Existing comment:
PUBLIC MURALS
To jumpstart his career as a muralist, Gates strategically arranged to spend the summer of 1938 studying at the Colorado Springs. Fine Arts Center with Henry Varnum Poor. Poor was one of the most successful painters. and muralists of his time, and the Fine Arts Center's students had an impressive record of winning government mural competitions. Gates returned from his study with Poor to successfully compete for a mural commission for the Bethesda, Maryland, post office, offered by Treasury's Section of Fine Arts.
His mural design was executed and installed in 1939. It depicts a scene from Bethesda's semiweekly Montgomery Farm Women's Cooperative Market. Both the Bethesda Post Office mural and the Farm Women's Cooperative across the street can be enjoyed today in their original locations. This commission was quickly followed in 1940 by Treasury Department commissions in Oakland, Maryland, and Lewisburg, West Virginia.
Image: Robert Franklin Gates with reproduction of his mural for the post office in Bethesda, MD, 1938. Unidentified photographer. Robert Franklin Gates papers, 1910-1988, bulk 1928 1988. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. |