In the months before its final installation at the Curtis Publishing Company Building in Philadelphia, The Dream Garden caused a sensation. Seven thousand people, attracted by reports that they would see “the most wonderful favrile mosaic picture in America,” visited the Tiffany Studios in Corona, New York, in 1915 to preview the 15-by-49-foot fantasy. Weighing nearly four tons, The Dream Garden required the efforts of 30 artisans to execute over the course of a year, in thousands of hand-cut pieces of favrile glass, a new type of material invented by Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933). A derivation of the Old Saxon word for “handmade,” favrile dazzles with iridescent colors and a jewel-like patina. As one leading critic of the day breathlessly wrote: “Mere words are only aggravating in describing this amazing picture.”
The making of The Dream Garden, however, was not without incident. From 1908 until 1914, no fewer than 10 artists were approached for the commission for the foyer of the new headquarters of the Curtis Publishing Company. The project was fraught with so many setbacks that company directors had to unveil their new building in 1910 without its central masterpiece. Instead of seeing a “pivotal note,” visitors to the empty foyer were greeted by strategically placed topiary trees.

Over the span of six years, the original plans for the foyer commission changed substantially. In place of a central panel painted by a single artist, The Dream Garden became a collaborative undertaking that took its inspiration from a painting by Maxfield Parrish (1870–1966). Created to champion the aspirations of a commercial publishing company that relied on advertising, sales, and subscriptions for its livelihood, The Dream Garden also can be seen as representing a pivotal moment at the turn of the 19th century, when aesthetic divisions between illustration, fine arts, and the crafts were breaking down. The art-historical hierarchy that had placed painters and sculptors above commercial illustrators and designers and had relegated craftsmen to the realm of skilled laborers was tested during the commission and manufacture of The Dream Garden.

The story of The Dream Garden began in 1908, when Edwin Austin Abbey was first approached to paint a large panel for the foyer of the Curtis Publishing Company’s new building. Abbey, a native Philadelphian and an alumnus of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, also held the distinction of being a member of the Royal Academy of London—a singular achievement for an American-born painter. Abbey, who was not represented by a major work in the City of Philadelphia, was occupied with a series of murals for the Pennsylvania Capitol Building in Harrisburg when he signed on to submit a design for a 13-by-50-foot canvas for the Curtis foyer. Abbey had been able to convince the Curtis Publishing Company directors that stretching a canvas of such enormous size was possible and agreed to begin it upon completion of the Harrisburg work. His substantial fee of 50,000 pounds included expenses for a trip to Athens in January 1909, in order to research classical costumes and settings for the composition—one of his own choosing—The Grove of Academe.

Surviving sketches and writings show that Abbey’s Grove of Academe pictured scholars and maidens, dressed in classical robes, assembled in a Garden of Knowledge. Abbey acknowledged thinking of an image of Plato surrounded by his disciples, in the spirit of Raphael’s famous frescoes in the Vatican. Such instructional subjects, framed within the elevated spaces of classical architecture, were hallmarks of Abbey’s monumental style and can be seen in The Apotheosis of Pennsylvania on the south wall of the Chamber of the House of Representatives in Harrisburg. His murals in other civic buildings, such as the Boston Public Library, were renowned; Abbey’s work was well suited to grand public spaces and government commissions. The placement of The Grove of Academe in a commercial publishing house, therefore, signaled the aspirations of the Curtis Publishing Company, which sought to give Philadelphia a work that would “put good art within the comprehension of a large public.”

Heir through marriage to the Curtis publishing empire, Edward W. Bok (1863-1930) was responsible for commissioning all the decorations inside the company’s new building, the exterior of which was fashioned from red brick with marble trimmings to enter into the spirit of its 18th-century surroundings. Both professionally and socially ambitious, Bok had risen through the ranks of American publishing houses to become vice-president of the Curtis Publishing Company and managing editor of The Ladies’ Home Journal. Under his management, the Journal had become the foremost women’s magazine in the country, reaching a staggering one million subscriptions in 1902. The Journal’s advice on clothes, food, home decoration, manners, and morals influenced an entire generation of middle-class women who, in Bok’s opinion, had achieved “domestic statesmanship.”

In 1912, with the innovation of four-color presses, Bok began to focus on a “systematic plan for improving pictures on the walls of the American home” by producing in his magazine reproductions of paintings by Rembrandt, Velázquez, Turner, Van Dyck, Raphael, Frans Hals, Gainsborough, Whistler, Corot, Vermeer, Botticelli, Titian, and other old masters. The notion proved so successful that circulation rose to 1.75 million copies, and more than 70 million reproductions of art were distributed nationally. In addition to fostering art appreciation, Bok was a proponent of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which, in the mid-1860s, had crossed the Atlantic from Britain. He had read John Ruskin and William Morris and supported the development of a distinctively American design aesthetic that avoided unnecessary embellishments and communicated democratic ideals through the use of local materials. Whether he was championing the redesign of Pullman railway cars, calling for the elimination of billboard advertising, or criticizing the haphazard planning of America’s cities, Bok enthusiastically supported the idea that superior design was linked to social reform. If the quality of the design was improved, the character of the individual producing the design would be improved, and hence society would be improved. Interestingly, in terms of The Dream Garden, Bok did not differentiate between the skills of the craftsman and the artist. To his way of thinking, “making decorations” was a communal concern, and no one member of the community was more important than another. Following John Ruskin’s dictum: “Wherever you can rest, there decorate,” The Grove of Academe fulfilled Bok’s sense of responsibility to create serene places for reflection on the part of workers of the Machine Age. The Curtis Publishing Company Building was, after all, a commercial enterprise, with printing presses housed in the basement and the upper floors filled with stenographers, typesetters, designers, and writers. Although the building was surrounded by history, inside, it was a model of American industrialization. Echoing William Morris, Bok envisioned Curtis Publishing as a place where art and labor would be reunited to mutual benefit.

The dimensions of the Curtis foyer—a thousand square feet, unobstructed by a single column—were established in 1908 by the building’s architect, Edgar V. Seeler, in consultation with Edwin Austin Abbey. But Abbey suddenly died in early 1911, before work was begun. Throughout the search for another artist, Bok sought to transform the foyer into a space of social- and self-improvement. He wanted the commission to attract national attention, either by its construction, or by the stature of the artist (such as Edwin Austin Abbey, R.A.), or by its inspirational subject matter. The end result had to be conceptually and visually stupendous. The Grove of Academe had not only determined simply the size and shape of the foyer decoration, it had also set the standard against which all other artists approached for the commission would be measured.

The first artist to be approached after Abbey’s death was John Singer Sargent (who had shared a studio with Abbey), then the most successful American painter living in Britain, but he declined the commission. Next in line came Howard Pyle, a well-known illustrator, who produced a study of Plato not unlike Abbey’s. In November 1911, shortly before Curtis offered him the commission, Pyle died. George de Forest Brush, who like Pyle had produced illustrations for popular magazines such as Harper’s magazine and Century magazine, worked for a number of months on designs with a Native American theme before he, too, declined the commission. Next was Barry Faulkner, who submitted three sketches, which were all rejected. Subsequently, and in quick succession, came Andre Castaigne, Albert Herter, Richard Dana Marsh, and Boutet de Monvel. The work of the last was accepted by the judging panel for the Curtis foyer, despite some concerns expressed by Parrish, who sat on the panel, who said that the work was “a bit ‘frenchy.’” It must have been with significant dismay that Bok learned of de Monvel’s untimely death in March 1913. An equally unsuccessful attempt was made by Frank du Mond, whose work Bok deemed “too inappropriate for the lobby.”
At this point, Bok was beginning to believe that “some fatal star” hung over his commission. When the building was complete, but there were still no concrete plans for the foyer, he wrote to Parrish: “The hoodoo that is following me in regard to that panel is simply amazing! Just think of the record: Abbey, Howard Pyle and de Monvel! You had better get a little anxious about your dealings with me, because the moment I have mural relations with a man he seems to run off the earth!”

Parrish was indeed reluctant to become involved with Bok’s project, since he was already working on 18 murals for the Ladies’ Dining Room on the top floor of the Curtis Publishing Company Building. The theme there centered on a “Florentine Fête”—a gathering of young boys and girls set within a classical loggia framed by lush gardens. It was Parrish’s largest commission to date. Although Bok pressed to unify all the interior decorations for the Curtis Building with a single artistic vision, Parrish declined the commission at this time. Bok, who felt no nearer to a solution for the foyer, was forced to think about alternatives, such as bas-reliefs, fountains, or even an indoor garden.
Casting about for ideas, Bok recalled having seen, a few years earlier, a paneled glass tile theatrical curtain, which had been made for the National Theater in Mexico City by the Tiffany Studios in New York. Hailed as a marvel of modern engineering and design, the curtain was both visually striking and unerringly new. With great enthusiasm, Bok described favrile glass as “a new method in wall decoration, but one that was entirely practicable. Glass would not craze like tiles or mosaic; it would not crinkle as will canvas; it needed no varnish. It would retain its color, freshness, and beauty, and water would readily cleanse it from dust.”

At the Tiffany Studios glass blowing was treated as an art, and workers were encouraged to become artisans, developing the skills to hand make objects. At a time when the glass industry was undergoing mechanization, Tiffany employed more than a hundred workers, including a Venetian glassblower named Andrea Boldini and several English craftsmen such as Arthur J. Nash, who was in charge of furnace operations. Tiffany apprenticed young men to carry out the various stages of furnace operations and women to prepare working drawings, to match colors, and to enamel precious metals and jewelry. Aiming at the luxury interior-design market, Tiffany stated: “We are going after the money there is in art, but art is there all the same.”

Louis Comfort Tiffany had trained at the National Academy of Design and personally authored many of Tiffany’s early designs. By the turn of the century, he had assembled a group of experienced designers who were adept at designing windows with religious figures, to meet the enormous ecclesiastical market. This left Tiffany himself free to concentrate on domestic commissions for private clients, setting a new trend for nonfigurative allegorical windows that was considered quite modern. In 1913, for example, the Pittsburgh industrialist Andrew Carnegie commissioned a Tiffany window of a landscape with no figures in memory of his parents. This was deemed inappropriate by the Abbey of Dunfermline Church Council in Scotland, where the window was to be installed. Carnegie defended his decision, stating: “I want something new, something American. I don’t want these old style windows with the figures of bible prophets and crosses and that sort of thing. I want an outdoor scene. God is in that sunset. God is in all the great outdoors. I want a window just like that.”

Bok wanted a mosaic also, “just like that,” but he did not want Tiffany to design it. While acknowledging the exciting possibilities of favrile glass, Bok agreed with contemporary critics that Tiffany’s strength was in the realm of color, while he thought that his designs were either too traditional, too stilted, or overwhelmingly sentimental. Tiffany submitted three designs to the Curtis Publishing Company, but they were all rejected. Later, in a telling letter of 1913, Bok wrote to Parrish: “I am delighted that the sketch goes so well, for it all depends on you—Tiffany’s sketch is in, and is NIX: sad I think—still, it is about what I thought.” Despite the rejection of his designs, Tiffany nevertheless agreed to manufacture the mosaic by Christmas of 1915, for the princely sum of $40,000. Parrish, in turn, was paid $2,000 for his design.
On Bok’s urging, Parrish visited the Tiffany Studios at Corona, New York, and was beguiled by the brilliant, shimmering colors of the glass. Parrish’s biographer noted that: “He saw the depth of the cobalt blues emerging from the firing kilns, the oranges and the golden tones so essential to his signature pieces catching the light and bursting in cascades of color before him.” Upon his return to his studio, Parrish painted a three-by-nine-foot panel for The Dream Garden. This “garden sketch” became the template that the Tiffany craftsmen used to create the final mosaic.

At the unveiling of the mosaic in the foyer of the Curtis Publishing Company Building in 1915, the responses of the main protagonists, Edward W. Bok, Maxfield Parrish, and Louis Comfort Tiffany, could not have been more revealing. Bok approached the end of the project with his customary marketing zeal; he reproduced Parrish’s original painting in a double-page color lift-out in The Ladies’ Home Journal and printed a glowing editorial as well as a brochure. In press releases, Tiffany spoke of having created a “practically new art” for the benefit of mankind and, moreover, of having “improved” upon Parrish’s original design to reveal the “real significance of [the] picture.” But from the moment of acceptance of his “garden sketch” in February 1914, until his death, Parrish always refused to discuss his design for the mosaic in all but the most perfunctory manner, stating that: “It’s a dream garden, a genuine dream, not a real thing in it, [and] nothing will induce me to talk about it.”

Parrish’s reluctance and, indeed, his absence at the unveiling and the dedication receptions in Philadelphia were not uncharacteristic. Parrish was a notoriously private man, and he often declined to be interviewed or photographed. And yet the distance he placed between himself and The Dream Garden commission seems to have gone beyond a wish to be out of the limelight. Only a few months earlier Parrish had produced a short explanation of the Florentine Fête and the 17 other murals he completed for the Ladies’ Dining Room, which Bok subsequently used for an editorial in The Ladies’ Home Journal. The artist was not, however, willing to do the same for The Dream Garden, stating: “I could no more write about the garden sketch than I could be present at that reception in the fall. Absolutely beyond me. And really, even if I had any command over that medium, to write about my work in any way would give me exactly the same modest sensation as walking down Chestnut Street at noon stark naked.”

Parrish visited the Tiffany Studios only twice while The Dream Garden was being made. He visited once, for a few moments, in December 1914, at the start of the manufacturing process, and later in August of 1915, shortly before it was put on public display. At the second visit, Parrish wrote to his wife that Tiffany had set up stage lighting that changed the surface colors of the mosaic creating a “truly unusual” effect. According to his son, Maxfield Parrish, Jr., this was the only time his father saw the completed picture. Between the lines of Parrish’s correspondence however, can be detected a sense of supreme disappointment in the mosaic’s color. Despite Tiffany having used 260 different shades of colored tesserae, carefully transcribed from Parrish’s original painting, The Dream Garden mosaic did not achieve the visual illusion that the painter had wanted to convey.

The composition of The Dream Garden was, in fact, inspired by a real garden that Parrish had recreated at his summer home, The Oaks, in the artists’ colony of Cornish, New Hampshire. There, Parrish envisioned the creation of fantastical spaces where a visitor would chance upon places of tremendous beauty and solitude, improved by careful placement of foliage and flowers, large classical urns and vases, reflecting pools and fountains, walkways and steps. During a visit to The Oaks, Parrish told Bok that what he had in his “mind’s eye” was a dream garden—a passionate disclosure that Bok orchestrated into an artificial reality.

Rendering landscape had always held special significance for Parrish, who considered it the highest form of subject matter. He sought to make his paintings visually accurate by meticulously studying photographs, carefully establishing points of perspective, and using precise painting and glazing techniques. What Parrish sought for The Dream Garden was what he sought for all his paintings—an effect of illusion, where the viewer would be transported beyond the picture plane into a lifelike fantasy. The Dream Garden was extremely personal for Parrish. He considered it his garden. It was an extension of his heart’s desire for The Oaks. It was, in fact, so personal that it has even been suggested that the commedia dell’arte masks the artist placed in the foreground are a form of self-portraiture. Did Parrish paint himself into his own fantastical world?

The very nature of mosaic is, of course, fragmentation. Parrish’s preparatory painting was reduced to 260 color tones, which could not compare to his original rendering. Tellingly, a number of years later, when asked for advice on furniture for the lobby, Parrish recommended that, in addition to the already extant reflecting pool, perhaps small fountains and carved balustrades placed in front of the mosaic and low pots filled with box plants on either side would suffice. Anything more delicate or flowery would “contrast unpleasantly with the formal artificial flowers of the glass.”
Since the moment of its unveiling there have been many who have disagreed with Parrish’s personal assessment. In 1998, public affection for the mosaic rose to a peak when a spirited public campaign was mounted to halt the private sale and removal of The Dream Garden by the estate of the developer John W. Merriam. Ownership of the mosaic had transferred to Merriam with the purchase of the Curtis Building and most of the furnishings and contents of the Curtis Publishing Company in 1968. By then, popular magazines, which depended on low cost and high circulation, were faced with the competition of newer media such as photojournalism and television: The Saturday Evening Post ended publication in 1963, and The Ladies’ Home Journal was acquired in 1986 by the Meredith Corporation.

Merriam owned the Curtis Building from 1968 to 1984. However, the resale of the building to the Kevin F. Donohoe Company in August of 1984 did not include title to the mosaic itself. This complicated the ownership of The Dream Garden upon the death of Merriam in 1994, whose estate was divided among several beneficiaries: his widow and sole executor, Elizabeth C.L. Merriam, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of the Arts, Bryn Mawr College, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Collectively, the four institutions owned 59 percent. A public outcry ensued when Mrs. Merriam and her heirs began negotiating the mosaic’s sale and removal to an unknown buyer in 1998.
In 1999, the Philadelphia Historical Commission, attempting to prevent its removal, designated The Dream Garden a “historic object.” Media attention about the subsequent legal appeals highlighted the importance of the mosaic to Philadelphians. The Philadelphia Inquirer went as far as to state: “To remove the Dream Garden would be an act of sacrilege, equivalent to selling off one of the Calder fountains on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, or perhaps tearing out the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for sale to the highest bidder.”

Upon the death of Mrs. Merriam in May 2001, the four institutions that were beneficiaries became co-executors of the Merriam estate. Publicly in agreement that the mosaic should not leave Philadelphia, their combined majority ownership and legal status prevented the mosaic’s removal. The matter of ownership was finally settled on November 6, 2001, when the Pew Charitable Trusts provided funding to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to purchase the remaining financial interest held privately by John W. Merriam’s family. The remaining three organizations that had also inherited interest in the mosaic unanimously donated their share to the Pennsylvania Academy. This generous and elegant solution resulted in full ownership of The Dream Garden by the Academy in trust for the people of the City of Philadelphia. "The Dream Garden is a celebration of artistic achievement that has been a renowned part of Philadelphia's history for 85 years," said Rebecca W. Rimel, president of the Pew Charitable Trusts. "We are pleased to be able to work with area cultural and academic institutions and the Merriam estate to assure such a great masterpiece will remain on public display in Philadelphia for the benefit of all generations to come."

Before the inveiling of The Dream Garden in the foyer of the Curtis Publishing Company Building, Parrish made the following statement, with some rancor, to Bok, whom he accused of orchestrating the entire process: "Tiffany and I are only instruments who helped carry out the dreams of a mastermind." And yet, as the subsequent public support for the mosaic demonstrates, we ban be grateful that Bok persevered to make Abbey's Groveinto Parrish and Tiffany's Garden. From its inception, and many years after its completion, the fate of The Dream Garden was fraught with setbacks, artistic conflicts, and legal disputes. In the end, however, Tiffany's final words, which were printed in the brochure at the work's unveiling, ring true: "I trust it may stand in years to come...as something worthy [that] has been produced for the beneft of mankind, and may serve as an incentive to others to carry even farther the true mission of the mosaic."

Kim Sajet is Senior Vice President of Museum and Public Programs at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts