death resulted from an explosion which occurred while hg was making gunpowder. The Prench people presented a bronze bust of Washington to this country on February 22, 1905. The Prench Ambassador, J. J. Jusserand, made the presentation speech in the President’s room of the Capitol. The statuary was given to the Government to replace a bust of Wash- ington which was destroyed by fire in the library in 1851. The three family names which head the list of subscribers are Lafayette, Rochambeau and De Grasse, all descendonts of the illustrious allies of the United States in her struggle for freedom. Th2 bust is a replica of an original model by Pierre Jean David d’Angers, a distinguished Prench sculptor whe loved freedom and greatly admired the Ameri- can Republic. The original model was freely eriticized by Lafayette in the artist’s studio during the progress of the work. Those who go to the Capitol to study the statues and portraits of the illustrious George Washington will find that every likeness of him is a notable work of art. Washingten’s fame has grown with the years, his superior qualities and achievements are unsurpassed, but when we honor the memory of the greatest of all Americans we cannot forget the distin- guished portrait painters who gave his likemess to us. Crude Rubber Demands. IT took almost half a million tons of crude rubber to meet the needs of the rubber in- dustry in this country in 1929. In actual fig- ures, the rubber weighed 441,343 tons, of which the tire industry consumed 382,782 tons. In addition to the crude rubber, nearly 200,000 tons of reclaimed rubber were manufactured into tires and other rubber goods. Rubber itself is only part of the story in the rubber industry, for, in the manufacture of various rubber articles, there was a vast amount of other materials consumed. These included 160,000,000 pounds of carbon black, 130,000,000 pounds of zinc oxide, 60,000,000 pounds of sul- phur, 270,000,000 pounds of tire fabrics, 35,000, 000 pounds of hose and belting duck, 65,000,000 pounds of a variety of cotton fabrics and a large quantity of other fabrics. Taken altogether, the rubber industry showed a gross income for manufactured articles of $1,122,054,874, which was about $100,000,600 less than in 1927, the year of the preceding business census. TIME ON W00D accurately ascertained in most cases, but it appears to have been in part Syrian fir or cedar and in part a local Egyptian hardwood. In Egypt wood shrinks considerably at all times. Practically all wooden statues, doors and other objects show a certain amount of distortion due to splitting and shrinkage, but up to the time of the discovery of the funerary deposit of Queen Hetep-heres such pronounced shrinkage had not been observed. The shrink- age of some of the wood which had been covered with gold could be measured in several ine stances, and it was found that with the grain it had shrunk to two-thirds of its original length and across the grain to one-half its original width and thickness. ‘The mortice and tenon joints of the furniture were pulled apart, and wooden boxes which were held intact either by construction or contents had split along the sides of the grain into shriveled sticks and then had broken into fragments across the grain. Apparently the first effect of time on the wood was splitting and a certain amount of shrinkage, and with the splitting and shrinkage a continual loss of weight took place, which weakened the strength of the wood. Some of the decaying wood was attacked by fungus. That which was in direct contact with copper sheathings generally escaped the attack, indicating that copper oxide had a distinct preservative effect. The best whole pieces of wood were found to be those encased in the heavy gold used on the carrying-chair and inside the palm capitals and legs of the bod. However, the wood in the gold cases was not always saved from the action of the fungus, On the other hand, the wood directly exposed to the air was not always attacked. When the decay of the wood reached & certain point the fibers were reduced to a sofg and very fine brown powder. Some of the wood had been separated into masses of long fibers, and occasionally these were reduced to a sorg of gray ash—the final effect of the fungi. o 1