Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
415-750-3600
http://www.thinker.org/index.shtml
Picturing San Francisco:
1850-2000 at M.H. de Young Memorial Museum · Golden Gate Park
4 March - 14 May 2000
Since its earliest days, the city of San Francisco
has been a magnet for artists and creative individuals seeking a place where
their freedom of expression could be fully realized. This exhibition of
artists' impressions of San Francisco celebrates both a century and a half
of artistic achievement and the 150th anniversary of the founding of the
city itself -- transformed in 1850 from the sleepy backwater of Yerba Buena
to the bustling city of San Francisco by the California Gold Rush. Rather
than reflect the typical guidebook views and tourist images so often associated
with San Francisco, the works in this exhibition instead present the city
as seen through the eyes of its artists, echoing the times they lived in
and their unique individual perceptions of San Francisco's dramatic natural
setting, inspired urban development, and socially progressive history. (left:
Wayne Thiebaud, Hill Street, 1987, color woodcut, 37 1/2 x 24 1/2
inches)
Works on view in "Picturing San Francisco" reflect
a wide range of artistic styles and genres, from 19th-century magazine illustrations
to photographs to contemporary prints and paintings. Depicted and reflected
are many of the landmarks and landscapes most associated with the city:
San Francisco
Bay, the Golden Gate, the Embarcadero, Telegraph Hill, the Golden Gate and
Bay Bridges, the Transamerica Pyramid, Union Square, and the seemingly ever-present
fog. Also depicted are numerous historical events responsible for shaping
the city as we know it. Seen here through the eyes of the city's artists
are important events such as the "Great Fire" of 1851 (one of
five "great fires" that occurred between 1850 and 1851), the 1894
Midwinter Fair in Golden Gate Park, the disastrous 1906 earthquake and fire,
the construction of the bridges across the bay in the 1930s, and the drama
and tragedy of the Depression and of World War II. (right: Elmer
Bischoff (1916-1991), Yellow Lampshade, 1969, oil on canvas, 70 x
80 inches)
Artists represented in "Picturing San Francisco"
range from the internationally renowned to the locally beloved to the completely
obscure. Works by anonymous 19th-century engravers and painters accompany
those by locally prominent artists and photographers like Arnold Genthe,
Isaiah West Taber, Chiura Obata, Dong Kingman, David Lance Goines, and Robert
Bechtle; as well as those by more widely known figures such as Wayne Thiebaud,
Elmer Bischoff, and Richard Diebenkorn.
While
"Picturing San Francisco" offers a compelling look at artists'
interpretations of the city, it also provides a view into the changing landscapes
of San Francisco and the surrounding area. The gold rush-era waterfront,
the Golden Gate and bay without their now-familiar bridges, the haunting
ruins of a downtown devastated by the 1906 earthquake and fire, and ephemeral
events such as the 1894 Midwinter Fair and the 1915 Panama Pacific International
Exposition are all among the 
different, once familiar land- and cityscapes that
are not necessarily gone today, but are irrevocably changed. (left:
Eduardo Scott (1897-1925), San Francisco Embarcadero, 1924, black
crayon and graphite on wove paper, 21 1/2 x 27 1/4 inches; right: Thomas
Almond Ayres (1816-1858), North Beach: San Francisco from Off Meigg's
Wharf, 1854, charcoal and pastel on marble-dusted drawing board, 13
x 23 1/4 inches)
Read more about the Fine
Arts Museums of San Francisco in Resource
Library Magazine
For further biographical information on selected artists
cited above please see America's Distinguished
Artists, a national registry of historic artists.
Please click on thumbnail images bordered by a red line
to see enlargements.
rev. 1/6/11
Search Resource
Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.
Copyright 2011 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights
reserved.
Since its earliest days, the city of San Francisco
has been a magnet for artists and creative individuals seeking a place where
their freedom of expression could be fully realized. This exhibition of
artists' impressions of San Francisco celebrates both a century and a half
of artistic achievement and the 150th anniversary of the founding of the
city itself -- transformed in 1850 from the sleepy backwater of Yerba Buena
to the bustling city of San Francisco by the California Gold Rush. Rather
than reflect the typical guidebook views and tourist images so often associated
with San Francisco, the works in this exhibition instead present the city
as seen through the eyes of its artists, echoing the times they lived in
and their unique individual perceptions of San Francisco's dramatic natural
setting, inspired urban development, and socially progressive history. (left:
Wayne Thiebaud, Hill Street, 1987, color woodcut, 37 1/2 x 24 1/2
inches)
