Elmer Ellsworth Garnsey (1862-1946)

About the Artist

Elmer Ellsworth Garnsey was born in 1862 to John C. and Louisa J. (Fenton) Garnsey in Holmdel, New Jersey. He completed his artistic training at the Art Students League and Cooper Union in New York City where he learned the specialty of murals under the tutelage of the notable decorative painters George W. Maynard (1843-1923) and Francis Lathrop (1849-1909). Garnsey kept a studio in New York City and earned several distinguished mural commissions for prominent civic and private institutions on the East Coast, including the Library of Congress, the Boston Public Library, Memorial Hall at Yale University, Rhode Island State House, the New York Stock Exchange, and the U.S. Custom House in New York City. His esteemed reputation also extended to the Midwest, where he completed murals for the City Art Museum of St. Louis and the Capitol Buildings in Des Moines, Iowa, and Madison, Wisconsin. Most of his murals are painted in a classical style (albeit in vibrant colors) with a focus on allegorical subjects that relate to the function of the space which they inhabit.