Art: Ladies in Cheesecloth

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By last week the great limestone & marble building which will soon house the Post Office Department just across the street from its old quarters on Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue was far enough along to raise the question of its mural decorations. With a warm controversy brewing over the type of art to be used, the only person, in the capital who seemed to have no fixed opinions on the matter was Postmaster General Farley. Conservative Architects William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich who designed the building favored a classical allegory. But Edward Bruce, tireless head of the Public Works Art Project and himself a painter of some note, wanted realism. Stormed he: "I don't want any pictures of ladies in cheesecloth clutching letters and postcards to go into that building!" Aligned with Mr. Bruce and helping to create a deadlock was Fourth Assistant Postmaster General Silliman Evans. Being put in position last week in the Bepartment of Agriculture was just the kind of mural to which Artist Bruce strenuously objected. It was a 40-by-13 ft. canvas by Gilbert White and distinctly suggestive of ladies in cheesecloth. Taking a line from Virgil's Georgics ("Happy would be the men of the fields if they knew their good fortune") as his inspiration, Artist White painted a large oak beneath which is seated Cybele (Great Mother of the Gods). At her right is Pomona (Goddess of Fruit Trees), at her left, Ceres (Mother Earth). Flora, Goddess of Flowers, dreams while Pan flutes. There are also a grandfather who explains the gods, some reapers and sheep. Thomas Gilbert White, born 56 years ago in Grand Haven, Mich., has spent most of his life in Paris. A long-haired eccentric boulevardier, he paints with intense seriousness. He has done murals for the New Haven County Court House, Manhattan's Hotel McAlpin, the State Capitol at Oklahoma City. He painted his mural for the Department of Agriculture building in the vasty studios of the Academy Julian, had difficulty finding a model for Flora.