Jules Guerin (1866 – 1946), American muralist, painter and illustrator.

Biography

Guerin was born in St Louis, Missouri on November 18, 1866 and moved to Chicago to study art in 1880. Later he was to follow a parade of other American artists and architects of his day to Paris, where he studied with Benjamin-Constant and Jean Paul Laurens .

Returning to America after his European sojourn, he began his career as an artist illustrating books, often travel books about exotic places. It is likely that these designs are based on his own travels through North Africa and Palestine. The designs that he did then as well as his ability to romantically depict exotic peoples and places stood him well later when he began painting murals.

His mural work typically featured large areas of gold with vermilion, salmon and rose hues and blue and green accents.

As with many of the artists of his time Guerin took an active part in the international expositions of his day, showing at the Paris Expo 1900, where he received an honorable mention, the Pan American Expo in Buffalo, NY, 1901, the Louisiana Purchase Expo held in St Louis in 1904 at which he won a silver medal, and the Lewis & Clark Expo in Portland, Oregon in 1905. In 1915, Guerin was asked to serve as color co-ordinator of the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915 in San Francisco. It is likely that connections that he made there led to his one man show at the University of California, Berkeley two years later, followed by several large murals in the Federal reserve Bank in San Francisco.

Daniel Burnham, Chicago’s best known architect of his day, was selected to create the Chicago Plan in 1907; part of the City Beautiful movement that Burnham was spearheading. In pursuit of this effort Burnham had Guerin paint a series of paintings of what Chicago could look like, many of them done from a bird’s eye perspective. These large watercolors are currently owned by the Chicago Historical Society.

In 1912, when architect Henry Bacon began working on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., he hired Guerin to create renderings of his proposed designs. After he received the commission, Bacon retained Guerin to paint the two large murals, Reunion and Emancipation, that decorate the interior of the memorial, allegorical figures that today serve primarily as the backdrop to Daniel Chester French’s Seated Lincoln statue.

Probably because of his early Chicago based background, Guerin was a frequent collaborator with the Chicago architectural firm (and the successor firm to Daniel Burnham’s practice) Graham, Anderson, Probst & White. Most notable of these commissions was the dramatic fire curtain he executed for the theatre in their Chicago Civic Opera Building in 1929.

Guerin was a frequent contributor to Scribners Magazine and Century Magazine during the first decade of the Twentieth Century.

Selected Murals

• Pennsylvania Station, McKim, Mead & White, architects, New York City 1911
• Lincoln Memorial, Henry Bacon, architect, Washington D.C. 1922
• Union Trust Building, Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, architects, Cleveland, OH 1924
• Cleveland Terminal Group, Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, architects, Cleveland, OH 1924
• Illinois Merchants Bank, Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, architects, Chicago IL 1924
• Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, George Kelham, architect, San Francisco, CA 1924
• Chicago Civic Opera, Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, architects, Chicago IL 1929
• Merchandise Mart, Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, architects, Chicago IL 1930
• Louisiana State Capitol Building, Solis Seiferth, architect, Baton Rouge, LA 1932

Books Illustrated

Books by Robert Hichens, illustrated By Jules Guerin.

• The Fruitful Vine (1911)
• Egypt and Its Monuments (1908)
• The Holy Land (1910)
• The Near East - Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople (1913)

Books written or illustrated with Maxfield Parrish

• The Lure of the Garden (1911)
• Water Colour Rendering-Suggestions. (n.d.)

Other books illustrated By Jules Guerin.

• The Mystery of Orcival (1901)
• Notes of Travel, Volume III, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Illustrated by Jules Guerin (1901)
• The Winger Colt of Casa Mia (1904)
• The Chateaux of Touraine (1906)
• The Syrian Shepherd's Psalm (1911)

The Chicago Plan

Paintings that were part of the Burnham Plan, owned by the Chicago Historical Society:

• 1. Chicago. Bird's-Eye View at Night of Grant Park, Facade Of City, Proposed Harbor and Lagoons of Park on South Shore.
• 2. Chicago. Bird's-Eye View at Night of Grant Park, Facade Of City, Proposed Harbor and Lagoons of Park on South Shore.
• 3. Chicago. Michigan Avenue Looking Toward the South.
• 4. View Looking North on South Branch of Chicago River, Showing Suggested Arrangement of Streets.
• 5. View Looking North on South Branch of Chicago River, Showing Suggested Arrangement of Streets.
• 6. Chicago. Proposed Plaza on Michigan Avenue West of the Field Museum of Natural History in Grant Park.
• 7. Chicago. Proposed Plaza on Michigan Avenue West of the Field Museum of Natural History in Grant Park.
• 8. Chicago. Proposed Boulevard to Connect North and South Sides of the River; View Looking North from Washington Street.
• 9. Chicago. Proposed Boulevard to Connect North and South Sides of the River; View Looking North from Washington Street.
• 10. Chicago. Alternate Railway Station Scheme West of River Between Canal and Clinton Streets.
• 11. Chicago. Alternate Railway Station Scheme West of River Between Canal and Clinton Streets.

References

• Chappell, Sally Kitt, Transforming Tradition: Architecture and Planning of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, 1912 – 1936, University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL 1992
• Corbett, Michael,Splendid Survivors: San Francisco’s Downtown Architectural Heritage, The Foundation For San Francisco’s Architectural Heritage, San Francisco, CA 1979 ISBN 79063454
• Gray, Mary Lackritz, A Guide to Chicago’s Murals, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL 2001 ISBN 00041167
• Kubly, Vincent, The Louisiana Capitol: Its Art and Architecture, Pelican Publishing Company, Gretna 1977 ISBN 76049889
• Roth, Leland, McKim, Mead & White, Architects, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, NY 1983 ISBN 83047559
• Scott, Pamela & Antoinette J. Lee, Buildings of the District of Columbia, Oxford University Press, New York NY 1993