Camera Work: Taylor Coleman; Editing and Narration: Eliza Vegas.
Emil Schnellock and student artists completed this procession of Mary Washington faculty in 1940 in association with the opening of George Washington Hall. Schnellock designed the original interior of the building’s auditorium—selecting wall colors and material for the curtains and seats– that were intended to complement the murals.[2]
In this panel, two lines of faculty process towards a center point in academic regalia. As visitors moved from the George Washington entrance hall into the foyer for the auditorium, they too, symbolically joined the procession, passing under an open book with a cap, gown, and hood in the Mary Washington colors.[3] A description of this panel included in the 1940 Battlefield praised the artists’ skill and its forward-looking perspective. Students at the time anticipated that generations to come would join the procession and follow in their footsteps. “A slender-paneled mural, just above the great auditorium plays its part in interest and sentiment,” the editors noted, “a mural that, were it not inanimate, would feel the glance of approval from the eyes of the thousands who will look thereon, and through the years to come enjoy its beauty and its significance, and the promise that it holds.”[4]
A professional conservator recently discovered the signatures of five student collaborators near this panel: Dorothy Graff, Marjorie Burgess, Aloise Ellen Brill, Clara Hellen Vondress, and Edith Patterson. As Marjorie Burgess Parce ‘42 recalled, students worked with Schnellock on mural projects across campus, including in Monroe Hall and what was then Trinkle Library (now Farmer Hall).
“I not only had mural classes under Mr. Schnellock, but, at his request, worked in his studio at other times when classes permitted,” she wrote. “I helped paint the murals in the basement of the Trinkle Library and posed for some of the murals in George Washington Hall; also helped with the designs for Monroe Hall which were painted after I graduated.” Parce taught high school art after leaving Mary Washington.[5]
[1] Image Credit: Karen Pearlman of K. Pearlman Photography, 2015. Teresa Boegler and Karen Pearlman, “The Murals of the University of Mary Washington: Emil Schnellock in Collaboration with Faculty and Students,” Center for Historic Preservation, University of Mary Washington, p. 10.
[2] Edward Alvey, Jr., “The Murals in George Washington Hall,” Mary Washington Today (1990): 2.
[3] Edward Alvey, Jr., “The Murals in George Washington Hall,” Mary Washington Today (1990): 5.
[4] Battlefield, Mary Washington College Student Yearbook (1940): 27.
[5] Marjorie Burgess Parce, response to Schnellock Project Survey, Chadis Collection, UMW Special Collections and University Archives, Fredericksburg, VA.
