Pageant of Juvenile Literature

Pageant of Juvenile Literature

Robert Lynn Lambdin

84 x 180 inches, designed to fit architectural features above and to the sides of the auditorium doors (site specific)

225

Robert Lynn Lambdin, a painter, illustrator, muralist and longtime Westport resident, died Wednesday, June 3, 1981, in Southport Manor. He was 94 years old.
Born in a sod house in Dighton, Kansas, in 1886, Mr. Lambdin moved with his family to Denver at the age of seven. He studied at the Reid School of Art in Denver and started his professional career as a newspaper artist by illustrating feature stories.
He went to New York in 1917 to illustrate for Colliers, Cosmopolitan, Red Book and several other magazines. He also put his hand to advertising and book illustration.
Mr. Lambdin moved to Westport in 1918 but continued to make frequent trips to the West to paint mountain landscapes and life on the Great Plains. During the Depression he was commissioned by the WPA to paint murals in Westport for the elementary schools.
He won a competition for the mural panels at the Bridgeport Post Office - a group of three murals depicting the history of mail transportation. He also received commissions from the Bridgeport Brass Company, the Beekman-Downtown Hospital in New York and from industrial concerns in Chicago.
Other examples of Lambdin's mural painting may be seen in the main office and the Saugatuck branch of the Westport Bank and Trust Company. A mural displaying the landing of the British at Compo Beach during the American Revolution hangs in the Westport Public Library.
In recent years, Lambdin had produced a series of oil paintings of the Old West. In these paintings, as in all his other work, his attention to detail, his careful research and skilled craftsmanship have been noted as remarkable.
Besides his work as an artist, he was actively involved in community service. During World War II he was a leader of the auxiliary police. Later he served on many Westport town committees including the building committee for the Police and Court building, the special committee for Housing for the Elderly, and the Housing Authority.
Mr. Lambdin helped organize and served as vice president of the Citizens' Planning Association and has been a trustee of the Westport Public Library and a director of the Westport-Weston Arts Council.
He was a member of the National Society of Mural Painters and the Artists'' Guild of New York.
He is survived by one son, Robert Edward Lambdin.

WPA Art Collection

Oil; canvas

Oil on canvas (affixed to walls)

Signed, lower right