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Guerin was born in St Louis, Missouri on November 18, 1866 and moved to Chicago to study art in 1880. Later he was to follow a parade of other American artists and architects of his day to Paris, where he studied with Benjamin-Constant and Jean Paul Laurens .
Returning to America after his European sojourn he began his career as an artist illustrating books, often travel books about exotic places. It is likely that these designs are based on his own travels through North Africa and Palestine. The designs that he did then as well as his ability to romantically depict exotic peoples and places stood him well later when he began painting murals.
His mural work typically featured large areas of gold with vermilion, salmon and rose hues and blue and green accents.
As with many of the artists of his time Guerin took an active part in the international expositions of his day, showing at the Paris Expo 1900, where he received an honorable mention, the Pan American Expo in Buffalo, NY, 1901, the Louisiana Purchase Expo held in St Louis in 1904 at which he won a silver medal, and the Lewis & Clark Expo in Portland in 1905. In 1915 Guerin was asked to serve as color co-ordinator of the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915 in San Francisco. It is likely that connections that he made there led to his one man show at the University of California, Berkeley two years later, followed by several large murals in the Federal reserve Bank in San Francisco.
Daniel BurnhamDaniel Hudson Burnham ( September 4, 1846 June 1, 1912) was born in Henderson, New York and raised in Chicago, Illinois. His parents brought him up under the teachings of the Swedenborgian Church of New Jerusalem, which ingrained in him the strong belief, Chicago’s best known architect of his day, was selected to create the Chicago Plan in 1907; part of the City Beautiful movement that Burnham was spearheading. In pursuit of this effort Burnham had Guerin paint a series of paintings of what Chicago could look like, many of them done from a bird’s eye perspective. These large watercolors are currently owned by the Chicago Historical Society.In 1912 when architect Henry BaconHenry Bacon ( November 28, 1866, Watseka, Illinois February 17, 1924, New York) an American Beaux-Arts architect, is best remembered for his severe Greek Doric Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. built 1915 1922), which was his final project. Raised in and began working on the Lincoln MemorialThe Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC, is a memorial to United States President Abraham Lincoln. The first stone of the Lincoln Memorial was put into place on Lincoln's birthday, February 12, 1915 and the monument was dedicated on Ma in Washington D.C. he hired Guerin to create renderings of his proposed designs. After he received the commission, Bacon retained Guerin to paint the two large murals, Reunion and Emancipation, that decorate the interior of the memorial, allegorical figures that today serve primarily as the backdrop to Daniel Chester FrenchDaniel Chester French ( April 20, 1850 October 7, 1931) was an American sculptor. He was a neighbor and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Alcott family. His decision to pursue sculpting was influenced by Louisa May Alcott's sister May Alcott. He was’s Seated Lincoln statue.
Probably because of his early Chicago based background Guerin was a frequent collaborator with the Chicago architectural firm (and the successor firm to Daniel Burnham’s practice) Graham, Anderson, Probst & White. Most notable of these commissions was the dramatic fire curtain he executed for the theatre in their Chicago Civic Opera Building in 1929.
Guerin was a frequent contributor to Scribners Magazine and Century Magazine during the first decade of the Twentieth Century