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to illustrate the magnitude of the main structure-it covers four acres of ground, whereas the Capitol at Washington has an area of only three and a half; there are four miles of marble base, one hundred and thirty-two acres of wall surface covered with flat painting, wall space for a mile and three-quarters of pictures in the two large rooms on the second floor of the Forbes Avenue façade devoted to engravings, prints, water colors, etc., twenty-three thousand, five hundred square feet of floor space in the three galleries in which the annual exhibitions are held, forty negro janitors employed, etc., etc. The wall space covered by Mr. Alexander's paintings alone

measures over five thousand square feet, and he estimates the number of figures in his various themes as between four and five hundred. In fact, it is claimed that this is the largest and most important commission ever given a single artist in this country or anywhere else, the whole pavilion, from bottom to top, having been turned over to him, and quite without hampering instructions. It is even called after him, Alexander Hall.

In designing the extension the architects, Messrs. Alden and Harlow, followed the style of the original building, though a slightly later period of the Italian Renaissance was ultimately chosen. The eastern

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ings which probably helped not a little to blow up the flame of his own inspiration. In its general proportions and style, the grace and lightness of the Corinthian colonnade, the beauty of the marbles, this.main staircase hall is exceedingly handsome. There are little incidents, one or two of them not originally planned, which help to carry out the main theme and to marry still more closely the architecture and the decoration. On the second floor, at the foot of the staircase to the third, and thus facing the artist's central Apotheosis panels, has been mounted on a pedestal a reproduction of the immortal Niké of Samothrace, and in the very centre of the paintings across the open space is a little bronze figure of Victory relieved against a white cloud and held out at arm's length by a winged maid. There is no doubt as to what this building celebrates. In the central landing of the staircase under the pictures where it divides to right and left is a geometrical pattern set in the floor, in reddish and gray marbles, and the spectator standing in the opposite gallery is surprised to see how very important this touch of warmer color is in leading up to those of

Four of the twelve panels of the

the paintings. The tone of the échaillon marble of the columns, between which the flying figures are seen, being grayer, and by artificial light much darker, than the Hauteville marble which frames them, is repeated and emphasized by the greenish robe of the important figure in the central panel and by the greenish and bluish drapery of two smaller figures farther to the right-these being somewhat darker tones than those around them. In like manner the reds of the great cloak behind the armored knight are echoed by the lighter ones over the flying Cupid, as well as by the red Numidian marble of the stairlanding. The horizontal lines of the ceiling are repeated in the row of figures in white, blowing trumpets, which go off to the left, in the middle distance, and by the long rows of white figures across two panels at a greater distance at the right. The darks of the heads are very carefully spaced, as accents; all these details, of course, being the result of much consideration by the painter. As the two end panels of this wall are pierced by square-topped doorways it is the three central panels only which are of full length, and the design of

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this great central group is a very ingenious composition. A white-winged, greendraped, young woman of much personal charm holds a wreath of golden leaves over Pittsburg's head; there is a burst of dark vapor under his feet, which rolls off to the extreme left in a reddish-gray cloud in curious harmony with the general tones of the side gallery down which you look at it; and the beauty and grace of the four or five larger figures nearest the knight are quite admirable. On a clear day the paintings are very well lit by the great square skylight in the centre of the hall, the upper parts being very slightly in shadow though so close under the ceiling, the reflected light from the polished marbles apparently keeping them evenly illuminated; by artificial light they become somewhat more luminous, the gray columns in front somewhat darker, the yellowish marbles of the walls somewhat warmer. The more electric lights turned on, the more brilliant the great picture becomes, until, when the lofty hall is completely lit up, it seems to open on the spectator as a real vision of aerial splendor. In conception, design and color, it would be difficult to imagine a figure decoration that

would seem to grow more naturally out of the architecture and more successfully to complete it.

The theme of all this great monumental painting being triumphal, it followed naturally that in the Labor panels, and those of the People, as we may call them, as well as in the more frankly symbolic and ideal ones, there should not appear unduly the poverty of humanity-the sordidness, the hopelessness, which, according to some of the not unimportant contemporary European schools of literature and art, are its distinguishing qualities, "the bitter joy of sorrow and of sacrifice," "la melancolie et le deuil modernes." Demagogic, and not philanthropic, these preachings present mortality as only ugly, poor and desperate. Even in the so-called decorative arts these uncouth theories have prevailed. From his previous work, it would appear that the Pittsburg painter has always had something of an instinct that the ugly is not meant for his art; in these continuous panels of Labor these stripped and swarthy workers work unrebellious and without discontent noble or otherwise-rather with a fine, impersonal, dispassionate ardor, much as we may

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