User:Buster7/Richard Haines

Richard Haines was born in Marion, Iowa in 1906 and died in Los Angeles in 1984.

Education
His parents, Fred C. Haines (1885-1949) and Hattie Mae Carver (1884-1952) were pioneer farmers at the turn of the century and Richard grew up sketching countryside scenes. He worked for several years as a designer for a greeting card company and subsequently Brown and Begelow, a calendar firm. He won a scholarship to the Minneapolis School of Art and, upon graduation, was hired as a professor. In 1933 he won the Vanderlip Traveling Scholarship to the L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in France and studied fresco technique at the Fountainbleau School and, at some point, with muralist John Norton in Chicago, Il.

Murals
Murals were produced from 1934 to 1943 in the United States through the Section of Painting and Sculpture, later called the Section of Fine Arts, of the Treasury Department. The murals were intended to boost the morale of the American people from the effects of the Depression by depicting uplifting subjects. Murals were commissioned through competitions open to all artists in the United States. Almost 850 artists were commissioned to paint 1371 murals, most of which were installed in post offices, libraries, and other public buildings. The murals were funded as a part of the cost of the construction with 1% of the cost set aside for artistic enhancements.

Haines returned to the United States at the time of the Depression and started receiving commissions from the Federal Treasury's Section of Fine Arts. He was one of the more prolific New Deal muralists. Amongst his many murals was one of the more colorful in Iowa Farming, which he painted for the Cresco, Iowa post office in 1937. In it, he harkened back to his days in Marion and produced a scene depicting the farm and two generations of family that had lived there. It shows horses, cows, pigs, chickens, and family members performing chores as his mother reads a letter just delivered by the postal service…

Haines continued to paint throughout the Depression, completing many other New Deal murals. In addition to the Cresco, Iowa mural, he did post office murals in
 * Berwyn, Illinois, The Picnic
 * Wichita, Kansas Kansas Farming, Source
 * Hastings, Minnesota,
 * Clinton, Missouri,
 * Shelton, Washington Skid Road

In 1952 he was among nine artists selected to paint murals for the renowned Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. From 1954-1974 he was the head of the painting department at Otis Art Institute. In the Sebeka, Minnesota High School is a mural he painted in 1938 that demonstrates the casein paint process as used in fresco-painting.

LA, CA
In the 1938 he met and married interior decorator Leonora 'Nona' D. Stevens (1911-1989?) from Minneapolis, MN. He and his wife moved to Los Angeles in 1941 and Haines worked for Douglas Aircraft. After WWII he taught art at the Chouinard Art Institute from 1945 to 1954 and was the head of the painting department at Otis Art Institute from 1954 to his retirement in 1974. In 1952 he was among nine artists selected to paint murals for the renowned Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He was represented by Los Angeles' Dalzell Hatfield Galleries.

Died

 * Richard Haines died in 1984 in Los Angeles, California.