Image: Lobby of the New Rosslyn Hotel, showing murals by Einar Petersen.
Note: This is an encore post from 2011.
Fame is an odd thing. An artist might be successful and popular in his lifetime and forgotten with the decades, while other artists receive little or no recognition in their lifetimes, only to become household names later. For example, painter Vincent Van Gogh was virtually unknown during his life and sold only one painting during his career, but within decades of his death, was recognized as one of the world’s greatest painters.
Muralist Einar Petersen, on the other hand, was a well-respected and successful artist during his life. He created many elegant and beautiful murals in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the 1910s and 1920s, only to drop into obscurity within a few decades. Not only was he forgotten, but most of his work was also destroyed.
Long before Los Angeles or Hollywood possessed any historic preservation organizations fighting to save architectural, cultural or historically significant buildings, Los Angeles Times Editor and Publisher Harry S. Chandler astutely summed up what preservation is all about: saving structures that help define a sense of identity and place, showing where we as a society and people come from.
Note: This is an encore post from 2012.
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