User:Supernerdsarah/Julius Moessel and The Story of Food Plants

Julius Moessel and The Story of Food Plants

Introduction
From the April 1938 up to July1940, the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration commissioned famous German artist Julius Moessel to complete a series of murals to accompany a botany exhibit. These murals would demonstrate how the plants were planted, gathered, and distributed in their natural setting. In a review of the exhibit after it was opened, it was declared that the mural series “illustrates humankind’s use of plants as food, from early man as a hunter-gatherer to an urban produce market in 20th century America.” This project was the last major commission completed by the esteemed painter. Clarence Bulliet of the Daily News considered it by far “his most important public work since he came to America”. The mural series of eighteen 7’ by 9’ oil paintings is entitled The Story of Food Plants it continues to occupy the second floor of the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History in the Plants of the World Exhibit.

Life in Germany
“Moessel was one of the Chicago art scene's most notable figures from the late 1920s through the 1950s--but the Chicago years were actually a second career for the German artist”. The artist Julius Moessel was born in 1871 in Fürth, Germany. While residing in his native country, he studied at the Munich Academy. While still in his 20’s, he established own architectural decoration firm and “by early 1900s had become one of Germany’s most important and sought-after architectural painters” and muralists. Some of his more famous works from this period in collaboration with architect Max Littman include the Württenbergischen Court Theater in Stuttgart and Schiller Theater in Berlin. As a lone artist, some of his most distinguished works include the City Hall at Leipzig, the Munich Stock Exchange, and the Jury Room in Nuremberg’s Central Justice Building. This specific jury room would become the site of the post-war trials after the Second World War. He was quite proud of his prestige.

Immigration to the United States
In 1926 he came to New York after the economic decline of Germany at the conclusion of the First World War. He “claimed to have immigrated to Chicago at the invitation of Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., to decorate the philanthropist’s planned Museum of Science and Industry.” However, the commission fell through. He chose to stay and continue his search for other work. He moved to Chicago after several decorative projects were offered in the area in 1929. By this time, he had “rebuilt his business and his fortune - only to see both wiped out in the stock market crash of 1929”. He would not give up any chance to once again rebuild his name and his business. He exhibited his works at the Chicago Galleries Association, the Art Institute of Chicago and the All-Illinois Society of Fine Arts. In addition to these larger expositions, he had numerous one-man shows at smaller galleries. One could also find his portraits of orangutans and monkeys “commonly [decorating] the cover of the Saturday Evening Post”.

Moessel Received the Commission
It is not clear how Moessel first received the Field Museum commission at the age of 66. After conversing with Armand Esai, a current museum archivist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, I found out that not many records were kept at the museum regarding the commission because it was through the WPA, and therefore was a coordinated effort. The museum did not feel the need to document the initiation of the work because it would be in the WPA’s hands. Where this documentation is now, however, is unknown to the museum at this time. Whatever the reason, Moessel received the commission from the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration for the Field Museum in 1938. The commission originally called for 13 murals, but multiplied into a staggering 18 by the end of the project. Initially, Moessel “proposed to paint the 13 murals for $15,000, noting they ‘would of course cost in normal times $75-100,000.’” However, there is no official record of how much Moessel was actually paid in total for his efforts.

Why The Murals Were Made
“The museum envisioned the murals as an illustrative adjunct... [and a demonstration of] ... the various aspects of the economic and social dimensions of food plants... [being shown in]... the botany displays in what was then known as Hall 25, the Hall of Food Plants”. The extensive project was completed “under supervision of museum’s curator of botany and with the museum’s extensive resources for research, the german-born artist Julius Moessel spent two and a half years creating detailed depictions of agricultural practices in many regions”. Twelve of Moessel’s murals illustrate the production and preparation processes of agricultural vegetation; four murals illustrate the transportation, dispersal, and commerce of the vegetation ; and the last two murals are “two large maps that trace the origins of plants and ancient trade routes”.

“The Moessel murals depict the production, gathering, and distribution of vegetable food in many parts of the world, and represent scenes typifying conditions of both past and present times.” The main purpose of the murals is to highlight what the exhibit’s material can only suggest. The murals illustrate the importance of the cultivated food plants, and their vital significance to our human economy. At some point or another, certain vegetation has defined cultures worldwide. The murals act as an aid for visitors of the exhibit to see the effort and historical significance of new technologies in action. They celebrate how far we have come while honoring where we came from.

As a whole, the Field Museum’s Annual Report of the Director to the Board of Trustees for the Year 1939 stated that the murals fulfilled their purpose. They brought the entire exhibit together to act as one unit instead of several exhibits. “They are not only highly decorative, forming an interesting and instructive feature of the hall which they embellish, but they contribute effectively to an appreciation of the exhibits to which they relate”.

Accomplishments Over a Short Duration
Moessel began painting in April 1938. By the end of the year, four murals were completed: Open Air Market in Mexico, French Coffee Buyers in Yemen, Rice Growing in the Philippines, and Overland Caravan in Iran. He had also started three other murals in 1938 and finished them in 1939. These murals were: Sugar Harvest in Brazil, Gathering Lily Pods in Oregon, and Winemaking in Bavaria. He then started and finished seven murals in 1939. These included: Plowing and Broadcast Sowing in the United States, Pressing Olives in North Africa, Planting Potatoes in Peru, Preparing Corn in Mexico, Planting Taro in New Guinea, Urban Produce Market in the United States, and Threshing Grain in Europe. By the Fall of 1939 he had finished fourteen murals in total, “spending an average of 34 days on each”.

A Hindrance to the Multitudes of Progress
In February 1940 Moessel stopped working in protest with four murals left to complete. Specifically, two paintings and the two maps. He took another commission and informed Dahlgren through a letter that he would stay a way for a while. He had “the opportunity to make some money.” He then went on to complain about his current wage at the museum. In it, he stated “You know that I can’t save a cent out of the ‘salary’ I receive from the museum”.

About a month later, Moessel came up with demands he needed met to finish his work at the museum. He wanted freedom to work when and how he pleased so he could work on other projects intermittenly. He also demanded additional pay “according to the progress of the work to a certain amount.” He did not specify that amount. In exchange, he promised to complete the entire project no later than September 15th, 1940. In these correspondences he also demonstrated his distaste of working for an hourly wage and proclaims that he will not work for the WPA forever. He always worked for what he had and was not about to give up his ambitions for reasonable compensation.

The discussion continues with assurances from Dahlgren that the administrative personal will listen to him and be willing to compromise. Moessel acknowledged that he did not know the English language well enough “to follow [his] opponents in all their subtle expressions.” This is why he wanted a simple contract that he understood and agreed with without the need for a lawyer. “Dr. Dahlgren asked me what money I finally would ask for, and I replied, according to my justified self-respect a large sum. He smiled and so did I. I assured him no blackmail is intended, that I accept any reasonable offer” and then Moessel repeated his former offer of completing by September 15 if the contract was made within one week. Within this time frame, “Museum Director Clifford Gregg resolved the dispute by agreeing to pay Moessel $500.00 to finish the four murals, which the artist did in July 1940”.

The Remainder of the Work: to Completion and Beyond
He completed the last four murals in July 1940 after negotiating a contract with B.E. Dahlgren, the museum’s Chief Curator of Botany, and Museum Director Clifford Gregg. These last four murals were entitled: Principal Centers of Origin of Cultivated Plants of the World, Food Gathering in Western Asia, Soil Preparation in West Africa, and Ancient Trade Routes of the World. Principal Centers of Origin of Cultivated Plants of the World and Ancient Trade Routes of the World are two maps which were painted by Moessel. They depict precisely what their titles designate. The installation of all the murals was completed in August 1940 and the exhibit with it’s new murals was unveiled in September of that same year.

After the work was completed, Dahlgren wrote another letter to Clifford Greg at the request of Julius Moessel on July 16th. “Mr. Moessel having completed the two murals and two maps for which he was to be paid $500.00, it is now recommended that payment be made to him of the balance of $300.00 due him.” Apparently, Moessel wanted his money almost immediately after the completion of his project.

Other Paintings in the Exhibit Before and After Moessel
Moessel’s paintings accompanied the initial oil on canvas which was first put up with the exhibit from the beginning. This introductory mural was entitled “Baobab Tree, Central Africa” and was completed by Charles A. Corwin in 1935. After work was completed by Moessel, eleven additional murals were completed by Charles Abel Corwin (1857-1938), the staff artist at the time, and Arthur George Rueckert (1891-1948). According to records at the Museum, “the work of Corwin and Rueckert together accounts for the overwhelmingly majority of the Museum’s habitat backgrounds”. The final mural currently on display in the Plants of the World Hall was completed by John Pfiffner, “an artist who is best known for his technical drawings of monkeys and other animals for scientific publications”.

Individual Mural Descriptions
The eighteen murals of Moessel’s completed work are listed below in the order they are presented in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet. The titles shown are the label present beneath the painting on the bottom portion of the frame unless otherwise stated. In some cases, the titles were blocked by the exhibit cases on the ground. The murals themselves are hung from the ceiling by metal chains. If this was the case, I then resorted to the titles on the Field Museum’s website. If available, additional titles that these murals were described as in the museum’s different media sources are listed for comparison between what the murals are physically labeled and how they are referred to in different publications. The date in bold which is to the right of the mural name is the date in which the mural was finished.

Principal Centers of Origin of Cultivated Plants in the World - 1940
This map displays the origin locations of food plants and the beginning of their cultivation. The map marks six areas with a Roman Numeral inside of a white dot for each in a map key of common trade throughout the world. These places are Southwestern Asia, Southeastern Asia, Mediterranean Region (in Europe), Abyssinia (in Northeast Africa), Mountainous Regions of South America and Mexico, and India Burma - Indo-China Region. ===Early Plant Gatherers, Western Asia -1940 === This mural goes by several different names in the museum’s different publications. It is titled Gathering Food, Western Asia on the Field Museum website and Primitive Man as a Food Gatherer, Western Asia in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet. It is nearly impossible to read title at the bottom of mural’s frame because the mural is hung far back from the front of the case which holds an exhibit. To capture my picture with the name visible, my camera was held high by a tall friend while standing on a portable stool I brought with to the exhibit.

The mural depicts primitive man when we were completely dependent on food which could only be gathered, not hunted, such as vegetation. The only real problem with this system was that if man was not careful, there would be “a lack of available fruits of the earth for winter stores”. ===Gathering Lily Pods, Oregon - 1939 === It too goes by several different names in the museum’s different publications. On their website, the Field Museum calls this mural Gathering Cow-Lily Pods, Klamath Lake, Oregon while The Story of Food Plants Leaflet entitles this work as Indians Gathering Pods of the Cow-Lily, Klamath Lake, Oregon.

The pamphlet goes on to describe the tradition being illustrated in the mural. The “yellow water-lily” is California’s Native American tribe’s main vegetable food source. One can store the mucilaginous seeds within the lily pod and then keep them as a winter food source. ===Planting Taro, New Guinea - 1939 === This mural is called Papuan Planting Taro, New Guinea on the Field Museum website and in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet. Taro is a main staple food for Papuans who live in New Guinea. Taro is believed to be one of the first foods to ever be planted in the soil in New Guinea. ===Preparing Corn, Mexico - 1939 === This mural is also known as Women Grinding Corn in Ancient Mexico on the website, Indians Grinding Corn in Ancient Mexico in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet , and Vegetable Market in the Tropics in the Chicago Daily Tribune on Oct 6, 1940. It was nearly impossible to see title at the bottom of mural’s frame because the mural is hung far back from the front of the case which holds an exhibit. To capture the best picture I could, I had a friend follow the same procedure as they did for the Early Plant Gatherers artwork.

Moessel felt confident in this mural, and upon the suggestion from the museum’s Chief Curator of Botany to make an alteration to his work, Moessel argued that he did not want his work changed according to others’ opinions. In a letter response to Dahlgren on May 24, 1940, he wrote, “Regarding the corn picture I have no feeling for any change. I think it is good”. ===Soil Preparation, West Africa - 1940 === This is also known as Women Preparing to Plant Their Fields, South Central Africa on the Field Museum website and Negro Women Preparing to Plant Their Crops, Southern Central Africa in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet. ===Planting Potatoes, Peru - 1939 === It is also referred to as Potato Planting, Peru on the Field Museum website and Preparing the Ground for Planting Potatoes, Peru in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet. ===Rice Growing, Philippines - 1938 === The title for this mural was taken from the Field Museum Website and is the same in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet. From ground level, one cannot physically see title displayed at the base of the painting because it is on the back of a painting and not displayed over an open isle. It can only be seen from an angle at its side.

Plowing and Broadcast Sowing, United States - 1939
Visibility is for this mural is the same ordeal as Rice Growing. It can only be seen from an angle at its side. The title for this work was taken from Field Museum website. The title is listed same way in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet. The scene depicted in this mural demonstrates how bigger animals helped mankind to conquer the ground and allow us to plant our own food in a location of our choosing. ===Threshing Grain, Europe - 1939 === This mural is entitled Threshing with Flails on the Field Museum website and in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet.

Sugar Harvest, Brazil - 1939
It is referred to as Harvesting Sugar Cane on the Field Museum website and as Colonial Sugar Plantation in Brazil in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet. In this mural, “Sugar production is portrayed in a scene showing a colonial sugar plantation in Brazil where sugar cane was first grown on the American continent”. ===Pressing Olives, North Africa - 1939 === This painting is called An Olive Press, Northern Africa on the Field Museum website and A Primitive Olive Press, Northern Africa in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet. Signature and date on lower left-hand corner This mural “is based on the recent discovery of ancient remains of a primitive type of olive oil press on the north coast of Africa”.

Overland Caravan, Iran - 1938
Trade Caravan North of the Persian Gulf is what this work is called on the Field Museum website and Caravan North of the Persian Gulf is what it is called in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet. “The spice trade is represented by [this] caravan scene from the region north of the Persian Gulf”.

Coffee Buyers, Yemen - 1938
This mural is also known as Early French Coffee Buyers, Yemen on the Field Museum website and Early French Coffee Buyers in Arabia in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet. “The beginning of water-borne commerce in foreign food products is depicted in [this] mural.” It was also reproduced in the Annual Report of the Director to the Board of Trustees for the Year 1938. . ===Urban Produce Market, United States - 1939 === Moessel’s signature and date are on truck’s driver’s side door. This piece is also called A Whole Sale Vegetable Market in the City on the Field Museum website and A Wholesale Vegetable Market in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet and A Guide to Chicago's Murals. “A Wholesale Vegetable Market, in which a horse-drawn wagon, still used in the 1930s, enters the modern city of large trucks, ships, warehouses, and tall buildings.

Open Air Market, Mexico - 1938
The title of this piece was impossible to read the way the mural is hung. I retrieved the title from the museum’s website. The piece is also entitled Open Air Market in Southern Mexico in The Story of Food Plants Leaflet. Additionally, it is referred to as Mexican Market Scene when it made the cover in both the Chicago Daily Tribune and the September 1940 Issue of Field Museum News. It is the first mural featured in leaflet as an introduction and is the only image in color within the leaflet, but has a gray scale image which appears later. This mural was also reproduced and had its color photo taken by photographer Mr. Clarence B. Mitchell, the Museum's Research Associate in Photography.

Moessel used this painting before it was completed to exemplify discontent toward unsolicited input of other museum officials on his work. In 1938 “Moessel became rankled with the Museum powers and illustrated his contempt by painting a dog urinating on a fiber basket in the center of the [Open Air Market] painting. Museum staff reportedly raised eyebrows but said nothing, and in a day or two, when his ire had subsided, Moessel lowered the dog’s leg”.

Ancient Trade Routes of the World - 1940
According to the 1939 report, this map was made to “show the ancient trade-routes over which contact was maintained between the East and West up to the time of the discovery of the sea routes and the resultant general interchange of cultures and products which profoundly changed the food plant situation everywhere”.

Winemaking in the Valley of Tyrol, Bavaria - 1939
The title of this work was impossible to read the way the mural is hung. I retrieved the title of it from the museum’s website. This mural was the only work of Moessel’s WPA contribution from 1938 - 1940 which did not appear in the leaflet. If one only counted the number of murals in the leaflet, there were only seventeen of the eighteen murals Moessel had completed.

I believe this caused much confusion with the number of murals which were displayed in the exhibits. A few newspapers reported that there were only seventeen murals instead of eighteen being displayed by Julius Moessel in Hall 25. The publications I found that made this error include the Chicago Daily Tribune on October 3, 1940 and on October 6, 1940.

Unveiling of the Exhibit
Moessel’s paintings accompanied the initial oil on canvas which was first put up at the entrance of the exhibit before he was even offered the commission. This introductory mural was entitled Baobab Tree, Central Africa and was completed by Charles A. Corwin in 1935. When the exhibit first opened with Moessel’s eighteen completed murals, there was even a “special lecture tour of Botany Murals... with particular attention to the new series of mural paintings of agricultural subjects” was given on Thursday, September 5, 1940 at 2:30pm by a member of the Museum staff, Miss Marie Pabst. Mural paintings were reproduced in “collotype plates” in a leaflet, The Story of Food Plants. It was printed with accompanying text “describing the action represented by each painting [by] Dr. B. E. Dahlgren, Chief Curator of Botany.” It was available at the Museum Book Shop of the Field Museum for twenty five cents. Several of these murals were later reproduced in color in a small booklet entitled Exploring Field Museum. In 1942, the color booklet sold for sixty cents in the Museum Book Shop.

Positive Reviews
Eleanor Jewett proclaimed that the exhibit was the “most important addition to the worth while art in Chicago. The murals show the production, gathering, and distribution of vegetable food in many parts of the world and present scenes illustrating the conditions which prevailed in the past as contrasted to those we find today. Mr. Moessel has done a perfect piece of work; it is hard to overpraise this type of sincere, sound, and authentic painting, which is decorative in addition to being instructive”.

The head of the Chicago WPA office described the exhibit as “a high water mark in WPA art achievement.” The murals were critically reviewed as “works that wedded science and art” and the exhibit was called one of the “imperative ‘not-be-missed’ affairs” of the season.

“Mr. Moessel has produced in these [eighteen] murals what is probably his most significant single piece of work, The Story of Food Plants, which may be read on the walls of this Museum hall. As an example of the practical application of the art of the painter toward the fulfillment of the educational function of the Museum, the successful completion of this notable series of murals should be of particular interest to all Museum Members, as well as to other visitors”.

Moessel’s Biography after The Story of Food Plants
Frustrated with an absence of extensive projects as he had previously, Moessel “stopped executing large-scale works by the mid 1940s.” He had looked for projects in Chicago, New York, and even Germany, but ended up painting smaller canvases and exhibiting his work up until 1955. He sold what little he could and gave others away as presents. Everything else wound up in storage in his studio, which was packed to the ceiling with his finished work at the time of his death on Aug 13, 1957. He was 86 years old when he “died destitute”. His ashes were scattered by his widow near their home in Chicago, over the lagoon in Jackson Park. Currently Moessel’s murals at the Field Museum are his only pieces on public display in Chicago; and yet, in his prime, as Chicago Tribune's critic wrote in 1936, he was "recognized as an important figure in Chicago's art world".