The Jewel City
by Ben Macomber · English · Gutenberg #7348 · 376,459 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Jewel City
Author: Ben Macomber
Release date: January 1, 2005 [eBook #7348]
Most recently updated: December 30, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7348
Credits: Produced by David Schwan
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JEWEL CITY ***
Produced by David Schwan
Panama-Pacific International Exposition
The Jewel City:
Its Planning and Achievement; Its Architecture, Sculpture, Symbolism,
and Music; Its Gardens, Palaces, and Exhibits
By
Ben Macomber
With Colored Frontispiece and more than Seventy-Five Other Illustrations
Introduction
No more accurate account of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition
has been given than one that was forced from the lips of a charming
Eastern woman of culture. Walking one evening in the Fine Arts
colonnade, while the illumination from distant searchlights accented the
glory of Maybeck's masterpiece, and lit up the half-domes and arches
across the lagoon, she exclaimed to her companion: "Why, all the beauty
of the world has been sifted, and the finest of it assembled here!"
This simple phrase, the involuntary outburst of a traveled visitor, will
be echoed by thousands who feel the magic of what the master artists and
architects of America have done here in celebration of the Panama Canal.
I put the "artists" first, because this Exposition has set a new
standard. Among all the great international expositions previously held
in the United States, as well as those abroad, it had been the fashion
for managers to order a manufactures building from one architect, a
machinery hall from another, a fine arts gallery from a third. These
worked almost independently. Their structures, separately, were often
beautiful; together, they seldom indicated any kinship or common
purpose. When the buildings were completed, the artists were called in
to soften their disharmonies with such sculptural and horticultural
decoration as might be possible.
The Exposition in San Francisco is the first, though it will not be the
last, to subject its architecture to a definite artistic motive. How
this came about it is the object of the present book to tell,--how the
Exposition was planned as an appropriate expression of America's joy in
the completion of the Canal, and how its structures, commemorating the
peaceful meeting of the nations through that great waterway, have fitly
been made to represent the art of the entire world, yet with such unity
and originality as to give new interest to the ancient forms, and with
such a wealth of appropriate symbolism in color, sculpture and mural
painting as to make its great courts, towers and arches an inspiring
story of Nature's beneficence and Man's progress.
Much of Mr. Macomber's text was written originally for The San Francisco
Chronicle, to which acknowledgment is made for its permission to reprint
his papers. The popularity of these articles, which have been running
since February, has testified to their usefulness. In many cases they
have been preserved and passed from hand to hand. They have also won the
endorsement of liberal use in other publications. It is proper to say,
however, that similarity of language sometimes indicates a common
following of the artists' own explanations of their work, made public by
the Exposition management.
Mr. Macomber has revised and amplified his chapters hitherto published,
and has added others briefly outlining the history of the Exposition,
and dealing with the fine-arts, industrial, and livestock exhibits, the
foreign and state buildings, music, sports, aviation, and the amusement
section. Apart from the smaller guides, the book is thus the first to
attempt any comprehensive description of the Exposition. Without
indiscriminate praise, or sacrificing independent judgment, the author's
purpose has been to interpret and explain the many things about which
the visitors on the ground and readers at home may naturally wish to
know, rather than to point out minor defects.
For the general exhibit palaces, anything more than a brief outline of
their contents would fill several books. But the chapter entitled "The
Palace of Fine Arts and its Exhibit, with the Awards," supplies such an
account of the plan of the galleries and of the important works therein
as will furnish a clear and helpful guide to this great collection. The
awards of the Fine Arts juries, just announced, have been incorporated
in the account, while a full list of the grand prizes, medals of honor
and gold medals also follows the chapter. With the artists thus named
are noted the rooms where the works of each may be found. The Appendix
offers a practical aid to the study of the "Exposition Art" in the list
there given of the mural paintings and sculptures which form the notable
decorations of palaces and gardens. With these are cross-references to
the pages in the text where they are described.
In selecting the photographs here reproduced, the aim has been not so
much to show exhibits as to illustrate the plan, architecture and
decorative art of the Exposition, and to indicate the advance which it
scores over its predecessors. The pictures, with their full
"underlines," will aid those who have not yet visited the Exposition to
apprehend its spirit and much of its unprecedented beauty.
Cross-references from text to illustrations increase their helpfulness.
But even these abundant illustration can do little more than suggest how
far the artistic achievement is the finest yet seen in America. No book
can adequately represent this World's Fair. Its spell is the charm of
color and the grandeur of noble proportion, harmonizing great
architectural units; its lesson is the compelling value, demonstrated on
a vast scale, of exquisite taste. It must be seen to be understood.
John H. Williams.
San Francisco, July 15, 1915.
Contents
I. Motive and Planning of the Exposition
II. Ground Plan and Landscape Gardening
III. The South Gardens
IV. "The Walled City": Its Great Palaces and their Architecture,
Color and Material
V. The Tower of Jewels
VI. The Court of the Universe
VII. The Court of the Ages
VIII. The Court of the Seasons
IX. Courts of Flowers and Palms
X. The Fountains
XI. The Palace of Machinery
XII. The Palace of Fine Arts and its Exhibit, with the Awards
XIII. The Exposition Illuminated
XIV. Music at the Exposition
XV. Inside the Exhibit Palaces
XVI. The Foreign Pavilions
XVII. The State Buildings
XVIII. The Live-Stock Exhibit
XIX. Sports and Games; Automobile Races; Aviation
XX. The Joy Zone
Appendix: Lists of Sculptures, Mural Paintings, and Artists. Roster of
the Exposition. Index.
Illustrations
Unless otherwise noted, these are from photographs by the official
photographers, the Cardinell-Vincent Company.
Roman Arch of the Setting Sun, Color Plate from Photo by Gabriel Moulin
Ground Plan of the Palace of Fine Arts
Aeroplane View of the Exposition, Photo copyrighted by Gabriel Moulin
Avenue of Palms
The South Gardens
The Palace of Horticulture
Festival Hall--George H. Kahn
Map of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition
"Listening Woman" and "Young Girl," Festival Hall
South Portal, Palace of Varied Industries--J. L. Padilla
Palace of Liberal Arts
Sixteenth-Century Spanish Portal, North Facade
"The Pirate," North Portal
"The Priest," Tower of Jewels
The Tower of Jewels and Fountain of Energy
"Cortez"--J. L. Padilla
Under the Arch, Tower of Jewels
Fountain of El Dorado
Column of Progress--Pacific Photo and Art Co.
"The Adventurous Bowman"
Arch of the Setting Sun--J. L. Padilla
Frieze at Base of the Column of Progress (2)
The Court of the Universe and Arch of the Rising Sun
"Earth" and "Fire" (2)
"The Rising Sun" and "The Setting Sun" (2)
Tower of the Ages--J. L. Padilla
Fountain of the Earth--J. L. Padilla
"Air," one of Brangwyn's Murals
The Court of Seasons
Arch in the Court of Seasons--George H. Kahn
Court of Flowers, Detail--Pacific Photo and Art Co.
"The End of the Trail"--J. L. Padilla
"The Pioneer"
The Court of Palms.
Portal between the Courts of Palms and Seasons--Pacific Photo and Art Co.
Fountain of Summer--J. L. Padilla
The Mermaid Fountain
Fountain of "Beauty and the Beast"
The Palace of Machinery
Palace of Machinery, Interior
Vestibule, Palace of Machinery--Gabriel Moulin
Palace of Fine Arts
Open Corridor, Palace of Fine Arts
Detail of Rotunda, Palace of Fine Arts
Colonnade, Fine Arts, and Half-Dome, Food Products Palace
--J. L. Padilla
"The Mother of the Dead"
"High Tide; the Return of the Fishermen"--Gabriel Moulin
"Among the White Birch Trunks"--Gabriel Moulin
Tower of Jewels at Night--J. L. Padilla
"The Outcast"
"Muse Finding the Head of Orpheus"
Palace of Fine Arts at Night--Paul Elder Co.
Tympanum, Palace of Varied Industries
Tympanum, Palace of Education
"The Genius of Creation"
Pavilions of Australia and Canada (2),--H. W. Mossby, J. L. Padilla
Pavilions of France and the Netherlands (2)
Rodin's "The Thinker"--Friedrich Woiter
A Court in the Italian Pavilion
The Pavilion of Sweden
Pavilions of Argentina and Japan (2)
The New York State Building--Pacific Photo and Art Co.
California Building
Illinois and Missouri (2)
Massachusetts and Pennsylvania (2)
Inside the California Building
Oregon and Washington (2)
Aeroplane Flight at Night
The Jewel City
I.
Motive and Planning of the Exposition
The Panama Canal a landmark in human progress--Its influence through
changes in trade routes San Francisco determines, in spite of the great
fire, to celebrate its completion--Millions pledged in two hours--
Congressional approval won--The Exposition built by California and San
Francisco, without National aid--Only two years given to construction--
Fifty millions expended.
Human endeavor has supplied no nobler motive for public rejoicing than
the union of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Panama Canal has
stirred and enlarged the imaginations of men as no other task has done,
however enormous the conception, however huge the work. The Canal is one
of the few achievements which may properly be called epoch-making. Its
building is of such signal and far reaching importance that it marks a
point in history from which succeeding years and later progress will be
counted. It is so variously significant that the future alone can
determine the ways in which it will touch and modify the life of
mankind.
First of all, of course, its intent is commercial. Experts have already
estimated its influence on the traffic routes. But these experts, who
can, from known present conditions, work out the changes that will take
place, that are already taking place, in the flow of commerce on the
seven seas, cannot estimate the effect those changes will have on the
life of the people who inhabit their shores. Changes in trade routes
have overwhelmed empires and raised up new nations, have nourished
civilizations and brought others to decay. From the days when merchants
first followed the caravan routes, nothing has so modified the history
of nations as the course of the roads by which commerce moved. Huge as
was the Canal as a physical undertaking alone, it is not less stupendous
in the vision of the effects which will flow from it.
In this vision, the Western shore of the United States feels that it
looms largely. No small part of the benefits of the Canal are expected
to fall to the Pacific States. Long before it was completed, the minds
of men in the West were filled with it. Its approaching completion
appealed to everyone as an event of such tremendous significance as to
deserve commemoration. Thus when R. B. Hale, in 1904, first proposed
that the opening of the waterway should be marked by an international
exposition in San Francisco, he merely gave expression to the thought of
the whole West.
The Canal is a national undertaking, built by the labor and money of an
entire people. It is of international significance, too, for its
benefits are world-wide. The Exposition thus represents not only the
United States but also the world in its effort to honor this
achievement. San Francisco and California have merely staged the
spectacle, in which the world participates.
An international exposition is a symbol of world progress. This one is
so complete in its significance, so inclusive of all the best that man
has done, that it is something more than a memorial of another event. It
is itself epochal, as is the enterprise it commemorates. It bears a
direct relation to the Canal. The motive of the Exposition was the
grandeur of a great labor. Completed, it embodies that motive in the
highest expression of art.
It took eleven years to prepare for and build the Exposition. The first
proposal in 1904 was followed by five years of discussion of ways and
means. Two years were occupied in raising the money and winning the
consent of the Nation, and then four years more in planning, building,
and collecting the exhibits. The first plans were interrupted, but not
ended, by the most terrible disaster that ever befell a great city--the
fire of 1906, which wiped out the entire business portion, with much of
the residence section, of San Francisco, and destroyed hundreds of
millions of wealth. Before that year ended, and while the city was only
beginning its huge task of rebuilding, it again took up its festival
idea. A company was formed, but, until reconstruction was largely out of
the way, it was impossible to do more than keep the idea alive.
In October, 1909, the idea began to crystallize into a definite purpose.
In that month President Taft, at a banquet at the Fairmont Hotel,
declared that the Canal would be opened to commerce on January 1, 1915.
That announcement gave the final impulse to the growing determination.
The success of the Portola celebration that summer had given the city
confidence in its ability to carry out a great festival undertaking. In
fact, it was at a meeting of the Portola committee that the first move
was made toward the organization that later became effective.
A mass-meeting in the Merchants' Exchange, on December 7, 1909, ended in
a resolve to organize an exposition company. This found such strong
popular support that at a second mass-meeting on April 28, 1910,
$4,089,000 was subscribed in less than two hours. In two months the
subscription had risen to $6,156,840. Governor Gillett called the
California legislature in special session in August to submit to the
people constitutional changes enabling San Francisco to issue exposition
bonds in the amount of $5,000,000, and the State to raise another
$5,000,000 by special tax. In November the people of State and city
voted the two amounts. That placed a minimum of $16,000,000 to the
credit of the Exposition Company and assured the world that California
meant business.
Then followed the struggle for Congressional approval. New Orleans
demanded the right to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal. All the
resources of both cities were enlisted in a battle before Congress that
drew the attention of the Nation. Three times delegations went from
California to Washington to fight for the Exposition. California won, on
January 31, 1911, when, by a vote of 188 to 159, the House of
Representatives designated San Francisco as the city in which the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition should be held in 1915 to
commemorate the opening of the Canal.
During this struggle California gave her word that she would not ask the
Nation for help in financing the Exposition. The promise has been kept.
The Government has not even erected a national building. It has,
however, helped in material ways, by granting the use of portions of the
Presidio and Fort Mason reservations, by sending naval colliers to bring
exhibits from European countries, and by becoming one of the heaviest
exhibitors. The national exhibits include three companies of marines
encamped on the grounds, and the battleship Oregon anchored off the
Marina.
After Congress had acted, half a year was spent in choosing a site. It
was at first expected that the Exposition would be built in Golden Gate
Park. A compromise among advocates of different sites was reached on
July 25, 1911, when a majority vote of the directors named a site
including portions of Golden Gate Park, Lincoln Park, the Presidio, and
Harbor View. Before 100,000 people President Taft broke ground for the
Exposition in the Stadium of Golden Gate Park. But it was not long
before the choice settled finally on Harbor View alone.
The work began with the organization of the architectural staff. The
following architects accepted places on the commission: McKim, Mead and
White, Henry Bacon, and Thomas Hastings of New York; Robert Farquhar of
Los Angeles; and Louis Christian Mullgardt, George W. Kelham, Willis
Polk, William B. Faville, Clarence R. Ward, and Arthur Brown of San
Francisco. To their number was later added Bernard R. Maybeck of San
Francisco, who designed the Palace of Fine Arts, while Edward H.
Bennett, an associate of Burnham, of Chicago, made the final ground plan
of the Exposition group. When San Francisco had been before Congress
asking national endorsement for the Exposition here, the plans which
were then presented, and on which the fight was won, were prepared by
Ernest Coxhead, architect, of this city. These proposed a massed
grouping of the Exposition structures, around courts, and on the Bay
front. They were afterwards amplified by Coxhead, and furnished the
keynote of the scheme finally carried out. While the Exposition belongs
not to California alone, but to the whole world, it is pleasant to find
that so much of what is best in it is the work of Californians and San
Franciscans.
The architects perfected the plan in 1912. At the same time the actual
work of preparing the site was completed with the filling of the
tide-land portions by hydraulic dredgers and the removal of the standing
buildings. In the same year the department chiefs were named and began
their work. John McLaren, for many years Superintendent of Golden Gate
Park, was put in charge of the landscape engineering; W. D'A. Ryan was
chosen to plan the illumination, and Jules Guerin and K. T. F. Bitter
were placed at the heads of the departments of color and sculpture. With
these details behind, the ground-breaking for Machinery Palace in
January, 1913, marked the beginning of the final stage. In the two years
that remained it was necessary only to carry out the plans already
perfected. No other exposition has been so forehanded. When the gates
opened on February 20, 1915, to remain open till December 4, the
Exposition was practically complete. Some of the exhibitors had not
finished their installation; some of the foreign nations were not ready,
but the Exposition had kept a promise made two years before to have its
own work done on time. This achievement was quite unprecedented. It is
the more remarkable in that the record was made by a city which had been
almost annihilated by fire a few years before.
The entire cost of the Exposition, exclusive of the value of exhibits,
is estimated by the Controller at $50,000,000. This total is made up of
$20,000,000 spent by San Francisco and California, $10,000,000 laid out
in state and foreign buildings and displays, $10,000,000 by private
exhibitors, and $10,000,000 by the one hundred concessionaires on the
Joy Zone. San Francisco contributed $12,500,000, the State of California
$5,000,000, and its fifty-eight counties, $2,500,000. The amounts
expended by foreign nations range from $1,700,000 by Argentina to sums
as low as $100,000. The State of New York spent nearly $1,000,000.
II.
Ground Plan and Landscape Gardening
The Exposition a product of co-operation of the arts--The landscape
made part of the scheme--Block grouping of palaces and courts--Plan of
the buildings--McLaren's wonders in gardening--Succession of flowers
throughout the Exposition--Changes overnight--Unique wall of living
green.
The artistic quality which distinguishes this Exposition above all
others in America or Europe rests on two outstanding facts: the
substantial unity of its architectural scheme, and its harmony of color,
keyed to Nature's coloring of the landscape in which it is placed. The
site furnished the clue to the plan; co-operation made possible the
great success with which it has been worked out.
"Centuries ago," said George W. Kelham, chief of Exposition
architecture, "before the modern age of advanced specialization was
dreamed of, had an architect been asked to create an exposition, he
would have been not only an architect, but painter, sculptor and
landscape engineer as well. He would have thought, planned and executed
from this fourfold angle, and I doubt if it would have even occurred to
him to think of one of the arts as detached from another." These words
express the method of the Exposition builders. The scheme adopted was a
unit, in which all of the arts were needed, and in which they all
combined to a single end. Each building, each court, every garden and
large mass of foliage, was designed as part of a balanced composition.
To make the landscape an integral part of the Exposition picture, by
fitting the Exposition to the landscape, was the common aim of
architect, colorist, sculptor and landscape engineer. The Mediterranean
setting offered by a sloping bench on the shore of the Golden Gate
suggested, as most capable of high expression of beauty, the scheme of a
city of the Far East, its great buildings walled in and sheltering its
courts. The coloring of earth, sky and sea furnished the palette from
which tints were chosen alike for palaces and gardens.
The beauty of this plan is matched by its practical advantages. The
compact grouping of the Exposition palaces not only meant a saving of
ground and labor, but it makes it easier to handle the crowds, and
lessens the walking required of the visitor. There is no monotony. In
developing the general idea, each architect and artist was left free to
express his own personality and imagination. The result is that varied
forms and colors in the different courts and buildings blend truly into
the whole picture of an Oriental city, set in the midst of a vast
amphitheater of hills and bay, arched by the fathomless blue of the
California sky.
The ground plan is as simple as it is compact. Entering through the main
gate at Scott Street, the visitor has the Exposition before him,
practically an equal section on either hand. (See map, p. 30, 31.) On
right and left in the South Garden are Festival Hall and the Palace of
Horticulture. (p. 23, 24, 29.) In front is the Tower of Jewels, before
it the Fountain of Energy. (p. 47.) The tower centers the south front of
a solid block of eight palaces, so closely joined in structure, and so
harmonized in architecture, as to make really a single palace. On the
right and left of the tower are the Palaces of Manufactures and Liberal
Arts; beyond them, on east and west, are Varied Industries and
Education. Behind these four, and fronting on the bay from east to west,
are Mines, Transportation, Agriculture and Food Products. In the center
of the group, cut out of the corners of the Manufactures, Liberal Arts,
Agriculture and Transportation Palaces, and entered from the south
through the Tower of Jewels, is the great Court of the Universe, opened
on east and west by the triumphal Arches of the Nations. (p. 59 and
63.) The Court opens northward between the Palaces of Transportation and
Agriculture in a splendid colonnaded avenue to the Column of Progress,
near the bay. (p. 57.)
Through the arch on the east the Court of the Universe opens into an
avenue which leads to the Court of the Ages, cut out of the intersection
of the four Palaces of Manufactures, Varied Industries, Mines and
Transportation. (p. 70.) A similar avenue on the west passes to the
Court of Seasons, carved from the common junction of Liberal Arts,
Education, Food Products and Agriculture. (p. 79 and 80.) Avenues pass
east and west and to the north from each of these two courts, and on the
south each connects through an arch with a court set back into the south
front of the palace group, the Courts of Flowers and Palms. (p. 85, 87,
88, 93, 100.) On east and west of this central group of eight palaces
are the Palace of Machinery and the Palace of Fine Arts (p. 105, 112),
serving architecturally to balance the scheme. East of the exhibit
palaces is the Joy Zone, a mile-long street solidly built with bizarre
places of amusement. Balancing the Zone on the west is the State and
Foreign section, with the live-stock exhibits, the polo field, race
track and stadium beyond, at the western extremity of the grounds. The
state buildings stand along two avenues on the north side of the
section; the foreign pavilions occupy its southern half.
The Tower of Jewels and the central palace group face south on the
Avenue of Palms (p. 18), which, at its west end, turns as it passes the
Fine Arts lagoon, and becomes the Avenue of Nations. This latter
highway, bordered by the foreign buildings, joins at its western
extremity the Esplanade, a broad avenue passing the north face of the
palace group and continuing westward between the state and the foreign
sections.
On the east, the Avenue of Progress divides the central group from the
Palace of Machinery. Administration Avenue on the west separates the
central group from the Palace of Fine Arts. Along the bay shore is the
Marina, and between it and the Esplanade are the Yacht Harbor and the
lawns of the North Gardens.
Surrounding all these buildings, filling the courts and bordering the
avenues, are John McLaren's lovely gardens. For multitudes of visitors
this landscape gardening is the most wonderful thing about the
Exposition. The trees and flowers have been placed with perfect art;
they look as though they had been there always. It is hard for a
stranger to believe that three years ago the Exposition site was a
marsh, and that these trees were transplanted last year.
The Avenue of Palms is bordered on each side for half a mile with a
double row of California fan palms and Canary date palms, trees from
eighteen to twenty-five feet high and festooned higher than a man's head
with ivy and blooming nasturtium. (See p. 18.) These massive plants,
soil, roots, vines and all, were brought bodily from Golden Gate Park.
Against the south walls of the buildings facing this avenue are banked
hundreds of eucalyptus globulus, forty to fifty feet high, with smaller
varieties of eucalyptus, and yellow flowering acacias.
The Avenue of Progress is bordered with groups of Draceona indivisa,
averaging twenty feet in height. The walls of the palaces on either hand
are clothed with tall Monterey and Lawson cypresses and arbor vitae.
Between these and the Draceonas of the avenue are planted specimens of
Abies pinsapo, the Spanish fir. Banks of flowers and vines cover the
ground around the bases of the trees. Administration Avenue has on one
side the thickets of the Fine Arts lagoon, on the other, masses of
eucalyptus globulus against the palace walls, finished off with other
hardy trees and shrubs. Against the north front of the palaces are set
Monterey cypresses and eucalyptus, banked with acacias.
The entire city side of the South Gardens is bordered by a wondrous wall
of living green,--not a hedge, but truly a wall,--the most surprising
of all McLaren's inventions. For this wall, though living, is not rooted
in the ground, but is really a skeleton of timbers, three times the
height of a man, paneled solidly on both sides with shallow boxes of
earth thickly set with a tiny green plant, which, as though crushed down
by the weight of its name, Mesembryantliemum spectabilis, hugs the soil
closely. Each box, really nothing more than a tray, is barely deep
enough to contain a couple of inches of earth, and is screened over with
wire mesh to prevent the slice of soil from falling out when it is set
on edge. Some thousands of these boxes are required to cover the entire
wall, which thus appears a solid mass of greenery. The little plant
looks like the common ice-plant of old-fashioned gardens, and is
actually kin to it. It asks little of this world, is accustomed to grow
in difficult places, and is kept green by sprinkling. If a section of it
gives up the struggle, the tray may be replaced with a fresh one. From
time to time a blush of tiny pink flowers runs over the wall. There
seems to be no season for the blossoms, but whenever the sun shines,
this delicate shimmer of bloom appears.
The season opened in the great sunken garden of the Court of the
Universe with solid masses of rhododendron. The Court of the Ages was a
pink flare of hyacinths, which, with an exquisite sense of the desert
feeling of the court, were stripped of their leaves and left to stand on
bare stalks. The South Gardens and the Court of Flowers were a golden
glow of daffodils. Daffodils, too, were everywhere else, with
rhododendron just breaking into bloom. The daffodil show lasted several
weeks until, over night, it was replaced by acres of yellow tulips
blooming above thick mats of pansies. This magic change was merely the
result of McLaren's forethought. The daffodils had all been set at the
right time to bloom when the Exposition opened. The pansies were set
with them, but were unnoticed beneath the taller daffodils. Unnoticed
also were the tulips, steadily shooting upward to be ready in bloom the
moment the daffodils began to fail. One night and morning scores of
workmen clipped off all the fading daffodils, and left a yellow sea of
tulips with cups just opening. When the tulips faded early, because of
continued rains, the solid masses of pansies remained to keep up the
golden show. With the end of the yellow period came three months of pink
flowers, to be followed in the closing third of the Exposition's life by
a show of variegated blooms.
This marvelous sequence of flowers without a gap is not the result of
chance, or even of California's floral prodigality, but of McLaren's
hard-headed calculation. He actually rehearsed the whole floral scheme
of the Exposition for three seasons beforehand. To a day, he knew the
time that would elapse between the planting and the blooming of any
flower he planned to use. Thus he scheduled his gardening for the whole
season so that the gardens should always be in full bloom. In McLaren's
program there are ten months of constant bloom, without a break, without
a wait. No such gardening was ever seen before. Needless to say, it
could hardly have been attempted elsewhere than in California.
III.
The South Gardens
A charming foreground to the great palaces--Palace of Horticulture and
some of its rare plants--Food for pirates--Ancient and blue-blooded
forest dwarfs--The Horticultural Gardens--House of Hoo Hoo--Festival
Hall, with its fine sculptures by Sherry Fry--A remarkable pipe organ.
Entering the Exposition by the main or Scott Street gate, the visitor
has before him the beautiful South Gardens. (See p. 23.) These form an
animated and effective foreground for the Exposition palaces. Except for
their fountains, the gardens and the structures in them are less notable
for sculpture than the central courts of the Exposition. Most of the
plastic work here is purely decorative. The gardens are formal, French
in style, laid out with long rectangular pools, each with a formal
fountain, and each surrounded by a conventional balustrade with flower
receptacles and lamp standards. In harmony with their surroundings, the
buildings, too, are French, of florid, festival style.
The Palace of Horticulture, Bakewell and Brown, architects, is the
largest and most splendid of the garden structures. (p. 24.) Byzantine
in its architecture, suggesting the Mosque of Ahmed I, at
Constantinople, its Gallic decorations have made it essentially French
in spirit. The ornamentation of this palace is the most florid of any
building in the Exposition proper. Yet this opulence is not
inappropriate. In size and form, no less than in theme, the structure is
well adapted to carry such rich decoration. This is the palace of the
bounty of nature; its adornment symbolizes the rich yield of California
fields.
In harmony also with the theme, the human figure is absent from the
sculpture, save in the caryatids of the porches and the groups
supporting the tall finials. Fruits and flowers, interwoven in heavy
garlands and overflowing from baskets and urns, carry out the idea of
profuse abundance. The great dome, larger than the dome of either St.
Peter's at Rome or the Pantheon at Paris, is itself an overturned fruit
basket, with a second latticed basket on its top. The conception of
profusion becomes almost barbaric in the three pavilioned entrances,
flanked on either side by the tall finials suggesting minarets. Here the
Oriental influence of the architectural form, the mosque, becomes most
pronounced, changing to French again in the caryatid porches.
Altogether, the Palace of Horticulture is a beautiful building, but
rather hard to see properly from the ground. From an elevation, where it
appears more as a whole, it is far more effective. Curiously, it
photographs better than any other building here, save the Fine Arts
Palace, but in actual view it hardly lives up to the pictures. Perhaps
this is because the comparatively small portions of the structure seen
between the trees near-by are dwarfed by the huge dome, while in
photographs the camera emphasizes the lower and nearer sections and
reduces the proportions of the dome.
The exhibit housed under the great dome should not be passed by. A vivid
bit of the tropics is the Cuban display. Here, in an atmosphere
artificially heated and moistened to reproduce the steaming jungle, is
massed a splendid exhibit of those island trees and flowers that most of
us know only through pictures and stories of southern seas. Around the
central source of light, which is hidden under tropic vines, stands a
circle of royal palms; and planted thickly over the remaining space are
jungle trees, vivid enough to our imagination, but many of which have
never before been seen in this country.
Boys who feel pirate blood in their veins will revel in this
reproduction of the scenes of imagined adventure. Any reasonable pirate
could be quite happy here. For here is the breadfruit tree, read of in
many a tale of castaways; also the cocoanut palm, with the fruits
hanging among the fronds, waiting for the legendary monkey to scamper up
the trunk and hurl the great balls at the heads of the beholders. Here,
too, are the mango, and many sorts of bananas, and the cabbage palm,
another favorite resource of starving adventurers. With these there are
other jungle denizens,--the bamboo palm, the paperleaf palm, splendid
specimens of the world-old cycad family, the guanabana, and a Tom Thumb
palm, which, full grown, is no more than a handbreadth high.
Ancient among trees are the two specimens of microcycas from the swamps
of Cuba. These Methuselahs of the forest are at least 1,000 years old,
according to the botanists. They are among the slowest growing of living
things, and neither of them is much taller than a man. They were
seedlings when Alfred the Great ruled England, and perhaps four feet
high when Columbus first broke through the western seas. In the four
centuries of Cuban history they have not grown so much again.
These venerable trees belong to the bluest-blooded aristocracy of the
vegetable world. Ages ago they inhabited our northern states. Their
family has come down practically unchanged from the steaming days of the
Carboniferous period, when ferns grew one hundred feet high, and
thronged with other rank tropical growths in matted masses to form the
coal measures. The fossil remains of cycads in the rocks of that period
prove that they once flourished in the tropic swamps where now are the
hills of Wyoming and Dakota.
Scattered among the trees is a host of flowering vines, of huge crotons
with variegated leaves, giant gardenias and tropical lilies. When these
bloom, the air of this transplanted jungle is heavy with the perfume of
their own island habitat.
The Horticultural Gardens south of the Palace belong to it, and contain
a large part of the horticultural exhibits. As they were planted for
competitive exhibition purposes, they will not show the constant beauty
that appears in the South Gardens. Here we must wait for the flowers in
their season, and not expect to have them changed overnight for us by
the gardeners' magic.
Back of this horticultural garden is the House of Hoo Hoo, in Forestry
Court, flanked by the Pine and Redwood Bungalows. It needs but a glance
at its beguiling loveliness to know that here is another lesson in art
and architecture by Bernard Maybeck. Here again is poetry in
architecture, of a different order from the noble theme of Maybeck's
Fine Arts Palace, but none the less poetry. This is a sylvan idyll,
telling of lofty trees, cool shades, and secret bowers of fern and vine
and wild flower, in the moist and tangled redwood forests. There is
little used but rough-barked tree trunks, but what delicate harmony of
arrangement!
This lumbermen's lodge is one building outside the Exposition palaces
that should not be missed, even though almost hidden away against the
south wall. It is worth pondering over. No one may want to build a house
like it, but it proclaims how beauty can be attained with simple
materials and just proportions.
Festival Hall, Robert Farquhar, architect, balances the Palace of
Horticulture in the architectural plan of the South Gardens. (p. 29.)
It, too, is French in style, its architecture suggested by the Theatre
des Beaux Arts in Paris, a design which furnished the dome necessary to
harmonize with that of the palace to the west. As architecture, however,
it fails to hold up its end with the splendid Horticultural Palace. Its
dome is too large, and has too little structure around it, to be placed
so near the ground without an effect of squattiness. Its festive
adornment is extremely moderate. On the cornice above the main entrance
is the rhyton, the ancient Greek drinking horn, symbol of festivity.
The sculpture, all done by Sherry E. Fry, carries out the same idea. The
graceful figures poised on the corner domes are Torch Bearers. On the
pylons at either end of the semicircular arcade of the main entrance are
two reclining figures. On the right is Bacchus, with his grapes and
wineskin,--a magnificently "pickled" Bacchus! On the left a woman is
listening to the strains of festal music. (p. 32.) Each of the pedestals
before the false windows at the ends of the arcade supports a figure of
Flora with garlands of flowers. On the ground below the two Floras are
two of the most delightful pieces of all the Exposition sculpture. One
is a little Pan, pipes in hand, sitting on a skin spread over an Ionic
capital. This is a real boy, crouching to watch the lizard that has
crawled out from beneath the stone. The other is a young girl dreaming
the dreams of childhood. There is something essentially girlish about
this. Unfortunately, it is now almost hidden by shrubbery.
Within Festival Hall is one of the half-dozen greatest organs in the
world. It has more than 7,000 pipes. The heaviest of them weigh as much
as 1,200 pounds apiece. Though mere size is not the essential quality of
a fine instrument, it is hard to ignore the real immensity of this. The
echo organ alone is larger than most pipe organs. This complementary
instrument, which is played from the console of the main organ, is
placed under the roof of the hall, above the center of the ceiling. Its
tones, floating down through the apertures in the dome, echo the themes
of the great organ.
Few organs have so mighty a note as the sixty-four-foot open pitch
attainable on the Exposition's instrument. Speaking by itself, this note
has no sound. It is only a tremendous quaking of the whole building, as
though the earth were shuddering. By itself it has no place in organ
music. It is not intended to be struck alone. It is used only as a
foundation upon which to build other tones. In combination it adds
majesty to the music, rumbling in a gigantic undertone to the lighter
notes.
Even the open stops in this organ are of more than ordinary dimensions.
The usual limit in a pipe organ is the sixteen-foot open stop. But in
this organ there are several pipes, both of wood and of metal,
thirty-two feet or more in length.
Two small buildings, balanced on either side of the Scott-street
entrance, are the Press Building and the Exposition home of the National
Young Women's Christian Association. They are alike, French in style,
and fronted with caryatid porches.
The real glory of the South Gardens lies in their flowers, and in the
charming setting the landscape engineers have here given to the south
facade of the palace group. There is the air of Versailles in the
planned gayety of the scene. In this the pools and fountains, the formal
gardens, the massed trees and shrubbery, and the two palaces themselves,
play their part.
IV.
"The Walled City": It's Great Palaces and their Architecture,
Color and Material
The central group of Exposition structures really a single vast palace,
behind a rampart--Historical fitness of such architecture here--The
south facade--Spanish portals of Varied Industries and Education
Palaces--Italian Renaissance portals of Manufactures and Liberal Arts,
and of the Courts of Flowers and Palms--The Roman west wall--Ornate
doorway of north facade Interior courts and aisles--A balanced plan--
This the first exposition to adopt the colors of nature for its
structures--Jules Guerin's color scheme, designed for an artificial
travertine marble--Simplicity of his palette, from which he painted the
entire Exposition--Even the flowers and sanded walks conform.
Although there are eight buildings named in the central palace group,
these are so closely connected in design and structure that in reality
they make but one palace. Here is seen the unity with variety which
marks this Exposition above all others. Commemorating a great
international event, its architecture is purposely eclectic,
cosmopolitan. Under a dominating Moorish-Spanish general form, the
single architect of the group, W. B. Faville, of San Francisco, drawing
upon the famous styles of many lands and schools, has combined into an
ordered and vastly impressive whole not only the structural art of
Orient and of the great Spanish builders, but also the principles of the
Italian Renaissance and the architecture of Greece and Rome from which
it sprang. Thus the group is wholly Southern in its origin. There is no
suggestion here of the colder Gothic architecture of the North.
Differing from each other in many details, the eight palaces are alike
in their outer walls, their domes and gables, and similar in their
entrances. These portals give a distinctive character to each palace.
While the palaces differ widely in details of decoration, they all have
a common source; they are all Mediterranean,--not all Byzantine, or
Roman, or Italian, or Spanish, or Moorish, but some thing of each. The
manner in which these forms are carried over from one palace to another,
and the almost constant recurrence of some of them, like the Moorish
domes at the corners, blends them without jar or break. The great wall,
almost blank, except for the entrances, encloses the palaces like a
walled city of the Mediterranean or the nearer Orient. Such a walled
city it is, with its courts, its avenues, its fountains and pools, all
placed in a setting of landscape, sea and sky, that might belong to
Spain, or Southern Italy, or the lands of the Moslem.
The broad, unbroken spaces that mark each face of this vast block
greatly heighten the illusion. They lend an Old-World aspect, the
historical fitness of which must not be overlooked. For these plain
surfaces are indeed significant in the celebration of an event which was
predicted by the Spanish conquistadors a century before the English
Cavaliers and Puritans laid the foundations of our American
Commonwealth. Relieved only by the foliage that is finely massed against
them, the great blank spaces of the "Walled City" recall the severer
side of Mediterranean architecture, just as their gorgeously ornate
portals, towers and domes speak of its warmth and color. They are an
architectural feature that has traveled far. The unbroken rampart, born
of the need of defense in immemorial cities on the east and south shores
of the Mediterranean, was carried thence by the Moors to Spain, to go in
turn with the conquerors of the New World, and became a characteristic
of the civic and ecclesiastical architecture of Latin America. Hence it
is not without meaning and reason that this historic architectural form,
the blank exterior of the walled city, has found its finest use in the
far-western city of St. Francis. Quite apart from their frequent
occurrence in the mission architecture of old Alta California, these
simple wall spaces well befit the monumental structure that honors an
achievement so important to all Spanish America as the Panama Canal.
The southern front of the group, facing the Avenue of Palms, has the
aspect of a single palace, opened in the center by the noble Roman arch
of the Tower of Jewels, and indented by the Court of Flowers and the
Court of Palms. (See p. 18, 88.) Seen across the South Gardens, the
whole facade rising from the trees along the wall, is wondrously
beautiful. The wall is seventy feet high, topped with a red-tiled roof.
The pale green domes over the centers of the palaces are Byzantine, a
style much used in the mosques of Islam. The gables are each crowned
with a figure of Victory, sometimes called an "acroterium," from the
architectural name of the tablet on which it stands. The towers on
either side of the entrances to the courts are Italian. The little
towers buttressing the domes on the corners of the palaces at the
extreme right and left of the front, and from there repeated around the
east, west and north walls, are Moorish, with characteristic latticed
windows.
The Palace of Varied Industries, on the extreme right, is made entirely
Spanish in its southern front by its beautiful central portal, modeled
after the sixteenth-century entrance to the Hospice of Santa Cruz at
Toledo. (pp. 18, 37.) Except for the sculpture, in which the Spanish
saints have been replaced by figures of industry, the portal is a copy
of the original. All the figures are the work of Ralph Stackpole, whose
treatment of the subjects, no less than their exalted position in the
niches of the saints, has dignified the workman.
On each side of the entrance is the "Man with a Pick." The group in the
tympanum represents Varied Industries. (p. 138.) The central figure is
Agriculture, the basic food-supplying industry. On one side is the
Builder, on the other the Common Workman. Beyond them are Commerce
holding the figurehead of a ship, and a woman with a spindle, a lamb
before her, typifying the textile industries.
The figure in the keystone represents the Power of Industry. Under the
upper canopy is an old man handing his burden to a younger one, the Old
World passing its burdens on to the New World. The infant figures come
from the Spanish original.
The two lesser portals on the south side of this palace are likewise
Spanish. In the grill work of their openings, designed in imitation of
metal, as well as in that of the central portal, there is a strong
suggestion of the Arabian architecture brought into Spain by the Moors.
Indeed, there is something Moorish about the whole work, except that the
Mohammedans do not represent living things in art. A passage in the
Koran tells devout followers of the prophet that if they should carve or
picture a plant or animal they would be called upon at the Judgment to
make it real. Sometimes, however, they employed Christian workmen to
execute such representations, being quite resigned to let the unbeliever
risk damnation.
The bears terminating the buttresses on the walls represent California,
and hold the seal of the State. Such buttresses against a plain wall,
with a tiled roof, are common in the Franciscan missions of California.
The Palaces of Manufactures and Liberal Arts, on either side of the
Tower of Jewels, are alike on the south, and Italian. The Moorish corner
domes are omitted here, as the palaces terminate on one side in one of
the Italian towers and on the other in the wings of the Tower of Jewels.
The central portals are Italian, with tiled roofs and latticed grills,
with handsome imitations of bronze work under the arches. The friezes
over the arches as well as the figures in the niches are by Mahonri
Young, of New York. The frieze represents industries of various kinds,
the work of women as well as of men. In the niche on the left is a woman
with a spindle, on the right a workman with a sledgehammer. Like
Stackpole's figures on the portal of Varied Industries, Young's
sculptures are simple and strong. The lion used as the keystone figure
of the arch and the lions and elephants alternating as fountain heads in
the niches in the wall give an Oriental touch to these palaces.
Of their portals none are more beautiful than those leading from the
Courts of Flowers and Palms. All four are finely expressive of the
noblest architecture of the Italian Renaissance. They glow with the
sunshine and color of Italy. Those entering the Palaces of Liberal Arts
and Education from the Court of Palms are identical in design, and seem
almost perfect in their harmonious lines and warm color. (p. 88.) The
other pair, opening from the Palaces of Manufactures and Varied
Industries into the Court of Flowers, are cheery portals, made more
domestic in feeling by the loggia between the colonnade and the tiled
roof. (p. 85, 100.)
The three portals of the Palace of Education are of the Spanish
Renaissance, and the Moorish towers reappear at the corners. The twisted
columns of the entrances are Byzantine. The tympanum above the central
portal contains Gustav Gerlach's group "Education." (p. 138.) In the
center is the teacher with her pupils, seated under the Tree of
Knowledge; on the left, the mother instructs her children; on the right,
the young man, his school days past, is working out for himself a
problem of science. Thus the group pictures the various stages of
education, from its beginning at home to that training in the school of
life which ends only at death. The cartouche just above the entrance
bears the Book of Knowledge, shedding light in all directions, the
curtains of darkness drawn back by the figures at the side. The hour
glass below the book counsels the diligent use of time; the crown above
symbolizes the reward of knowledge. The banded globe over the portal
signifies that education encompasses the world.
Above each of the flanking portals is an inset panel representing the
Teacher, a woman at the left, a man at the right. The man looks toward
the woman, thus signifying that the world is no longer dependent on man
alone.
Turning the corner, the entire west wall of the palaces becomes Roman to
accord with the Roman Palace of Fine Arts across the lagoon. The
characteristic features are the Roman half-domes above the entrances,
and the sculptures repeated in the niches of the walls. (p. 119.) On
this side, the Palaces of Education and Food Products are alike, except
for a slight difference in the vestibule statuary and the fountains.
On the great Sienna columns beside the half-domes stands Ralph
Stackpole's "Thought." The semicircle of female figures in the vestibule
of the dome of the Palace of Education, bearing in their hands books
with the motto "Ex Libris," though the preposition is omitted,
represents the store of knowledge in books. The similar array of men
bearing wreaths of cereals in the half-dome of the Palace of Food
Products signifies the source of vigor in the fruits of the soil. The
simple Italian fountains in the vestibules, the work of W. B. Faville,
are decorative and beautiful.
The alternated groups in the niches along the wall are "The Triumph of
the Fields" and "Abundance." This is well called archaeological
sculpture, for the emblems are from the dim past, and can be understood
only with the help of an archaeological encyclopaedia. In the first are
the bull standard and the Celtic cross, which were carried through the
fields in ancient harvest festivals. In the second, the objects heaped
around the lady suggest abundance.
The north facade of the palace group is an unbroken Spanish wall, blank,
except for the four beautiful and identical sixteenth-century portals.
(See p. 43.) This magnificent decoration, suggestive of the finest work
in rare metals, is, in fact, called "plateresque," from its resemblance
to the work of silversmiths. The figures looking out on the blue water
that reaches to Panama and the shores of Peru, are historical. In the
center is the Conquistador. Flanking his stately figure on each side is
the pirate of the Spanish Main, the adventurer who served with but a
color of lawful war under Drake, the buccaneer that followed Morgan to
the sack of Panama. (p. 44.) These statues are by Allen Newman.
Every man jack of the eight pirates on the four portals is apparently
bow-legged. There is a vast space between the knees of these buccaneers
of Panama, but when you look more closely it is hard to decide whether
those pirate knees are really sprung, or whether it is the posture of
the figures that suggests the old quip about the pig in the alley. The
sculptor has at least given to the figures a curious effect of bandy
legs. The feet are set wide apart, the space between and behind the legs
is deeply hollowed out, and the rope which hangs from the hands curves
in over the feet to add to the illusion. There used to be a saying that
cross-eyed people could not be honest. Similarly, perhaps, Newman
thought the appearance of bow-legs would increase the villainy of his
pirate. Certainly, no such blood-curdling ruffian has been seen out of
comic opera.
The east wall of the palace group becomes Old Italian, to harmonize with
the Roman architecture of the Machinery Palace opposite. The portals
suggest those of ancient Italian city walls. In the niches stands Albert
Weinert's "Miner," here used because the Palace of Mines forms one half
the wall.
In the long avenue that runs east and west through the center of the
group, the unity of the eight buildings becomes more apparent as we view
the noble arches which join them, and note the character of their inner
facades. Education and Food Products are alike in the walls and portals
fronting on the dividing aisle. The Spanish architecture of the south
facade of Education is here carried over to Food Products. Similarly,
the avenue between Mines and Varied Industries is the same on both
sides, carrying out the Old Italian of the east front, and with The
Miner repeated in the portal niches of both palaces. The avenues leading
from the Court of the Universe to the Court of Ages and the Court of
Seasons have been variously called the Aisles of the Rising and the
Setting Sun, or the Venetian and Florentine Aisles. Their four walls are
in the style of the Italian Renaissance, and show a diaper design
similar to that on the Italian towers of the Courts of Flowers and
Palms.
In an artistic sense, this group is incomplete without the Palace of
Fine Arts on the west and Machinery Hall on the east. (p. 105, 106.)
Balancing each other in the general scheme, they form the necessary
terminals of the axis of the Exposition plan. This matter of balance has
been carefully thought out everywhere, and affords a fine example of the
co-operation of the many architects who worked out the vast general
design. The Courts of Seasons and Ages are set off against each other;
the Courts of Palms and Flowers weigh equally one against the other; the
Arches of the Nations not only balance but match; even the Tower of
Jewels, which is the center of the whole plan, is offset by the Column
of Progress. In the South Gardens, the Palace of Horticulture is
balanced against Festival Hall.
Color and Material.--All other Expositions have been almost colorless.
This is the first to make use of the natural colors of sea and sky, of
hill and tree, and to lay upon all its grounds and buildings tints that
harmonize with these. Jules Guerin, the master colorist, was the artist
who used the Exposition as a canvas on which to spread glorious hues.
Guerin decided, first, that the basic material of the buildings should
be an imitation of the travertine of ancient Roman palaces. On this
delicate old ivory background he laid a simple series of warm, yet
quiet, Oriental hues, which, in their adaptation to the material of
construction and to the architecture, as well as in their exquisite
harmony with the natural setting, breeds a vast respect for his art.
The color scheme covers everything, from the domes of the buildings down
to the sand in the driveways and the uniforms of the Exposition guards.
The walls, the flags and pennants that wave over the buildings, the
shields and other emblems of heraldry that hide the sources of light,
draw their hues from Guerin's plan. The flowers of the garden conform to
it, the statuary is tinted in accordance with it, and even the painters
whose mural pictures adorn the courts and arches and the Fine Arts
Rotunda were obliged to use his color series. The result gives such life
and beauty and individuality to this Exposition as no other ever had. It
makes possible such beautiful ornamentation as the splendid Nubian
columns of the Palace of Fine Arts, and the glories of the arches of the
Court of the Universe. (See frontispiece.)
Go into that Court on a bright day and take note of the art that has
made Nature herself a part of the color plan. From a central position in
the court, where one can look down the broad approach leading from the
bay, Nature spreads before the beholder two expanses of color, the deep
blue of salt water sparkling in the sun, and the not less deep, but more
ethereal, blue of the California sky. With this are the browns and
greens of the hills beyond the bay, and, nearer at hand, the vivid
verdure of lawns and trees and shrubs. All these the designer used as
though they were colors from his own palette. To go with them in his
scheme he chose for pillar and portico, for the wall spaces behind, for
arch and dome, for the decorations and for material of the sculptures,
such hues that the whole splendid court and its vistas of palaces beyond
blend with the colors of sea and sky and of green living things in a
glorious harmony.
Such a view of the heart of the Exposition at its best compels
recognition of Guerin's skill in color. It needed a vivid imagination to
realize the possibilities of the scene, and visualize it. It required
infinite delicacy and a fine sense of the absolute rightness of shade
and tint to produce such harmonious beauty. The mere thought of it is a
lesson in art.
The decision of the architects to develop the theme of an Oriental
walled city, and the natural setting of the site, Mediterranean in its
sea and sky, led Guerin to select Oriental colors. Aiming at simplicity,
he decreed that not more than eight or nine colors should be found upon
the subdued palette from which he would paint the Exposition. Then he
took into consideration the climate and atmospheric conditions peculiar
to San Francisco. Every phase of sky and sea and land, every shadow upon
the Marin hills, across the bay, was noted in choosing an imitation of
natural travertine for the key color of the Palaces.
This is a pale pinkish-gray-buff, which may be called old ivory. It is
not garish, as a dead white would be, especially in the strong
California sunlight, but soft and restful to the eye. It harmonizes with
the other colors selected, and, most important of all, it avoids a
certain "new" effect which pure white would give, and which is deadly to
art.
Paul Deniville, who had already developed a successful imitation of
travertine, was engaged to make the composition to be applied over the
exterior walls. This is a reproduction in stucco of the travertine
marble of the Roman palaces of the period of Augustus. This marble is a
calcareous formation deposited from the waters of hot springs, usually
in volcanic regions, and is common in the hills about Rome. It often
contains the moulds left by leaves and other materials incorporated in
the deposit. These account for the corrugations of the stone when it is
cut. In California, as in other regions where hot springs are found,
travertine is not uncommon. It is found notably in the volcanic district
of Mono County, and elsewhere, sometimes in the form of Mexican onyx,
which is only a translucent variety of the same marble. In its
reproduction here the marble has been imitated even to the natural
imperfections which roughened the Italian stone. In the concave surfaces
of the ornamentation the color has been deepened, so that it appears
sometimes as a rich reddish brown. All this enhances the antique effect,
making the palace walls and columns still more like those of the old
Roman construction.
Besides the travertine the eight other colors employed are:
1. French Green, used in all lattices, flower tubs, curbing of great
plats, where it complements the green of the grass, In the exterior
woodwork and some of the smaller doors.
2. Oxidized Copper Green, a peculiar mottled light green. All the domes,
except the six yellow ones in the Court of the Universe, are of this
light green. It forms a sharp contrast with the blue sky and a pleasing
topping to the travertine walls.
3. Blue Green, found in the ornamentation of the travertine, and in the
darker shades at the bases of the flag poles. These first three colors,
all in tones of green, are regarded as one unit in the spectrum of nine
colors allowed by Guerin.
4. Pinkish-Red-Gold, used in the flag poles and lighting standards only.
It is a very brilliant and striking pigment, and is always topped with
gold.
5. Wall-Red, used in three tones. They are found in the backgrounds of
the colonnades, courts and niches, on the tiled roofs, and in the
statuary. These reds run from terra-cotta to a deep russet, and
predominate in the interiors of the principal courts.
6. Yellow-Golden-Orange, largely used in enriching the travertine and in
enhancing shadow effects. It is found in the architectural mouldings and
in much of the statuary. The following rule was adopted in regard to the
coloring of the statuary: That which is high off the ground, that is,
the figures surmounting the domes and spires, is of golden yellow, while
that close to the eye of the beholder is of verde-antique, a rich
copper-green streaked with gray, and much is left in the natural
travertine tint.
7. Deep Cerulean Blue and Oriental Blue, verging upon green, are used in
the ceilings and other vaulted recesses, in deep shadows, in coffers and
in the background or ornamentation in which travertine rosettes are set
in cerulean blue panels. It might be called electric blue. It is
brilliant and at the same time in harmony with the other colors.
8. Gray, very similar to the travertine.
9. Marble Tint, spread over the travertine in places with a transparent
glaze.
10. Verde-Antique, really one of the many shades of green--a
combination of the copper-green and a soft gray, and therefore not to be
counted as one of the nine cardinal colors. It simulates corroded
copper, and has faint yellow and black lines.
With the gamut thus restricted by the taste and discrimination of a
master, the decorators and artists were strictly limited to the nine
colors named. No one might use other than cerulean blue, if he employed
blue at all; no other red than the tone popularly known as "Pompeiian"
has been admitted in the scheme. In this red the admixture of brown and
yellow nullify any tendency towards carmine on crimson. The French and
the copper greens and the intermediate shades approved by Guerin are the
only greens allowed.
Here is seen the great advantage of a one-man idea. No other exposition
was ever so carefully or successfully planned in this particular. There
is no court of one color clashing with a dome, palace or tower of
conflicting tone, whether near by or at a distance. All is in harmony.
Working with Guerin, John McLaren, in charge of the landscape gardening,
so selected the flowers which border the paths and fill the parterres
that they too conform to the color scheme. Though three different
complete floral suits are to be seen at the Exposition in three periods,
each one accords with the hues of wall and tower, completing in harmony
the effect of the whole. The pinkish sand spread on the paths and
avenues to harmonize with other ground colors was not always tinted.
Some one had noticed that the white beach sand at Santa Cruz turned pink
when heated. Seizing upon this fact, McLaren and Guerin used it to give
a final touch to their scheme of color. They drew another lesson from
the washerwoman. A familiar laundry device was used to give sparkle and
brilliance to the waters of the pools and lagoons. They were blued, not
by dumping indigo into the water, but by tinting the bottoms with blue
paint.
V.
The Tower of Jewels
Imposing as the central accent of the Exposition's architecture--Its
magic glow at night--A magnificent Roman arch--"Jewels" of the Tower--
An historical landmark--Inscriptions, sculpture and murals--Fountains
of "Youth" and "El Dorado"--An epitome of the Exposition's art.
The Tower of Jewels, Carrere and Hastings, architects, is the central
structure in the Exposition architecture. (See p. 47.) It plays a triple
role. In architecture it is the center on which all the other buildings
are balanced. In relation to the theme of the Exposition, it is the
triumphal gateway to the commemorative celebration of an event the
history of which it summarizes in its sculpture, painting and
inscription. Last of all, it is an epitome of the Exposition art.
Towering above everything else, it is at once the culminating point and
the center of the Exposition scheme. It links the palaces of the central
group, otherwise divided into two sections. Upon it rests the balance of
Festival Hall and the Palace of Horticulture, of the courts, the
gardens, the Palace of Machinery and the Palace of Fine Arts. It finds
its own balancing structure in the Column of Progress. It is intended to
be the first thing seen from afar, the point from which the eye travels
to lesser things on either hand.
At night the Tower remains the center of the transformed Exposition.
Under the white light of the powerful projectors, details disappear, the
structure is softened into a form almost ghostly. It becomes ethereal.
All its daytime glitter gone, it seems really spiritual. The jewels hung
over the upper portion do not flash out a diamond brilliance, as they
might have been expected to do; rather they spread the light in a soft
film about the Tower. (p. 135.)
From close at hand, the arch and its flanking colonnades are truly
imperial. There the ornamentation and color of the upper part are not in
the eye. Up to the cornice above the arch, the mass of the Tower is
magnificent in proportion and harmonious in line and color. It almost
seems that the builders might have stopped there, or perhaps have
finished the massive block of the arch with a triumphant mass of
sculpture.
Studied from the ground underneath the Tower and around it, the arch and
the two little colonnaded courts in the wings are gloriously free and
spacious, with the spaciousness that the Exposition as a whole reflects,
that of the sea and sky of its setting. I walked here when the ocean
breeze, fresh from winter storms at sea, was sweeping through them.
There is no confinement, no sense of imprisonment from the boundless
depths of air outside. Something which the architect could not include
in his plans has come in to make constant this increase in the sense of
freedom and space. The openings of the arches, being the only free and
unconfined passageways through the south facade of the palace group,
provide the natural draft on this side for the interior courts. The air
rushes through at all times, even when no breeze is stirring outside.
This uncramped movement of air currents, far from being unpleasant,
gives the same sense of open freedom that one gets on a bold headland,
where the ocean winds whip the flowers and lay the grass flat.
From the court behind the Tower you see the mansioned hills of San
Francisco through the colonnades like panelled strips of painting; and,
looking northward, the long spaces over the bay to the great Marin hills
beyond.
The jewels on the Tower give it a singularly gay and lively touch when
the sun is bright and the wind blowing. The wind is seldom absent around
the top of so lofty a structure, and there these bits of glass are
always sparkling. At night they produce, under the strong white light of
a whole battery of giant reflectors hidden on other buildings, the
mystic haze that shrouds the Tower. They were a fine idea of the chief
of illumination, W. D'A. Ryan, giving just a touch of brilliance to an
Exposition otherwise clothed in soft tones. The jewels are only hard
glass, fifty thousand of them cut in Austria for the purpose, prismatic
in form, and each backed with a tiny mirror. Hung free to swing in the
wind, they sparkle and dance as they catch the sun from different
angles.
As the great gate to the Exposition, the Tower becomes historical in
relation to the event celebrated beyond its archway. Its purpose, from
this point of view, is to tell the entering visitor briefly of the
milestones along the way of time up to the digging of the Canal. Its
enrichment of sculpture, painting and inscription summarizes the story
of Panama and of the Pacific shore northward from the Isthmus. The
architect has expressed in its upper decorations something of the
feeling of Aztec art. The four inscriptions on the south faces of the
arches tell how Rodrigo de Bastides discovered Panama in 1501; how
Balboa first saw the Pacific Ocean in 1513; how the United States began
to dig the Canal in 1904, and opened it in 1915. The four on the north
faces epitomize the history of California, thus honored as the state
that commemorates the opening of the Canal. They speak of Cabrillo's
discovery of California in 1542, of the founding of the Mission of San
Francisco by Moraga, in 1776, of the acquisition of California by the
United States, 1846, and its admission to the Union in 1850.
The sculpture carries out the same idea. Pizarro and Cortez sit their
horses before the Tower, splendid figures of the Spanish conquerors, the
one by Charles C. Rumsey, the other by Charles Niehaus. (p. 48.) Above
the entablature of the supporting columns are repeated around the outer
wall of the arch, Adventurer and Priest, Philosopher and Soldier, types
of the men who won the Americas, all done by John Flanagan. Above the
cornice, the mounted figures by F. M. L. Tonetti are those of the
Spanish cavaliers, with bannered cross. The eagles stand for the Nation
that built the Canal. Excellent in spirit are Flanagan's figures of the
four types, especially that of the strikingly ascetic Priest. (p. 44.)
Besides their symbolism, the statues fulfill a useful architectural
purpose in relieving what would otherwise be the blankness of the wall.
But the same cannot be as truly said of the Armoured Horsemen above.
Vigorous as they are, they are not in the right place. They clutter up
the terrace on which they stand. The globe on the pinnacle, with its
band, signifies that now a girdle has been put around the earth.
On the side walls of the arch under the Tower, the murals by William de
Leftwich Dodge tell the story of the triumphant achievement which the
Exposition commemorates. On the east, the central panel pictures Neptune
and his attendant mermaid leading the fleets of the world through the
Gateway of All Nations. (p. 53.) On one side Labor, with its machines,
draws back from the completed task, and, on the other, the Intelligence
that conceived the work and the Science that made it possible, move
upward and onward, while a victorious trumpeter announces the triumph.
One figure, with covered face, flees from the appeal of the siren, but
whom he represents, or why he flees, I cannot tell.
In the smaller panel to the left, Labor is crowned and all who served
with toil are acclaimed. Its companion picture on the right represents
Achievement. The Mind that conceived the work is throned, the Sciences
stand at one side, while a figure crouching before the bearer of rewards
points to Labor as equally worthy.
On the west side of the arch, the central panel portrays the meeting of
Atlantic and Pacific, with Labor joining the hands of the nations of
east and west. In the panel to the left, enlightened Europe discovers
the new land, with the savage sitting on the ruins of a forgotten
civilization, the Aztec once more. On the right America, with her
workmen ready to pick up their tools and begin, buys the Canal from
France, whose labor has been baffled.
The two lovely fountains in the wings of the Tower draw their
inspiration from the days of the conquistadors. Mrs. Harry Payne
Whitney's Fountain of El Dorado is a dramatic representation of the
Aztec myth of The Gilded One, which the followers of Cortez, in their
greed for gold, mistook for a fact instead of a fable. (p. 54.) The
Fountain of Youth by Edith Woodman Burroughs finds its justification as
a part of the historical significance of the Tower in the legend of that
Fountain of Eternal Youth sought by Ponce de Leon. (p. 53.) The
interpretation of these sculptures is set forth in the chapter on
Fountains.
The Tower of Jewels epitomizes the Exposition's art. The glories of its
architecture, color, sculpture, painting, and landscape gardening all
find an expression here. In architecture it reflects something of almost
all of the orders found in the Exposition. In the main it is Italian
Renaissance, which means that the basic characters are Roman and Greek,
enriched with borrowings from the Orient and Byzantium. In column and
capital, in wall and arch and vaulted ceiling, it represents the
architecture of the whole Exposition, and so harmoniously as to form a
singular testimony to the unity of the palace scheme.
In color, from the dull soft gold of the columns of the colonnades on
either wing, through the vivid hues of Dodge's allegorical murals under
the arch, and the golden orange and deep cerulean blue in the vaulted
recesses, up to the striking green of columns on the upper rounds of the
Tower, the structure summarizes all the pigments which the master of
color, Guerin, has laid upon the Exposition.
In sculpture, the conquistadors in front, the hooded Franciscans and the
Spanish warriors who stand around the cornice, the corner figures on the
Tower above, and, finally, the great globe on top, repeat in varied form
the themes of palace, court, facade, and entrance. It has its own
fountains in its own little courts.
Then, as a final touch to complete this epitome of Exposition art, the
dark cypresses set in the niches on either side of the openings of the
arch, gracefully express the debt the whole palace scheme owes to its
landscape engineer. In the original models of the Tower, these niches
were designed for vases. It was a happy thought that placed the
cypresses there instead.
VI.
The Court of the Universe
Most important of the three great courts of the "Walled City"--
A meeting-place of East and West--Roman in its architecture and
atmosphere, suggesting the vast Piazza of St. Peter's Triumphal Arches
of the Nations--Their types of the great races of Orient and Occident--
Fine mural paintings by Simmons and Du Mond--Fountains of the Rising
and the Setting Sun--Aitken's "Elements"--The "Column of Progress."
The court is the key to the scheme of the palace group of the
Exposition. Leaving out the state and foreign quarters, and the other
suburbs, and omitting the Fine Arts Palace and Machinery Hall, which,
from a purely architectural standpoint, are merely balanced ornaments
needed to complete the whole, the Exposition city is a palace of blank
walls enclosing three superb courts.
The court is an essential element of the Oriental architecture of the
Mediterranean, which provided the theme of the Exposition plan. There,
however, it is the patio, the place of the siesta, the playground of the
children. Here the courts have been made the chief architectural feature
of the group. There the courts are private. Here they are merely hidden.
The central court at the Exposition, the largest and the most splendid,
is the Court of the Universe. (See p. 63.) It is the most important,
too, in the story which its sculptures tell, and in its relation to the
purpose of the Exposition. Whether it is also the most beautiful is a
matter about which opinions differ. Many persons admire Mullgardt's
romantic Court of Ages beyond anything else, while others are in love
with the calm Court of Seasons. Paradoxically, the Court of the Universe
suffers from its very magnificence. It is so vast that the beholder is
slow to feel an intimate relation with it. The same is true of some of
the noblest sights in nature. First seen, there is something
disappointing in the Grand Canyon. There is too much in the view to be
comprehended until after many days. In this court, the visitor is
pleased with its splendid proportions, its noble arches, its rich
sculpture, the wonderful blending of its colors with those of sea and
sky; but the pleasure at first is of the intellect rather than of the
emotions. Like other big and really fine things, it grows on one. The
sweep of its colonnades is majestic, the arches are noble monuments, the
Column of Progress is inspiring, the fountains show a graceful play of
water, the sculpture is big, strong, and significant; the flowers of the
sunken garden are a glory long to be remembered.
The Court of the Universe is Roman in architecture, treated in the style
of the Italian Renaissance. Its commanding features, the Triumphal
Arches and the magnificent flanking colonnades are most Roman in spirit,
their Italian decoration appearing in the medallions and spandrels of
the arches, the garlands hung along the entablature of the colonnade,
and the interior adornment of the vaulted corridors. The columns,
including the huge Sienna shafts before the arches and the Tower of
Jewels, are Roman Corinthian, with opulent capitals, though not too
florid when used in a work of such vast extent. Most Roman of all is the
great Column of Progress, at the north end of the court.
McKim, Mead and White of New York, the architects, had the Piazza of St.
Peter's at Rome in mind when they designed this great sweep of
colonnades. There, too, they borrowed from the circle of saints the idea
of the repeated Star figure. The colonnade not only encloses the court
but is produced along the sides of the Palaces of Agriculture and
Transportation to form two corridors of almost Egyptian vastness. These
two features, the arches and the colonnades, here at the center of the
palace group, strike the Exposition's note of breadth. Their decoration
is the key to the festal richness of all the adornment.
By day the four entrances to the court are its finest features. Nowhere
in the whole Exposition is the air more gloriously free than around the
lofty arch and colonnades of the Tower of Jewels. Nowhere is the
sunlight purer, or the sky bluer, than over the broad approach leading
up from the glancing waters of the bay, past the aspiring Column of
Progress, and between the noble colonnades of the palaces on either
hand. From within the court, or from the approaches on east and west,
the triumphal Arches of the Nations impress one with the magnificence of
their proportions, their decoration, and their color. There the Oriental
hues of the Exposition are carried upward, to meet and blend with the
sky, and magically to make the heavens above them bluer than they really
are. (See frontispiece.)
There is little Oriental about the court, except the color and the group
of the Nations of the East above the Arch of the Rising Sun. The
colonnade is Corinthian, all the arches are Roman, the sculpture is
classic, the paintings are romantic, mystic,--the Court of the Universe
may properly hold all things. It is thus an arena for the expression of
universal themes, on which the nations of the East and West look down
from their lofty Arches of Triumph. With this key, the symbolism of the
sculpture in the court is easy. The Stars, by Calder, stand in circle
above the colonnade. The frieze below the cornices of the pavilion
towers represents the Signs of the Zodiac, by Herman A. MacNeil.
The graceful figures atop the two fountain columns in the oval sunken
garden are the Rising and the Setting Sun, by Adolph A. Weinmann. (p.
69.) In the east the Sun, in the strength of morning, the masculine
spirit of "going forth," has spread his wings for flight; in the west,
the luminary, now essentially feminine, as the brooding spirit of
evening, is just alighting. The sculptural adornment of the shafts is
detailed in the chapter on Fountains.
The titanic Elements slumber on the balustrade, one on either hand of
the stairways leading down on north and south into the sunken area. (p.
64.) On one side, on the north, the Elemental Power holds in check the
Dragon of Fire. The whole figure expresses the primitive terror of Fire,
a fear that still lives in the beasts. On the other side lies Water, the
roaring Ocean, kelp in his hair, Neptune's trident in his hand, by him
one of his fabled monsters. On the south, eagles of the Air hover close
to the winged figure of the woman, who holds up the evening star and
breathes gently down upon her people. Icarus, who was the first airman,
appears upon her wings. Opposite, rests Earth, unconscious that her sons
struggle with her. These remarkably expressive figures are the work of
Robert Aitken.
The youthful groups by Paul Manship upon the extremities of the
balustrade, on either hand of the eastern and western stairways,
represent Music and Poetry, Music by the dance, Poetry by the written
scroll. The sculpture is archaic in type,--an imitation of Greek
imitations of still earlier models.
The colossal groups on the Arches of the Nations symbolize the meeting
of the peoples of the East and West, brought together by the Panama
Canal, and here uniting to celebrate its completion. In the group of the
Nations of the East the elephant bears the Indian prince, and within the
howdah, the Spirit of the East, mystic and hidden. (p. 63.) On the right
is the Buddhist lama from Tibet, representative of that third of the
human race which finds hope of Nirvana in countless repetitions of the
sacred formula, "Om Mani Padme Hum." Next is the Mohammedan, with the
crescent of Islam; then a negro slave, and then a Mongolian warrior, the
ancient inhabitant of the sandy waste, a type of those Tartar hordes
which swept Asia under Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. On the left of the
Indian elephant are an Arab falconer, an Egyptian mounted on a camel and
bearing a Moslem standard, then a negro slave bearing a basket of fruit
on his head, and a sheik from the deserts of Arabia, all representing
the Mohammedans of the nearer East. Thus are figured types of the great
Oriental races, the Hindoo, the Tartar, which includes the Turk and the
northern Chinese; the Chinese stock of the south, the Arab, and the
Egyptian. Only the Persian is omitted, and possibly the Japanese, unless
that, too, is Mongol.
On the Arch of the Setting Sun, the prairie schooner is the center of
the group of the Nations of the West, on the top a figure of Enterprise,
the Spirit of the West. (p. 59.) On either side of her is a boy. These
are the Heroes of Tomorrow. Between the oxen rides the Mother of
Tomorrow. Beside the ox at the right is the Italian immigrant, behind
him the Anglo-American, then the squaw with her papoose, and the horse
Indian of the plains. By the ox at the left is the Teuton pioneer,
behind him the Spanish conquistador, next, the woods Indian of Alaska,
and lastly the French Canadian.
Three sculptors collaborated in the modeling of these groups, A.
Stirling Calder, Leo Lentelli, and Frederick G. R. Roth.
Of the Mural Paintings under the Arches of the Nations, the two by
Edward Simmons in the arch on the east are an allegory of the movement
of the peoples across the Atlantic, while those by Frank Vincent Du Mond
in the western arch picture in realistic figures the westward march of
civilization to the Pacific. Historically, the picture on the southern
wall of the Arch of the Nations of the East comes first. Here Simmons
has represented the westward movement from the Old World through natural
emigration war, conquest, commerce and religion, personifying these in
types of the people who have crossed the Atlantic. On the strand, beyond
which appear types of the navies of the ages, are the following: an
inhabitant of the fabled Atlantis, here conceived as a savage; the Greek
warrior, perhaps one of those who fared with Ulysses over the sea to the
west; the adventurer and explorer, portrayed as Columbus; the colonist,
Sir Walter Raleigh; the missionary, in garb of a priest; the artist, and
the artisan. All are called onward by the trumpet of the Spirit of
Adventure, to found new families and new nations, symbolized by the
vision of heraldic shields. Behind them stands a veiled figure, the
Future listening to the Past. The long period in which this movement has
been in progress is expressed by the dress of the travellers.
This might be called the Material Movement to the West, for the picture
opposite depicts the Ideals of that progress. Hope leads the way, though
some of the Hopes, shown as bubbles, were but Illusions. Then follow
Adventure, Art, Imagination, Truth, Religion, and the spirits of
domestic life. Simmons' work is characterized by grace and delicacy. The
pictures are pleasing as form and color alone, but without titles the
allegories are too difficult for people unaccustomed to interpreting
this kind of art.
Du Mond's two murals in the western arch are easier. They make a
continuous story. The first chapter, on the north side, pictures the
emigrant train, led by the Spirit of Adventure, leaving for the West,
while the second shows the pioneers reaching the shores of the Pacific
and welcomed by California. To express the many-sided development of the
West, Du Mond has portrayed individuals as the types of the pioneers.
Here are Junipero Serra, the priest; Anza, the Spanish captain who first
trod the shores of San Francisco Bay; Joseph Le Conte, the scientist;
Bret Harte, the author; William Keith, the artist; and Starr King, the
divine. The energy of these men has actually outstripped the Spirit of
Adventure. Du Mond's story parallels in a way that pictured by Simmons.
Color and composition are both exceedingly grateful to the eye.
The Column of Progress, outside the court, commands the entire north
front of the Exposition, as the Tower of Jewels does the southern. (p.
57.) Symmes Richardson, the architect, drew his inspiration from
Trajan's Column at Rome, an inspiration so finely bodied forth by the
designer and the two sculptors who worked with him, MacNeil and Konti,
that this shaft stands as one of the most satisfying creations on the
Exposition grounds. Its significance completes the symbolism of the
Exposition sculpture and architecture, as the joyous Fountain of Energy
at the other end of the north-and-south axis begins it. That fountain
celebrates the completion of the Canal. The Tower of Jewels with its
sculpture tells the historical story of the conquest of the western seas
and their shores. The Court of the Universe is the meeting place of the
Nations, come to commemorate the joining of East and West. From this
Court, a splendid avenue leads down to the border of the Western Ocean,
where stands the Column of Progress, beyond the Exposition. Both in its
position and in its sculpture the column signifies that, this
celebration over, human endeavor stands ready to go on to still vaster
enterprises on behalf of mankind.
The figure atop this Column is the Adventurous Bowman, past human
achievement behind him, seeking a new emprise in the West, whither he
has loosed his arrow. At his back is a figure of Humanity, signifying
the support of mankind. By his side is the woman, ready to crown his
success. (p. 58.) The question has often been asked, why there is no
string to the archer's bow. The sculptor properly omitted it, for, at
the moment the arrow leaves the bow, the cord is vibrating far too
strongly to be visible.
The cylindrical frieze below the Bowman represents the Burden Bearers.
This, with the Bowman, is the work of H. A. MacNeil. The spiral of ships
ascending the shaft symbolizes the upward course of man's progress.
Around the base is the frieze by Isidor Konti, on three sides striving
human figures, on the fourth celestial trumpeters announcing victory.
The whole signifies man's progress through effort. (p. 60.)
Yet the visitor must not look for a story in all the sculpture here or
elsewhere. Some of this art is merely decorative, fulfilling purposes of
harmony or completeness in the general mass. The winged figures by Leo
Lentelli on the columns before the Arches of the Nations are simply
ornaments, relieving, with their shafts, what would otherwise be too
sheer a wall in the structure. They may be angels or they may be genii.
Decorative, also, are the sculptured medallions between these columns,
and the Pegasi on the spandrels of the arch, the medallions done by
Calder, the Pegasi by Roth.
The caryatids in pairs of male and female surmounting the balustrade of
the sunken garden are merely lamp bearers. The spouting monsters in the
fountain pools are but ornamental, and so are the figures in relief
under the basins. Those at the base of the shafts are described in
detail in the chapter on Fountains. In the decoration of the entablature
of the colonnade, the skull of the ox repeated between the garlands
recalls the vicissitudes of the pioneers in their long march across the
continent.
The Court of the Universe, this huge Piazza of the Nations, is thus
all-inclusive. Within its vast oval is room for every theme. From it
lead the ways to all the Exposition. In spirit it is as cosmopolitan
as the Forum under the Caesars. Its art revives for us
"The glory that was Greece,
The grandeur that was Rome."
-
Inscriptions in Court of the Universe
I. Arch of the Rising Sun, east side of the Court.
(a) Panel at center of attic, west side of the Arch, facing the
Court:
The Moon Sinks Yonder in the West While in the East the Glorius Sun
Behind the Dawn Appears. Thus Rise and Set In Constant Change Those
Shining Orbs and Regulate the Very Life of this Our World.
--Kalidasa, India.
(b) Small panel at right of center, facing the Court:
Our Eyes and Hearts Uplifted Seem to Gaze on Heavens' Radiance.
--Hitomaro, Japan.
(c) Small panel at left of center, facing the Court:
They Who Know the Truth are Not Equal to Those Who Love It.
--Confucius, China.
(d) Panel at center of attic, east side of the Arch:
The Balmy Air Diffuses Health and Fragrance. So Tempered is the
Genial Glow That We Know Neither Heat Nor Cold. Tulips and
Hyacinths Abound. Fostered by A Delicious Clime the Earth Blooms
Like A Garden.--Firdausi, Persia.
(e) Small panel at right of center:
A Wise Man Teaches Be Not Angry. From Untrodden Ways Turn Aside.
--Phra Ruang, Siam.
(f) Small panel at left of center:
He That Honors Not Himself Lacks Honor Wheresoe'er He Goes.
--Zuhayr, Arabia.
II. Arch of the Setting Sun, west side of the Court.
(a) Panel at center of attic, east side of the Arch, facing
the Court:
Facing West From California's Shores--Inquiring Tireless Seeking
What is Yet Unfound--I A Child Very Old Over Waves Toward the
House of Maternity the Land of Migrations Look Afar--Look Off the
Shores of My Western Sea the Circle Almost Circled.
--Whitman, America.
(b) Small panel at right of center:
Truth--Witness of the Past Councilor of the Present Guide of the
Future.--Cervantes, Spain.
(c) Small panel at left of center:
In Nature's Infinite Book of Secrecy A Little I Can Read.
--Shakespeare, England.
(d) Panel at center of attic, west side of the Arch:
It is Absolutely Indispensable For the United States to Effect A
Passage From the Mexican Gulf to the Pacific Ocean And I Am Certain
That They Will Do It--Would That I Might Live to See it But I Shall
Not.--Goethe, Germany.
(e) Small panel at right of center:
The Universe--An Infinite Sphere the Center Everywhere the
Circumference Nowhere.--Pascal, France.
(f) Small panel at left of center:
The World is in its Most Excellent State When Justice is Supreme.
--Dante, Italy.
VII.
The Court of the Ages
(Officially called "The Court of Abundance.")
An artist's dream in romantic Orientalism--Mullgardt's own title for it
- His great "Tower of the Ages"--Mullgardt interprets his architectural
masterpiece--Brangwyn's splendid murals, "Earth," "Air," "Fire" and
"Water"--The "Fountain of Earth," by Robert Aitken, realism set amidst
the romantic.
The Court of the Universe is not Oriental, the Court of the Ages is. Not
in architecture, but in feeling, in the atmosphere with which the
architect has invested it, this court brings to mind those brilliant
lands of the Mediterranean touched by the East through the Moors. You
pass under its arcades and walk out into a region of the Sun, warm,
bright, dazzling. The architect, Louis Christian Mullgardt, has caught
the feeling of the South,--not the rank, jungle South of the tropics;
nor the mild, rich South of our own Gulf states; but the hard,
brilliant, arid South of the desert. This court expresses Arizona, New
Mexico, Spain, Algiers,--lands of the Sun. The very flowers of its
first gardens were desert blooms, brilliant in hue, on leafless stalks.
There are orange trees, but they, also, are trees of the Sun, smooth of
leaf, to retain moisture.
It is a court, too, of romance. It might be a garden of Allah, with a
plaintive Arab flute singing, among the orange trees, of the wars and
the hot passions of the desert. It might be a court in Seville or
Granada, with guitars tinkling and lace gleaming among the cool arcades.
It is a place for dreams.
The architecture has been called Spanish Gothic, but, according to the
architect, it "has not been accredited to any established style." We may
well be content to call it simply Mullgardt. The court is an artist's
dream, rather than a formal study in historic architecture; and it is
the more interesting, as it is the more original, for that. Except for
the central fountain, which, fine though it is as a sculptured story, is
out of harmony with the filigreed arcades around it, all the sculpture
in the court is, in feeling, an intimate part of the romantic
architecture. This portion of the art of the court is best considered as
decoration, finding its justification in the beauty it imparts to the
whole. It has genuine meaning, but what that is remains inscrutable so
long as the court is called that of Abundance.
Mullgardt called his creation the "Court of the Ages." He was overruled
because the officials deemed the name not in accord with the
contemporaneous spirit of the Exposition. They called it the "Court of
Abundance." In spite of the name, however, it is not the Court of
Abundance. Mullgardt's title gives a key to the cipher of the statues.
Read by it, the groups on the altar of the Tower become three successive
Ages of Civilization. (See p. 70.)
Tower of the Ages.--This is the most admired of all the Exposition
towers, and with reason. The originality, strength and beauty of its
design set it above anything else of the sort yet seen in America; and
the symbolism of its sculptures, which are the work of Chester Beach, is
of almost equal interest with the tower itself. At the base, on the
gable above the arch, rude of face and form, with beasts low in the
scale, are the people of the Stone Age. Above them is a mediaeval group,
the Crusader, the Priest, the Peasant Soldier armed with a cross-bow,
with similar figures on the side altars. Enthroned over all, with a
crown on her brow, is Modern Civilization, expressed as Intelligence. At
her feet are two children, one with an open book, symbolizing Learning;
the other, a boy with a part of a machine, representing Industry. The
supporting figures on the sides are the Man and Woman of the Present,
sprung from the earlier types. The delicate finials rising from the
summit of the tower express Aspiration.
The two shafts at the head of the court, each surmounted by a huntress
with bended bow, symbolize Earth and Air. Originally they were intended
as finials to the double cascade which was to have swept down to the
court from the Altar of the Ages on the tower. The cascade was not
built, much to the benefit of the beauty of the court, but the ornaments
were suffered to remain. The giddy females who support each shaft are
sufficiently romantic to be in keeping with the decoration of the court.
The three figures repeated around the top of the arcade are of a hunter
dragging a deer, a woman with her offspring on her shoulder, and a
primitive man feeding a pelican, all so happily expressed that they are
an intimate part of the arcade on which they stand. They seem almost to
have grown from their supports. These figures alone, unless we add the
florid ladies of the ornamental shafts, with the rich filigree of the
arcades and the tower, are all that express in any way the idea of
Abundance carried in the present name of the court.
Mullgardt conceived this court as a sermon in stone. Its significance as
a whole is best explained by the architect himself. He interprets the
court as rising in four horizontal strata:
"The court is an historical expression of the successive Ages of the
world's growth. The central fountain symbolizes the nebulous world, with
its innate human passions. Out of a chaotic condition came Water (the
basin), and Land (the fountain), and Light (the Sun, supported by
Helios, and the electroliers). The braziers and cauldrons symbolize
Fire. The two sentinel columns to the right and left of the tower
symbolize Earth and Air. The eight paintings of the four corners of the
ambulatory symbolize the elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. The
central figure in the North Avenue symbolizes 'Modern Time Listening to
the Story of the Ages.'
"The decorative motifs employed on the surrounding arcade are sea-plant
life and its animal evolution. The piers, arches, reeds and columns bear
legendary decorative motifs of the transition of plant to animal life in
the forms of tortoise and other shell motifs;--kelp and its analogy to
the prehistoric lobster, skate, crab and sea urchin. The water-bubble
motif is carried through all vertical members which symbolize the
Crustacean Period, which is the second stratum of the court.
"The third stratum, the prehistoric figures, surmounting the piers of
the arcade, also the first group over the tower entrance, show earliest
forms of human, animal, reptile and bird life, symbolizing the Stone Age
Period.
"The fourth stratum, the second group in the altar tower, symbolizes
human struggle for emancipation from ignorance and superstition, in
which Religion and War are dominating factors. The kneeling figures on
the side altar are similarly expressive. The torches above these
mediaeval groups symbolize the Dawn of Understanding. The chanticleers
on the finials surrounding the court symbolize the Christian Era. The
topmost figure of the altar symbolizes Intelligence, 'Peace on Earth,
Good Will Towards All,' the symbols of Learning and Industry at her
feet. The topmost figure surmounting the side altar symbolizes Thought.
The arched opening forming the enclosure of the altar contains
alternating masks expressing Intelligence and Ignorance in equal
measure, symbolizing the Peoples of the World. A gradual development to
the higher forms of plant life is expressed upward in the altar tower,
the conventionalized lily petal being the highest form."
This, then, is the lesson, the deepest and most spiritual attempted in
any of the Exposition structures, and surely entitling the court to be
called, as its creator wished, the Court of the Ages.
Brangwyn's Murals.--The mural paintings by Frank Brangwyn in the four
corners of the arcades are rich, glorious in color, freighted with the
opulence of the harvest, but they symbolize the four primeval elements--
Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Their themes have nothing to do with
Abundance. It is unfortunate that these pictures, far and away the best
in the decoration of the Exposition, have been hidden in the corners of
a court. The canvases are bold, free, vast as the elements they picture.
They need space. When they were unpacked and hung on the walls of
Machinery Hall, they were far more effective. Here they are cramped by
their close quarters, and easily overlooked. People are not going in to
see them as they should, and so are missing one of the chief joys of the
Exposition,--the masterpieces of one of the world's greatest living
painters.
These representations of the four elements glow and burn with the vivid
hues of nature. All of the pictures have a setting of autumn,, that
season of the year when nature puts on her dying hues, and floods the
earth with color. Their rich reds, purples, yellows, browns, greens and
indigoes are the hues of autumn skies, the falling leaves of hardwoods,
the dense foliage of pines, colors of the harvest, of fruit and grapes,
of flowers, and of deep waters. The men and women in them are primeval,
too, of Mediterranean type, and garbed in the barbaric colors in which
Southern folk express the warmth of their natures.
Free and vivid as is their color, the breadth of primeval liberty is not
less seen in the splendid spaces of Brangwyn's pictures. The forest
vistas are illimitable; the air has the freedom of the Golden Age; the
skies stretch out and up to heaven.
Each set of two pictures represents one of the elements. The first of
the Earth pictures in the northwest corner of the corridor is a harvest
of orchard fruits, products of earth. Tall cypresses on the right
enhance the vast space of sky over the orchard, the best sky in all the
eight paintings. The colors are those of the rich fruits, the autumn
flowers, and the garish costumes of Brangwyn's peasantry. The companion
picture represents a vintage, with great purple grapes hanging among the
bronzing leaves on a trellis, and yellow pumpkins and flowers underfoot.
The color is in these, and in the same Southern costumes seen in the
first picture.
The first of the Air pictures is as easy to read as the second is
difficult. (p. 74.) In it a huge windmill stands on a height against
rain-laden clouds and a glowing rainbow. The slope is covered with
heavy-headed grain, and stained with vivid flowers, all bending before
the swift currents of air. Laborers, men and women, hurry homeward
before the wind, from their task of winnowing grain. Boys flying their
kites complete the symbolism.
In the companion picture a group of archers are loosing their arrows
between the boles of tall, straight hardwoods on the brink of a deep
valley. Great white birds are winging outward through the tops of the
trees. The distance in the sky beyond is wonderful. The color is of the
gorgeous autumn leaves of hardwoods and of rich flowers.
In one of the Water pictures fishermen are drawing a net from a lake
suggested by a fringe of purple, white and yellow iris. The men seem to
stand on an island or a peninsula, for behind them, beyond tall trees,
is a deep indigo lake. Great pregnant clouds float in the sky, and the
picture glows with autumn colors.
In the other, men and women come forward with water jars to a source
suggested by tall white water birds and flowers growing thick among the
sedges. There are the same clouds, big with the promise of rain, and the
same profusion of vivid hues.
Primitive Fire is suggested in the next pair by a thick-clustered group
of peasants with hands outstretched where a thin column of smoke rises
straight. Autumn skies and foliage tell of chill in the air. The colors
burn in dying leaves, in the sky, in fruit and grapes. A man is bringing
a burden of fagots. Men of bovine anatomy crouch before the fire, their
backs arched, their cheeks bulging, as they blow it into flame. These
folk are all primitive, candid in their animalism, Samsons in limb and
muscle. Brangwyn's mastery of anatomy is notable, and he builds his men
with every flexor showing, like a machine.
Pottery burners working around a furnace dimly suggested convey the idea
of Industrial Fire in the last of the pictures. There is the same motif
of cold in the sky and the fruits, intensified by the somber leafage of
fir and pine.
In striking contrast with the light and ethereal quality of the
allegorical murals in the arches of the Court of the Universe, these
paintings are rich to the point of opulence. There is an enormous depth
in them. The figures are full-rounded. The fruits, flowers and grain
hang heavily on their steams. The trees bear themselves solidly. The
colors, laid on with strong and heavy strokes, fairly flame in the
picture.
Public auction is the fate said to be destined by the Exposition company
for these wonderful pictures. It is not to be blamed for this. It is a
business corporation, and these paintings are assets on which it may be
necessary to realize. But if the company finds itself financially able,
it should see to it that the paintings remain in San Francisco as the
property of the city. Like the great organ in Festival Hall, which the
Exposition has promised to install in the Civic Auditorium when the fair
ends, these splendid pictures should be hung in the Auditorium as a gift
to the city.
If the Exposition is not able to give them, an opportunity is presented
for men of wealth to do art a great service in San Francisco. Our
cities, unlike those of Europe and of South America, are not accustomed
to buy works of art. Private generosity, then, must supply the
deficiency.
In the northern extension of the court, beyond the tower, where the
Spanish decoration is carried almost to the bayward facade of the palace
group stands a massive female figure, Modern Time Listening to the Story
of the Ages. Beyond it are four standards of the Sun, like two at the
southern end of the pool in the main court, brilliant at night.
There remains but the central fountain, in the main court, symbolizing
the Earth, done by Robert Aitken. (p. 73.) Taken by itself, this is a
notable work, but it is not in keeping with the romantic spirit of the
Court of Ages. Its figures are magnificently virile, but wholly
realistic. Only at night, when, through clouds of rising steam, the
globe of the Earth glows red like a world in the making, and from the
forked tongues of the climbing serpents flames pour out on the altars
set around the pool,--only then does the fountain become mystic. Even
then it suggests cosmogony, mechanics, physics, which are not romantic,
except in so far as there may be romance of the intellect. However, this
is Aitken, not Mullgardt. The allegories of the group are detailed in
the chapter on Fountains.
VIII.
The Court of the Seasons
A charming bit of Italian Renaissance--Its quiet simplicity--The alcove
Fountains of the Seasons, by Furio Piccirilli--Milton Bancroft's Murals
- The forecourt, with Evelyn Longman's Fountain of Ceres--Inscriptions.
In The Court of the Seasons, the architect, Henry Bacon of New York, has
shown us a charming mood of the Italian Renaissance. (p. 79, 80.) This
court, neither too splendid to be comfortable nor too ornate to be
restful, is full of a quiet intimacy. Nature's calm is here. It is a
little court, and friendly. Its walls are near and sheltering. People
like to sit here in the shelter of the close thickets around the still
pool in the center. I notice, too, that persons hastening across the
grounds come this way, and that they unconsciously slacken pace as they
walk through the court.
This is the only one of the three central courts in which everything is
in harmony. There is nothing obtrusive about it. The effect is that of a
perfect whole, simple, complete. The round pool, smooth, level with the
ground, unadorned, gives its note. The colors are warm, the massive
pillars softly smooth. The trees press close to the walls, the shrubbery
is dense. Birds make happy sounds among the branches. Water falls from
the fountains in the alcoves, not with a roar, but with something more
than a woodland murmur. These fountains touch one of the purest notes in
nature. In cool, high, bare-walled alcoves the water falls in sheets
from terrace to terrace, at last into a dark pool below. The sound is
steady, gently reinforced by echo from the clean walls behind, and
pervasive. It is a very perfect imitation of the sound of mountain
waters.
Nothing in this court takes effort. The pictures and the sculpture of
the alcoves and the half-dome tell their own story. Here is no elusive
mysticism, no obscure symbolism to be dug out with the help of
guidebooks, like a hard lesson. The treasures of the Seasons are on the
surface, glowing in the face of all.
The Seasons are sheltered in the four alcoves, distinguished from each
other only by the fountain groups of Furio Piccirilli and the murals by
H. Milton Bancroft. Neither pictures nor statues need much explanation.
The first alcove to the left of the half-dome is that of Spring. In the
sculptured group of the fountain, flowers bloom and love awakens. It is
a fresh and graceful composition. The murals are on the faces of the
corridor arches. No one can mistake their meaning. Springtime shows her
first blossoms, and the happy shepherd pipes a seasonal air to his
flock, now battening on new grass. In the companion picture, Seedtime,
are symbols of the spring planting.
Next comes Summer, the time of Fruition. (p. 94.) Above the fountain the
mother gives the new-born child to its happy father, and the servant
brings the first fruits of the harvest. This is less likable than the
other groups. The posture of the mother is not a happy one. The two
murals picture Summer and Fruition. Bancroft has taken athletic games as
the symbol of the season. Summer is crowning the victor in aquatic
sports. Conventional symbols of fruits and flowers represent Fruition.
In the group of Autumn, Providence is the central figure, directing the
Harvest. She is bringing in the juice of the grape. The season is
significantly represented in the full modeling of the figures and the
maturity of the adults. The mural of Autumn, in the rich colors of the
dying year, suggests by its symbols of wine and music, the harvest
festival. Opposite, is pictured the Harvest, with the garnered crops.
Last of all is Winter, with the bare desolation of the wintry world in
the melancholy fountain group. Then Nature rests in the season of
conception, while a man sows, his companion having prepared the ground.
In his mural of Winter, Bancroft pictures the snowy days, the fuel piled
against the cold, the chase of the deer, the spinning in the long
evenings. The companion piece represents the festival side of the
season, when men have time to play. The Seasons are complete.
On the walls of the half-dome are two formal paintings by Bancroft,
conventional but charming in their allegory. These are Bancroft's best
murals. In the first, Time crowns Art, while her handmaids, Painting,
Pottery, Weaving, Glass-making, Metal-working and Jewel-making, stand in
attendance. In the other, Man is taught the laws of Love, Life, and
Death, Earth, Fire, and Water.
On the summit of the half-dome is a group representing the Harvest, and
before it, on two splendid columns, are Rain, a woman bearing the cup of
the waters, and Sunshine, another with a palm branch. All three are by
Albert Jaegers. At the other extremity of the court each of the two
pylons is surmounted by a bull, wreathed in garlands, and led by man and
maiden to the sacrifice. These groups, each called the Feast of the
Sacrifice, are also by Albert Jaegers. (p. 79.) The spandrels on the
arches and the female figures on the cornices are by his brother, August
Jaegers.
The abundance of the Seasons is symbolized in the fruit-bearing figures
that form the pilasters of the cornices of the arches, and by the fat
ears of corn depending from the Ionic capitals of the columns. These
types of fruitfulness have a further justification in the neighborhood
of the Palaces of Agriculture and Food Products, which border the court
on the north.
The eastern and western arches are exquisite in their simple proportion,
and the delicate charm of the fresco of their vaulted passages. The
quality of this interior decoration is enhanced by the beauty of the
staff work, which throughout this court is the most successful found in
the Exposition. Here this plaster is soft, rich and warm, and looks more
real and permanent than elsewhere.
I prefer to consider the northern approach between the two palaces as
not a part of this court. The pleasant intimacy of the court would have
been enhanced if it had been cut off from this approach by an arch. Half
way down the forecourt is the formal fountain of Ceres by Evelyn
Beatrice Longman, which must cheer the hearts of those who would have
all art draped.
-
Inscriptions in Court of Seasons
(a) On arch at east side:
So Forth Issew'd the Seasons of
The Yeare--First Lusty Spring All
Dight in Leaves and Flowres.
Then Came the Jolly Sommer Being Dight
In A Thin Silken Cassock Coloured Greene.
Then Came the Autumne All in Yellow Clad.
Lastly Came Winter Cloathed All in Frize
Chattering His Teeth For Cold that Did Him Chill.
--Spenser.
(b) On arch at west side:
For Lasting Happiness We Turn
Our Eyes To One Alone
And She Surrounds You Now.
Great Nature Refuge of the
Weary Heart And Only Balm To
Breasts That Have Been Bruised.
She Hath Cool Hands For Every
Fevered Brow And Gentlest
Silence For the Troubled Soul.
--Sterling.
IX.
The Courts of Flowers and Palms
The Court of Flowers typically Italian--Its delightful garden and
fountain, "Beauty and the Beast," by Edgar Walter--Borglum's fine
group, "The Pioneer"--The Court of Palms is Grecian in feeling--"The
End of the Trail," by Fraser, a chapter in American history--Murals in
the doorways--Arthur Mathews' "Triumph of Culture."
Recessed in the south front of the palace group, and leading back to the
Court of the Seasons and the Court of the Ages, are two perfect smaller
courts, each admirably living up to its name--the Court of Flowers and
the Court of Palms. (See p. 85, 88, 93.) Both courts were designed by
George W. Kelham. Each is a pleasant and colorful bay of sunshine facing
southward between two graceful towers. One is bright with level fields
of flowers, the other cool with greensward and palms set about a sunken
garden. Both are calm, peaceful spots to rest and dream in the sun. Both
are of the South. Here summer first unfolds her robes, and here she
longest tarries.
Though at first sight these courts are much alike, they differ in
feeling and effect. The Court of Flowers is Italian, the Court of Palms
Grecian, though Grecian with an exuberance scarcely Athenian. Perhaps
there is something Sicilian in the warmth of its decoration. When it is
bright and warm, the Court of Palms is most Greek in feeling; less so on
duller days.
But the Court of Flowers is Italian in all moods. With its shady balcony
above the colonnade, it might be in Verona or Mantua. It is a graceful
court, formal, yet curiously informal. Its paired Corinthian columns,
its conventional lions by the porches and its flower girls around the
balcony, its lamp standards and the sculptured fountain, go with formal
gardens. The garden here is itself formal in its planting, and yet so
simple, so natural, that it banishes all ceremony.
This garden is one of the best things in the truly wonderful floral show
at the Exposition. The flowers are massed as we always dream of seeing
them in the fields,--a dream never quite so well realized before. The
areas of the court in the Exposition's opening weeks were solid fields
of daffodils, thick as growing wheat, with here and there a blood-red
poppy, set to accent the yellow gold of the mass. Other flowers have now
replaced these in an equal blaze of color. Here, too, are free, wild
clumps of trees and shrubs, close set, with straggling outposts among
the flowers, as natural as those bordering grain fields in California
valleys.
It is a summery court, lacking but one thing to make it ideally perfect.
It ought to have crickets and cicadas in it, to rasp away as the warm
afternoons turn into evening, and tree hylas to make throaty music in
the still, rich-lighted night.
The statuary goes well with the court. There is a pretty, summery grace
about the flower girls designed by Calder for the niches above the
colonnade, and in the figures of Edgar Walter's central fountain. Here
on the fountain are Beauty and the Beast, Beauty clad in a summer hat
and nothing else, the Beast clothed in ugliness. (p. 100.) Never mind
the story. This is Beauty, and Beauty needs no story. Four airy pipers,
suggestive at least of the song of the cicada on long, hot afternoons,
support the fountain figure. Around the basin of the pool is carved in
low relief a cylindrical frieze of tiger, lion and bear, and, wonder of
wonders, Hanuman, the Monkey King of Hindoo mythology, leading the bear
with one hand and prodding the lion with the other.
Before the court The Pioneer sits his horse, a thin, sinewy, nervous
figure; old, too,--as old as that frontier which has at last moved
round the world. (See p. 87.) The statue, which is by Solon Borglum, is
immensely expressive of that hard, efficient type of frontiersmen who,
scarcely civilized, yet found civilization always dogging their
footsteps as they moved through the wilderness and crossed the deserts.
He is, indeed, the forerunner of civilization, sent forward to break
ground for new states. This group is offset against that other fine
historical sculpture, The End of the Trail, placed before the Court of
Palms. As representatives of the conquering and the conquered race, the
two must be studied together.
The elusive Grecian feeling of the Court of Palms comes in large part
from the simple Ionic columns, and the lines of the gabled arches.
Properly, this court is in the Italian Renaissance, but it is less
Italian than the Court of Flowers. Like that court, it is warm and
sunny, full of color and gladness. It has the same harmonious
perfection, but it is more formal. Its sunken garden is bordered with a
conventional balustrade and grass slopes, with marble seats by the
paths. There is no fountain, only a long pool in the sunken area, and a
separate raised basin at the inner end with gently splashing jets,
giving out a cool and peaceful sound. Fat decorated urns, instead of
lions, guard the entrances to the buildings. Italian cypresses border
the court, with formal clipped acacias in boxes between the pillars of
the colonnade.
The Fountain of Beauty and the Beast, which stands in the Court of
Flowers, was designed to be set here, while Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney's
Fountain of the Arabian Nights was to have found a place in the Court of
Flowers. These two courts were planned as the homes of the fairy tales,
one of Oriental, the other of Occidental lore. Many beautiful things
were designed for them. The attic of the Court of Flowers, which was
intended as the place of Oriental Fairy Tales, was to have carried
sculptured stories from the Arabian Nights. But none of these things was
done. Mrs. Whitney's fountain was modeled but never made, unfortunately,
for the modeled figures are charming.
The only sculpture in the Court of Palms, aside from the "End of the
Trail," which stands before it, is in the decoration of the entablature
and the arches. Horned and winged female caryatids mark off the
entablature into garlanded panels. All the three arches under the gables
are enriched with figures of women and of children supporting a shield,
conventional groups, but graceful.
"The End of the Trail," by James Earle Fraser, of New York, is a great
chapter in American history, told in noble sculpture. The dying Indian,
astride his exhausted cayuse, expresses the hopelessness of the Red
Man's battle against civilization. (p. 86.) There is more significance
and less convention, perhaps, in this than in any other piece of
Exposition sculpture. It has the universal touch. It makes an
irresistible appeal.
To make up for the lack of statuary in this court there are mural
paintings over the entrances leading into the Palaces of Education and
Liberal Arts on either hand, and into the Court of the Seasons. Of these
three lunettes two add little to the beauty of the court except for the
vivid touch of color which they give it. One, over the door of the
Palace of Education, is entitled "Fruits and Flowers," by Childe Hassam.
It is a triumph of straight line applied to the female form. Over the
door of the Palace of Liberal Arts is "The Pursuit of Pleasure,"
ascribed to Charles Holloway. The figures are gracefully drawn, the
coloring flowery. There is better quality in Arthur F. Mathews' "Triumph
of Culture," over the entrance to the Court of Seasons. In color and
force this comes nearer to the splendid standard set by Frank Brangwyn
than anything else in the Exposition's mural decoration. Perhaps that is
too faint praise, for this is a real picture. In it a victorious golden
spirit, crowding aside brute force, allows the Humanities,
representatives of Culture, to triumph as the guardians of Youth. The
figures are human, there is strength and ease in them, and the color is
a deep-toned song.
X.
The Fountains
A characteristic and fitting feature of the Exposition--Fountain of
Energy--The Mermaids--Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's "El Dorado" and
Mrs. Burroughs' "Youth"--Rising and Setting Sun--Piccirilli's
"Seasons"--Aitken's masterpiece, the Fountain of Earth--"Beauty and
the Beast."
The fountain, the spring, the well, is a characteristic note in the life
and art of all lands in the Sun. The Arabians, the Moors, the Spaniards,
the Italians and the Greeks loved fountains. It is less so in the North,
in the regions of much rain, where water flows naturally everywhere. But
nothing is so welcome in a thirsty land as a fountain. Hence there is
appropriateness in the many fountains of this Exposition, which reflects
in its plan the walled cities of the Orient of the Mediterranean, where
fountains play in the courts of palaces, in public squares and niches in
the walls; and pools lie by the mosques, and in the gardens.
Here are many kinds of fountains, from huge masses of sculpture spouting
forth many powerful streams in the sun to terraced basins where water
murmurs in quiet alcoves, and simple jets tinkling in summery courts. Of
those fountains that have especially been dignified and adorned by
sculpture there are fourteen, some single, some in pairs, with one
quartet in the Court of Seasons. Their sequence from the chief gate of
the Exposition follows in a way the symbolic significance of all the
sculpture.
The Fountain of Energy, by A. Stirling Calder, in the center of the
South Gardens before the Tower of Jewels, as a figure of aquatic
triumph, celebrates the completion of the Panama Canal. (See p. 47.)
Resting on a pedestal in the center of the pool, and supported by a
circle of figures representing the dance of the oceans, is the Earth,
surmounted by a figure of Energy, the force that dug the canal. Fame and
Victory blow their bugles from his shoulders. When all the jets are
playing, Energy, horsed, rides through the waters on either hand.
The band around the Earth, decorated with sea horses and fanciful
aquatic figures, represents the seaway now completed around the globe.
On one side a bull-man, a rather weak-chinned minotaur, stands for the
strength of Western civilization; on the other, a cat-woman represents
the civilization of the Eastern hemisphere. Surrounding the central
figure in the pool are the four Oceans,--the Atlantic with corraled
tresses and sea horses in her hand, riding a helmeted fish; the Northern
Ocean as a Triton mounted on a rearing walrus; the Southern Ocean as a
negro backing a sea elephant and playing with an octopus; and the
Pacific as a female on a creature that might be a sea lion, but is not.
Dolphins backed by nymphs of the sea serve a double purpose as
decoration and as spouts for the waters.
The central figure of this fountain has been severely criticized, and
with reason. The design is a beautiful one, but unfortunately not well
adapted to reproduction on so large a scale. Symbolism is here carried
to an extreme that spoils the simplicity which alone makes a really
great work imposing. Calder had a fine idea of a figure of joyous
triumph to stand as the opening symbol of the festival side of the
Exposition. He deserves credit for the real beauty of his design. It is
a pity that a thing so charming as a model should not have worked out
well in heroic proportions.
As a fountain, though, it is splendid. The pool and its spouting figures
are glorious. The play of the waters when all the jets are spouting is
not only magnificent but unique. This veil of water shooting out and
falling in a half sphere about the globe has not been seen before. There
is a real expression of energy in the force of the leaping streams.
Mermaid Fountains, by Arthur Putnam.--At the far end of each of the
lovely pools in the South Gardens is an ornamental fountain of ample
basins topped by a graceful mermaid, behind whose back a fish spouts up
a single jet of water. These are formal fountains, but exceedingly
harmonious. Without trying to be pretentious, they achieve an effect of
simple beauty. (p. 99.)
"El Dorado" and "Youth."--Within the colonnaded wings of the Tower of
Jewels are two fountains which carry' out the symbolism of the days of
the Spanish explorers in their themes, the Aztec myth of El Dorado, and
the fabled Fountain of Youth, sought by Ponce de Leon. In their way,
these are the loveliest fountains on the Exposition grounds, though they
differ so from all the rest that comparison is not easy. The naive
conception of the Fountain of Youth and the realistic strength of that
of El Dorado lead visitors back to them again and again. They are hidden
fountains, as their prototypes were hidden. Each terminates one of the
two open colonnades with a central niche composition flanked on either
hand by a sculptured frieze. Each is the work of a woman sculptor, and
both, though very different, are far from the conventional or the
commonplace.
The Fountain of El Dorado, by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, tells the
story of an Aztec myth of a god whose brilliance is so dazzling that the
sun is his veil, and who lives in a darkened temple lest his light
destroy humanity. (p. 54.) At the center of the recessed wall are doors
of the deity's shaded abode, a guardian on either side. In the friezes
naked humanity moves ever onward, striving to reach the home of the god.
The figures, in full relief, are splendid in their grace and vigor. Here
are men and women whom nothing can hold back; here are those who must be
pushed along, some who linger for love, others for worldly goods; but
all, the strong and the faint, the eager and the tardy, move forward
irresistibly to their destiny.
In Wait's "The Stories of El Dorado," the following account is given of
this aboriginal myth of an expected Indian Messiah, El Hombre Dorado,
the Gilded Man, as the Spaniards interpreted the native words,--which
played a fateful part in the history of the primitive races of Spanish
America:
"No words incorporated into the English language have been fraught with
such stupendous consequences as El Dorado. When the padres attempted to
tell the story of the Christ, the natives exclaimed 'El Dorado'--the
golden. The ignorant sailors and adventurers seized upon the literal
meaning, instead of the spiritual one. The time, being that of Don
Quixote and of the Inquisition, accounts for the childish credulity on
one side and the unparalleled ferocity on the other. The search for El
Dorado, whether it was believed to be a fabulous country of gold, or an
inaccessible mountain, or a lake, or a city, or a priest who anointed
himself with a fragrant oil and sprinkled his body with fine gold dust,
must always remain one of the blackest pages in the history of the white
race. The great heart of humanity will ever ache with sympathy for the
melancholy and pitiful end of the natives, who at the time of the
conquest of Mexico were confidently expecting the return of the mild and
gentle Quetzalcoatl,--the Mexican variant of this universal myth. * * *
The Golden Hearted came from an island in the East, and to this he
returned, in the legend. In all variants, he gave a distinct promise of
return. This accounts for the awe inspired by Europeans in the minds of
the natives, causing them everywhere to fall easy victims of the
unscrupulous adventurers swarming into their country. Fate never played
a more cruel prank than to have one race of men speak and act constantly
from the standpoint of tradition, while the other thought solely of
material gain."
Interesting, too, is Mrs. Edith Woodman Burroughs' conception of the
Fountain of Youth. (p. 53.) The beautiful central figure is a girl child
standing without self-consciousness by blooming primroses. Modeled
faintly on the pedestal are the parents, from whose upturned faces and
uplifted hands the primroses seem to spring. In the friezes, wistful old
people are borne onward to Destiny in boats manned by joyous chubby
children, unconscious of their priceless gift of youth to which their
elders look back with so much longing.
Fountains in the Court of the Universe.--Passing through the Tower of
Jewels into the great court where themes become universal under the
circle of stars above the surrounding colonnade, we come to the
Fountains of the Rising and the Setting Sun, by A. A. Weinmann, one at
either focus of the elliptical sunken garden. In the East, the Sun, in
the strength of the morning, his wings spread for flight, is springing
upward from the top of the tall column rising out of the fountain. Walk
toward him from the west and you get the effect of his rising. (p. 69.)
At his feet a garland of children is woven in the form of a ring at the
top of the column. At the base of the shaft, just above the basin, is a
cylindrical frieze in low relief, symbolizing Day Triumphant. Weinmann
interprets this as the Spirit of Time, hour-glass in hand, followed by
the Spirit of Light with flaming torch, while Energy trumpets the
approaching day. Interwoven with these figures is an allegory of Truth
with mirror and sword, escaping from the sinister power of Darkness,
Falsehood shrinking from its image in the mirror of Truth, and Vice
struggling in the coils of a serpent. It is not easy to read either
series, or to disentangle one from the other.
In the West the Setting Sun is just alighting, with folding wings. The
luminary, which in the morning was male, to represent the essentially
masculine spirit, the upwardness and onwardness of opening day, has now
become female in its quality of brooding evening. In fact, this same
figure, which the sculptor shows in the Palace of Fine Arts, is there
called by him "Descending Night."
The frieze at the base of the shaft of the Setting Sun is as difficult
to interpret as the other. On it are shown the Gentle Powers of Night.
Dusk folds in her cloak Love, Labor and Peace. Next are Illusions borne
on the wings of Sleep, then the Evening Mists, followed by the Star
Dance, and lastly, Luna, the goddess of the Silver Crescent. Luna may be
recognized, for the Silver Crescent is in her hand; and, with the
sequence I have just given, you may recognize the others.
The figures supporting the basins and the creatures in the pools of each
fountain are merely decorative. The play of water in these fountains is
joyous and delightful. The purpose of a fountain is well and adequately
fulfilled.
There now remain the seven fountains of the lesser courts, connected
more or less intimately in theme with their immediate surroundings.
In the Court of Seasons.--Four are in the Court of Seasons, where
Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, by Furio Piccirilli, have each its
own alcove in the wall and its own play of water. These are pleasant
fountains, simple and quiet. There is some feeling of lonely mountain
cliffs in the plain walls behind them, hung with streamers of the
maidenhair vine.
In the first alcove stands Spring with her flowers; on one side the man,
in whom love awakens, on the other fresh young Flora, bringing the first
offerings of the year. Next comes the alcove of Summer, the time of
fruition. The mother brings her babe to its father, the laborer bears
the first fruits of the harvest. (p. 94.)
Autumn follows, the time of harvest. The central figure of the fountain
group is Providence. The fruits of the year are brought in, and the
vintage is in progress. Last of all comes Winter, the melancholy time
when the trees are bare and the bark splits with the frost. The central
figure is naked Nature resting in the period of conception. On one side
is bowed an old man, after preparing the ground for the seed; on the
other is a strong man sowing. This is perhaps the best of the four
fountain groups it expresses admirably the bleakness and sadness of the
season. There is a wintry chill about it, the gloom of a dark December
day. Of the others, Spring is most likable, with its conception of the
seasonal impulse to love; and Autumn, for the strength of its figures
and the beauty of their modeling.
In the forecourt, appropriately placed between the Palaces of
Agriculture and Food Products, stands the Fountain of Ceres. (p. 79.) It
is an odd fountain, with the water gushing from the mouths of satyrs set
barely above the level of the ground, as though for the watering of
small animals. Ceres stands above, with a wreath of cereals and a
scepter of corn. The frieze pictures the dance of joyous nature.
Fountain of Earth.--In Mullgardt's Court of Ages is the Fountain of
Earth, by Robert Aitken, the most magnificently virile of all the
Exposition fountains, conceived of a powerful imagination and executed
in strength and beauty. (p. 70, 73.)
The sculpture of the fountain must be described in three parts. Aitken's
own interpretation is condensed in the following account. On the wall of
the parapet at the foot of the pool, sixty feet from the central
structure, is a colossal figure symbolizing Helios, in his arms the
great globe of the setting sun after it has thrown off the nebulous mass
that subsequently became the earth. The whole expresses primitive man's
idea of the splashing of the sun into the water as it sets.
On the side of the central structure toward the figure of Helios, and
leading up to the Earth, are two groups, each of five crouching figures,
and divided by a conventional plane. At the outer extremity, Destiny, in
the shape of two enormous hands and arms, gives life with one and takes
it with the other. The five figures on the left side represent the Dawn
of Life, those on the right, the Fullness and End of Existence. The
first group begins with a woman asleep, just from the hand of Destiny;
while the succeeding figures symbolize the Awakening, the Joy of Being,
finally, the Kiss of Life, with the human pair offering their children,
representing the beginnings of fecundity.
On the east side, a figure of Greed looks back on the earth, the mass in
his hands suggesting the futility of worldly possessions. Next is a
group of Faith, wherein a patriarch holds forth to the woman the hope of
immortality, with a scarab, ancient symbol of renewed life. Then comes a
man of Sorrow, as the woman with him falls into her last Slumber. These
are about to be drawn into oblivion by the relentless hand of Destiny.
The gap between these groups and the main structure of the fountain
typifies the unknown time between the beginning of things and the dawn
of history.
Each of the four panels in pierced relief surrounding the globe of the
Earth tells a single story, with the exception of the first, which tells
three. Traveling to the left around the globe, we begin with the figure
of Vanity, mirror in hand, in the center of the first panel, as the
symbol of worldly motive. Here, too, are primitive man and woman,
bearing their burdens, symbolized by their progeny, into the unknown
future, ready to meet whatever be the call of earth. The woman suggests
the overwhelming instincts of motherhood.
Passing into the next panel, we see their children, now grown, finding
themselves, with Natural Selection. The man in the center, splendid in
physical and intellectual perfection, attracts the women on either hand,
while two other men, deserted for this finer type, display anger and
despair. One tries to hold the woman by force, the other, unable to
comprehend, turns hopelessly away.
The succeeding panel symbolizes the Survival of the Fittest. Here
physical strength begins to play its part, and the war spirit awakens,
with woman as its cause. The chiefs struggle for supremacy, while their
women try in vain to separate them.
The last panel portrays the Lesson of Life. The elders offer to
hotheaded youth the benefit of their experience. The beautiful woman in
the center draws to her side the splendid warrior, whose mother on his
left gives her affectionate advice. On the right of the panel, a father
restrains a wayward and jealous youth who has been rejected by the
female.
Passing again into the first panel we find a representation of Lust,--a
man struggling to embrace a woman, who shrinks from his caresses. Thus
the circle is complete; these last two figures, though in the first
panel, are separated from those first described by decorations on the
upper and lower borders.
Framing the panels, while also indicating the separation in time of
their stories, stand archaic figures of Hermes, such as the ancients
employed to mark distances on the roads. Their outstretched hands hold
up the beginnings of life in the form of rude primeval beasts, from
whose mouths issue the jets of the fountain.
At night this fountain glows deep red, from lamps concealed within the
panels, while clouds of rosy steam rising around the globe create an
illusion of a world in the making.
The Fountain of Beauty and the Beast was originally intended for the
Court of Palms, which was conceived as the Court of Occidental Fairy
Tales, just as the Court of Flowers was to have been that of Oriental
Fairy Tales. Mrs. Whitney's fountain of the Arabian Nights, a creation
of whimsical beauty, was to have stood in the latter court. It was
modeled, but was never enlarged; and its place was taken by Beauty and
the Beast, the work of Edgar Walter. (p. 100.)
This is another harmonious fountain, rightly conceived, so that its
sculpture does not overbalance its use in the play of water, and
admirably in tune with the flowery grace of the court. Beauty, pouring
water from a Greek amphora, sits lightly upon the ugly Beast. Why she
wears a smart Paris hat no one has discovered. Four cheery pipers,
lively as crickets in the sun, support the upper bowl. Around the lower
basin is a frieze in low relief, figuring Hanuman, the King of Monkeys,
leading a bear with one hand and prodding a lion with the other. All
this is part of the original fairy-tale significance of the court.
The fountains are of the glories of the Exposition. There is always
charm in the movement of the waters, rest in their music. The appeal is
elemental, and therefore, universal. Artificial jets can never equal the
play of water in Nature, but when adorned with harmonious sculpture, as
here, they become that significant and satisfying imitation which is
Art.
XI.
The Palace of Machinery
A vast rectangular hall, saved by Ward's successful architecture from
being a huge barn--Modeled on the Roman Baths of Caracalla--Patigian's
finely decorative sculptures, symbolizing the mechanical forces and
labor--Beauty of the interior--A Cathedral of Dynamics.
A mighty hall is the Palace of Machinery. (See p. 105, 106.) Beachey
flew in it. The Olympic might rest in its center aisle with clear space
at both bow and stern, and room in the side aisles for two ocean
greyhounds as large as the Mauretania. Vastness is the note of the
architecture which Clarence Ward has employed to give body to this
enormous space. It is an architecture of straight lines in all the outer
structure, lending itself admirably to the expression of enormous
proportions. In general ground plans the palace is a simple rectangular
hall. Think, then, of the task the architect had before him to avoid
making the palace a huge barn. His work succeeded, as any great work
succeeds, because he used simple means.
First of all, a Roman model was well chosen for so vast a building. The
Greeks built no large roofed structures. Their great assemblages were
held in open-air theaters and stadia. The Greek masterpiece, the
incomparable Parthenon at Athens, was considerably smaller than Oregon's
timbered imitation at the Exposition. On the other hand, the solid Roman
style lends itself to bulk. The models followed in the Machinery Palace
were the Roman Baths, particularly the Baths of Caracalla. They have
been used once before as a model in this country, in the building of the
Pennsylvania Railway station in New York. There, too, travertine was
first successfully imitated by Paul Deniville. Looking at the Palace of
Machinery, indeed, it is not difficult to imagine it as the noble
metropolitan terminal of a great railway system. It would hold many long
passenger trains, and an army of travelers. The distinctive feature of
the perspective is the triple gable at the ends of the palace and over
the great main entrance. By thus breaking up the long roof lines, as
well as by lowering the flanks of the building to flat-roofed wings, a
barn like effect was avoided. In the triple gables, also, the three
central aisles which distinguish the interior show in the outer
structure. Under the gables the huge clerestory windows above the
entrances relieve the great expanse of the end walls. Similar windows
open up the walls above the flat-topped wings. In the main entrance, the
gables are deepened to form a huge triple vestibule where the row of
columns is repeated. The long side walls are relieved by pairs of
decorated columns flanking the minor entrances.
Thus, by entirely simple devices, the long lines and vast expanses of
wall are deprived of monotony. The architect has given majesty to the
palace, not merely a majesty of hugeness, but of just proportions and
dignified simplicity. In the general architectural scheme of the
Exposition it forms one end of the main group of palaces, at the other
end of which is set the Palace of Fine Arts. Machinery Hall, with its
severe massiveness and solidity, is a balance to the poetry and
spirituality of the Fine Arts.
The main entrance is on the west side, looking down the avenue between
the Palaces of Mines and Varied Industries. Perhaps it is better,
though, to take a first view of the sculptural decoration at the
entrance at either the north or the south end, where almost everything
is shown that appears in the more complicated main vestibule.
The three clerestory windows make three arches with four piers. In front
of each pier stands a great Sienna column crowned with one of four
symbolic figures, each, in the strength of the male, emblematic of
force. First on the left is "Electricity," grasping the thunderbolt, and
standing with one foot on the earth, signifying that electricity is not
only in the earth but around it. The man with the lever that starts an
engine represents "Steam Power." "Imagination," the power which
conceives the thing "Invention" bodies forth, stands with eyes closed;
its force comes from within. Wings on his head suggest the speed of
thought. At his feet is the Eagle of Inspiration. "Invention" bears in
his hand a winged figure,--Thought, about to rise in concrete form.
The eagle appears as a symbol of the United States, on the entablature
carried across the opening below the arch on two Corinthian columns in
each embrasure. The lower third of each of these shafts is decorated
with a cylindrical relief representing the genii of machinery, flanked
by human toilers and types of machines. The genii are blind, as the
forces developed by machines are blind. There are only two of these
cylindrical friezes, but they are repeated many times on the columns at
either end and at the main entrance, and on the pairs of columns that
flank the minor openings in the western wall.
Over the main entrance the gable is extended to enclose a majestic
triple vestibule, backed by the same effect that appears at the palace
ends, but with the entablature and its supporting columns repeated
across the outer arches. (p. 111.) With the exception of the spandrels
on the transverse arches, the sculptural decoration here is the same as
that described for the end entrances, though more often repeated. The
spandrels represent the application of power to machines. All this
decoration is the work of Haig Patigian, of San Francisco.
Before the main entrance stands the only example, in the Exposition
sculpture, of the work of the dean of American sculptors, Daniel Chester
French. This is his noteworthy group, the Genius of Creation. (p. 147.)
Other statues by French will be found among the exhibits of the Fine
Arts Palace. The Genius of Creation was placed here at the last moment.
It had been intended for the Court of the Universe, while Douglas
Tilden's group of "Modern Civilization" was to have stood before the
Palace of Machinery. When this was not completed, the Exposition wisely
decided that the great court already had enough statuary, and ordered
French's group erected in its place.
According to French himself, this group might well have been called "The
Angel of Generation." The winged figure, neither male nor female, but
angelic, is veiled, suggesting the creative impulse as a blind command
from unknown sources. The arms are raised in a gesture of creative
command. It has wings, said French, because. both art and the conception
demanded these spiritual symbols. The man and woman against the rock
whereon the angel sits are emblems of the highest types created. The man
looks upward and outward with one hand clenched, ready to grapple with
life. The woman reaches out for sympathy and support; her fingers find
this in the hand of the man at the back of the rock. Man and woman are
encircled by the snake, the earliest symbol of eternity and
reproduction, a figure appearing, curiously enough, in every religion,
and with much the same significance.
Without ignoring the majesty of the exterior, glowing with color and
adorned with statuary, it may be said that the real nobility of this
great structure appears in the splendid timber work of the interior.
Here, where every bone and rib of the huge hall stands bare as the
builders left it, is a note of true grandeur. The long rows of great
timbered columns, the lofty arches that spring from them, the almost
endless vista of truss and girder, tell of vastness that cannot be
expressed by the finished architecture outside. The finest character of
the palace is within. From the outside it is a great and
well-proportioned hall. Within it becomes a vast cathedral, dedicated to
the mighty spirit of Dynamics.
XII.
The Palace of Fine Arts and its Exhibit, With the Awards
A memorable demonstration of the value of landscape to architecture--
Simplicity the foundation of Maybeck's achievement--The Colonnade and
Rotunda--Altar, Friezes and Murals--Equestrian statue of Lafayette--
Night views--The Palace should be made permanent in Golden Gate Park--
The Fine Arts Exhibit--Its contemporaneous character and great general
merit--American art well shown--The foreign collections--Sweden's
characteristically national art--Exhibits of France, Italy, Holland,
Argentina, and other countries--Japan and China exhibit ancient as well
as modern art--The Annex--Work of the Futurists--Notable sculptures
in the Colonnade--Grand Prizes, Medals of Honor and Gold Medals
Awarded.
If everything else in the beautiful architecture of the Exposition were
forgotten, the memory of the Palace of Fine Arts would remain. It should
be a source of pride to every Californian that this incomparable
building is the work of a Californian, and a source of deep satisfaction
to the architect himself that it so completely points the lesson which
he intended it to convey. For the Palace of Fine Arts is a sermon in
itself. In it old Roman models have been used to elaborate a California
text. Its structure and setting are the demonstration of a theorem,--
the finished word of the preachment of a lifetime. The Exposition gave
the preacher his opportunity. Bernard Maybeck, the Berkeley architect,
had long been telling California that architecture here, to be
beautiful, needed only to be an effective background for landscape. His
theory is that as trees and plants grow so easily and so quickly here,
Californians are wasting their finest source of beauty if they do not
combine landscape with building.
When Maybeck was called upon to design a palace of fine arts at the
Exposition, one fact enabled him to exemplify his theory in the finest
way. The old Harbor View bog was found to have a bottom impervious
enough to hold water, and the trees of the demolished resort were still
standing. When the mud was scooped out, a lake was left. That gave not
only growing trees, in addition to the resources of the Exposition's
forestry, but also a real sheet of water, for the landscape. (See p.
112.)
Maybeck surprised me by saying that there is nothing specially
remarkable about the Palace itself. "What is it the people like?" he
asked, and himself replied, "it is the water and the trees." When I
reminded him of the beauty of the colonnade seen from points in the
enclosed passageway, where no water is in view, he answered: "The public
was bribed to like that. Leaving off the roof between the colonnade and
the gallery was a direct bribe. A few other simple devices give the
effect the people like. One of these is the absence of windows in the
walls, a device well known to the old Italians. Others are the water,
the trees, and the flower-covered pergolas on the roof."
Maybeck's modesty is genuine, but he deserves more credit than he gives
himself. I quote him because his point is worth emphasizing. The highest
beauty can be attained by simple means. If all our architects could see
that, we should have less straining for effect, less over doneness, and
more harmony and significance in our buildings. The people can and do
appreciate this kind of beauty. It was surely inspiration that made it
possible for Maybeck to produce this masterpiece.
Sweeping in a great arc around the western shore of the lagoon, the
Palace, in the architect's view, is merely a background for the water,
the trees and the plants on the terraced walls and pergolas. Certainly
it is a beautiful setting to a beautiful scene. So perfectly are the
Palace and its foreground fitted to each other that the structure looks
as though it might have stood there for twenty centuries, a
well-preserved Roman villa, while generations of trees grew, and
decayed, and were reproduced around its base.
The great detached colonnade, with its central rotunda, is the climax of
the entire structure. It is backed up and given solidity by the walls of
the gallery behind it, 1,100 feet long. These walls, unbroken save for
the entrances, are relieved and beautified by shrubbery set on a terrace
halfway between the ground and the eaves. (p. 113.) At the extremities
of the double colonnade, and spaced regularly along it, are groups of
four columns, each crowned with a great box designed for flowers and
vines. Unfortunately, the architect's plan to place growing plants in
these receptacles was vetoed because of the cost. The weeping women at
the corners, by Ulric Ellerhusen, expressive of the melancholy felt on
leaving a great art collection, were intended to be only half seen
through drooping vines. On the water side of the rotunda, a novel effect
of inclusion is obtained by semi-circular walls of growing
mesembryanthemum.
Around the entablature of the noble octagonal rotunda are repeated Bruno
Louis Zimm's three panels, representing "The Struggle for the
Beautiful." (p. 114.) In one, Art, as a beautiful woman, stands in the
center, while on either side the idealists struggle to hold back the
materialists, here conceived as centaurs, who would trample upon Art. In
another, Bellerophon is about to mount Pegasus. Orpheus walks ahead with
his lyre, followed by a lion, representing the brutish beasts over whom
music hath power. Back in the procession come Genius, holding aloft the
lamp, and another figure bearing in one hand the pine cones of
immortality, in the other a carved statue which she holds forward as a
lesson in art to the youth before her. In the third panel appears
Apollo, god of all the arts, in the midst of a procession of his
devotees bearing garlands. Between the panels are repeated alternately
male and female figures, symbolizing those who battle for the arts.
On an altar before the rotunda, overlooking the lagoon, kneels Robert
Stackpole's figure of Venus, representing the Beautiful, to whom all art
is servant. The panel in front of the altar is by Bruno Louis Zimm, and
pictures Genius, the source of Inspiration. Unfortunately, this fine
altar has been made inaccessible; it can be seen only from across the
lagoon. (p. 137.) The friezes decorating the huge circular flower
receptacles set around the base of the rotunda and at intervals in the
colonnade are by Ellerhusen. Eight times repeated on the lofty columns
within the rotunda is "The Priestess of Culture," a conventional but
pleasing sculpture by Herbert Adams.
Above, in the dome, Robert Reid's eight murals, splendid in color, are
too far away to be seen well as pictures. Two separate series are
alternated, one symbolizing the Progress of Art, the other depicting the
Four Golds of California. The panel in the east, nearest the altar, is
"The Birth of European Art." The sacred fire burns on an altar, beside
which stands the guardian holding out the torch of inspiration to an
earthly messenger who leans from his chariot to receive it. On the right
is the Orange panel, representing one of the California golds.
"Inspiration in All Art" comes next. The veil of darkness, drawn back,
reveals the arts: Music, Painting, Poetry, and Sculpture. A winged
figure bears the torch of inspiration. The second of the California
golds, the Wheat panel, follows, and then "The Birth of Oriental Art."
The allegory here is the ancient Ming legend of the forces of earth
trying to wrest inspiration from the powers of air. A Chinese warrior
mounted on a dragon struggles with an eagle.
Gold, the yellow metal, is the subject of the next panel, followed by
"Ideals in Art." In this appear concrete symbols of the chief motives of
art, the classic nude of the Greeks, the Madonna and Child of Religion,
Joan of Arc for Heroism, Youth and Material Beauty represented by a
young woman, and Absolute Nature by the peacock. A mystic figure in the
background holds the cruse wherewith to feed the sacred flame. A winged
figure bears laurels for the living, while the shadowy one in the center
holds the palm for the dead. Last of all comes the Poppy panel,
representing the fourth gold of California.
"The entire scheme--the conception and birth of Art, its commitment to
the earth, its progress and acceptance by the human intellect,--is
expressed in the four major panels. They are lighted from below by a
brilliant flood of golden light, the sunshine of California, and reach
up into the intense blue of the California skies." This, as well as much
of the interpretation of the eight pictures, is drawn from Reid's own
account.
Within the rotunda has been installed Paul Wayland Bartlett's spirited
equestrian statue of Lafayette. This is a replica of the original work,
which was presented to the French Government by the school children of
the United States, and stands in the gardens of the Louvre. Other
notable statues here are Karl Bitter's Thomas Jefferson, John J. Boyle's
Commodore Barry, Herbert Adams's Bryant, and Robert T. McKenzie's
charming figure of "The Young Franklin." Outside the rotunda, facing the
main entrance to the gallery, is "The Pioneer Mother," Charles Grafly,
sculptor. Over the entrance is Leo Lentelli's "Aspiration."
Beautiful as is the Palace of Fine Arts by day, it is even more lovely
at night. (p. 137.) Either by moonlight or under the gentle flood of
illumination that rests softly upon it when the heavens are dark, it is
wonderful. There is so much of perfection in the building, and it is so
well placed, that it needs no special conditions to be at its best. Nor
is any particular viewpoint necessary. Stand where you will around this
structure, or on the opposite margin of the lagoon, and each position
gives you a different grouping of columns and dome and wall, a different
setting of trees and water. The form of the Palace is responsible for
this. Roughly speaking, a rectangular structure presents but four views.
But the great arc of the Fine Arts, with its detached colonnade
following the same curve on either side of the rotunda, is not so
restricted. Every new point of view discloses new beauty. The breadth of
the lagoon before it guarantees a proper perspective. It is impossible
not to see it aright.
An excellent test of the quality of all such temporary structures is the
satisfaction with which one thinks of them as permanent buildings. No
other of the palaces would wear so well in its beauty if it were set up
for the joy of future generations. It would be a glorious thing for San
Francisco if the Fine Arts Palace could be made permanent in Golden Gate
Park. To duplicate it in lasting materials would cost much, but it would
be worth while. San Francisco owes it to itself and its love for art to
see that this greatest of Western works of art does not pass away. As it
stands on the Exposition grounds, it is more enduring than any of the
other palaces. To induce the loan of its priceless contents, the
building had to be fireproof. But the construction is not permanent. The
splendid colonnade, a thing of exquisite and manifold beauty, is only
plaster, and can last but a season or two. Even were the building solid
enough to endure, its location is impossible after the Exposition
closes.
It should be duplicated in permanent form. No doubt a proper site, with
a setting of water and trees, can best be found in Golden Gate Park. The
steel frame and roof of the main gallery could easily be transferred
there and set up again. While it would cost too much to duplicate in
real marble the pillars of the colonnade and dome, yet these can be
reproduced in artificial stone as successfully as they have here been
imitated in plaster. In the Pennsylvania Railroad station in New York
travertine has been counterfeited so well that no one can tell where the
real ends and the imitation begins.
Every other considerable city in the civilized world has its art
gallery. San Francisco has already the full-sized model of surely the
most beautiful one in the world. Made permanent in the Park, this Palace
of Art would not only honor San Francisco, but would be "a joy forever"
to all America.
The Fine Arts Exhibit[1].--The Palace of Fine Arts contains what the
International Jury declares the best and most important collection of
modern art that has yet been assembled in America. The war in Europe had
a two-fold effect on this exhibition. While it prevented some countries,
like Russia and Germany, from sending their paintings and sculptures, it
led others, such as France and Italy, to send more than they otherwise
would have sent. The number the Exposition might have was limited only
by its funds available for insurance. So many were the works of art sent
over on the Vega and the Jason that an Annex was required to house them.
It must be remembered that this art exhibit, like the other exhibits of
the Exposition, is contemporaneous. It represents, with exceptions, the
work of the last decade. Most of the exceptions are in the rooms of the
Historical Section, the Abbey, Sargent, Whistler, Keith, and other loan
collections, and the great Chinese exhibit of ancient paintings on silk.
In general, the paintings and sculptures made famous by time are not in
the Fine Arts Palace. Its rooms are mainly filled with the latest work
of artists of the day, exhibited under the Exposition's rule which
limits competition in all departments to current production. This
explains, for instance, why the French Government has placed its
Meissoniers and Detailles, with Rodin's bronzes, in the French Pavilion.
A Michelangelo, works of Benvenuto Cellini, and many old paintings and
statues are in the beautiful Italian Pavilion. Other paintings of value
are in the Belgian section of the French Pavilion, and in the Danish
Pavilion.
This limitation of the Fine Arts exhibit has made room for a great
representation of the men of today. The Palace contains a multitude of
splendid pictures. While of course, as in all such collections, there is
some inferior work, the most pertinent criticism is that there are too
many really notable things, and the scope of the collection is too
broad, to be seen with due appreciation in a limited time. There is so
liberal a showing of different schools, styles and lands, that one is
liable at first to be bewildered. But the exhibit is most popular. The
great number of visitors constantly thronging the galleries is
significant of the value the people put upon art. Excellent as the
collection is as a school for artists, it was made for popular enjoyment
and education. The best result to be looked for is its stimulation and
culture of the public taste. The people are already in love with it, and
what they love they make their own.
The exhibits are arranged in fifteen sections, consisting of national,
sectional, or personal, collections of paintings, besides many important
displays of miniatures, etchings, prints, drawings, and tapestries. The
art of the sculptor is abundantly illustrated in grouped statuary,
single pieces, panels in low or high relief, and wood carvings. Passing
the heroic emblems of history or allegory in marble, bronze or plaster,
nothing is more beautiful or appealing than the hundreds of small
bronzes shown. In brief, the Fine Arts exhibit embraces all the
classifications of modern art, save the "arts and crafts" exhibits,
which are scattered among the several exhibit palaces.
First in importance to a citizen of this country is the art of the
United States. Possibly it may also be of first importance to foreign
visitors. For the phrase "American art" no longer raises a doubt. It is
at last recognized that America has something of its own to offer the
world,--a style developed within the last, two decades. The prime
movement of the times presenting boldness, brilliance and a laxity of
detail in portrayal, the art of America, as shown in this exhibition,
embodies these characteristics without emphasizing them. Keeping in mind
the fact that the Palace contains little American art earlier than 1905,
American artists are showing marked individualities, even in their
acceptance of popular precepts. The virile men of the day love
luminosity; it dominates all else, and marks their canvases with light;
they restrain the too bold stroke of the radical Impressionist, but
outline with firmness, so that details are more easily imagined by the
observer, even when an expected delineation is absent. Even the older
men, though still under the influence of earlier tradition, show a
distinctiveness of style that sets them well apart from their English,
French or German contemporaries.
The International Section, in Room 108 and in the Annex, is peculiarly
interesting in that it makes easy a comparison of the characteristic
fingerprints of each country represented. There is ample opportunity
here for a discriminating and profitable study. Unfortunately, because
of the war, the gallery contains no special rooms for the art of England
and Germany. Both countries are represented only by loan collections. Of
German art there are forty well chosen paintings.
France, Italy, Holland, Sweden, Portugal, Japan, China and several of
the South American countries have installed representative collections
in the Palace; while the Annex, made necessary by the unexpected number
of pictures from Europe, contains a large exhibit of Hungarian art, a
Norwegian display, filling seven rooms, a large British exhibit, and a
small group of pictures by Spanish painters, showing that the influence
of Velasquez is still powerful in Spanish art. The Norwegian display is
one of the largest foreign sections, quite as characteristic as the
Swedish, and certain to arouse discussion because of its extreme
modernism. The ultra-radical art of Edvard Munch, who is called the
greatest of Norwegian painters, and to whom a special room is assigned,
is sure to be a bone of contention among the critics. The work of Harald
Sohlberg (medal of honor) and Halfdan Strom (gold medal), differing
widely from Munch's, though hardly less modern in style, will also
attract much attention. The omission of Munch from the honor list is
really a tribute to his eminence. An artist who has won the Grand Prix
at Rome and awards in every other European capital was deemed outside of
competition here.
Axel Gallen-Kallela, the celebrated Finnish painter, winner of the
Exposition's medal of honor, fills another room in the Annex. This room,
covering adequately Gallen's progress through twenty-five years, is the
only one in the Exposition to illustrate the development of a great
painter from his student days. The collection runs from his earliest
academic work, photographic in its care for detail, to his present
mastery of Impressionism, wherein by a few strokes he expresses all the
essentials.
The Italian Futurists are well shown in the Annex, and for the first
time in this country. The Futurist pictures hitherto seen in America
have been French imitations of the Italian originators of the mode. A
sample Futurist title, "Architectural Construction of a Woman on the
Beach," may or may not indicate what these pictures reveal. The Annex,
too, has a splendid exhibit of the etchings of Frank Brangwyn, the great
Englishman, who is no less renowned as an etcher than as a painter, and
who has won the Exposition's medal of honor in the International
Section.
The arrangement of the rooms in the Fine Arts Gallery becomes simple
enough when the key is supplied. The United States section is in the
center, and, with the historical rooms, occupies, roughly, half the
space, flanked by the foreign rooms at either end of the building. Four
rooms of the United States section are separated from the rest and form
a narrow strip across the extreme north end of the gallery. The prints,
drawings, miniatures, and medals are installed in rooms forming a strip
along the west wall of the building.
The United States section is opened by a central hall opposite the main
entrance, and by a corridor extending on either side through to the
foreign sections. The central hall is chiefly devoted to sculpture,
including Karl Bitter's strong and characteristic group, "The Signing of
the Louisiana Purchase Treaty," Daniel Chester French's "Alice Freeman
Palmer Memorial," both winners of the medal of honor, Gertrude
Vanderbilt Whitney's fine central fountain, and other important work.
The walls are hung with ancient tapestries of great interest, and
paintings, mostly decorative, though Robert Vonnoh's "Poppies" and Ben
Au Haggin's "Little White Dancer" are admirable. Vonnoh won a gold
medal.
Historical Section.--South of the United States section, a block of ten
rooms, with Room 54 at the southwest angle of the central hall, is
devoted to painters who either have influenced American art or represent
its earlier stages. Room 91, on the east side of the block, contains old
Dutch, Flemish, French, and Italian pictures, none very interesting,
though Teniers, Watteau and Tintoretto are represented. Rooms 92, 62,
and 61, constituting the tier next to the Italian section, show chiefly
examples of the French painters, including those of the Barbizon school,
who have influenced later American painting. Along with other names less
known, Room 92 displays canvases by Daubigny, Courbet, Charles Le Brun,
Meissonier, Tissot, Monticelli and Rousseau. It has two Corots, one a
delight. Room 62 is even more important. It offers a Millet, far from
typical; a capital Schreyer, two portraits by the German Von Lenbach, a
small but interesting sample of Alma Tadema's finished style, and the
sensational "Consolatrix Afflictorum" by Dagnan-Bouveret. Better still,
in Jules Breton's "The Vintage" and Troyon's "Landscape and Cattle" it
has two of the noblest paintings to be seen in the entire Palace,--
pictures that show these great masters at their best.
Room 61 is mainly devoted to the early Impressionists, with seven
canvases by their leader, Claude Monet, and other landscapes by Renoir,
Pissaro and Sisley, and a brilliant interior (No. 2343) by Gaston La
Touche. The pictures by Monet illustrate his progress from the hard
conventionalism of his early academic style (seen in 2636) to such
delightful embodiments of light and atmosphere as 2633 and 2637. The
gallery contains no more triumphant piece of Impressionism than the
saucy "Lady in Pink" by the Russian, Nicholas Fechin. The story set
afloat that it is the work of an untaught Russian peasant simply
testifies to ignorance of this master. Every splotch of color here
breathes technique. As if by way of contrast, the opposite wall shows
one of Puvis de Chavannes' classical murals, even more anaemic than
usual.
The large room No. 63 shows a Venetian sunset by Turner, two portraits
by Goya, another attributed to Velasquez, a splendid Raffaelesque
altar-piece by Tiepolo, the like of which rarely leaves Italy, and
canvases by Guido Reni, Ribera, and Van Dyke. Almost all the remaining
space is taken up by excellent examples of the British art that
influenced the early American painters, with some of prior date. Here
are canvases by Lely, Kneller, Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hoppner,
Beechey, Allan Ramsay, Lawrence, Raeburn, and Romney. The last four are
especially well represented. In this room, too, is the bronze replica of
Weinmann's figure, "The Setting Sun," here called "Descending Night."
American "Old Masters."--Following logically the English portrait
painters, the American historical section begins with Rooms 60 and 59.
The former is mainly filled with the work, much of it admirable, of the
early American portrait painters. Here are Gilbert Stuart's lovable
"President Monroe," Benjamin West's "Magdalen," and portraits by Peale,
Copley, West, Sully and others. In Room 59, the antiquarian interest
predominates, with a few fine portraits by Inman, Harding, King, and S.
F. B. Morse, who, besides inventor, was an artist. But nothing here
surpasses No. 1719 by Charles Loring Elliott, a canvas that is
irresistible in its vivid setting forth of personality. Room 58 brings
the story of American painting well past the middle of the Nineteenth
century, with typical examples of Bierstadt, Eastman Johnson and other
fading names. Room 57 contains a number of Edwin Abbey's finely
illustrative paintings, the most popular of which is his "Penance of
Eleanor," and a collection of his splendid drawings; also important
canvases by Theodore Robinson and John La Farge. Room 64 covers a wide
sweep, from Church's archaic "Niagara Falls" down to Stephen Parrish,
Eakins, Martin, the Morans, Hovenden, and Remington. Edward Moran's
"Brush Burning" (2649) is capital. Room 54, the last of the American
historical rooms, is perhaps the most important, finely showing Inness,
Wyant, Winslow Homer, Hunt, and other American masters.
Modern American Painting.--We come now to the great and splendid
representation of present-day painters. In noting these, the artists
achieving grand prizes, medals of honor or gold medals will often be
mentioned; but a full list of such honors will be found at the end of
this chapter. It should be remembered that no member of a jury, and no
man who received the honor of a separate room, was eligible for award.
In general, it may be said, the Exposition puts forward the work of
artists who have "arrived" since the opening of the century. In
accordance with this helpful policy, older painters who had won many
honors at previous exhibitions were passed over for the encouragement of
younger men. It should also be noted that awards were not made for
particular pictures, but upon each artist's exhibit as a whole.
Rooms 55, 56, 65 and 85 show contemporary Americans,--the last two with
great credit. No. 65 is a large room of canvases by American women
painters. One who has not kept abreast of woman's work in art in this
country has a surprise awaiting him in the the high quality shown here.
Two pictures by Ellen Rand (2919, 2918), Mary Curtis Richardson's
captivating "Young Mother" and her "Professor Paget" (3000, 3002), and
Alice Stoddard's inimitably girlish group, "The Sisters" (3329), will
reward very careful study of their sincerity and strength of treatment.
Especially brilliant are the works of Cecilia Beaux and M. Jean McLane,--
the first winning the Exposition's medal of honor, the latter rather
theatrical in their gayety of color. Here also is a canvas (2743) by
Violet Oakley, another honor medallist.
Room 85 is enriched by the canvases of Charles Walter Stetson, Horatio
Walker, Charles W. Hawthorne, Douglas Volk (gold medal), and George de
Forest Brush. Volk's three charming pictures deserve to be better hung.
The Stetson group illustrates the Impressionist method and result as
well as anything in the Palace. Take his "Smugglers" or his "Summer Joy"
(3311, 3317), and note how a few heavy and apparently meaningless dabs
of color may be laid side by side on canvas in such a way that, when
seen from a distance, they blend, until the picture not only outlines
figures and foliage, but also glows with atmosphere, life and movement.
These rooms complete the south half of the American section, with the
exception of the very interesting, though not fully adequate, Whistler
Room, 28; the Print Rooms, 29 to 34, in the tier along the west wall,
and five more one-man rooms along the east wall. These five, in their
order from the main entrance are: No. 87, devoted to the old-masterlike
works of Frank Duveneck, who, more perhaps than any other American,
shows the great manner of Velasquez, Rembrandt and Franz Hals, and to
whom the jury has recommended that a special medal be given for his
influence on American art; No. 88 filled with the admirable
Impressionist landscapes of E. W. Redfield; 89 and 93, given up to the
widely contrasted work of Edmund C. Tarbell and John H. Twachtman, each
in his own fashion a master and enjoying a well-earned popularity,
Twachtman's pictures in particular commanding almost as high prices as
those of the men in Room 54; and No. 90, just off the Tarbell room,
containing a small loan collection which very incompletely represents
William Keith. Five other individual rooms are north of the main
entrance: No. 79, portraits and still life by William M. Chase; 78,
Childe Hassam's radically Impressionist work; 77, Gari Melchers'
pictures of Dutch types and scenes; 76, the charming western pictures of
Arthur F. Mathews and Francis McComas, both Californians; and 75, the
John S. Sargent room, containing among other works his famous early
portrait of Mme. Gautrin, his "John Hay," and the sympathetic portrait
of Henry James which was mutilated by the British suffragettes. All
these one-man rooms exhibit characteristic work of the men thus
distinguished, though the younger men are the more completely
represented. The Whistler, Keith, Chase and Sargent rooms, which may be
classed with the historical block, show few of the best-known
masterpieces of these artists.
Room 80, cut out of the northeast corner of the central hall, a gallery
of well restrained pictures, contains the interesting work in light and
color of William McG. Paxton, member of the jury; portraits and figures
by Leslie P. Thompson (silver medal), Philip L. Hale's warm-toned
portraits, the delicate but brilliant landscapes of Willard L. Metcalf
(medal of honor), and those by Philip Little (silver medal). The
portraits are in the older academic style; the landscapes, modern. Rooms
67 and 68 are distinguished by some notable landscapes and marines. No.
67 shows Emil Carlsen's fresh "Open Sea," his single picture here, but
the winner of a medal of honor, and Albert Laessle's small animal
sculptures (gold medal), and capital examples of Paul Dougherty, J. F.
Carlson, Leonard Ochtman and Ben Foster. No. 68 holds two fine snowy
landscapes by W. Elmer Schofield (medal of honor), two engaging studies
in brown by Daniel Garber, brilliant figures by J. C. Johansen, and
California coast views by William Ritschel. The last three artists are
gold medallists.
Room 69 is made noteworthy by works of three of the nine American
winners of the medal of honor,--Lawton Parker's voluptuous "Paresse"
and two portraits, and single paintings by John W. Alexander and Richard
E. Miller (1035, 2606). Alexander's airy "Phyllis" is his only picture
in the Palace. Miller shows one more canvas, a colorful "Nude" (2607) in
Room 47. Room 70 is entirely devoted to portrait painters, among them
Julian Story, H. G. Herkomer, Robert Vonnoh, and Irving C. Wiles (3668),
the latter two both winners of the gold medal. No. 74 shows admirable
small landscapes, among them the "Group of White Birches" by Will S.
Robinson (silver medal), Charles C. Allen's "Mountain and Cloud," and
land and water views by Charles J. Taylor, especially No. 3404. Room 73
shows good landscapes by Ernest Lawson (gold medal), Paul King (silver
medal), and the two Beals. Gifford Beal's work won a gold medal. Room
72, a gallery in the academic style, contains a variety of portraits,
figure paintings and landscapes, including W. R. Leigh's spirited
"Stampede," and the more conventional work of Walter MacEwen. No. 71 is
another varied room. In addition to some landscapes, the visitor will be
struck by the small but exquisite exhibit in gold, enamel, and precious
stones of Louis C. Tiffany.
The western tier of this section, Rooms 43-51, contains work of all
grades of merit. No. 43 is conglomerate. Perham Nahl's well drawn
"Despair" (2690) is perhaps best worth mention. In No. 44 Putthuff's two
brown western scenes and Clarkson's portrait of E. G. Keith are
interesting. No. 45 is better. Walter Griffin's opulent landscapes
(medal of honor) are well worth studying. Here also are two canvases by
Robert Reid, one almost Japanese in its effect; the restrained
landscapes of William Sartain, and Charles Morris Young's sharply
contrasting "Red Mill' and "Gray Mill," with his characteristic wintry
landscapes. Reid and Young won the gold medal. In No. 46 are a
half-dozen delicately handled landscapes by Frank V. Du Mond, a member
of the jury. In No. 47 E. L. Blumenschein's warm Indian pictures and A.
L. Groll's desert scenes won silver medals. But the best thing here is
Richard E. Miller's "Nude," already mentioned.
On the east wall of Room 48 hangs "Sleep," the best of the eight
canvases shown by Frederic Carl Frieseke, distinguished above all other
American painters in the palace by the Exposition's grand prize. Seven
other pictures by Frieseke, interesting by reason of comparison with
this masterpiece, hang in Room 117. In Gallery 48 are also some good
landscapes,--Robert Vonnoh's "Bridge at Grez" and Cullen Yates'
"November Snow." In No. 49, a better balanced room than most in this
tier, three walls are made noteworthy by J. Alden Weir's luminous and
Impressionist landscapes, and D. W. Tryon's more academic canvases. Weir
was the chairman of the jury for oil paintings. No. 50 is dominated by
Sergeant Kendall, in both painting and sculpture. In the first he won
the gold medal, in the second the silver medal. Room 51 has been called
the "Chamber of Horrors," because it shows several of the extremists;
but it has some masterpieces. Staring things by John Sloan, William J.
Glackens, Adolphe Borie, and Arthur B. Caries are relieved by H. H.
Breckinridge's highly colored fruits and flowers, Gertrude Lampert's
"Black and Green," Thomas Anshutz' two studies of women, and several of
Robert Henri's strong figure pieces.
In the extreme northern end of the gallery, beyond the foreign sections,
is a tier of four rooms, 117-120, ranging from the mediocre to the
admirable. In No. 117 are seven interesting canvases by Frieseke, the
grand-prize winner, already mentioned. These pictures show the artist's
scope. No. 1816 and others are strikingly like Plinio Nomellini's No. 86
in the Italian section. No. 1811 is as different from these as "Sleep"
is from all the rest. In the same room are Mora's "Vacation Time" (2645)
and Tanner's "Christ at the Home of Lazarus" (3370), both winners of the
gold medal. Room 118 holds the pictures of several gold-medal winners,
the "Promenade" (1185) by Max Bohm; the noble "Lake Louise" (1246) by H.
J. Breuer, whose pictures of the Canadian Rockies are also to be found
in Rooms 56 and 58; the tender "Spring" (1972) by W. D. Hamilton, worthy
of a better place; and H. L. Hoffman's clearlighted "A Mood of Spring"
(2116), and his vivid "Savannah Market" (2115).
Room 119 is filled with water-colors, drawings, engravings and etchings.
Room 120 holds George Bellows' Post-Impressionistic canvases, Myron
Barlow's well-drawn figures, W. D. Hamilton's speaking likeness of
Justice McKenna (1971), Charles H. Woodbury's "The Bark" (3692), and
Waldo Murray's portrait of "Robert Fowler" (366), wrongly catalogued
with the International section. All these painters won gold medals. This
is perhaps the best room in this tier.
In the tier on the western wall devoted to the minor forms of art,
Howard Pyle's illustrations occupy two small rooms, 41 and 42. The first
contains ink sketches, the second his works in characteristic color.
Room 40 is devoted to admirable miniatures and to water colors. Here on
the east wall are Jules Guerin's vividly colored Oriental scenes, which
won the gold medal. The walls of Room 39 are given up to a series of
charming pastels by John McClure Hamilton. No. 39 also contains cases of
medals, as does No. 38. Room 37 is devoted to miniatures, and 36 to
drawings.
In the section known as the "Print Rooms," 29-34, along the west wall,
are hundreds of famous etchings. This branch of art, old and respected
through the examples offered by early masters like Albrecht Durer and
Rembrandt, has still to be fully appreciated. It has come to the public
slowly, the layman who likes and buys pictures more often holding aloof
from the thing called an etching. That there is now a closer
acquaintance than before is due in large measure to Joseph Pennell.
Working through the practical, he allied his art years ago with such
subjects as bridge and railroad building, and by giving the public an
easier avenue of approach, has attracted it to the beauty of this method
of art. The print rooms show dozens of Pennell's etchings, with those of
Whistler and many others. Whistler's etchings, lithographs, and drawings
are in No. 29, Pennell's in No. 31. Room 30 holds the work of Henry
Wolf, winner of the grand prize. B. A. Wehrschmidt, an honor medallist,
is represented in Room 119. J. Andre Smith, Herman A. Webster and
Cadwallader Washburn are in Room 32, Allen Lewis and Gustav Baumann
(gold medals) are in Room 34. Room 28 holds the loan collection of
Whistler's works, already mentioned, chiefly from the National Gallery,
Washington. Room 27 contains photographic reproductions of painting and
sculpture. Room 26 is devoted to original drawings for illustration.
The Foreign Sections.--These are placed north and south of the United
States collections. In the extreme south end, Japan occupies a large
block of rooms, numbered from 1 to 10. With this abundant floor and wall
space at her disposal, that country left nothing undone to make her art
exhibit comprehensive and beautiful. The display stands alone for
completeness. Japan's art is as old as her history; and now, with her
advent among the modern nations, she has added Occidental art to her
more ancient forms. The essayal, as shown here, is still beyond her, but
the strides are noteworthy. In the wonderful display of her own art, she
shows both the beauties of antiquity and the masterpieces of her present
day artists. The paintings upon silk, landscape embroideries,
porcelains, ink drawings, metal work, and scrolls will occupy the art
lover many hours.
France adjoins Japan, filling a block of rooms from 12 to 18, and Italy
follows, in Rooms 21 to 25. The intervening rooms, Nos. 19 and 20, are
assigned respectively to Uruguay and Cuba.
The French and Italian exhibits had to wait for the arrival of the
Jason. Now they are installed, and beautifully hung and set. Though
France is the home of the Post-Impressionists, and Italy that of the
Futurists, the flagrancy of neither of these schools is on view here.
Both countries show their best balanced art since 1905. In the French
exhibit, the mode of the day prevails, color, luminosity, richness of
texture. All that differentiates the art of France to-day from that of
other countries is her own inimitable, delicate, inherent taste and
touch. The subject matters little; the French perception and execution
are there. Where other canvases offer--say a beautiful glow--the
French picture "vibrates." If other works are finished, these have
finesse. There is similar spirit in the Italian galleries, with a
variation due to national characteristics rather than to difference of
opinion or method. The Italian pictures fully occupy the mind and eye;
the French often fascinate by something more than skill and color. Both
countries have placed their older art, and some of its best, in their
official pavilions.
France.--In the French Section, Room 12 contains a diverse collection
of water color, drawing, engraving, and painting, among the latter,
Henry Grosjean's "The Bottoms" (365). Room 13, full of strongly
contrasting work, is distinguished by Maurice Denis' daring decorative
panels. Here also is Claude Monet's "Vetheuil" (452), the same scene,
though not the same picture, as his No. 2634 in Room 61. Comparison is
interesting for the difference in touch, though both were painted in the
same year. Francois Flameng is represented here by "Paris" (346), not so
compelling as his "Madame Letellier" (345), and "Fete Venetienne" (344),
in Rooms 18 and 14. Room 14, containing a good many decorative canvases,
has also, besides Flameng's "Fete," two of the extreme Impressionistic
paintings of Henri Martin, "The Lovers" (432), and his own dim "Self
Portrait" (433). Two colorful Breton scenes (302) by Darrieux, and (406)
by Le Gout-Gerard stand out on the north wall. Room 15 shows some
charming pieces,--Lucien Simon's strongly contrasting work in the
spiritual "Communicants" (494) and his barbaric "Gondola" (495);
Domergue's "The Frog" (324), Besnard's glowing "Gipsy" (255), and
Lemordant's "The Wind" (409). These last give a strong color to the
room, relieved by Leroux' calm "Lake" (416), and Maury's delicate young
girls (440).
Room 16 is better balanced. Remembering "The Frog," Domergue's
versatility appears in the portrait of Gina Mabille, the danseuse. A
delicate bit of Impressionism in Le Sidanier's "The Harbor: Landernau"
(418). Two canvases by Menard are hung here. His "Opal Sea" (445) is
charming. Auburtin's decorative panels hang on the north wall. One of
the most notable works of P. Franc Lamy, his golden "Venice: Morning"
(393), will be found on the west wall.
Room 17 shows little of striking interest. Augustin Hanicotte, one of
the few French painters to adopt the strong colors and lights of the
Scandinavian artists, is represented by the gay "Winter in the Low
Country" (381). Andre Dauchez' "Le Pouldu" (304) is a fine brown lowland
landscape. In spirit, though in richer colors, Jean Veber's captivating
"Little Princess" (515) reminds one of John Bauer's Swedish fairy-tale
pictures. Strength and truthfulness characterize Jeanniot's fine group
of Norman fisherfolk (388). (See p. 125.)
Room 18 is better. Note Marie Cazin's "Diana Asleep" (289), done in a
single brown. Here, too, is Flameng's "Portrait of Madame Letellier"
(345). A soft, delicate bit of landscape is Brouillet's "Among the
Dunes" (272), which deserves better than to be hung in a corner. One who
has seen the Futurist pictures in the Annex should not overlook here
Albert Guillaume's "Le Boniment" (370), a rich burlesque on Futurist
art.
Italy.--No other section in the Palace is so finely hung as the
Italian. As no attempt has been made to crowd the rooms, each canvas is
properly placed. Room 21 holds the most important paintings honored by
the jury. On the west wall is the work of Ettore Tito, the winner of the
grand prize, five canvases demonstrating both his versatility and his
mastery of color. On the north and south walls are the medal-of-honor
pictures of Onorato Carlandi and Camillo Innocenti, the latter striking
in their golden tone. Coromaldi's rich harvest scenes (26, 27), and a
Leonardo Bazzaro (4) (both gold medallists), hang on the east wall. Not
to be overlooked, though passed by the jury, are Casciaro's warm
landscapes on the north wall and Ricci's "Butterflies" (96), which help
to make this collection one of splendid color.
Room 22 also glows with color. Ferraguti's "Portrait in Red" (46) (gold
medal) holds the place of honor on the west wall. On the north wall is
the glowing "Fiametta" (49) by Matilde Festa Piacentini, wife of the
architect of the Italian Pavilion, and beside it the equally warm
"Golden Rays" (47) by Ferretti. On the east wall burns Traiano
Chitarin's "Evening Fires" (31). Among the sculpture is Dazzi's
"Portrait of a Lady" (160) (gold medal).
Room 23 holds the greater portion of the sculpture, including Amigoni's
simple "Adolescence" (151), Brozzi's spirited "Animals" (155), in
relievo on bronze, Graziosi's "Susanna" (165), and Pagliani's "On the
Beach" (180). All of these won gold medals, but the really striking
piece in the room is "Proximus Tuus" (162), the weary peasant, by
Achille D'Orsi. Of the few paintings nothing is very remarkable, though
Bazzani's "Arch of Septimus Severus" (3) is interesting for its
workmanship.
Room 24 presents extremely varied styles from Morani's No. 80 to
Domenico Irolli's heavily painted "Violin Player" (64), and Enrico
Lionne's gorgeous purple figures in the extreme of Impressionism. One of
Nomellini's effects in light and shade appears in No. 86, on the east
wall. Paolo Sala's "Along the Thames" (100) deserves better place and
notice. Irolli, Lionne and Nomellini are gold medallists.
Room 25, without any remarkable canvases, is very pleasing as an example
of harmonious hanging. This is best illustrated by the west wall where
hang four pictures by the three Ciardis, Beppe, Emma, and Guiseppe, and
one, No. 6, by Bartolomeo Bezzi, the group admirably centered by Beppe
Ciardi's large "Venetian Scene" (32). All three of the Ciardis won gold
medals. In the center of the north wall is a fine ruddy sunset (102) by
Francesco Sartorelli. The south wall is dominated by Z. V. Zanetti's
richly decorative "Tree" (116). Beside it, on the cut-off of the wall,
is Guiseppe Mentessi's gripping "Soul of the Stones" (75). Mentessi won
the gold medal with this picture, as Italo Brass did with his "Bridge
Across the Lagoon" (10). Sculpture in this room is represented by small
bronzes and Ernesto Biondi's almost terrible "St. Francis d'Assisi"
(154).
Uruguay.--The Uruguayan exhibit of painting and sculpture is in one
small room, No. 19, against the west wall, next to France. The work has
characteristics in common with that of the south of Europe, and shows
national feeling. Manuel Rose (52-57) was awarded a gold medal.
Cuba.--The Cuban section in Room 20, adjoining Uruguay, though small,
is interesting. The jury thought well enough of Leopoldo Romanach's
canvases (16-29) to give him the medal of honor. M. Rodriguez Morey
(13-15) won the gold medal.
China, occupying four rooms, 94-97, adjoining the northern end of the
United States Section, though desirous of appearing before the world as
a modern republic, has wisely brought here the most beautiful examples
of her ancient art. Many of the pieces go so far beyond the records of
man that their authorship is lost in darkness. The exquisitely beautiful
ink paintings on silk, the finest collection of these works in
existence, represent the master painters of all the dynasties of China.
Their subjects deal with tradition and religious precepts. Precious
cloisonne in heroic pieces has been used for the background of
paintings. There are picture-screens made of five or six attached panels
of fine porcelain inlaid with cloisonne, and many splendid carvings and
porcelains. The medal of honor for water color went to Kiang Ying-seng's
"Snow Scene" (348) in Room 94. The water colors of Su Chen-lien, Kao
Ki-fong, and Miss Shin Ying-chin, and the exquisite carvings in
semi-precious stones of Teh Chang, all gold medal winners, are in the
same room.
The Philippines, Room 98, by the west wall, have an exhibit which shows
that their march toward civilization includes well-grounded ambitions of
art. Mentality, feeling, spirit, all reveal themselves in the canvases.
Crudity is apparent, but it comes more from an untutored hand than from
failure to grasp the significance of the subject. Many pictures are
flamboyant, some are melodramatic, nearly all are big subjects handled
with great boldness; what they lack in finish they make up in sincerity.
Felix R. Hidalgo's contributions (10-20) won him a gold medal.
Sweden.--The achievements of Sweden, Rooms 99-107, next to China, have
surprised everybody. That country has sent the most distinctively
national of all the European exhibits. Swedish artists are
stay-at-homes, and their pictures are filled with the Scandinavian love
of country. The scenes and portraits are all Swedish, from Carl
Larsson's intimate pictures of family life and forest picnics (see p.
126), or Bruno Liljefors' great paintings of the misty northern ocean,
down to John Bauer's captivating little illustrations of Swedish goblin
tales. No one who has viewed the snow scenes of Anshelm Schultzberg can
ever forget the impression of cold and impenetrable depth. Swedish
painters are heroic in method, very lavish with their pigments, and
generous in the size of their canvases. Some of the pictures, in fact,
like "The Swans" (202) by Liljefors, are too large to be seen to the
best advantage in the small rooms where they hang. Liljefors won the
grand prize, and Gustav Fjaestad the medal of honor, for Swedish
painting; Larsson, the grand prize for water color. Anna Boberg, Room
106, whose masculine paintings have always won her honor hitherto, is
without award. This famous painter is the wife of the architect of the
fine Swedish Pavilion. The jury offered her a silver medal, but
Commissioner Schultzberg refused to accept it.
Spain is to have an excellent exhibit in the Annex building behind the
Palace. Thus far Portugal alone represents the Iberian painters. The
collection fills three rooms, 109-111, between Sweden and Holland. The
Portuguese artists infuse the spirit of revelry into much of their work.
Indeed, it sometimes approaches the bacchanalian. The work is of the
extreme modern school as to color, although, technically, there is much
drawing in and respect for definite form. Most striking, perhaps, is the
splendid representation in many of the pictures of the intense sunlight
that beats upon that Southern country. No more vivid examples of this
can be found in the collection than Malhoa's "Returning from the
Festival" (54) and his "Catholic Procession in the Country" (56).
Malhoa, deservedly, captured the grand prize for Portuguese art. The
single medal of honor went to Jose Veloso Salgado for his scenes of
Minho. The portraits, too, have much of the intensity of the South. The
most noteworthy are those by Columbano, Room 110, winner of the grand
prize at St. Louis. The four rooms show Portugal prolific of artists who
seek beauty in scenes of domesticity and the qrandeur of landscapes.
Argentina.--It is interesting to note that the painters of Portugal
show more characteristics in common with those of South America and the
Philippines than with their European neighbors. Their execution is more
tamed than that of the Filipino painters, their style more settled than
that of the Argentine. That is not to the discredit of the Argentinos,
who, though a new people, have accomplished much that deserves praise.
Their exhibit, in Room 112, is important in its showing of the progress
of art in so new a country, and it is said to be representative. The
artists whose works are shown are almost all young men, a fact which, in
connection with their performance, proclaims that Argentina will do
something free and original in the future. Three pictures by Antonio
Alice, Nos. 1, 2, and 3, have been awarded the medal of honor. They bear
witness to Alice's great versatility. Jorge Bermudez' three figure
studies (gold medal) are striking. No. 5, "The Daughter of the
Hacienda," is wrongly entitled in the official catalog "The Young
Landlady." Others in the collection suffer in the same way, as Coppini's
"The Old Station" (20), which is catalogued as "The Old Stall." Some of
the Argentino landscapes are striking expositions of the spirit of the
pampas, particularly Lavecchia's "Ne
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