Sylvester Headlines SLAM Exhibition

Principia’s first art director and renowned Midwest artist Frederick Oaks Sylvester (1869–1915) was the star of a recent exhibition at the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM). The exhibition—Art Along the Rivers: A Bicentennial Celebration—was featured at the museum from October 3, 2021, through January 9, 2022. Sylvester’s 1903 oil painting titled “The Mississippi at Elsah” not only hung in the exhibition but curators enlarged it to cover the entire entry wall of the gallery—and prominently featured it in promotional materials for the museum.

Art Along the Rivers included more than 150 regional objects to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Missouri’s statehood—some dating back 1,000 years.

Sylvester was an established artist and art teacher before he became a Christian Scientist and started working for Principia as its first Art Director—in addition to teaching art at New Central High School in St. Louis. In recent decades, Sylvester’s reputation has only gained prominence throughout the Midwestern art world.

“Since rivers are at the heart of the exhibition, we knew from the beginning that a river scene by Sylvester would play a central role,” says Saint Louis Art Museum Assistant Curator of American Art Amy Torbert. “Upon viewing The Mississippi at Elsah at the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri, we were struck by how perfectly the scene encapsulated an experience we imagine was shared by those who passed through and lived in our region over so many centuries. We felt this particular painting was an epitome of Sylvester’s deep love for the river and his ability to convey the atmospheric effects of light and water, as seen from the bluffs at Elsah. Sylvester remains to this day one of the most beloved and sensitive chroniclers of our region and its waterways.”

Last summer, Sylvester’s work as the “Poet-Painter of the Mississippi” was the subject of a talk at the St. Louis Mercantile Library of the University of Missouri—St. Louis (UMSL) by Mercantile Curator of Fine Art Collections Julie Dunn-Morton.

Although Sylvester passed on years before Principia College opened its campus in Elsah, Illinois, his influence and artistic aesthetic—along with the vision and work of renowned architect Bernard Maybeck—played a key role in the founding of the campus on the bluffs above the Mississippi River.

The confluence of these creative thinkers was eloquently articulated by Paul Ryan, the chair of the Studio Art & Art History Department at Principia College in the department’s 2017 exhibition catalog, Tapping into the Flow: Teaching and Making Art Above the Mississippi, which documented an ambitious exhibition by the same name. The 2017–2018 exhibition was held at the James K. Schmidt Gallery (in Principia’s Voney Art Center) and brought together works by fourteen artist-teachers at the College—from Frederick Oakes Sylvester to current studio art faculty–as well as the College’s esteemed architect, Bernard Maybeck. Prof. Ryan’s essay on art’s key role in the College’s origin story is excerpted and edited for length below.

Art at the Heart of Principia

“Transcendence, Immanence, and Flow: Studio Art at Principia College”

Through their respective practices as artist and architect, the confluence of Frederick Oakes Sylvester and Bernard Maybeck at Elsah places creativity and the visual arts at the heart of Principia College. This is significant for a college such as Principia that remains dedicated to the liberal arts; for, the discipline of art, like a river’s watershed that draws from adjacent expanses of land, effectively draws from other academic disciplines, as well as directly from the human experience in all its richness and complexity.

Frederick Oakes Sylvester

Sylvester established himself as a highly respected and influential painter and art teacher. In 1901, he was hired by Mary Kimball Morgan of The Principia to be the young school’s first art director. Through his studio practice in St. Louis, Sylvester developed a niche as visual transcriber of the city, poetically recording its urban culture at the turn of the century.

In 1902, the artist pivoted northward to the unassuming village of Elsah, Illinois, where he purchased a summer cottage that served as a new base for his studio practice. Sylvester’s many sojourns to Elsah corresponded with the artist’s gravitation to metaphysics; establishing his artistic practice amid the Elsah hills became a kind of spiritual homecoming. In 1901, Sylvester had become a Christian Scientist, and, for him, the panoramic views from the bluffs translated into a series of spiritual vistas. He found his calling as “Poet-Painter of the Mississippi.”

Bernard Maybeck

In October 1930, The Principia abandoned plans to build a four-year college in Missouri. The school’s trustees quickly assigned the task of finding a new location to College Director Frederic Morgan who had been working closely with architect Bernard Maybeck. Morgan was surprised to find that Maybeck was happy to abandon the proposed Missouri site. “We didn’t think big enough,” Maybeck said.

Morgan recalled his early days as a student at Principia, when Sylvester brought students to Elsah’s bluffs high above the Mississippi River for art outings. After exploring possible sites at this location, over two-thousand acres were purchased by Principia in November 1930. 

The fortuitous conceptual link in Principia’s history between Sylvester and Maybeck is, without exaggeration, existential for the College. Their earthly lives never crossed, but the confluence of Sylvester and Maybeck at Principia is a key reason for Frederic Morgan’s pursuit and the school’s acquisition of the property that became the College campus.

Read Ryan’s full essay including footnotes and an online version of the art faculty’s 2018 book.

Other Works on Sylvester

Recent appreciation for Sylvester’s work from area museums and Principia art faculty join a growing list of celebrations of his life, art, and poetry. Sylvester’s work hangs prominently in the new School of Government building, the Marshall Brooks Library, and elsewhere across the College campus. Former Associate Professor of Art History Jeanne Colette Collester worked with the Principia Corporation to publish Frederick Oakes Sylvester: The Principia Collection in 1988. And in 1986, Principia College Professor and award-winning novelist Paul O. Williams published Frederick Oakes Sylvester: The Artist’s Encounter with Elsah in conjunction with the Principia Corporation and the Historic Elsah Foundation.