MUSEUM GUIDE | CABANA TRAVEL | CABANA MAGAZINE
In this series, we travel the world's great museums through the eyes and minds of Cabana Curators, asking one question: if you had only an hour to spare, what would you see? This week, Thomas P. Campbell, director and CEO of San Francisco's Legion of Honor Museum, talks Parissa Mostaedi through five of the institution's most notable works of art.
INTERVIEW BY PARISSA MOSTAEDI | CABANA TRAVEL | 22 NOVEMBER 2024
The Court of Honor, Legion of Honor. Photograph by Steve Whittaker © FAMSF. Image courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Perched high on a bluff, in the San Francisco Peninsula, a vast and particularly graceful neoclassical style building commands an elegant presence, offering unparalleled views of the Pacific Ocean with majestic pines and cypresses framing the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. The Legion of Honor, a cultural landmark erected as a three-quarter scale replica of Paris’ Palais de la Légion d'Honneur, is one of San Francisco’s treasured gems and is celebrating its centenary this year.
Inaugurated 11 November, 1924 on Armistice Day, the museum is dedicated to the fallen California soldiers of WWI. It was gifted to San Francisco by philanthropist, Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, whose singular vision helped bring a major French and European infusion to the city once referred to as ‘the Paris of the West’.
A painted, gilded wooden ceiling from the Palacio de Altamira (Spain 1482–1503), installed in the Legion of Honor Gallery. Image courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
With an array of exquisitely curated collections of world-class art spanning 4,000 years, an impressive Rodin gallery and a significant collection of graphic arts, the museum also houses a massive gilded wooden tower ceiling, once part of a 15th century Spanish palace. The Salon Doré, a period room installation revealing a rare display of a pre-Revolutionary Parisian salon, is one of the finest examples of French neoclassical interior architecture ever exhibited in a museum.
Here, director and CEO Thomas P. Campbell highlights a selection of five magnificent masterpieces from the Legion of Honor’s collections.
Auguste Rodin, The Thinker, 1888 (enlarged 1902-03, cast ca. 1914)
Auguste Rodin, "The Thinker," 1888. Photography by Randy Dodson. Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
“Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker presided over the Legion of Honor’s opening ceremony on Armistice Day (now Veteran’s Day) in 1924, and the sculpture has been inextricably linked to the museum’s identity ever since. Rodin originally conceived of this now iconic pensive figure to top his monumental “Gates of Hell,” but in the Legion of Honor’s entry court, our enlarged cast serves as an apt and quite literal signal to our visitors that they are entering a space of art and ideas.”
Lavinia Fontana, Portrait of Bianca degli Utili Maselli and Her Children, ca.1604-5
Lavinia Fontana "Portrait of Bianca degli Utili Maselli and Her Children," ca. 1604-5. Photograph by Randy Dodson, courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
“From the mischief that’s being plotted on the right hand side of the painting, to the smallest child’s tender grip of her mother’s finger, to the sitters’ dazzling dress, Lavinia Fontana’s Portrait of Bianca degli Utili Maselli and Her Children is rife with tantalizing details. One of the leading portraitists of her time, Fontana continues to command our attention across the centuries in this sumptuous portrayal of a Roman noblewoman with six of the nineteen children she bore in her 37 years. As a painting of outstanding quality and great historical import, it was a huge coup to bring this into the collection on the occasion of the Legion’s centennial.”
Monet, Water Lilies, ca.1914-17
Claude Monet, "Water Lilies," ca. 1914-1917. Photograph by Randy Dodson, courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
“It is quite moving to think of the circumstances in which Claude Monet painted this serene canvas. The devastation of the first World War would have been ubiquitous for the artist, whose son, Michel served in the French army. Giverny, Monet’s home since 1888, was not far from the front, and housed a hospital for convalescing soldiers.
"This is the alchemy of art’s power at its finest; in the face of the greatest conflict the world had ever known, Monet conjures this scene of floating tranquility. The fact that this painting found a home at the Legion of Honor, which was dedicated to the memory of the 3,600 Californians who lost their lives on the battlefields of France during World War I, feels like a providential outcome.”
Canapé à la turque, ca.1779
Gondouin, Jacques. Canapé supplied for Queen Marie-Antoinette, c.1779. Photograph by Randy Dodson. Courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
“Originally conceived for Marie Antoinette’s private apartments at Versailles, this magnificent canapé, or sofa entered our collection in the 1950s. Recent research and conservation campaigns have restored the canapé to its former splendor, and the late historian and upholsterer, Xavier Bonnet played a critical role in this effort.
"While in the archives of the Musée des Arts décoratifs, Bonnet discovered an 18th century textile design that features Marie Antoinette’s cypher surrounded by her favorite flowers. The canape’s new embroidery, completed by Lesage, is inspired by this drawing.”
Detail, Gondouin, Jacques. Canapé supplied for Queen Marie-Antoinette, c.1779. Photograph by Randy Dodson. Courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Matisse, Jazz, ca.1947
©️ 2024 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Randy Dodson, courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
“Visually arresting, and technically innovative, Henri Matisse’s Jazz evokes a particular moment of transition in the artist’s practice when he began composing work almost exclusively using painted pieces of paper. As the pinnacle of Matisse’s graphic oeuvre we were thrilled to bring Jazz into the collection this year.”
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