The story of mural painting in America dates back just a trifle over half a century; yet so rapidly do we develop things in this country that today the names of half a hundred men and women who have done distinguished work in this direction come to mind in any review of native accomplishment. However, the art of decoration is one of the oldest in the history of the world, examples of which have been handed down from almost prehistoric times. Traditions reach us--examples too--from the great civilizations of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, in Europe; while on our own continent there remain records of art in the way of wall decorations in Mexico and Central America, of beauty, taste, and invention, that baffle all efforts to classify as to their age. Says a great art writer, “No society, however rudimentary, has altogether ignored art.” Within the last few years prehistoric paintings by men who probably lived on reindeer flesh have been discovered in caves of the Pyrenees, paintings of no little artistic merit and surely artistic instinct. With the name of John La Farge must begin any account of the history of mural painting in America. The name is an honored one in the annals of our art development, and he has been dead only a few years, after a long life of devotion to high artistic ideals. It was in 1861 that he completed a panel for the church of the Paulist Fathers, in New York. The theme was “Saint Paul Preaching at Athens.” The architects, however, rejected the work for reasons that seem never to have been recorded, and the next year La Farge began a large triptych[1] of “The Crucifixion”; though he completed only two of the smaller divisions of the composition. These he kept in his studio for many years, until they were purchased by the late William C. Whitney. But his work in the meantime had been remarked, and he received an order for some decorations for a dining room; while the architect H. H. Richardson, in 1876, offered him a commission to take charge of the interior decoration of Trinity Church, Boston. This work was completed in about four months. La Farge chose as assistants Francis Lathrop, Francis D. Millet, George W. Maynard, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens the sculptor, among others. The work was satisfactorily completed, and remains today one of the great accomplishments in this country. After this La Farge was asked to decorate Saint Thomas’ Church in New York, which was followed by his decorations for the Church of the Incarnation in the same city. [1] A picture on three panels side by side. [Illustration: Copyright, 1904 THE EDICT OF TOLERATION, by E. H. Blashfield This is the central section of a decoration in the courthouse at Baltimore, Maryland] [Illustration: THE LIGHT OF LEARNING By Kenyon Cox Lunette in the public library at Winona, Minnesota] LA FARGE’S MASTERPIECE