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Francis Robert White (1907-1986) - student

Perhaps the most controversial artist from the Stone City Art Colony, "Bob" White was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa and pursued his art studies in various locations - the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia, 1924-25), European studies in Rome, Genoa, Venice, and Paris (1925-1929), the New York Art Students League (1932-33), and night classes at the Art Institute of Chicago (1934-1935). He initially studied the craft of stained glass at the Wilkes Barre Campus of Penn State University and then opened a glass design studio in New York City. His work there resulted in a Guggenheim Fellowship and overseas study opportunities in England, France, and Italy from 1930-31.

A student at the Stone City Art Colony in 1932, White initially followed Grant Wood's leadership and artistic style. During the 1933 session, he had clear differences with the colony founder and sparked a debate over Wood's teaching influence and methods. An all-colony meeting, led by Adrian Dornbush, reiterated its policies and expectations. Despite the challenge of leaving under such conditions, several students broke with the colony, followed White to Cedar Rapids, and then began their own collective.

Formally organized in 1934 as the Cooperative Mural Painters of Iowa (later known as the Cooperative Mural Artists), the network was a division of the WPA's Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP). In Cedar Rapids, White gathered a small group of artists about him - Howard Johnson, Everett Jeffrey, Harry Donald Jones, Arnold Pyle, and Don Glasell. These men would then dedicate two years to complete a single, controversial project -- the mural installation for the Linn County federal courthouse in 1936. Collectively, the five men discussed and decided on the mural's subject matter; figure scale and color palette was synonymous, even as each man designed and created specific portions of the mural. Inspired by Mexican artists, the courtroom's murals, on its four walls, were the largest American art project to date.

Behind the judge's bench, at the front of the room, was an actual courtroom scene, roughly 48 feet long and five-and-a-half feet high; the wall highlighted the legal system's mechanisms for protecting individuals. White would complete this section. At the rear of the courtroom, American culture was depicted through the eyes of archeology, culiminating in Aztec history, references to ancient, cliff dwellers, and industrial progress; Harry D. Jones executed this section. The side walls, roughly sixty feet in length, focused on the rise of law with culture. Here, the project's controversial images were clearly seen -- vigilantes, mob violence, fires spawning police patrols, primitive medicine practiced on the American prairie, and a lynching scene. Don Glasell and Everett Jeffrey completed the side walls, and Glasell was also responsible for a group of six grisailles, small, monotone scenes appearing at regular intervals above doors, windows, and exhaust vents. Egg tempera was applied directly to the walls; the mural was completed in June 1936. After almost twenty years of complaints about the content, particularly for side-wall scenes directly across from the jury box, the court ordered all of the mural to be painted over immediately. Despite another Iowa mural project having a dubious ending, the cooperative continued to thrive, expanding across the state, eventually including thirty members.

Francis Robert White. Self-portrait Christmas card, 1978. Sketch provided by Lea Rosson DeLong.

Francis Robert White, ca. 1930. Photographer unknown. Holger Cahill papers, 1910-1993. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

When Tillage Begins: The Stone City Art Colony and School
Published online October 2003 by the
Busse Library,
Mount Mercy University
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Telephone: 319-368-6465
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