Stained Glass Enigma

The 68 stained glass medallions by G. Owen Bonawit in the windows of Deering Library are among the artistic achievements of the building that will be celebrated in a new book next year. As part of the celebration of Deering’s 75th anniversary in 2008, NUL is publishing Deering Library: An Illustrated History, with text by staff including Janet Olson, Nina Barrett, Russ Clement, and Jeff Garrett and a rich selection of historical and contemporary photographs.
But one intriguing question has emerged from the authors’ attempt to catalog all the Bonawit windows for identification in the book: Who is that man in the small panel to the left in the window above the desk of the Art Collection reading room?

For years, the pamphlet “Painted Window Medallions in the Eloise W. Martin Reading Room,” available to visitors of the room, has described him as “Unidentified man, possibly Charles Deering, reading a book; cryptic inscription: ‘Through Grand Canion Arkansas 10 March 1904 OLN.’” But the source of this mysterious description is itself mysterious. Art Collection Head Russ Clement believes it came originally from a document in University Archives, but Assistant University Archivist Janet Olson, who combed through material related to the windows as part of her research for the Deering book, says Bonawit’s original list of medallions in the Archives files includes no reference either to this medallion or the one to its immediate right in the window, picturing the insignia of the U.S. Naval Academy. “For a while I thought maybe those two medallions weren’t original, that they were added to the window later,” she says. “But I looked at photographs of the windows at the time the Library opened, and they were definitely there from the beginning. So it’s odd that they weren’t included on Bonawit’s list.”

What strikes most viewers of the medallion who are familiar with other portraits of Charles Deering, however, is that the man in the window bears absolutely no resemblance to him whatsoever. Portraits of Deering, whether photographic or painted—and even including the rather whimsical series of watercolor sketches of him by his friend the painter Ramon Casas—universally depict him as a tall, slender man with chiseled, well-defined facial features. The window depicts a rather stocky figure whose head and face are notably well-rounded.

“I can’t think that it’s not him,” Russ says. “Who else would it be? Look at the location: it’s in the prominent center window. Look at the medallion next to it: who else went to the Naval Academy and served as an officer for eight years? It’s not a good likeness, that’s true, but it wouldn’t make sense for it to be anyone else.”

Then there’s the matter of the “cryptic inscription,” which appears in the lower right corner of the pane. Everything about it is a riddle: the alternate spelling of “canyon,” the location of a “Grand Canion” in Arkansas, the significance of the date (Deering was born in 1852 and died in 1927; it’s unlikely that the date relates to his Naval Academy
experiences, since by 1904 he would already have been 52 years old), and the meaning of “OLN.” For the record, Janet notes: “Actually, there is an Arkansas River in the Grand Canyon: The canyon along the Arkansas River between Cotopaxi and Parkdale (which is the beginning of the Royal Gorge, downstream) was formerly named the Grand Canyon of the Arkansas River before the State of Colorado renamed it Bighorn Sheep Canyon.”

On the one hand, it might be argued that preserving a riddle—which was always, perhaps, intended to be a riddle in the first place—at the heart of Deering Library simply enhances its mystique: that intangible sense of magic that reminds today’s students, according to Janet, of the wizard academy at Hogwarts. On the other hand, as an actual bastion of research skills, rather than wizardry, NUL and its staff might consider it a point of pride to get to the bottom of this one.

LibStaff Links takes no firm position either way. But anyone with concrete information on the matter—or a plausible hypothesis—is encouraged to step forward.