Murals at Olcott (art work)

Visitors entering the lobby of the L. W. Rogers Building at the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in America are surrounded by a mural painted on all four sides of the lobby. The work was painted in 1931 by Philadelphia artist Richard Blossom Farley. At the summer convention in 1930, members authorized the mural project that was proposed by arts patron Georgine Wetherill Shillard-Smith. Mr. Farley visited the headquarters and measured the space. He returned to his studio in Philadelphia where panels were painted, and then he spent several weeks in the Rogers Building while he applied the canvas panels to the walls.

Mrs. Wetherill Smith wrote of the mural as "Life Aspiring Through the Ages":

Mr. Farley's ambition is to bring into one focus an impartial suggestion of all life, the past and the avenues that lead to the future, the mysteries that drive the onward multifold manifestations, from the atoms to the suns, the oneness of the endless flowers that bloom and fade on the tree of life, and he believes that the graphic can suggest more than words, for into the million melting tones of color can be woven a fabric too complicated and yet too elemental for words.

Photo gallery

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  View from northeast corner before mural, 1928

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  View from southeast corner before mural, 1928

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  View from balcony, 2007

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  Detail of east wall, 2007

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  Detail of northwest corner, 2007

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  Starburst on west wall, 2007

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  Heralds at southwest corner, 2007

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  Thinking ape, 2007

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  Flying figure with torch, 2007

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  Flying figure with sword, 2007