Spirit of Adventure

Spirit of Adventure

Lambdin, Robert Lynn

http://wpa.cslib.org/?s=lambdin http://www.artprice.com/artist/220332/robert-lynn-lambdin/biography https://www.lewiswaynegallery.com/r-l-lambdin-orig-illustration-pictorial-review-1930-p-5965.html

Three-panel mural:
Left panel: 70 x 48 inches
Center panel: 70 x 140 inches
Right panel: 70 x 48 inches

398

Robert Lambdin was born in 1886 in a sod house on the prairie in Kansas. He was reared in Denver, Colorado and attended schools there. He then attended the Henry Read School of Fine Arts in Denver for a year and went to work in the art departments of the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Republican. His job required that he complete a drawing for one news story a day. In 1911, Lambdin married Lillian Peters and moved to Kansas City, Missouri where he worked for the Kansas City Star doing feature work. He attended classes at the Kansas City Art Institute studying painting under C. A. Wilimovsky. He also taught black and white illustration there. Lambdin and his wife moved to New York City in 1917 where he worked as a free lance illustrator for magazines and for commercial purposes. In 1918 the couple was living in Leonia, New Jersey and then moved to Westport, Connecticut. Under the Federal Arts Project, Lambdin painted three panels for a mural entitled The Spirit of Adventure for the Bedford Elementary School in Westport. Photographs in his WPA file suggest that he also painted a mural at the Bridgeport Post Office. In 1942 Lambdin was hired by the Bridgeport Brass Company to paint murals covering the theme “Brass Through the Ages.” He was active in community matters and served as director and archives chairman of the Westport-Weston Arts Council. He was a member of the National Society of Mural Painters and the Society of Illustrators, and he produced art for magazines and juvenile books. Later in life he painted scenes from the Kansas of his youth. Lambdin died in 1981 in Westport. Sources: WPA Biography; WPA Artist’s Work Card; AskART; Who Was Who In American Art (1985), p. 355; Dorothy and John Tarrant, A Community of Artists; Westport-Weston, 1900-1985 (1985), pp. 8, 35-37; Joel Thompson, “Industrial Murals May be Used in Bus, Train Stations,” originally published in the Connecticut Post and found at www.railfan.net/lists/rshsdepot-digest/200402/msg00038.html; Kathleen Maher and Stephanie Cutrone, “Art and Industry: Age of the New Deal Exhibit” at www.barnum-museum.org/artandindustry.htm; New York Times: “Art Events From Out of Town, September 9, 1928, “The Westport Art Market,” July 3, 1932, “Pageant of Westport to Mark Anniversary,” August 13, 1935, “Murals at Science Museum,” January 5, 1944, Andree Brooks, “For Murals of the Depression, New Life in Public Buildings,” December 9, 1984; “Sitting Pretty for Folks at Home,” Hartford Courant, November 12, 1944.

WPA Art Collection

Oil

Oil on canvas, affixed to wall, large center panel with a smaller panel on either side

Signed, lower left