Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915 : San Francisco, Calif.)
The elusive Grecian feeling of the Court of Palms comes in large part
from the simple Ionic columns, and the lines of the gabled arches.
Properly, this court is in the Italian Renaissance, but it is less
Italian than the Court of Flowers. Like that court, it is warm and
sunny, full of color and gladness. It has the same harmonious
perfection, but it is more formal. Its sunken garden is bordered with a
conventional balustrade and grass slopes, with marble seats by the
paths. There is no fountain, only a long pool in the sunken area, and a
separate raised basin at the inner end with gently splashing jets,
giving out a cool and peaceful sound. Fat decorated urns, instead of
lions, guard the entrances to the buildings. Italian cypresses border
the court, with formal clipped acacias in boxes between the pillars of
the colonnade.
The Fountain of Beauty and the Beast, which stands in the Court of
Flowers, was designed to be set here, while Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney's
Fountain of the Arabian Nights was to have found a place in the Court of
Flowers. These two courts were planned as the homes of the fairy tales,
one of Oriental, the other of Occidental lore. Many beautiful things
were designed for them. The attic of the Court of Flowers, which was
intended as the place of Oriental Fairy Tales, was to have carried
sculptured stories from the Arabian Nights. But none of these things was
done. Mrs. Whitney's fountain was modeled but never made, unfortunately,
for the modeled figures are charming.
The only sculpture in the Court of Palms, aside from the "End of the
Trail," which stands before it, is in the decoration of the entablature
and the arches. Horned and winged female caryatids mark off the
entablature into garlanded panels. All the three arches under the gables
are enriched with figures of women and of children supporting a shield,
conventional groups, but graceful.
"The End of the Trail," by James Earle Fraser, of New York, is a great
chapter in American history, told in noble sculpture. The dying Indian,
astride his exhausted cayuse, expresses the hopelessness of the Red
Man's battle against civilization. (p. 86.) There is more significance
and less convention, perhaps, in this than in any other piece of
Exposition sculpture. It has the universal touch. It makes an
irresistible appeal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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