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Philip Spiess
A LITTLE-KNOWN MURAL PAINTING IN WALNUT HILLS HIGH SCHOOL
In a classroom (was it originally a French language classroom?) on the north half, Victory Parkway front, of Walnut Hills High School, on the third floor (if memory serves, and if renovations of the school have not obliterated it), there is a pleasant and colorful mural with the title “Scenes of Brittany.” It is the work of the Cincinnati artist, Paul Ashbrook.
Paul Ashbrook (1867-1949) was born Paul von Eschenbach (he Anglicized the name in 1917 during World War I) in lower Manhattan on January 3, 1867. [Interestingly, von Aschenbach is the artist-protagonist of Thomas Mann’s famous novella, Death in Venice, but I don’t think there’s any connection.] Having an early interest in art, Ashbrook became a member of the Art Students League and later studied under the famous American painter, William Merritt Chase. Here Ashbrook learned about Cincinnati’s most prominent painter and a founder of the “Munich School” of painting (dark browns predominating), Frank Duveneck. Thus it was that Ashbrook moved to Cincinnati with his wife and daughter in 1900, being offered the position of head of the design department of the Henderson Lithographing Company. Cincinnati was a major center of printing at that time – particularly art and poster printing (as well as being the world’s leading producer of colored printing inks) – and Henderson was one of the major lithography firms. Ashbrook worked for the Henderson Company until 1918.
During his time at Henderson, Ashbrook studied painting with Frank Duveneck at the Art Academy of Cincinnati in Eden Park. He also supplemented his income by teaching illustration at the Academy circa 1914 through 1919; during this same time he also taught lithography at the Ohio Mechanics’ Institute downtown, where he was head of the Department of Lithography. But this busy schedule of work and teaching left him little time for any artistic expression of his own.
Therefore Ashbrook left the Henderson Lithographing Company in 1918 and in 1920 joined the Strobridge Lithograph Company, Cincinnati’s largest and most famous (it printed most of the broadside posters for American circuses – such as Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus, many designed by Ashbrook --, minstrel shows, magicians, and early vaudeville acts), as a freelance commercial designer, a position which allowed him time to paint and occasionally travel abroad, such as to France in 1926 (which is when he doubtlessly visited Brittany), to Mexico a little later on, and to Cornwall in Britain in 1935.
Although the lithographic art was Ashbrook’s specialty, in which he had great experience in its design and production, up until the mid-1920s he did not produce much graphic art himself. But around 1925 he was asked by Walter Closson, the established Cincinnati art dealer, to make etchings for sale. Thus in 1929 Ashbrook gained national recognition after he published a series of etchings based on his travels in Mexico. His success allowed him to give up his commercial work at the Strobridge Company and devote his time and effort to his own etching and painting. (He was also a sharp caricaturist, though these were intended just for family and friends.)
I am guessing that Ashbrook did the Walnut Hills High School mural at the time the building was constructed in 1931 (or maybe shortly thereafter). Ashbrook died on a trip to Mexico in 1949. His papers are in the Cincinnati Art Museum Archives.
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