With his wife he wrote Italian Cities (1900) and edited Vasari's Lives of the Painters (1896), and was well known as a lecturer and writer on art. He became president of the Society of Mural Painters, and of the Society of American Artists.
BlashfieldÂ’s The New Dress of 1874 (The Cowan Collection; The Parthenon, Nashville), compared to similar full-length portraits by Bonnat, is more tight in technique, fussier in details, and rather static in its symmetrical composition.
Blashfield also took part in the WorldÂ’s Columbian Exposition where another portrait of his wife (unlocated), the large and popular Christmas Bells (The Brooklyn Museum), and The Angel with the Flaming Sword (Church of the Ascension, New York) were hung.
Blashfield represented the arts of the goldsmith, the ironworker, the maker of armor and the worker in bronze.
The only monograph on EdwinBlashfield yet to appear is a large-format book that was published after his passing in 1937.
Because of Blashfield's academic background in painting and his extensive travels to the great frescoes of Italy, he was an ideal guide to mural painting.
Chapter six is about the relationship between mural painters working on the same project, which Blashfield describes as "the thorniest and most delicate question in the range of decoration." In the next chapter Blashfield uses his erudition and art history background to describe the importance of the theme or subject of the mural.