Part 2

There was no difficulty in finding a man best suited to plan the garden that was to serve as the Exposition's setting. For many years John McLaren had been known as one of the most distinguished horticulturists in this part of the world. As superintendent of Golden Gate Park he had given fine service. Moreover, he was familiar with the conditions and understood the resources and the possibilities. Of course a California exposition had to maintain California's reputation for natural beauty. It must be placed in on ideal garden, representing the marvelous endowment of the State in trees and shrubs and plants and flowers and showing what the climate could do even with alien growths.

The first step that McLaren took was to consult the architects. They explained to him the court plan that they had agreed on and they gave him the dimensions of their buildings. Against walls sixty feet high he planned to place trees that should reach nearly to the top. For his purpose he found four kinds of trees most serviceable: the eucalyptus, the cypress, the acacia and the spruce. In his search for what he wanted he did not confine himself to California. A good many trees he brought down from Oregon. Some of his best specimens of Italian cypress he secured in Santa Barbara, in Monterey and in San Jose. He also drew largely on Golden Gate Park and on the Presidio. In all he used about thirty thousand trees, more than two-thirds eucalyptus and acacia.

Preparing the Landscape

Two years before the Exposition was to open McLaren built six greenhouses in the Presidia and a huge lath house. There he assembled his shrubs, his plants, and his bulbs. In all he must have used nearly a million bulbs. From Holland he imported seventy thousand rhododendrons. From Japan he brought two thousand azaleas. In Brazil he secured some wonderful specimens of the cineraria. He even sent to Africa for the agrapanthus, that grew close to the Nile. Among native flowers he collected six thousand pansies, ten thousand veronicas and five thousand junipers, to mention only, a few among the multitude a flowers that he intended to use for decoration. The grounds he had carefully mapped and he studied the landscape and the shape and color of the buildings section, by section.

The planting of trees consumed many months. The best effects McLaren found he could get by massing. He was particularly successful with the magnificent Fine Arts Palace, both in his groupings and in his use of individual trees. About the lagoon he did some particularly attractive planting, utilizing the water for reflection. There was a twisted cypress that he placed alone against the colonnade with a skill that showed the insight and the feeling of an, artist. On, the water side, the Marina, he used the trees to break the bareness of the long esplanade. And here and there on the grounds, for pure decoration, he reached some of his finest effects with the eucalyptus, for which he evidently had a particular regard. As no California Exposition would be complete without palm trees, provision was made for the decorative use of palms along of the main walks.

About two weeks before the opening, the first planting of the gardens was completed, the first of the three crops to be displayed during the Exposition. The flowers included most of the spring flowers grown here in California or capable of thriving in the California spring climate. In June they were to be re-placed with geraniums, begonias, asters, gilly-flowers, foxglove, hollyhocks, lilies and rhododendrons. The autumn display, would include cosmos and chrysanthemums and marguerites.

The Hedge

As the work proceeded, W. B. Faville, the architect, of Bliss and Faville, made a suggestion for the building of a fence that should look as if it were moss-covered with age. The result was that developing the suggestion McLaren devised a new kind of hedge likely to be used the world over. It was made of boxes, six feet long and two feet wide, containing, a two-inch layer of earth, held in place by a wire netting, and planted with South African dew plant, dense, green and hardy and thriving in this climate. Those boxes, when piled to a height of several feet, made a rustic wall of great beauty, Moreover, they could be continuously irrigated by a one-inch perforated line of pipe. In certain lights the water trickling through the leaves shimmered like gems. In summer the plant would produce masses of small purple flowers.

McLaren found his experiment so successful that he decided to build a hedge twenty feet high, extending more than a thousand feet. He also used the hedge extensively in the landscape design for the Palace of Fine Arts.

The Sculptors

The department of sculpture was placed under the direction of one of the most distinguished sculptors in the country. Karl Bitter, of New York, whose death from an automobile accident took place a few weeks after the Exposition opened. He gathered around him an extraordinary array of co-operators, including many of the most brilliant names in the world of art, with A. Stirling Calder as the acting chief, the man on the ground. Though he did not contribute any work of his own, he was active in developing the work as a whole, taking special pains to keep it in character and to see that, even in it its diversity, it gave the impression, of harmony.

Calder welcomed the chance to work on a big scale and to carry out big ideas. With Bitter he visited San Francisco in August, 1912, for a consultation with the architectural commission. Minutely they went over the site and examined the architectural plans. Then they picked the sculptors that they wished to secure as co-operators.

In December, 1912, Bitter and Calder made another visit to San Francisco for further conferring with the architectural commission, bearing sketches and scale models. Bitter explained his plans in detail and asked for an appropriation. He was told that he should be granted six hundred thousand dollars. The amount was gradually reduced till it finally reached three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.

It was at this period that Calder submitted his plan for the Column of Progress. He had worked it out in New York and had the scale models made by MacNeil and Konti. It won the approval of McKim, Mead & White, who declared that it made an ideal feature of the approach from the bay side to their Court of the Universe, then called the Court of the Sun and Stars.

The next few months of preparation in New York meant getting the sculptors together and working out the designs. The first meeting of the sculptors took place in January, 1913, in Bitter's studio, with a remarkable array of personages in attendance, including D. C. French, Herbert Adams, Robert Aitken, James E. Fraser, H. A. MacNeil, A. A. Weinman, Mahonri Young, Isidore Konti, Mrs. Burroughs and several others. In detail Bitter explained the situation in San Francisco and outlined his ideas of what ought to be done. Already Henry Bacon had sent in his design for his Court of the Four Seasons and sculptors were set to work on its ornamentation, Albert Jaegers, Furio Piccirilli, Miss Evelyn Beatrice Longman and August Jaegers, a time limit being made for the turning in of their plans.

Developing the Sculpture

In June, 1913, Calder returned to San Francisco to stay till the Exposition was well started. On the grounds he established a huge workshop. Then he began the practical developing of the designs, a great mass, which had already been carefully sifted. Hitherto, in American expositions the work had been done, for the most part, in New York, and sent to its destination by freight, a method costly in itself and all the more costly on account of the inevitable breakage. San Francisco, by being so far from New York, would have been a particularly expensive destination. From every point of view it seemed imperative that the work should be done here.

In a few weeks that shop was a hive of industry, with sculptors, students of sculpture front the art schools, pointers, and a multitude of other white-clad workers bending all their energies toward the completion on time of their colossal task. A few of the sculptors and artisans Calder had brought from New York. But most of the workers he secured in San Francisco, chiefly from the foreign population, some of them able to speak little or no English.

The modeling of the replicas of well-known art works were, almost without exception, made in clay. Most of the original work was directly modelled in plaster-staff used so successfully throughout the Exposition. For the enlarging of single pieces and groups the pointing machine of Robert Paine was chosen by Calder. It was interesting to see it at work, under the guidance of careful and patient operators, tracing mechanically the outlines and reproducing them on a magnified scale. For the finishing of the friezes the skill of the artist was needed, and there Calder found able assistants in the two young sculptors, Roth and Lentelli, who worked devotedly themselves and directed groups of students.

In all the sculpture Calder strove to keep in mind the significance of the Exposition and the spirit of the people who were celebrating. With him styles of architecture and schools were a minor consideration, to be left to the academicians and the critics. He believed that sculpture, like all other art-forms, was chiefly valuable and interesting as human expression.

The Decorative Figures

Less successful on the whole than the blending of sculpture and architecture were the individual figures designed to be placed against the walls. Some of them were extremely well done. Others were obvious disappointments. The unsophisticated judgment, free from Continental bias, might have objected to the almost gratuitous use of nudity. For a popular exhibition, even the widely-traveled and broad-minded art lover might have been persuaded that a concession to prejudice could have been made without any great damage to art.

In the magnificent entrance to the grounds it was deemed fitting that the meaning of the Exposition should be symbolized by an elaborate fountain. So in the heart of the South Gardens there was placed the Fountain of Energy, the design of A. Stirling Calder, the athletic figure of a youth, mounted on a fiery horse, tearing across the globe, which served for pedestal, the symbolic figures of Valor and Fame accompanying on either side. The work, as a whole suggested the triumph of man in overcoming the difficulties in the way, of uniting the two oceans. It made one of the most striking of all the many fountains on the grounds, the dolphins in the great basin, some of them carrying female figures on their backs, contributing to an effect peculiarly French.

The Column of Progress

The Column of Progress, suggested by Calder and planned in outline by Symmes Richardson, besides being beautiful symbol and remarkably successful in outline, was perhaps the most poetic and original of all the achievements of the sculptors here. It represented something new in being the first great column erected to express a purely imaginative and idealistic conception. Most columns of its kind had celebrated some great figure or historic feat, usually related to war. But this column stood for those sturdy virtues that were developed, not through the hazards and the excitements and the fevers of conquest, but through the persistent and homely tests of peace, through the cultivation of those qualities that laid the foundations of civilized living. Isidore Konti designed the frieze typifying the swarming generations, by Matthew Arnold called "the teeming millions of men," and to Hermon A. MacNeil fell the task of developing the circular frieze of toilers, sustaining the group at the top, three strong figures, the dominating male, ready to shoot his arrow straight alit to its mark, a male supporter, and the devoted woman, eager to follow in the path of advance.

The Aim of the Sculptors

It was evidently the aim of the sculptors to express in their work, in so far as they could, the character of the Exposition. And the breadth of the plans gave them, a wide scope. They must have welcomed the chance to exercise their art for the pleasure of the multitude, an art essentially popular in its appeal and certain to be more and more cultivated in our every-day life. Though this new city was to be for a year only, it would surely influence the interest and the taste in art of the multitudes destined to become familiar with it and to carry away more or less vivid impressions.

The sculpture, too, would have a special advantage. Much of it, after the Exposition, could be transferred elsewhere. It was safe to predict that the best pieces would ultimately serve for the permanent adornment of San Francisco - by no means rich in monuments.

Mural Painting

It was felt by the builders of the Exposition that mural decorating must be a notable feature.

The Centennial Exposition of '76 had been mainly an expression of engineering. Sixteen years later architecture had dominated the Exposition in Chicago. The Exposition in San Francisco was to be essentially pictorial, combining, in its exterior building, architecture, sculpture and painting.

When Jules Guerin was selected to apply the color it was decided that he should choose the mural decorators, subject to the approval of the architectural board. The choice fell on men already distinguished. all of them belonging to New York, with two exceptions, Frank Brangwyn of London, and Arthur Mathews, of San Francisco. They were informed by Guerin that they could take their own subjects. He contented himself with saying that a subject with meaning and life in it was an asset.

In New York the painters had a conference with Guerin. He explained the conditions their work was to meet. Emphasis was laid on the importance of their painting with reference to the tone of the Travertine. They were instructed, moreover, to paint within certain colors, in harmony with the general color-scheme, a restriction that, in some cases, must have presented difficult problems.

The preliminary sketches were submitted to Guerin, and from the sketches he fixed the scale of the figures. In one instance the change of scale led to a change of subject. The second sketches were made on a larger scale. When they were accepted the decorators were told that the final canvases were to be painted in San Francisco in order to make sure that they did not conflict with one another and that they harmonized with the general plan of the Exposition. Nearly all the murals were finished in Machinery Hall; but most of them had been started before they arrived there.

Painting For Out-Doors

Some concern was felt by the painters on account of their lack of experience in painting for out-of-doors. There was no telling, even by the most careful estimate, how their canvases would look when in place. Color and design impressive in a studio might, when placed beside vigorous architecture, become weak and pale. Besides, in this instance, the murals would meet new conditions in having to harmonize with architecture that was already highly colored. Furthermore, no two of the canvases would meet exactly the same conditions and, as a result of the changes in light and atmospheric effects, the conditions would be subject to continual change. Finally, they were obliged to work without precedent. It was true that the early Italians had done murals for the open air, but no examples had been preserved.

That the painters were able to do as well as they did under the limitations reflected credit on their adaptability and good humor. The truth was they felt the tremendous opportunity afforded their art by this Exposition. They believed that in a peculiar sense it testified to the value of color in design. It represented a new movement in art, with far-reaching possibilities for the future. That some of them suffered as a result of the limiting of initiative and individuality, of subordination to the general scheme, was unquestionable. Some of the canvases that looked strong and fine when they were assembled for the last touches in Machinery Hall became anaemic and insignificant on the walls. Those most successfully met the test where the colors were in harmony with Guerin's coloring and where they were in themselves strong and where the subjects were dramatic and vigorously handled. The allegorical and the primitive subjects failed to carry, first because they had little or no real significance, and secondly because the spirit behind them was lacking in appeal and, occasionally, in sincerity.

In one regard Frank Brangwyn was more fortunate than the other painters. His murals, though intended to be displayed in the open air, were to hang in sequestered corners of the corridors running around the Court of the Ages, the court, moreover, that was to have no color. Besides, there were no colors in the world that could successfully compete against his powerful blues and reds.

The Lighting

The lighting of the Exposition, it was determined, should be given to the charge of the greatest expert in the country. Several of the leading electric light companies were consulted. They agreed that the best man was Walter D'Arcy Ryan, who had managed the lighting at the Hudson-Fulton Celebration and at the Niagara Falls Exposition. Mr. Ryan explained his system of veiled lighting, with the source of the light hidden, and made plain its suitability to an Exposition where the artistic features were to be notable, and where they were to be emphasized at night, with the lighting so diffused as to avoid shadows. After his appointment as director of illuminating he made several visits to San Francisco, and a year before the opening of the Exposition, he returned to stay till the close. His plan of ornamenting the main tower with large pieces of cut glass, of many colors, to shine like jewels, created wide-spread interest on account of its novelty. It was generally regarded as a highly original and sensational Exposition feature.

Watching the Growth

As the building went on the San Franciscans gradually became alive to the splendor. Each Sunday many thousands would assemble on the grounds. About a year before the date set for the opening an admission fee of twenty-five cents brought several thousands of dollars each week. On the Sundays when Lincoln Beachey made his sensational flights there would often be not less than fifty thousand people looking on.

The Walled City

If there were any critics who feared that the walled city might present a certain monotony of aspect they did not take into account the Oriental luxuriance of the entrances, breaking the long lines and making splendid contrast of design and of color. Those entrances alone were worth minute study. Besides being beautiful, they had historic significance. Furthermore, the long walls were broken by artistically designed windows and by groups of trees running along the edge. Within the walls, in the splendidly wrought courts, utility was made an expression, of beauty by means of the impressive colonnades, solid rows of columns, delicately colored, suitable for promenading and for protection against rain.

From the hills looking down on the bay the Exposition began to seem somewhat huddled. But the nearer one approached, the plainer it became that this effect was misleading. On the grounds one felt that there was plenty of room to move about in. And there was no sense of incongruity. Very adroitly styles of architecture that might have seemed to be alien to one another and hostile had been harmoniously blended. Here the color was a great help. It made the Exposition seem all of a piece.

The War

In the summer of 1914 the Exposition received what for a brief time, looked like a crushing blow in the declaration of war. How could the world be interested in such an enterprise when the great nations of Europe were engaged in what might prove to be the most deadly conflict history?

The directors, in reviewing the situation, saw that, far from being a disadvantage in its effect on their plans, the war might be an advantage. In the first place, it would keep at home the great army of American travelers that went to Europe each year. With their fondness for roaming, they would be almost certain to be drawn to this part of the world. And besides, there were other travelers to be considered, including those Europeans who would be glad to get away from the alarms of war and those South Americans who were in the habit of going to Europe. Furthermore, though the Exposition had been designed to commemorate the services of the United States Army in building the Panama Canal, it was essentially dedicated to the arts of peace. It would show what the world could do when men and nations co-operated.

The Department of Fine Arts

Meanwhile, the war was upsetting the plans for the exhibits, notably the exhibit of painting and sculpture.

When John E. D. Trask, for many years director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, was appointed Director of the Fine Arts Department at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, he had made a careful survey of the field he had to cover. It virtually consisted of the whole civilized world. After arranging for the formulation of committees in the leading cities of the East and the Middle West to secure American work, he made a trip to Europe, visiting England, France, Holland, Sweden, Germany, Hungary, Austria and Italy. With the exception of England and Germany, the governments were sympathetic. The indifference of those two countries was at the time was not quite comprehensible. There might have been several explanations, including the threat of war. There were also those who said that England and Germany had entered into a secret alliance against this country for the purpose of minimizing the American influence in commerce, soon to be strengthened by the opening of the Panama Canal. Wherever the truth lay, the fact remained that both countries maintained their attitude of indifference. Individual English and German artists and organizations of artists, however, showed a willingness to co-operate.

Through emissaries, mainly unofficial, Americans of influence, Trask drew on the resources of all Europe. He also entered into negotiations with China and Japan, both of which countries, with their devotion to art, as might have been expected, co-operated with enthusiasm. The display at the Fine Arts Palace promised to make one of the greatest international exhibits in history, if not the greatest.

At the outbreak of the war it looked as if the whole of Europe might become involved and it might be impossible to secure anything that could properly be called a European art exhibit. Meanwhile, the space reserved for the European exhibitors must he filled. It happened that, at the time, Trask was in the East. He quickly put himself into personal communication with the New York artists, who had been invited to send three or four works, and he asked them to increase the number. He also arranged with his committee for the securing of a much larger number of American pictures. Under the circumstances he was bound to rely on the discretion of his juries. The result was that he had to take what came. It included a large number of excellent works and others of doubtful merit.

An Emissary to France and Italy