Music Concourse – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Spreckles Temple of Music

Posted by Cindy on May 25, 2013

May 252013

Music Concourse
Golden Gate Park
Spreckels Temple of Music

This is the third bandstand to grace Golden Gate Park. Claus Spreckels (The Sugar King) gave $75,000 towards the $78,810 cost of the building. The shell is an Italian Renaissance style with an acoustically reflective coffered shell standing 70 feet high and covered in Colusa Sandstone.

The Temple, dedicated on September 9, 1900, suffered damage in the 1906 earthquake (much of its Colusa sandstone cornices, balustrades and corners collapsed). It was further rattled by the region’s 1989 earthquake. This time the restoration was over seen by restoration architects Cary and Company. Performers under the dome have ranged from John Philip Sousa to Pavarotti and the Grateful Dead.

The band shell is home the the Golden Gate Park Band, an institution since 1882. They provide free concerts 25 Sundays each year.

Designed by Reid Brothers architects, it is similar to another structure designed by the Reid Brothers in Bellingham, Washington. There is an excellent history of the Reid Brothers by the San Francisco Examiner here.

The two relief sculptures are by Robert Aitken. The one on the left holds a lyre and the one on the right a trumpet.

Born in San Francisco, California, Robert Aitken became a noted sculptor who spent most of his career teaching at the National Academy of Design in New York City. He did numerous portraits, full size and bust, of well known figures.

For his early study he was a painting pupil of Arthur Mathews and Douglas Tilden at the Mark Hopkins Institute, San Francisco, and by the time he was age 18 he had his own studio. In 1897, he studied briefly in Paris, where influences turned him to sculpture.

He taught at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art, University of California, from 1901 though 1904, and was awarded some of the premier sculpture commissions including monuments to the Navy and to President McKinley in Golden Gate Park. In 1904, he returned to Paris for three more years, and then settled in New York City where he was an instructor at the National Academy of Schools Sculpture Class, and at the Art Students League.

Golden Gate Park – Verdi

Posted by Cindy on March 13, 2012

Mar 132012

Golden Gate Park

Music Concourse

Giuseppe Verdi by Orzio Grossoni March 23, 1914.

The statue was dedicated to the sounds of the sweet voice of soprano Luisa Tetrazzini. She sang the aria from Aida to a reported audience of 20,000. The memorial was a gift of the Italian Community spearheaded by Ettore Patrizzi owner and publisher of San Francisco’s Italian newspaper L’Italia (published form 1887 to 1943). The subscription fund raised $15,000 for the statue and commissioned the work through a contest at the the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan.

The sculptor chosen was Italian Orazio Grossoni of Milan. Grossoni studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan with, Raffaele Casnedi and Ambrogio Borghi and worked in the studio of the sculptor Ernesto Bazzaro. Grassoni specialized in portraiture, genre and funerary sculpture, as well as, the design of medals.

The allegorical figures around the statue represent the four muses; Love, Tragedy, Joy and Sorrow, the fundamental elements said to inspire most artists.

In 2003 the 6′ tall bronze bust of Verdi was regilded along with an inscription on the rear face of the granite pedestal. The bronze frieze and sculptures below were spot repatinated and treated with a custom wax coating. Copper stains were chemically poulticed from the pedestal and a sacrificial graffiti barrier was applied; a new dedication plaque was fabricated and installed.

Golden Gate Park – Robert Emmet

Posted by Cindy on March 12, 2012

Mar 122012

Golden Gate Park

Music Concourse

Robert Emmet was an Irish nationalist and Republican, orator and rebel leader born in Dublin, Ireland. He led an abortive rebellion against British rule in 1798. In 1803 he was captured, tried and executed for high treason.

The Emmet statue shows the 25 year old making his famous “Speech from the Dock” during his sentencing.

The artist was Gerome Connor who created the bronze in 1916. The statue was a gift of Senator James Duval Phelan. The piece was cast by the Bureau Brothers Foundry of Philadelphia and the granite pedestal and platform were designed by architect Charles E. Gottschalk.

Gerome Connor was born in 1874 in County Kerry, Ireland. At the age of 14 his father sold the family farm moved the family to Holyoke Massachusetts, a typical destination for emigrants from this part of Ireland. In 1899 Gerome joined the Roycroft arts community, where he assisted with blacksmithing and later started creating terracotta busts and reliefs and eventually, he was recognized as Roycroft’s sculptor-in-residence. After four years at Roycroft, he went on to work with Gustav Stickley and became well known as a sculptor being commissioned to create civic commissions in bronze. Connor was a self-taught artist who was highly regarded in the United States where most of his public works can be seen. He died in Ireland in 1943 of heart failure, and reputedly in poverty.

Golden Gate Park – General Pershing

Posted by Cindy on March 5, 2012

Mar 052012

Golden Gate Park

Music Concourse

A tribute to General Pershing and the victorious armies of the United States and her co-belligerents during the World War 1914-1918

Presented by Dr. Morris Herzstein 1922

Bronze by Haig Patagian

Haig Patigian is noted for his classical works, which are especially numerous in public venues in San Francisco, California. Patigian was born in Van, Armenia, which at that time was under Turkish rule. Haig was the son of Avedis and Marine Patigian. His parents, teachers in a missionary school, wanted their two sons to find freedom in the growing United States. When Patigian’s father was accused of creating propaganda for the Russian government — he was an artist, photographer — he took the opportunity to flee to the West.

They settled outside of Fresno. After working on a few farms in the area, the father found himself able to buy a ranch and a vineyard to establish his family. The parents, both believing passionately in art, encouraged the two boys to develop their artistic skills. And living in a peaceful community, Patigian developed quite well.

By the time he was 17 (around 1893), Patigian had found an apprenticeship painting signs. He painted the natural scenery, working with watercolors and oils. He soon had his own shop, once he put some money aside he moved to San Francisco, his older brother already worked in San Francisco as an illustrator. And in 1900, Patigian found employment at the San Francisco Bulletin as an illustrator.

Golden Gate Park – Ulysses S. Grant

Posted by Cindy on March 4, 2012

Mar 042012

Golden Gate Park

Music Concourse

Ulysses S. Grant by Rupert Schmid

The pedestal of the bronze bust lists the principle battles of the generals’ command. It was sculpted by Rupert Schmid and funded by a citizens committee in 1904. (However, there are articles the say it was installed in 1894 and 1896). Schmid had modeled the General at Mount McGregor a few weeks before he died and that concluded in a monument at Grant’s Tomb in Riverside Park, New York. This was why Schmid was chosen.

This is excerpted from “San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park: A Thousand and Seventeen Acres of Stories”

Several unfortunate events during the creation of this sculpture make its story colorful. Just weeks after Ulysses S. Grant died in 1885, a committee was formed to erect a memorial to the Civil War General and 18th U.S. president, who spent time in northern California The desired funding of $500,000 couldn’t be raised, however, and what little money was collected sat in a bank account for nine years. When the project finally proceeded, the committee members – Cornelius O’Connor, Theodore Reichert, and Isaac Hecht – agreed to shore up the funds to create an appropriate monument. …

With the project underway, plans were made to dedicate the monument on Memorial Day, 1896, and the sculpture was complete by mid-May. It was torn down a few days later, however, a victim of the stonecutters’ union and public opinion. To save money, the granite portions had been cut and dressed by convicts at Folsom Prison. The union protested, claiming that the use of prison labor had desecrated Grant’s memory. A new base, using materials from the McClennan Quarry in Madera County, was in place by late June.

Complete, the veiled monument awaited dedication, but a new complication arose. Schmid billed the monument committee $560 more than the agreed-upon $8000…(there was a change in the design for the base by committee member Hecht, who died before getting permission from the others).

The work was officially but unceremoniously accepted… If it was dedicated the date is obscure…(explaining the conflicting dates for the statue)

The obelisk-shaped granite pedestal was once draped with a bronze grouping containing a uniform, campaign hat, trench coat, rifle, spear, and sword. One of the four cannonball corner supports has been missing for decades.

Born in Egg, Bavaria, Germany, Rupert Schmid was a sculptor who was the son of a stone carver. He studied at the Royal Academy in Munich, and in 1884, immigrated to the United States. The next year he exhibited at the National Academy of Design, and by 1890 had settled in San Francisco where he established a studio and got many important commissions including the decorations for the Spreckels and Chronicle buildings as well as portraits busts of many prominent persons of San Francisco.

UPDATE: June 20, 2020

This statue was vandalized by protestors. The fate of the statue is unknown and this post will be updated when more is learned.

Notification San Francisco Mayor London Breed:

“There is very real pain in this country rooted in our history of slavery and oppression, especially against African-Americans and Indigenous people. I know that pain all too well. But the damage done to our park last night went far beyond just the statues that were torn down, and included significant damage to Golden Gate Park. Every dollar we spend cleaning up this vandalism takes funding away from actually supporting our community, including our African-American community. I say this not to defend any particular statue or what it represents, but to recognize that when people take action in the name of my community, they should actually involve us. And when they vandalize our public parks, that’s their agenda, not ours.

If we are going to make real change, let’s do the work with our impacted communities to make that change. To do that, I have asked the Arts Commission, the Human Rights Commission, and the Recreation and Parks Department and its Commission to work with the community to evaluate our public art and its intersection with our country’s racist history so that we can move forward together to make real changes in this City. Who and what we honor through our public art can and should reflect our values.”

Golden Gate Park – Rideout Memorial Fountain

Posted by Cindy on March 3, 2012

Mar 032012

Golden Gate Park

Music Concourse

Rideout Memorial Fountain

The Rideout Memorial Fountain – 1924

This area was developed for the Midwinter Fair’s Grand Court of Honor. The grounds were sculpted from sand dunes by men using horse-drawn sleds.

The fountain, dedicated in 1924, was made possible with a $10,000 gift from Corrine Rideout. Corrine Rideout was the widow of Norman Rideout, who died in a mining accident in 1896. Mr. Rideout’s father, also Norman, came from Maine to Oroville, California and opened a bank. He successfully opened five more in the central valley of California. After his death in 1907 the banks were sold to A.P. Giannini, founder of the Bank of Italy later to become the Bank of America. The family surmises that the money to pay for the fountain may have come from the sale of these banks. The Rideouts have given quite a bit to California.

The cast stone pool was designed by architect Herbert A. Schmidt. The statue is by M. Earl Cummings. The original intention was for the statue to be of bronze, but the budget did not allow it.

Golden Gate Park – Turtle Sun Dial

Posted by Cindy on February 25, 2012

Feb 252012

Golden Gate Park

In front of the de Young Museum

This sundial by Melvin Earl Cummings was named by the North American Sundial Society ‘Navigator’s Dial’ because on the dial face there are the images of three explorers of the California coastline.

The memorial sun dial was given to San Francisco by the California members of the National Society of Colonial Dames, in honor of the first navigators who approached the Pacific coast. These pioneers were Fortun Jiminiez, who came to the coast in 1533; Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo, 1542, and Sir Francis Drake, 1575.

The base of the dial is of Utah stone. The dial is bronze in the form of a half globe, resting on the back of the turtle. The inscription on the face translates to “I tell not the hours when the sun will not.” On the outside of the half globe is a relief map of the Western Hemisphere, the cost at the time was about $3000.

M. Earl Cummings (given name Melvin Earl Cummings) was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on August 13, 1876. As a teenager Cummings was apprenticed to a wood carver in decorating the Mormon Temple. After moving to San Francisco in 1896, he won a scholarship to the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art where he was a pupil of Douglas Tilden.

Golden Gate Park – Roman Gladiator

Posted by Cindy on February 23, 2012

Feb 232012

Golden Gate Park

Roman Gladiator – 1881 by Geef

In Commemoration
of the
Inauguration
of the
California Midwinter International
Exposition
On this spot the first shovelful of earth was turned
with ceremonies on August 24th 1893.
(That first spade of shovel was turned by President William Howard Taft)

After the popular 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, many American cities planned similar expositions to highlight progressive business ideas. Golden Gate Park became the setting for a hastily assembled fair, the first such west of the Mississippi. With a theme of “California: Cornucopia of the World”, the Midwinter Fair, as it is commonly called showcased the ideal climate and abundance of the state. It opened on January 27, 1894, during the depths of winter.

Michael H. de Young, publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper and the fair’s instigator, had been a director and a national commissioner at large for Chicago’s Exposition. As president and director general of San Francisco’s fair, he hoped the event would help offset the financial panic of 1893 then in full swing. On July 9, 1893, the fair committee met with park commissioners. Park Superintendent John McLaren objected to handing over his newly created park to a profit making venture; he had intended the park to be a haven from just such things. But the highly political and willful de Young got his way. Ground was broken on August 24, 1893, and construction took just five months. The fair was delayed for 26 days, however, because a sever snowstorm delayed rail cars delivering the exhibits from Chicago. (The recycling of exhibitions saved time and expense.) When the fair opened, 77,248 people attended on the first day, and the seven-month term saw 2,219,150 visitors, a triumph. The fair closed on July 4, 1894.

Known as the Sunset City, the 160-acre exposition site boasted 180 structures representing all of California’s counties, 4 other states, the Arizona Territory, and 18 foreign nations. No one architectural style predominated at it had in Chicago, but rather an eclectic approach echoed California’s multicultural population.

The above was excerpted from: San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park: A Thousand and Seventeen Acres of Stories by Chris Pollock and Erica Katz.
The Smithsonian puts the artist of this piece as Georges Geef. A reader kindly pointed out that it was by Belgian artist Willem Geefs, whose first name in French is Guillaume.

Willem Geefs (1805 – 1883), also Guiliaume Geefs, was a Belgian sculptor. Although known primarily for his monumental works and public portraits of statesmen and nationalist figures, he also explored mythological subject matter, often with an erotic theme.

Geefs was born at Antwerp, the eldest of six brothers in a family of sculptors, the best-known of whom are Joseph Geefs (1808–1885, winner of the Prix de Rome in 1836) and Jean Geefs (1825–1860, and winner of the prize in 1846). Guillaume first studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp under the late–Flemish Baroque sculptor Jan Frans van Geel and his son, Jan Lodewijk van Geel, who was also a sculptor. He completed his training under Jean-Etienne Ramey at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and began exhibiting his work in 1828.
In 1829, Geefs traveled to Italy. When he returned to Antwerp, he began teaching at the art academy. During the 1830s, he executed the colossal work Victims of the Revolution at Brussels, as well as numerous statues and busts. In 1836, he married Isabelle Marie Françoise Corr, a Brussels-born painter of Irish descent known professionally as Fanny Geefs. In the mid-19th century, the sculptor Guillaume-Joseph Charlier was an assistant to him and his brother Joseph.
The Geefs family played a leading role in the craze for public sculpture that followed Belgian independence in the 1830s, producing several propagandistic monuments that emphasized a “historical continuity of the southern Low Countries in the new independent state

Golden Gate Park – Sphinx

Posted by Cindy on February 22, 2012

Feb 222012

Golden Gate Park

Copies of Sphinx by Arthur Putnam – 1912

These sit to the right of the entry to the new de Young Museum. The plaque on them reads: This pair of concrete sphinxes replaces the original black granite sculptures commissioned from Arthur Putnam for the entrance to the Egyptian revival Fine Arts Building of the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894. At the fair’s end, this building served as the first incarnation of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum. Sometime between 1905 and 1912, the granite sphinxes were removed. New concrete sphinxes based on Putnam’s initial plaster maquettes were placed at the site. The building was demolished in 1929, but the sphinxes remained. During the construction of the new de Young, the museum’s conservators repositioned the statues on new bases and restored them to their original appearance based on documentary photographs.

As far as the originals, they disappeared sometime after the 1906 earthquake. Stories abound about the fate of the originals, and even the original material. Some say they were granite, and others say they were bronze and melted down. Another memory is that one was stolen and the other destroyed. In any event, the current concrete pieces, similar in concept to the original ones, were created in 1903 and installed in 1928.

Original Sphinx and Dore Vase at the Egyptian revival Fine Arts Building for the California Midwinter International Exhibition

Arthur Putnam (September 6, 1873–1930) was an American sculptor from the turn of the 20th century who is recognized for his bronzes of wild animals and public monuments. He was a well-known Californian and enjoyed a national reputation as well. Putnam was regarded as an artistic genius in San Francisco and his life was chronicled in the San Francisco and East Bay newspapers.

Golden Gate Park – Poeme de la Vigne

Posted by Cindy on February 21, 2012

Feb 212012

Golden Gate Park

Music Concourse

Poeme de la Vigne by Gustave Doré

Cast in Bronze 1882

This piece sits outside the deYoung Museum and the plaque attached reads: Gustave Doré created this vase for French winemakers, who exhibited it at the 1878 Paris World’s Fair. It represents an allegory of the annual wine vintage, taking the shape of a colossal wine vessel decorated with figures associated with the rites of Bacchus (the Roman god of wine). The revelers include cupids, satyrs and bacchantes, who protect the grape vines from pests. The foundry shipped this bronze version of the vase to Chicago for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 and then to San Francisco for the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition. M.H. deYoung purchased the vase at the fair’s end and later donated it to the de Young Museum.

Paul Gustave Doré was an Alsacian artist who specialized in book illustrations. Born in Strasbourg, France, on January 6, 1832, he began his artistic career in Paris when he was only 15 years old. His drawings and illustrations were groundbreaking and very popular, although he never won the acclaim of the artistic elite in France. In his later years, he spent much time in London, where he also opened a very popular gallery. He died on January 23, 1883, at the age of 51.

Doré is probably most famous for his depictions of numerous scenes from the Bible, but he also produced illustrations for many other books, including Milton, Dante, La Fontaine, Don Quixote and one of my favorites Baron Munchhausen.

Golden Gate Park – Francis Scott Key

Posted by Cindy on February 18, 2012

Feb 182012

Golden Gate Park

Music Concourse

Francis Scott Key by William Wetmore Story

To
Francis Scott Key
Author of the National Song
The Star-Spangled Banner
This Monument is Erected
by
James Lick
Of San Francisco California
A.D. 1887

*
This monument to Francis Scott Key was commissioned by San Francisco businessman James Lick, who donated $60,000 for the sculpture. Francis Scott Key wrote the Star-Spangled Banner after witnessing the shelling of Fort McHenry on September 13, 1814. James Lick was also in Baltimore during the shelling, which is most likely the reason for the bequest.

The travertine monument was executed by sculptor William W. Story in Rome in 1885–87. Recently renovated at a cost of $140,000, the monument is located on the music concourse in Golden Gate Park.

William Wetmore Story studied law at Harvard in 1840. Abandoning the law, he devoted himself to sculpture, and after 1850 lived in Rome where he was intimate with the Brownings and English poet and writer, Walter Savage Landor. His works include a statue of Dahlia as a young woman which is in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

UPDATE: June 20, 2020

This statue was vandalized by protestors. The fate of the statue is unknown and this post will be updated when more is learned.

Notification San Francisco Mayor London Breed:

Golden Gate Park – Apple Cider Press

Posted by Cindy on February 17, 2012

Feb 172012

Golden Gate Park

The Apple Cider Press by Thomas Shields Clark

*This 1892 Bronze sculpture was originally exhibited at the Midwinter International Exposition in 1894. The Apple Cider Bronze bears some resemblance to Douglas Tilden’s Mechanics Monument located on Market street in that it bears tribute to the value of hard work. However, this purchase and contribution by DeYoung was apparently inspired by art rather than memorial, since the only cider industry of note in the San Francisco Bay Area is Martinelli’s (1868) located in Watsonville, down the peninsula.

This statue was originally a drinking fountain with a cup attached by a chain, and some say it ran with cider instead of water.

Thomas Shields Clark graduated from Princeton University in 1882. He was a pupil of the Art Students League, New York, and of the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, later he entered the atelier of Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, and, becoming interested in sculpture, he worked for a while under Henri Chapu. As a sculptor, he received a medal of honor in Madrid for his Cider Press.

Golden Gate Park, The Music Concourse and Goethe and Schiller

Posted by Cindy on February 15, 2012

Feb 152012

Golden Gate Park

This is the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park. It is flanked by the new Academy of Sciences and the New DeYoung Museum.

A view of the DeYoung

Two important things you should know about Golden Gate Park. It is bigger than Central Park and it was NOT designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.

Golden Gate Park is 1017 acres, Central Park is 843 acres. Golden Gate Park was designed primarily by Botanist John McClaren and Engineer William Hammond Hall, Central Park WAS designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.

This is the first in a series of the statues of Golden Gate Park. Most of them used to be cleverly hidden in inconspicuous locations because John McLaren, the gardener who tended Golden Gate Park for more than 50 years, did not care for statues. In fact, he hated them so much, it is rumored that he took the one that sculptor Earl Cummings created of McLaren himself and hid it in the stables, where it was not discovered until after his death in 1943.

According to the Golden Gate Park superintendent William Hammond Hall “The value of a park consists of its being a park, and not a catch-all for almost anything which misguided people may wish up.” Hall considered the park to be a place to enjoy nature without the trappings of the city, a place that did not include a lot of structures, particularly ones that did not contribute to the true park experience. Yet in an 1873 report to park commissioners about the state of the park, Hall noted, “Some classes of park scenery are fitting settings for works of art, such as statues, monuments, and architectural decoration.”

The statues often move like chess pieces on a board, however, over the years many have been relocated to central locations. Most can be found, either on John F. Kennedy Drive, or on the Music Concourse.

Dedicated

to the City of San Francisco

by citizens of German descent

of California

in this year Nineteen Hundred and One

Renovated and rededicated

in the year 2001

by the

United German American societies

of San Francisco and Vicinity

Schiller is holding a scroll, and Goethe is holding the wreath. The bronze figures stand on a pedestal of red Missouri granite. The artist was Ernest Friedrick August Reitschel.

Rietschel was born in Pulsnitz, Saxony. At an early age he became an art student at Dresden, and subsequently a pupil of Christian Daniel Rauch in Berlin. In Berlin he earned an art studentship, and studied in Rome in 1827-28. After returning to Saxony, he became noticed by creating a colossal statue of Frederick Augustus, King of Saxony. He was elected a member of the academy of Dresden, and became one of the chief sculptors of his country. In 1832 he was elected to the Dresden Professorship of Sculpture. He died in Dresden in 1861.

The original Goethe–Schiller Monument is in Weimar, Germany. It incorporates Ernst Rietschel’s 1857 bronze double statue of Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832) and Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), who are probably the two most revered figures in German literature.

Four exact copies of Rietschel’s statue were subsequently commissioned by German-Americans in the United States for Goethe–Schiller monuments in San Francisco (1901), Cleveland (1907), Milwaukee (1908), and Syracuse (1911).