Chapter VI
Galleries in the South Wing:
Nos. 65, 55, 56, 64, 57, 58, 63, 59, 60, 61, 62, Etc.

Room No. 65

This large gallery, opening to the left, which is the south, from the central gallery as you enter from the entrance on the lagoon side, re-echoes the bright note struck by Room No. 66.

Wall A is devoted to the brilliant, vigorous, interesting marines of Hayley Lever, his pictures being flanked by Edward Cucuel, one of the painters whom San Francisco has sent forth.

C. Bertram Hartman and Richard E. Miller occupy Wall B. Miller is the dominating interest. His Medal of Honor "Nude" is surrounded with five or six new pictures, several of them being of much more decided interest than the prize winner. At any rate, so it seems to the observer who finds the manufacture of painted naked ladies a tedious thing, and one that art might well pray to be delivered from for a century or two at least. The Hartmans are fanciful decorations, an echo of the artificial romance which finds its fullest expression in Bakst and the modern theatrical movement.

On Wall C there are a number of paintings by men who represent the newer notes in American painting—Hugh Breckenridge, Carles, Charles Sheeler, Samuel Halper and C. L. Bryant.

In the center. of Wall D is another Medal of Honor nude, this time by Lawton Parker; which, like the other, makes the average man thirsty, they so tantalizingly suggest the sort of pictures which "palatial bars" delight to see reflected in their ornate mirrors. W. H. Singer, one of the new acquisitions, is represented by two Norwegian landscapes; and there are two winter landscapes by Charles Rosen.

Room No. 59

This gallery contains a number of important canvases. Theodore Robinson is the great name on Wall A, where a large number of his pictures are placed. Robinson is a man only now coming into his own, becoming recognized as one of the most important of the American pioneers of impressionism.

Horatio Walker is the chief feature of Wall B; while Wall C displays a group of Edmund C. Tarbell's popular and celebrated paintings.

In the paintings for which Tarbell is most admired modern genre is exhibited on its highest artistic level. As Charles H. Caffin admirably characterized Tarbell's work, "It is the character of the scene as a whole that he represents, the sum total of the impression recorded by the eye. Further, the parts are seen in their variety of relations to one another and the ensemble, everything also in its proper 'milieu' of lighted atmospheres and with reference to the latter's diverse effects on form, color, and texture."

Mary Cassatt is the outstanding contribution of Wall D. By common consent this artist is considered one of the initiators of the impressionistic movement in France, where she formed one of the group which rallied around Monet and Sisley and the other pioneers. Mary Curtis Richardson is represented by her Silver Medal picture, "Mother and Child."

Room No. 60

This might be termed a gallery of American moderns. Walt Kuhn and A. Carles are on Wall A, while W. Glackens occupies the most of Walls Band C with his curious productions. George Luks, Adolph Borye and Rockwell Kent are on Wall D.

Room No. 61

This is largely occupied by the work of well-known Boston artists, William Paxton and Philip Hale being the outstanding figures.

Room No. 62

Among the works attracting interest in this room are the landscapes of William Wendt, a Southern California artist, and Myron Barlow's Gold Medal picture "Apples."

Rooms Nos. 55 and 56

In these two smaller galleries opening from No. 65 there are found many interesting works. In Room 55 Hayley Lever and Hugh Breckenridge, E. A. Webster and Mary Foote, together with Louis Rittman, Rudolph Dirks and M. Evelyn McCormick are the outstanding names. Rudolph Dirks is a man we will hear from later. In him there is a power that not many others possess.

Mary Curtis Richardson and Granville Redmond, two San Francisco artists, are prominent in Room No. 56, which also contains several of George Hitchcock's well-known Holland subjects. On Wall D are the Alaska paintings of F. W. Stokes, works which are the result of personal observation in the Arctic and the Antarctic oceans.

Room No. 64

In this room it is Emil Carlsen, a painter well known in San Francisco, who dominates the interest. His pictures are on Wall B. "The Meeting of the Seas" and the imaginative painting of Christ walking on the water attract and hold the attention.

Cecilia Beaux, five of whose notable paintings hang on Wall C, and Ellen Emmet Rand occupy Wall C, while Wall D is devoted to Charles Rosen, Schofield's snow scenes, and portraits by Robert Gauley and Marion Pooke.

Paul Daugherty's marines dominate the interest of Wall A.

Rooms Nos. 57 and 58

In Room No. 57 there is a typical Frieseke, and pictures by Elizabeth Paxton, Gertrude Fiske, Dixie Selden, James Preston, L. C. Perry and others. Two San Francisco artists are represented in this room. E. Charlton Fortune, one of the most vigorous and promising of the younger group, shows two characteristic examples, and Gottardo Piazzoni exhibits a large canvas in which both poetical feeling and agreeable decoration are displayed.

Room 58 is predominantly an Alexander Harrison gallery, as there are many examples of his work. Charles J Dickman, of San Francisco, is also represented. There is an interesting canvas by H. D. Tanner, "Christ at the Home of Lazarus," on Wall D.

Room No. 63

The only picture by Frank Duveneck that could be retained from the noble collection which was shown during the Exposition, and which gained for him the exceptional honor of a Special Medal, given in recognition of his signal services as painter and teacher in the development of American art, hangs in this room on Wall D. It is the celebrated "Turkish Page." On Wall A is Horatio Walker's "Ploughing in Acadia."

Carl Marr is represented by his "Holy Family," which was lent by Mrs. Phoebe A. Hearst. Frank Van Sloun, one of the interesting new figures in California art, in which he is certain to take a prominent place, is represented by his vigorously painted "Portrait of an Actor."

Room 89
Whistler—John La Farge—Frank W. Benson—Joseph De Camp

This is one of the most interesting and important galleries in the American collection. There are three paintings by Whistler, the portraits of "Mrs. Huth" and "Mrs. Cobden," and the early paintings which illustrate the period when Whistler was influenced by Gustave Courbet, the one entitled "The Concierge's Daughter." Whistler's etchings will be found in Gallery 29. These paintings hang on Wall D.

On Wall A are several portraits and figure pieces by Joseph De Camp, who also has two others on Wall D near the Whistlers. One of the most notable of the portraits is that of Frank Duveneck. De Camp is a Boston artist, an eloquent witness, as one of his critics so justly states, "to the adequacy and validity of the old established methods of painting which were in vogue before the present generation of artists were born and will still be in vogue long after all the foolish fads of the day are forgotten."

Another celebrated Boston painter is represented by the three paintings on Wall B. This is Frank W. Benson, who also has a gallery devoted to his etchings, Room No. 28.

In the center of Wall C is a very important painting by John La Farge, entitled "Kwaunon Meditating upon Human Life." It is an exceedingly attractive work and is one which this city should not lose, but which it should retain for the museum which its art lovers are determined to secure.

The great name of John La Farge looms largely even in this necessarily limited and sketchy tracing of the post-Exposition art. Wall D is occupied by a number of his beautiful creations. This last word is justly employed, for La Farge was an authentic creator in an art in which far too many content themselves with imitating and re-echoing the creative ideas of others. A pupil of William Morris Hunt, and, as already noted, one of the first to imbibe the new wine of Barbizon, La Farge combined all the influences which played upon his sensitive and mystical temperament into a synthesis stamped with the seal of his own splendid personality. Teacher as well as painter, he moulded or affected a host of artists. Many authorities consider him the greatest mural creator so far produced in our country.

The La Farge painting is flanked by two beautiful paintings by an artist of whom San Francisco has reason to feel proud, Ernest Peixotto.