This oil on canvas mural was painted in 1929 by Leone C. Bradbury and depicts Little Miss Muffet. The dedication plaque for this mural reads:
“Little Miss Muffet” was one of the most commonly printed nursery rhymes in the mid-twentieth century. The earliest printed version appeared in 1805, but its origins are unclear and much older.
“Little Miss Muffet” is one of a set of nine murals painted in 1929 for the newly constructed Ellsworth Elementary School in Denver, Colorado. The entire set is now collectively titled “”Flights of Fancy.” The murals were wheat pasted to the walls of the kindergarten room and black borders were painted onto the wall around the edge of the canvas. The murals were commissioned by the building’s architect as part of construction costs. During that era commissioning art, especially murals, for school buildings in Denver Public Schools District No 1 (DPS) was considered to be an important and standard practice.
In 1995, prior to the building being demolished, all nine murals were removed from the walls, restored, cleaned, backed with canvas, put on stretchers, and framed by Hays Shoop, then a conservator with the Rocky Mountain Conservation Center at Denver University. DPS then hung seven of these murals in their administration building and two in an elementary school. In 2014 DPS gave all nine murals to El Paso County. They were hung in Centennial Hall.
Leone Bradbury grew up in Denver. She attended Yale University School of Art from 1926