The New International Encyclopædia/Blashfield, Edwin Howland

BLASHIELD, (1848&mdash;). An American mural painter. He was born in New York City, and studied in Paris under Bonnat. For twenty years he resided abroad, and worked in France, Italy, Greece, and Egypt. He has been president of the Society of American Artists, and is a member of the National Academy. Among his figure pieces &ldquo;Christmas Bells&rdquo; and the &ldquo;Angel with the Flaming Sword&rdquo; are best known; but he is chiefly noted for decorative work on a large scale. Such decorations are the dome of the Manufactures Building at the Chicago Exposition, a large panel in the Appellate Court, New York, the great central dome of the Congressional Library at Washington, and the Waldorf-Astoria ballroom ceiling, New York. In conjunction with his wife, he is widely known as an author on art subjects, among their joint works being Italian Cities (1900) and an admirable English edition of Vasari's Lives of the Painters (4 vols., 1897).