h ist o ry l es s o n
The Story of the Mural
The Chase Hall mural features 14th-century Chaucerian characters — and a few 20th-century Maine notables, too by h . jay burns p h o t o g r a p h y by mik e bradley
if you’re a bates graduate
from the early 1970s through 2008, you probably walked by the Canterbury Tales mural in Chase Hall more than 2,300 times en route to meals in old Memorial Commons. Walking by all those times, you may have recognized the Host, the Wife of Bath and the Prioress, among other Chaucerian characters. But did you see Phil Isaacson ’47, the prominent Lewiston attorney, art critic and architectural writer? Did you notice Shep Lee, a well-known Maine businessman (Lee Auto) and humanitarian? Dana Professor of Art Emeritus Don Lent, who painted the mural during the fall and winter of 1971–72, invited Isaacson, Lee and other Maine notables into the project as models for Chaucer’s band of pilgrims. Isaacson, for example, was Chaucer’s Man of Laws, and Lee, the Merchant. A few Bates students and faculty are depicted, too. As with viewing the mural itself, you have to step back to appreciate the details of how Lent’s mural came to be. The story starts in California, where Lent, a native New Englander, earned his bachelor’s degree at UC–Santa Barbara. There, one of his mentors was Rico Lebrun (1900–64), who had painted murals in New York City as part of the Depressionera Work Projects Administration. In his WPA work, Lebrun teamed with a young artist named Gridley Barrows. Later, armed with a
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design degree from Harvard, Barrows would land in Lewiston-Auburn in the 1950s as an architect with Harriman Associates of Auburn. The Harriman firm has handled the design work for a number of Bates renovations and new buildings, including Lane Hall and Schaeffer Theatre. By 1970, with Chase Hall needing sprucing up, Bates enlisted Harriman, with Gridley Barrows as lead architect, to renovate various Chase spaces, including the Bookstore, Den, meeting rooms and the main entrance. That put Lent and Barrows together, and Lent recalls that it was Barrows, perhaps recalling his WPA experience, who suggested that a mural would do just fine on the wall above a new sloping and curving walkway leading into Memorial Commons. “The space creates an odd problem,” Lent says. “It is hard to create something that ‘reads’ well both close up and from a distance. Gridley promoted simplicity — not trying to make things too detailed.” Lent chose the subject matter, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. He knew that three times a day, students would crowd the walkway as they entered Commons, so it is telling that the mural’s first character is the Host, his hand outstretched in welcome as he sits astride his horse. (Some characters are on horseback, including the Prioress, modeled by Lynda Litchfield ’71, so Lent went on horse rides to familiarize himself with the look of humans and horses.)