RON HENGGELER

September 13, 2016
Photos from the show, Wild West . . .Plains to the Pacific

On Sunday morning September 11th, I visited the Legion of Honor Museum. It was the last day of the show WILD WEST . . . Plains to the Pacific (June 18-September 11) and I wanted to see the show before it was gone. The show was mined from the wide-ranging collections of the Fine Arts Museums, and it explored artistic responses to the natural and cultivated landscapes of the western United States from the frontier era to the present. The exhibition featured paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, historical artifacts, and ephemera in a thematic presentation that celebrated the abundance and diversity within the region’s physical environment. Here are photos of some of my favorites from the show.

The San Francisco City Hall in the center, with the sun rising behind the Federal Building, as seen from my window.

The sun rising as seen from my window.

The tiled stairs at the far west end of California Street, on the edge of Lincoln Park.

The sign announcing the show at the entrance to the Palace of the Legion of Honor.

Rodin's The Thinker, in the courtyard of the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

The museum's web site explained the show:

The American frontier has long existed in the popular imagination as a land of unlimited promise and potential. As the landscape has been reshaped throughout history by prospectors, loggers, farmers, and urban developers, generations of artists have also invented and re-envisioned it in their works to fit the preoccupations of their times. Images of the land’s exploitation contrast with those that document the natural beauty and unique geological features of the region, including depictions of the Western national parks.

Included in Wild West are works by Albert Bierstadt, Maynard Dixon, Ester Hernández, Thomas Moran, Eadweard Muybridge, Chiura Obata, Bill Owens, Frederic Remington, Ed Ruscha, Fritz Scholder, Michael Schwab, Wayne Thiebaud, Carleton Watkins, Emmi Whitehorse, and other artists, whose diverse range of approaches to the theme contribute to a multifaceted picture of the American West.

Stockton, 1856

by Albertus Del Orient Browere (American)

Oil on canvas

Soon after the discovery of gold in 1848 at Sutter's Mill, near Sacramento, the town of Stockton, located approximately fifty miles south of the San Joaquin River, became a gateway to Northern California and a boomtown. Among the artist attracted here from the east coast was Albertus Del Orient Browere, who arrived in 1852 and spent several years painting scenes of prospectors panning for gold. His idyllic townscape of Stockton emphasizes its abundance of water, a crucial commodity in a region prone to drought.

detail of:

Stockton, 1856

by Albertus Del Orient Browere (American)

Oil on canvas

detail of:

Stockton, 1856

by Albertus Del Orient Browere (American)

Oil on canvas

California Spring 1875

by Albert Bierstadt (American b. Germany, 1830-1902))

Oil on canvas

In Albert Bierstadt's idealized version of the California landscape as an American Eden, storm clouds part to reveal heavenly rays of sunlight bathing majestic oaks, wildflowers, and grazing cattle in a golden glow. The serpentine river and the dome of the state capitol that pierces the horizon establish the setting of this painting as the Sacramento River Valley, an area once densely populated with indigenous people. The region's history, as well as its vulnerability to drought and flood, is nowhere to be seen.

detail of:

California Spring 1875

by Albert Bierstadt (American b. Germany, 1830-1902))

Oil on canvas

detail of:

California Spring 1875

by Albert Bierstadt (American b. Germany, 1830-1902))

Oil on canvas

The Widow of an Indian Chief Watching Over the Arms of Her Deceased Husband 1789

by John Raphael Smith (English 1751-1812)

Mezzotint on paper

The sentimental conception of the Native American people as a noble, vanishing race that took hold in the late 1800's may be traced back to the previous century. One of the earliest manifestations of this elegiac theme is found in Joseph Wright of Derby's iconic painting of 1785 representing a Native American widow in mourning before a melodramatic landscape, a work that gained even wider acclaim through John Raphael Smith's print published four years later.

"The Rescue": Pawnee Jack and the Modoc Indians 1894

by Isaiah West Taber (American, 1830-1912)

Gelatin silver print

The representation of Native Americans in the context of nineteenth-centurt expositions such as San Francisco's Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 reinforced ethnic stereotypes that were carried over from "Wild West" shows of the time. Attractions including the staging of dramatic scenes of white conquest as well as "living displays" of objectified native people making quaint crafts in replica Native American villages.

The Indian Yesterday 1937

by Maynard Dixon (American 1875-1946)

watercolor with crayon on graphite pencil and incising on illustration board

In the 1930s Maynard Dixon received a commission to design two murals for the foyer of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior, in Washington D.C. The artist produced two potential sets of designs, likely aware that on set --as seen here--was too politically charged. These rejected designs contrasts the artist's views of past and present Native American's experiences: buffalo are turned into railroad cars, corn into a windmill, a peace pipe into a hoe, and a rising sun into a setting sun.

The Indian Today 1937

by Maynard Dixon (American 1875-1946)

watercolor with crayon on graphite pencil and incising on illustration board

The End of the Trail ca.1914

by Willard E. Worden (American 1868-1946)

Hand-colored gelatin silver print

The Blind Medicine Man 1974

by Fritz Scholder (American 1937-2005)

Acrylic on canvas

The grandson of a member of the Luiseno tribe of Southern California, Fritz Scholder resisted drawing upon his ethnic heritage until 1967, when he began a powerful series of paintings of Native American figures. Reacting against the illustrative style espoused by the Santa Fe School in the 1930's, which had been adopted by generations of Native American artists, he translated traditional subjects such as the Medicine Man into the bold new language of contemporary art.

Taos Houses, ca. 1910-1920

by Francis McComas (American, b. Australia, 1874-1938)

Watercolor with wiping on paper

Peter Quivey and the Mountain Lion 1857

Charles Christian Nahl (American, b. Germany 1818-1878)

Oil on canvas

Peter Quivey (ca.1807-1869) was a pioneer migrant to California who briefly joined the infamous Donner Party--travelers who became tragically snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in 1846--before fighting in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and settling in 1847 in San Jose, where he built the city's first wood frame house and hotel. Quivey's fringed buckskin coat and pants recall the trademark attire of Daniel Boone and David Crockett, America's most famous frontiersmen, and he holds a bowie knife and a Colt revolver, weapons that played key roles in the "taming" of the American West.

Discovery of the Comstock Lode, June 12, 1859

Painted in 1875 by Joseph Harrington (American, 1841-1890)

Oil on canvas

detail of

Discovery of the Comstock Lode, June 12, 1859

Painted in 1875 by Joseph Harrington (American, 1841-1890)

Oil on canvas

The Luck of Roaring Camp, 1884

by Oscar A. Kunath (American, b. Germany 1830-1909)

Oil on canvas

In 1868 the young San Francisco-based writer Bret Harte published a sentimental short story, The Luck of Roaring Camp, which recounts the early life of an orphaned infant, "Luck", who is adopted by a community of miners and gamblers. The story inspired this painting, which shows the forty-niner camp's residents gathering to catch a first glimpse of their newest neighbor, who is wrapped in red flannel inside a wooden candle box.

detail of:

The Luck of Roaring Camp, 1884

by Oscar A. Kunath (American, b. Germany 1830-1909)

Oil on canvas

. . .Facsimile of gold brick representing the monthly output of Morning Star Mine, valued at $28,754, January 1898

. . . Case and weights for miner's scale

A Ranch on the Plains 1954

by Peter Hurd (American, 1904-1984)

Tempera on hardboard

Representing a portion of the artist's own Sentinel Ranch in New Mexico, this painting was commissioned by the San Francisco-based California Brewing Company as part of a western-themed advertising campaign to market its California Gold Label brand as "The beer with'The Flavor of the West'". The company mass-distributed color reproductions of Hurd's painting in a size suitable for framing, and subsequently donated the original to the M.H. de Young Museum.

detail of:

The Bronco Buster 1895

by Frederic Remington (American 1861-1909)

bronze

Sun Mad 1982

by Ester Hernandez (American, 1944)

Color screenprint on paper

San Francisco-based artist Ester Hernandez, who grew up in Dinuba, California, worked as a child alongside family members to harvest grapes destined for the raisin industry. She was later inspired to speak out against agribusiness after learning that the water supply to her hometown had been compromised by high levels of pesticides. Drawing upon the rich graphic tradition of Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada, Hernandez transformed the advertising icon on the sun-made raisin box into a skeleton, exposing a decidedly unwholesome aspect in the production of the so-called natural and healthy food.

California and Oregon Stage Company ca. 1872

Aaron Stein (American, 1835-1900)

Color lithograph

Published by Britton & Rey, San Francisco