Evening star., 1937-10-03
By VeSfa Cummings.

NY time you enter the quarters
n of an Army Air Corps officer
~ and see upon the wall pOr-
trait of him or his wife or one
of his children. it's sure to be the work
of Mary Oda Eglin. an artist of dis
tinction, who might be termed the
unofficial portrait painter of the Army.
AS the wife of Lieut.. Col. Frederick
Irving Eglin, who was killed in a
crash while flying between Langley
Field, Va, and Montgomery, Ala, last
New Year day, Mrs. Eglin for nearly
19 years unpacked her easel and oils
in quarters on the edge of flying fields
all over the United States. And since
the coloneps death she has come to
live and to paint in Washington, Sc
lecting it for her home because it is
one of the art centers of the country.
To-day Mrs Eglins pictures, many
of officers who lost their lives in the
hazardous days of pioneer flying, may
be found all over the world. Prob
ably few transports sail out of New
York or San Francisco for Panama,
Hawaii or the Philippines without at
least one in the household goods in
the hold. At the moment Mrs. Eglin
has no idea how many of her portraits
and landscapes are stationed" in
Washington
Launched on a career in New York,
Mary Oda married the then Lieut..
Eglin in 1918, few months before
the armistice. Although Manhattan
was then the center of numerous new
movements in art and the mecca of
young artists from what New Workers
refer to as the American provinces.
Mary Oda decided than an artist
can paint anywhere, and proceeded
through the stirring days of the in
fant Air Corps growth to its present
lusty proportions with a palette in her
hand, finding her inspiration in the
people who were building a new
branch of the service.
Every time I changed stations I
was forced to leave behind unpainted
pictures" Mrs. Eglin says. Always
! worked frantically from the time
my husband received orders for his
next detail until the last moment be-
fore leaving the field, trying to finish,
in the face of military orders, work
that I must deliver before leaving"
Once, indeed, Mrs. Eglin was forced
to leave San Antonio in house slip
pers and without a hat because a
maid cooperating with the Quarter
master Corps had packed the outfit
she had set aside for departure.
WHEN leaving Manila some years
ago Mrs. Eglin arrived at the
transport with the three last articles
left in her house, a bag of laundry, a
hot iron and her box of oil paints
There is no case on record, however
of her making an exit with a picture
unfinished or without the Eglin chill
dren and furniture.
To a lesser artist this bowling to
military discipline might have been
exceedingly nerve-wrac acking- but Mrs
Eglin disclaims that she has the artis-
tic temperament and that moving from
place to place has ever bothered her
In the least. There are those of her
friends, however, who would venture
the opinion that what she has is the
true artistic temperament. that price
less ability of the creative artist to
concentrate. They remember the lights
that burned in Mary Eglin's studio till
all hours of the night in the ener-
waiting climate of the Philippines They
recall catching glimpses of her striv-
ing for some nuance of line or color
while squadrons of laundering pursuit