Telegraph Hill – Coit Tower Murals

 Posted by on June 6, 2012
Jun 062012
 
Telegraph Hill
Coit Tower
WPA Murals
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Cowboy and Farmer by Clifford Wight
These are four of six single standing figures in the collection.  They represent the very essence of California. The Will Rogers Style cowboy (that many friends of Wight said was a self portrait) and the farmer, that looks an awful lot like artist Ralph Stackpole.
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These two are Surveyor and Ironworker. There are three windows between these two figures. Over the central window Wight painted a bridge, which had the NRA Eagle in the center. Over the right hand window he stretched a segment of chain, and in the circle appeared the words In God We Trust, then over the last window he placed a section of woven cable and a circle framing a hammer and sickle, and the words United Workers of the World. This all proved to be entirely too controversial and it was removed before the tower opened in 1934.

Clifford Wight was born in England in 1900. He and Ralph Stackpole worked with Diego Rivera in the 1920’s. Wight came to San Francisco with Rivera to work as an assistant on Rivera’s murals at the San Francisco Art Institute. He also worked with Rivera on his Detroit mural. Diego Rivera painted a portrait of Wight into one of the frescos in the Secretariat of Education in Mexico City. He returned to England and died in 1966.

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  8 Responses to “Telegraph Hill – Coit Tower Murals”

  1. Paul in Powell River says:
    June 6, 2012 at 3:28 pm

    These are very good, the “Will Rogers” I especially like. And in 1934 not too many people in authority had kind words for the UWW movement.

  2. RedPat says:
    June 6, 2012 at 6:32 pm

    Wonderful! What a place that tower is!

  3. GailO says:
    June 6, 2012 at 10:34 pm

    Many times I have wondered how my life would have been different if my ancestors had been brave enough to migrate west…but no they were stuck in the New England textile towns…It is murals like this that really get me wondering.

  4. AVCr8teur says:
    June 7, 2012 at 4:29 am

    I think I like the cowboy the best. I wonder what type of workers they would paint today.

  5. EG CameraGirl says:
    June 7, 2012 at 12:01 pm

    These are great portraits, a reminder of times past.

  6. Oakland Daily Photo says:
    June 8, 2012 at 4:51 am

    Oh, I like these individual portraits, so much. They command attention in their purity and simplicity.

  7. Telegraph Hill – Coit Tower Murals | Art and Architecture - San Francisco says:
    August 1, 2012 at 6:13 pm

    […] (Harold) Dean Their are six figures that stand alone in the Tower. (You can review the first four here).  The stockbroker/banker is thought to be A.P. Giannini, founder of the Bank of Italy that later […]

  8. Telegraph Hill – Coit Tower Murals | Art and Architecture - San Francisco says:
    August 1, 2012 at 6:31 pm

    […] was delayed several months because of the controversial content of some of the paintings. Clifford Wight’s mural, which contained a hammer and sickle as one of a series of medallions illustrating the range of […]

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