Eleazar Murals

With the popular Dartmouth song Eleazar Wheeloch as his theme, Walter B. Humphrey 'l4, well-known artist and illustrator, has been commissioned to paint a set of murals for the rathskeller of new Thayer Hall, it was announced by President Hopkins late in October. Mr. Humphrey, whose work is most widely known through his magazine covers for The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's, will develop the theme which has appealed to him for a number of years and on which he has already done a number of sketches in recent years. Four of these sketches, depicting the three verses and chorus of the song about Eleazar Wheelock, were reproduced in last month's issue of the MAGAZINE.

Mr. Humphrey will not paint directly upon the walls of the rathskeller in the new upperclass dining hall, but will do the murals upon canvas in his New Rochelle, N. Y., studio. These murals will combine with the embossed leather friezes of Indian life now in the main-floor lounge and with the photo-murals to be placed later in the cafeteria dining hall to make Thayer Hall one of the most artistically attractive buildings on campus. Mr. Humphrey has already begun work on the murals, and plans to complete them during the current college year.

As a Dartmouth undergraduate Mr. Humphrey was art editor of Jack-o-Lantern and of the Aegis, and was designer of the Outing Club seal and of the heading for The Dartmouth. Following his graduation he continued his artistic work, and in 1917 taught in the art education department of the University of Chicago. He next taught at Bradley Polytechnic Institute in Peoria, 111., and from there went to New York with his wife to engage in free lance drawing. After achieving great success in the field of commercial art, in 1929 he joined the staff of the Phoenix Art Institute in New York as instructor in commercial illustration lecturer in artistic anatomy. At the present time he is also instructor in the department of marketing, School of Commerce, New York University. For six years he was chairman of the Municipal Art Commission of New Rochelle, where he makes his home and where he is now president of the University Club. In 1917 he married Miss Constance Morton, whose brothers, Bill and Roald, later achieved fame as Dartmouth athletes.