Post Office Mural

The mural was part of a Depression-relief program overseen by the U.S. Treasury Department with the dual purposes of providing jobs for out-of-work artists and bringing artwork to local communities. Post offices were selected as the location for the public art, with murals usually placed over the door of the postmaster’s office, because post offices were buildings that nearly everyone in a community visited.

Mural commissions were awarded by competition with the Treasury Department often inviting artists to apply. Artists provided ideas and sketches for a painting and a committee selected the mural to be produced. Artists from the region where the post office was located were given preference, but the projects were not limited to local painters. The artists were encouraged, though, to create scenes which related to the community where the mural would be displayed.

The artist selected for the Angola commission, Charles Malcolm Campbell (1905-1985), was an Ohio native who resided in Cleveland. He studied for five years at the Cleveland School of Art, graduating in 1929. He taught at the art school for a year, but decided that teaching was not for him. He began working for a newspaper doing commercial artwork while continuing to paint and sketch and enter his work into juried exhibitions. His paintings were displayed at the Cleveland Art Museum, Chicago Art Institute, Whitney Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and the Smithsonian. Like many artists of his time, Campbell was not financially successful in the difficult days of the Depression. His commercial and newspaper work didn’t pay well. Federal art projects offered a way to supplement his income. When a post office mural project was announced for Cleveland, Campbell entered drawings into the competition. Although his designs were not selected, the competition judges liked his work and encouraged him to bid on the Angola project. He was awarded the contract of $600 in late March 1937. The mural, which is painted on stretched canvas, was completed in Campbell’s studio and installed in the post office in late 1937.

The painting depicts a farm family in and around the milk cow’s pen. Mother and a young daughter are in the pen with the cow, Mother carrying a bucket for the milk which will be collected. Other family members – presumably a father in overalls and two daughters, one young and one a teen – look on from outside the wooden fence as the family dog nips at the cow and chickens wander. In the distance are barns and silos, a windmill, and a school. In a nod to the postal service, there are two mailboxes in the lower left corner of the painting – one mounted on a high post and one on a low post. The older daughter has her hand in the high mailbox, likely reaching for the day’s post. It’s doubtful the scene represents any particular place in Steuben County. It is more likely the artist’s general representation of a Hoosier farm.

One would think that in a county where farm life was common, a mural depicting a family farm would be very popular. It seems that may not have been the case…at least not according to a contemporary newspaper account. An editorial in the November 24, 1937 edition of the Steuben Republican is almost humorously critical of the painting. The editorial states “not being versed as an artist, we hesitate to attempt the description of the work” and then goes on to individually describe each figure, animal and structure in the painting and make suggestions!

Some of the cutting comments are:
“There is compacted into that 4 ½ by 12 feet more farm life than one ordinarily finds in less than 40 acres.”
“In the absence of a title we would suggest ‘Old MacDonald Had A Farm – But No Ducks.’ ”
“… we lack the artistic viewpoint, but we wish someone would write a review of this picture for publication which would do justice to the idea of the artist in his execution of this theme.”
“…we cannot help but say that the artist would have been a little more true to Steuben County if, off in the distance, he would have put a flash of one of our beautiful lakes and a touch of our beautiful rolling hills, or had he depicted some of our fine crops and blooded cattle, or even had put in a true to soil good looking farm wife and girls…”

The editorial ends with this zinger: “…we venture the assertion that most of the people of Steuben County would have preferred very much that this $600 had been spent in building a modern front that would enclose the steps to the post office, which become icy and treacherous in winter.” Ouch!

Charles Campbell apparently survived the newspaper’s critique. He went on to paint a post office mural in Kennedy, Texas, and other federally-funded murals in Cleveland. He was contracted by the Treasury Department through 1942 to produce other paintings, two of which are now in the Smithsonian collection. He continued to paint and sell his work in galleries in California and New Orleans for the remainder of his life.

“Hoosier Farm” may be seen in the Steuben Community Center during regular business hours.