In front of the Court of Palms we stopped to admire James Earl Fraser's
"End of the Trail," the most popular group of sculpture in the
Exposition. "It deserves all its popularity, doesn't it? It's finely
imagined and splendidly worked out. The pony is excellent in its
modeling and the Indian is wonderfully life-like."
At our side a man and a woman were standing, the man more than six feet
tall, with broad shoulders and a face that had evidently seen a good
deal of weather. "I've known fellers just like that Indian," we heard
him say, "up in Minnesota. He might be a Blackfoot after a couple of
days' tusselling with the wind and the rain in the mountains. I've seen
'em come into town all beat out. The man that made that statue knew his
business. An' I guess he knew what he was doing when he called it 'The
End of the Trail."'
When the visitor had passed, the architect said: "The symbolism gets
them all, doesn't it; and the realism, too? But Fraser couldn't have
expressed so much if he hadn't put a lot of heart into his 'Work. He
really felt all that the Indian represented, as a human being and as a
representative of a dying race."
"The Court of Palms" captured us both, by its shape, by the splendor of
the Ionic columns, by the loveliness of its detail, by its coloring and
by that charm of its sunken garden. "You can feel here the mind that
developed those four Italian towers. It shows the same balanced
judgment, and skill and taste. The two towers here, though they stand at
either end of the court, and make a beautiful ornamentation, are really
a part of the wall. They help to give it dignity and variety. And how
artistically the palms have been used here. They can be among the least
graceful of plants; but here they are really decorative. And those
laurel trees at the side of the main doorway make fine ornamental notes.
The sculptured vases, too, are wonderfully graceful."
Above the doorways we found the three murals that gave further
distinction to this court and enriched the coloring. In "Fruits and
Flowers" Childe Hassam had done one of his purely decorative pictures,
without a story, contenting himself with graceful pictures and delicate
color scheme. Charles Holloway made "The Pursuit of Pleasure" frankly
allegorical, the floating figure of the woman pursued by admiring
youths. Over the main doorway Arthur Mathews had also painted an
allegory, "Victorious Spirit," the Angel of Light, with wide-spread
wings of gold, standing in the center and keeping back the spirit of
materialism, represented by a fiery horse driven by his rider with
brutal energy. "Observe how successfully Mathews has chosen his colors.
These deep purples help to bring out the splendor of those golden tones.
This canvas is unquestionably one of the best of all the murals. It
shows that in Mathews San Francisco has a man of remarkable talent, one
of the great mural painters of the country."
On the way to the second half-court we had a chance to see the South
Wall at close range, with its rich ornamented doorways, its little
niches and fountains devised to make it varied and gay. Those little
elephant heads were another sign of Faville's careful attention to
ornamental detail. And the coloring gave warmth to the background,
contrasting with the deep green of the planting.
At the Court of Flowers we met Solon Borglum's "Pioneer, too old to be
typical, different from the man in lusty middle age or in youth who came
to California in the early days. But it justified itself by suggesting
perhaps the greatest of the pioneers in old age, one who had grown with
the community, the poet, Joaquin Miller. "It's Miller sure enough," said
the architect, "even if the likeness isn't close. But why those military
trappings on the horse? Like the rest of the pioneers, Joaquin was a man
of peace."
The Court of Flowers we thought well named, both for its planting,
McLaren at his best, and for its Italian Renaissance decoration, with
that pretty pergola opening out on the scene, Calder's Oriental "Flower
Girl" decorating the spaces between the arches. And those lions by
Albert Laessle were a fine decorative feature. The fountain, "Beauty and
the Beast," by Edgar Walter, of San Francisco, was one of the most
original and decorative pieces of sculpture we had seen. The figure of
the girl standing on the coils of the beast was remarkably well done and
the water flowing over the bowl, with the pipes of Pan glimpsed
underneath, made a charming picture. There was a whimsical and a
peculiarly French suggestion in the use of the decorative hat and
sandals on the nude figure. In detail those two towers at the end were
slightly different from the other two. Like the others they served as a
decoration of the wall, breaking the long lines."