Donald Moss (1920 - 2010) "The Biltmore House". Signed lower right. Original Oil painting on Illustration Board. Provenance: Collection of James A. Helzer (1946-2008), Founder of Unicover Corporation. This painting was published on the Fleetwood First Day Cover for the U.S. 18c Biltmore House stamp issued August 28, 1981. More than any other American architect of his day, Richard Morris Hunt created buildings that suited the taste of the very rich. His lavish country home, Biltmore House, epitomizes this talent. Built for George Vanderbilt amid the lofty grandeur of the Blue Ridge Mountains, it is a strikingly beautiful monument to the wealth of a Gilded Age. To create a mansion of the splendor his client desired, Hunt took inspiration from the Renaissance chateaux of France. Flying buttresses, clusters of pinnacles, gables and gothic chimneys combine in this towering house to make the surrounding mountains, as architect Hunt declared, "in scale with the house." Inside, the home is just as grand. Chandeliers, bejeweled with Thomas Edison's newly devised light bulbs, hang pendant-like amid a swirling marble and bronze staircase that reaches -- from appearances -- all the way to heaven. The library is paneled in rich, Circassian walnut and reflects both the taste and the wealth of a man who could afford to travel the world learning eight languages and cultivating a taste for art and literature. Today, the lavish Biltmore House is a museum with a collection of paintings, sculpture, prints and furniture that is a marvel to the modern age. Stately and remote, the house towers over landscaped gardens and rolling lawns, a testimony to the skill and vision of architect Hunt, the pioneer of palace building in America. Image Size: 17.5 x 15 in. Overall Size: 20 x 19.75 in. Unframed. (B07092)