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.