We lingered in the colonnade to view the eight mural decorations by
Frank Brangwyn, of London. In front of The Bowmen we found a friend, a
gifted woman painter, fairly bursting with enthusiasm. "What delights me
in Brangwyn," she said, "is his artistic courage. He dares to put down
just what he feels. This sturdy figure in the foreground, for example,
peering through the trees, how many other painters would have allowed
him to turn his back on the spectator? And yet how interesting he is and
how alive."
"Some of those heads strike me as curious," I remarked. "That fellow
closest to the center, just about to let his arrow fly, seems to have no
head to speak of."
"Sometimes he's careless with his drawing. And yet he can draw
magnificently, too. He evidently had a purpose in making so many of the
heads in these murals almost deformed. He wanted to suggest that these
types were in no way mental. They were wholly physical. Notice the care
he has lavished on their muscular bodies, their great shoulders and
legs."
"It doesn't seem like English work, does it?" said the architect.
"No, there's something almost Oriental about it both in the feeling and
the coloring. And there's the Pagan love of the elemental life."
"But what a chance Brangwyn had to do something new with this
magnificent subject," the architect went on. "At last, after centuries
of effort, men are actually conquering the air. They've learned to fly.
They've become birds. Now why didn't Brangwyn give us a pictorial
expression of that miracle? Why didn't the artist have as much sense as
the man of affairs who pays Art Smith to come out here and fly before
the multitude?"
I argued that Brangwyn preferred to deal with antique themes - they were
so much more pictorial.
The architect interrupted with some impatience. "But that's exactly what
they're not. In my opinion Whistler was perfectly right when he said
that if a mural decorator couldn't make modern life pictorial he didn't
know his business. Flying through the air is only one of many wonders in
the life of today that cry out for expression in art; but you scarcely
catch a note of them here."
"For example?" said the painter.
"Industry - our great machines, the new power they bring into the world,
the change in industrial relations and social and moral ideals. Now in
these murals, Brangwyn has simply repeated himself and he hasn't by any
means done his best work. And I question whether his observation is so
accurate as you admirers of his try to make it appear. Look at the way
those fellows are holding their bows - with the left hand, presumably
for the pictorial effect of the composition. Well, let that point pass.
One fellow has shot his arrow. The other is holding his arrow between
the fore finger and the middle finger. Well, it won't go very far. The
Indians know better. They let the arrow rest on the thumb to give it
plenty of freedom to fly. One of those bows, by the way, has no string.
Brangwyn probably thought it wouldn't be missed."
As we looked at the other panels the architect conceded that the points
the painter raised for Brangwyn, the brilliant use of color; the
dramatic grouping and the fineness of characterization, were true
enough. "But he's too monotonous. Though his groups are of different
periods, some of them ages apart, they're all essentially alike and the
figures are even dressed alike. I'm perfectly willing to make allowance
for artistic convention. But why should an artist limit himself
unnecessarily when he has all the ages to draw on? Why should he neglect
the present, the greatest of all the ages?"
"Ah, I'm afraid you're too literal said the painter. "You want to limit
a genius to rules."
We turned from The Bowmen to study in detail the second illustration of
Air, much more modern and yet charmingly old-fashioned, the windmill and
the little mill high in the background, the group of naked boys flying
kites, the toilers and their children, going home as fast as they could,
fighting the wind, their picturesque draperies flying around them.
The architect was impressed. "He's caught the feeling of the
thunderstorm, hasn't he?" he said.
"And he's brought out all the picturesqueness and the color and the
majesty and even the humor," said the painter. "See how wonderfully be
has composed the picture, what pictorial use he has made of every
detail. The background of the clouds and the rain, the dark blues and
the green and the pink; and the kites catching some of the color, and
the lovely color of the mill and of the grass dried by the sun. And see
that figure up there on the steps, all windblown and rushing under
cover. It's all beautiful and yet there's not one face or figure there
that would be considered beautiful by the painter who works for
prettiness. He has no interest whatever in what the average mural
decorator considers beautiful. And yet he sees beauty everywhere and he
makes it felt. How pictorially he has used those purple flowers in the
foreground at the base of the composition. And observe their relation to
the purple clouds on top. And then what character he has put into those
active figures, particularly in this queer little boy, naked except for
the purple drapery flying from his waist. He has caught something of the
fantastic spirit that you often see in children."
In nearing the two panels illustrating Water we had a chance to see how
dexterously Brangwyn could manage his design without perspective, which
would have made a hole in the wall. Those women with jars on their heads
stood against a sky none the less lovely because it was flat. It was
exquisite in its varieties of blue and white and green. That sturdy
fellow lifting a heavy jar was actually working and working hard. "And
how splendidly Brangwyn has modeled the figure with his back turned to
us," the painter exclaimed. "What a stroke of genius it was that a
yellow handkerchief of just that shade should hang from his neck. And
the figures in the companion panel drawing their nets, they are putting
their heart and soul into their work and they are having a good time,
too. And this man here in the corner, with the purple shadows on his
bare back, lifting his net, he's evidently had a big catch. He's holding
the net in a way that shows it's heavy. And how decorative those men in
the background are, with the baskets on their heads. Brangwyn loves to
use figures in this attitude. They are interesting and picturesque and
dramatic at the same time."
"But they're too conscious," the architect insisted, "too posed.
"Remember, they're not paintings," the painter insisted. "They're formal
decorations."
In the panel representing the elementary use of Fire we were all struck
by Brangwyn's daring and fine treatment of the ugly. Nearly every face
was almost grotesque. And yet every face was appealing for the simple
reason that it expressed attractive human qualities. Two, a man and a
woman, had noses ridiculously large. The group of men in the center of
the background, at the base, around the fire, had apparently started the
fire by rubbing sticks together. One was intently leaning forward, as if
in the act of blowing. Among the figures behind the group stood a man
with an infant in his arms, vividly characterized by the unseeing eyes.
That infant was instantly singled out by the painter.
"Brangwyn is very wonderful in his observation of children. He has a
quality that is almost maternal. Observe the difference between the
expression in the face of that baby and the expression in the face of
that little boy to the left of the fire-makers. How intently he is
looking on as he leans against the brown jar. He shows all the interest
of a boy just learning how to do things."
The kiln charmed us, too, though we regretted that it did not explain
itself quite so spontaneously as most of the other panels. "But
symbolism ought not to be too obvious, you know," the painter argued.
"There's a certain charm in vagueness. It makes you feel your way toward
a work- of art. The more you think about this panel the more you find
there. To me it suggests the relation between fire and the abundance of
the earth. See how cleverly, in each case of these two panels, Brangwyn
has used smoke, first as a thin line, breaking into two lines as it goes
up and interweaving, and then as a great flowing wreath, dividing the
panel in two parts without weakening the unity."
For composition we decided that the two Earth panels were among the most
remarkable of all. With satisfaction I heard Brangwyn compared by the
painter to a great stage manager. "When I look at these groupings, I am
reminded of Forbes-Robertson's productions of plays." Now we could see
how brilliantly the decorator had planned in securing his effects of
height by starting his group of figures close to the top of the canvas.
And with what skill he had used trees and vines and vegetables and
fruits, both for design and for coloring. "He has always been mad about
apples and squashes," said that feminine voice. "In nearly every picture
here you will find not one squash only, but several squashes. He loves
them for their color and their shape. And how wonderful he makes the
color of the grape. He suggests the miracle of its deep purple."
We admired the painter's pictorial use of shadow on those powerful and
scantily draped figures and the animation he put into the bodies of the
wine-pressers. And down there in a corner he had perfectly reproduced
the attitude and facial expression of the worker at rest, holding out
his cup for a drink. "There's another of those queer and interesting
children. But oh, most wonderful of all is the opposite panel that ought
to be called Abundance. See that mother, holding her lusty baby. The
face is commonplace enough, but it has all motherhood in it. And the
woman behind, she looks as if she might be a mother bereft or one of
those women cheated out of motherhood."
The architect, though he still had his reservations on the subject of
the Brangwyns, conceded that they were distinctly architectural. They
blended into the spirit of the court.
The painter at once supported the opinion. "In these colonnades Guerin
has done some of his finest coloring. The blue and the red are in
absolute harmony with Brangwyn's rich tones. They must have been applied
to fit the canvases. But the marvel is that the murals should show up so
magnificently. Brangwyn painted them in London and he must have had
second sight to divine just the right scheme. Do you realize," she went
on enthusiastically, fairly losing herself in her enjoyment, "the
immense difficulties he had to contend with? In the first place, see how
huge those canvases are. Their size created all kinds of problems. To
view them right, to get a line on the detail, so to speak, would have
meant, for the average painter, walking long distances. But, in his
studio, Brangwyn could not have taken anything like accurate
measurements."
"Perhaps he painted them out of doors," the architect suggested.
"I believe the explanation is that he thought them all out and he saw
them in their places. From Mr. Mullgardt he had probably received a
complete account, with drawings, of just what the court was going to be
like. Then it lived before him and he made the murals live. His work
shows that he begins in the right place, unlike so many people who paint
from outside. He feels the qualities of the people he is going to paint.
He really loves them. He loves their surroundings. He must be very
elemental in his nature. They say he is a great, uncouth sort of a
fellow. When he first went to London he was very contemptuous of the
work done by the academicians. It must have seemed to him, a good deal
of it, effeminate and trifling. Can't you see how those murals show that
he is a man clear through? They are masculine in every detail."
"And yet they have a good deal of delicacy, too, haven't they?" said the
architect. "See how atmospheric those backgrounds are. They actually
suggest nature."
"Because they are unconventional and because they are true. And yet they
are purely decorative. You wouldn't like to think of them as standing
apart in a great frame. When you go close you will see that the colors
are laid on flat. And they don't shine. For this reason they have great
carrying power. Observe The Bowmen down there in the distance. Even from
this remote end of the court it expresses itself as lovely in color and
composition. Let us walk down and see how it grows on us as we
approach."
Slowly we moved along the colonnade, the figures seeming to grow more
and more lifelike as the painter indicated their technical merits. "They
are of the earth, those men, aren't they? They are the antithesis of the
highly civilized types used by so many of the painters today. They
suggest red blood and strength of limb and joy in the natural things of
life, eating, drinking, the open air, and simple comradeship. They make
us see the wonder of outdoor living, the kind of living that most of us
have missed. What a pleasure it is to find a worker in any kind of work
trying to do a thing and actually doing it and doing it with splendid
abandon. Now if Brangwyn hadn't entered into the feelings of those
bowmen in the foreground, he couldn't have made the figure alive. And
the life, remember, isn't merely brought out by the happy use of the
flesh tints or by the play of the muscles. It's in the animating spirit.
As Brangwyn painted those fellows, he felt like a bowman. So he
succeeded in putting into his canvas the strength that each bowman put
into his bow. He isn't pretending to shoot, that sturdy fellow in front.
He is shooting, and he's going to get what he is after."
Before each of the four pairs of murals, the painter indicated to us the
happy way in which, by the deft use of the coloring, each blended into
the other, and she called my attention to the clearness of the
symbolism. So often, she remarked, the mural decorators used
compositions that seemed like efforts to hide secrets, a childish way of
working, sure to defeat itself. Brangwyn had no secrets. He was sincere
and direct. He was happy over this work. He said that he had enjoyed
doing it more than anything else he had ever done before. If these
canvases had been found in the heart of Africa they would have been
identified as coming from Brangwyn. No one else used color just as he
did, with his kind of courage. His colors were arbitrary, too. He didn't
follow nature and yet he always conveyed the spirit of natural things.
Throughout his work he showed that he was a close and subtle observer.
The sweep of rain through the air, the movement of figures and of
draperies in the wind, the expression of human effort, how wonderfully
he managed to suggest them all and to make them pictorial. But he wasn't
interested in merely an activity. He loved repose. In nearly all of
these eight canvases, so brimming with life, there were figures looking
on serenely, calmly, conveying the impression of being absolutely at
rest.
In every particular, according to the searching observer, Brangwyn was
successful, with the exception of one, his treatment of birds. He
evidently didn't know birds. If he had known them he would have loved
them, and if he had loved them he would have entered into their spirit
and he would have flown with them and he would have made them fly in his
painting. Now they merely flopped. They were just about as much alive as
the clay figures used in a shooting match. Even his highly decorative
flamingoes weren't right. They did not stand firmly on the ground. They
weren't alive. And the necks of the two flamingoes never could have met
in the curves that Brangwyn gave them. This very failure, amusing as it
was and hardly detracting from the effect of his work as a whole, was
another proof that he was an instinctive painter, who relied for his
guidance on feeling. But it was plain enough that he had chosen those
flamingoes for their color, and a right choice it was.
We could not decide which of the eight murals we liked best. Perhaps,
after all, they could not be considered apart. Though each was in itself
a unity, the eight completely expressed a big conception. And in detail
each canvas was full of delightful bits. If you closed your hand and
peered between your thumb and your fingers, you could see how
beautifully the color had been applied and how, throughout the whole
surface, the workmanship sustained itself. Never was there the sense of
faltering or of petering out. And everywhere there were expressions of
fine understanding and sympathy, in the study of a peasant mother
holding her babe, nude boys flying kites, a happy face with the lips
blowing a pipe, a muscular figure lifting a jar, all conveying abundant
life and rich coloring.
The painter finally ran away from us, apologizing for her enthusiasm.
In discussing her opinions, the architect said: "Well, I don't
altogether agree. But she may be right. She sees from the inside, which
is very different from seeing from the outside. There is a great deal of
artistic appreciation that can be felt only by the artist, by the
fellow-craftsman. No wonder we go so far astray when we criticise
aspects of art that we're only related to indirectly or not related at
all."
We walked to the Marina. From there we saw the sun, a great red ball,
sinking behind the Golden Gate.