May 062019
 

George Washington High School
600 32nd Ave

Mural at George Washington High

Over the door to the library at George Washington High School is this Gordon Langdon mural titled Modern and Ancient Science.

On the left is Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Robert Andrews Millikan, who is recognized for measuring the elementary electronic charge. The center panel, apparently, represents Academy Award-winning actress Claudette Colbert, a popular French-born American actress of the 20s and 30s.  Ancient Science is shown on the right.

Photo taken before the pipes went up courtesy of https://www.newdealartregistry.org/artist/LangdonGordon/

Photo taken before the pipes went up courtesy of New Deal Art Registry 

Above you can better see the Pythagorean Theorem in a book sitting above Claudette Colbert.

Gordon Langdon was born in San Francisco, on March 9, 1910. Dropping out at Stanford, Langdon went on to study at the CSFA. During the 1930s he shared a studio with Ralph Stackpole another mural artist with murals at both Coit Tower and George Washington High School Library. Langdon’s family ranch in Olema, California was the subject of his Coit Tower mural where he inserted a likeness of himself. After service in WWII, Langdon abandoned his art career and moved down the peninsula to Palo Alto where he worked in wholesale hardware until he died of a brain aneurysm on March 8, 2963.

His fresco works in San Francisco include: Coit Tower (Timber and Dairy Industries); SF Art Institute Library (The Arts of Man) and this one at the George Washington High School Library

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