THE STOKES PAINTINGS REPRESENTING GREENLAND 



ESKIMO. 



THE mural decorations at the northern end of the Eskimo Hall have 

 been painted by ]\Ir. Erank Wilbert Stokes, an artist, who, as mem- 

 ber of the Peary Relief Expedition of 1892 and of the Peary North 

 Greenland Expedition of 1893 and 1894, has made careful study of the 

 Eskimo people and their frozen country. The INIuseum is indebted for 

 these paintings to Mr. Arthur Curtiss James, one of the Trustees. 



Ranged about the hall below are the weapons, the articles of dress, the 

 boats, the sleds, while above them in this painted frieze these same 

 objects are seen put to use in the daily activities of the Eskimo, revealing 

 his adaptation to an environment of months' long days and nights among 

 glaciers and icebergs. The combination of the scientific exhibits below 

 and the artist's work above, brings home to the observer not only the 

 ethnological facts involved, but also other facts, such as the austerity of 

 Eskimo life, its enforced simplicity and the limitations set upon civiliza- 

 tion for the people of the Arctics. Much of the interest of these pictures 

 rests in the fact that many of the scenes represent localities actually visited 

 by the artist. ^Nlr. Stokes established his studio at Bowdoin Bay, 77° 44' 

 N. latitude, and worked there during fourteen months, with the primitive 

 life of the Eskimo and the glowing colors of the northern land under con- 

 stant observation. As ^Yilliam Walton has said in an article in Scribner's 

 Magazine for February, 1909, ^Ir. Stokes has here succeeded, despite the 

 inadecpiacy of pigments, in well suggesting "the utmost sj)lendor of light 

 that blazes in the Polar skies and glows in the Polar, translucent ice." 



The North Wall. 



The largest picture of the series — in full view from the main foyer 

 of the IMuseum — is a continuous panorama sixty feet long. It is 

 intense and realistic in its coloring. In the center the glow of a mid- 

 night sun illuminates promontories and sea, toward the right this bril- 

 liant color gradually fades to the gray and purple of the twilight that 

 precedes the long Arctic night, while toward the left it changes to the 

 white lights and deep blue shadows of that other twilight tliat fort-tells 

 the approach of the long x\rctic day. 



