The Capitol interior contains four glass mosaics by Kenyon Cox.
While schoolchildren and other visitors may tour the Capitol to see government, it’s likely they come away most impressed by its art. Each piece illustrates the highlight or tragedy of an artist’s life.
Walk into the Capitol Rotunda and chances are you’ll see tourists looking up, awestruck; 200 feet above is the false interior dome that frames Edwin Howland Blashfield’s impossible painting, “The Resources of Wisconsin.”
Up close it is wildly distorted, painted onto a gigantic shallow bowl, 34 feet in diameter. Meant only to be seen from far below, Blashfield plotted its design on a wooden model one-fifth the actual size.
The central figure is meant to be “a symbolization of Wisconsin,” said Blashfield, according to Wisconsin State Capitol Guide and History, produced by the state Department of Administration. Like most of the Capitol’s artists and artisans, he had worked with the Capitol’s architect, George B. Post, at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.
David Michael Miller
Edwin Howland Blashfield’s “The Resources of Wisconsin” is meant to be seen from far below.
Around and below the central figure, the artist said, “are female figures, holding up specimens of the production of the state, lead, copper, tobacco, fruit,” and perhaps rather hopefully, “a fresh water pearl.”
Between the four interior arches supporting the dome are immense glass mosaics by Kenyon Cox, another World’s Fair veteran. The pieces average 12 by 24 feet, and are made up of 400,000 pieces of stained glass.
Its iridescent figures are surrounded by panels representing oak foliage, each panel in turn surrounded by an interlacing border of gold and purple. The figures symbolize the divisions of power of the state. To the portrayals of legislative, executive and judicial branches, Cox added a fourth: liberty.
Perhaps overlooked inside two of the Capitol’s ceremonial stairway entrances are two important sculptures.
“The West,” at the West Washington Avenue entrance, is a 5-foot figure sculpted by Vinnie Ream Hoxie, whose life is as incredible as it is forgotten.
She was born in Madison in 1847, in the first log cabin to be built here. At 18, Ream Hoxie became the first woman and youngest artist ever to be commissioned by Congress for her statue of the 16th president; the piece is now in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. She was the only sculptor for whom Abraham Lincoln posed in life.
Photos by Wisconsin Historical S
Wisconsin native Helen Farnsworth Mears created “Genius of Wisconsin.”
“The West,” created while Hoxie studied in Rome, was displayed in the Women’s Building of the Columbian Exposition. It portrays a young woman gazing across a prairie, her gown swept by wind. She holds a sheaf of wheat and a surveyor’s compass and chain.
“Genius of Wisconsin,” inside the Martin Luther King Jr. entrance, stands 9 feet tall and was similarly displayed at the Columbian Exposition. It portrays a leaning figure of a woman, with an eagle, looking ahead.
Its creator, Helen Farnsworth Mears, was an Oshkosh native and one of the“White Rabbits” of the World’s Fair. The group was named when it became clear that there were not enough male artists to finish the exposition’s statuary. Supervising architect Burnham ordered, “Hire anyone, even white rabbits, if they can get the work done.”
Farnsworth Mears studied in France and Italy, and she executed many commissions from her New York studio. Her work is exhibited in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall.
She was chosen by Post to create a sculpture for the top of the Wisconsin Capitol building, but her design was set aside. The shock of this allegedly led to her early death. She died a pauper in 1916, at the age of 45, one year before the Capitol was completed.
