Statuary – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Elegant Stag Poses at Lands End Lookout

Posted by Cindy on July 23, 2013

Jul 232013

Lands End Lookout
GGNRA
680 Point Lobos

This stag sits in a small seating area at the front entrance to the new Lands End Lookout building.

This is a copy of a statue that originally sat in the park across the street, Sutro Heights Park. The two lions that grace the entry to the park, as well as the entry to the lookout, and the history of that park can be found here.

Sutro collected statues after traveling to Europe, to recreate a European garden around his home. He did not buy and ship home works of art from other countries, like many other wealthy people such as William Randolph Hearst. When he saw something he liked, he would have a statue maker in Antwerp, Belgium make copies. The Lions are copies of those in London’s Trafalgar Square—making the two currently at the gate copies of copies.

This stag was copied in cast stone by an unknown artist in the 1980’s.

The new building designed by San Francisco’s EHDD was dedicated in December 0f 2012. It is the latest in a series of upgrades that follow the 1993 master plan for the Sutro Historic District done by the National Park Service and implemented in partnership with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, donated $8.6 million to the Lands End efforts.

Land’s End – El Cid

Posted by Cindy on April 20, 2012

Apr 202012

Land’s End

Palace of the Legion of Honor

El Cid by Anna Huntington

This piece is part of the Collection of the Fine Arts Museum. It sits on the lawn in front of the Palace of the Legion of Honor.

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (1043 – July 10, 1099), known as El Cid Campeador (“The lord-master of military arts”), was a Castilian nobleman, military leader, and diplomat. Exiled from the court of the Spanish Emperor Alfonso VI of León and Castile, El Cid went on to command a Moorish force consisting of Muladis, Berbers, Arabs and Malians, under Yusuf al-Mu’taman ibn Hud, Moorish king of the northeast Al-Andalus city of Zaragoza, and his successor, Al-Mustain II.

The name El Cid comes from the article el (which means “the” in both Spanish and Arabic), and the dialectal Arabic word سيد sîdi or sayyid, which means “Lord” or “The Master”. The title Campeador means “champion” or “challenger” in Spanish.

Anna Hyatt Huntington, (b. 1876 Cambridge, MA – d. Redding, CT 1973) became one of the best-known and most prolific sculptors of the 20th century. Her father, a paleontologist, interested her in animals. She began to make sculptures of animals that she observed on farms and at the New York City Zoo. She trained as a sculptor, first in Boston, then at the Art Students League in New York, and was taught by Hermon Atkins MacNeil and George Barnard. She also worked for the sculptor Gutzon Borglum.

In the early 1900s, she shared an apartment with the figure sculptor Abastenia St. Leger Eberle. They collaborated on sculptures; Anna Hyatt made the animal figures and Abastenia the human figures. She also studied and worked in France and Italy. One of her earliest public works was the equestrian statue of Joan of Arc, exhibited at the Salon of 1910 in Paris. Several replicas were made, and the statue won Anna the Legion of Honor from the French government. In 1927, she made her first sculpture of ‘El Cid Campeador’ for the city of Seville, Spain.

In 1923, she married the wealthy philanthropist/poet/Spanish scholar Archer M. Huntington (Archer was the adopted son of Collis P. Huntington, the railroad magnate). The couple later (1929) bought 10,000 acres of land near the Atlantic Ocean in South Carolina, named it Brookgreen Gardens and made it a showplace for Anna’s work and for the work of dozens of American figurative sculptors. It was also a sanctuary for plant and animal life of the region. The couple gave the estate, with an endowment, to the state of South Carolina in 1935. It is still a major tourist attraction.

Golden Gate Park – William D. McKinneon

Posted by Cindy on February 29, 2012

Feb 292012

Golden Gate Park

Chaplain William D. McKinneon

First California

US VOL INF

1898-99

Here is an excerpt from “San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park: A Thousand and Seventeen Acres of Stories”

“William D. McKinnon taught at Santa Clara University and was chaplain with the First U.S. Volunteer Infantry during the Spanish-American War in the Philippines. This sculpture, created by D. John MacQuarrie was placed in the park on August 21, 1927, 15 years after it was cast at the Louis de Rome Memorial Bronze, Brass and Bell Foundry of Oakland. The donors, the Bay Area Spanish American War veterans and American Legion Posts, had not liked the outcome of the final bronze and consequently, the park commission had denied its installation. The statue sat in an oakland backyard but was finally rescued and redesigned. Native San Franciscan MacQuarrie also created the Bear Flag Monument in Sonoma and Donner Lake Monument near Interstate Route 80.”

John MacQuarrie was a native of San Francisco. He was a graduate of the Mark Hopkins Institute, which later became the San Francisco Art Institute. He maintained a studio at 1370 Sutter Street. According to his obituary he executed the building decoration and window design of Holy Cross Cemetery mausoleum and murals in the Southern Pacific terminals and throughout Southern California.