(Click on images to enlarge)
Marjorie Eaton House, Trace Road, Palo Alto, Gregory Ain, architect, designed 1939. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Ain Collection.
Marjorie Eaton ca. late 1930s, Dorothea Lange photo. Courtesy Oakland Museum of California, Dorothea Lange Collection.
This essay is in essence a character study of Marjorie Lee Eaton (1901-1986), one of the more fascinating individuals among the coterie of Rudolph and Pauline Schindler, Edward Weston and "Blue Four" art dealer Galka Scheyer. As such she will be prominent protagonist in my work in progress "The Schindlers and the Westons: An Avant-Garde Friendship" (see below). In writing this piece I hope to do justice to the fascinating back story behind Eaton's friendships with Scheyer and Schindler and her selection of Schindler-Neutra apprentice Gregory Ain to design her little known modernistic adobe house in Palo Alto in 1939. I hope that this essay will also be a good introduction into Scheyer's and Schindler's interaction with the Bay Area arts and architecture communities.
Lovell Health House, Newport Beach, 1926, R. M. Schindler, architect. Photo by Edward Weston, August 2, 1927. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
Marjorie was born on February 5, 1901 to Dr. George Lee Eaton (1872-1934) and Helen Morley who died when Marjorie was only two years old. Eaton's father was a noted urologist and expert and frequent lecturer on venereal diseases and was on the teaching staff of the San Francisco College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Eaton was also on the staff of St. Francis Hospital and was President of the San Francisco Board of Health. In his free time he was an avid dog breeder. (San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year 1909-1910, p. 257, "Discussion on Renal Surgery," JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, October 9, 1915, p. 1248, CHIPS, Vol. X, San Francisco, p. 14, and The American Kennel Club Stud Book, Vol. XXXIV, New York, 1917, pp. 510-511).
Typical refugee camp in Golden Gate Park, 1906. San Francisco Public Library.
Marjorie's earliest childhood memories were of the aftermath of the traumatic 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Her father had by then begun courting well-to-do haute couture dress designer Edith Cox whom Marjorie adored. She fondly reminisced of the bonding with her soon-to-be step-mother in the post-quake devastation. "It was then decided that we'd live together ... and so I liked the earthquake." She recalled her father dragging a Persian rug with Edith's $45 French hat through the ruins of the city. "We had to cook in the street. It was like camping ... I loved that." (Clark, Reuben, unpublished manuscript, "The Princess Imperiale with Five Costume Changes," 6/27/74 from Eaton's papers. Cited in Mayfield, Signe, "Marjorie Eaton: Education and Memoir of the Artist, 1901-1940," Palo Alto Cultural Center, 1991).
Anna Cox and her daughters Edith and Anna immigrated to the U.S. in 1886 and began working their way up in San Francisco's high end custom dressmaking trade. By the time of the earthquake they had opened The Misses Cox haute coutere dress shop which was located at 144 Pine St. Their shop was relocated to 1184 Masonic Ave. within a week after the quake. (San Francisco Chronicle, April 26, 1906, p. 9). Their other atelier locations over the years included 3190 Clay St. (1907), 1201 Van Ness Ave. (1912) and 1441 Van Ness Ave. (1922). (San Francisco City Directories and "Gown Importers in Probe Before Federal Jury," San Francisco Call, December 14, 1912, p. 10). The Misses Cox operation was eventually acquired by I. Magnin's flagship Union Square store. (Fusako Sakai obituary).
Eaton Residence, 140 Commonwealth Ave., San Francisco. From Google Maps.
Edith and George soon married and by 1913 had moved into their new custom home at 140 Commonwealth Ave. in the Laurel Heights-Jordan Park neighborhood of San Francisco about half way between the east end of Golden Gate Park and the Presidio (see above). The spacious 6,000 square foot home included a marble vestibule entrance and came equipped with a billiard room, den, library and conservatory with hardwood flooring and blue gumwood paneling throughout (see article below). The home eventually filled with relatives with both George's and Edith's mothers and Edith's nephew moving in along with their live-in servant and cook. (1920 Census).
"Residence for Dr. George Lee Eaton; Jordan Park Home," San Francisco Chronicle, March 29, 1913, p. 4.
Site of Miss Burke's School ca. 1910-1917, 2310 Broderick St., Pacific Heights, San Francisco. From Google Maps.
Marjorie was enrolled in Miss Burke's School under the directorship of Katherine Delmar Burke. The school was founded in 1908 in a Victorian house at the corner of Steiner and Pacific Streets in Pacific Heights, about a mile and a half east of the Eaton's future home. The school soon outgrew its original space and in 1910 moved to another nearby Victorian at 2310 Broderick St. (see above).
Miss Burke's vision was to help the young women of her day find their place in a man's world. At a time when “finishing schools” were the norm, Miss Burke was an innovator whose progressive educational program began as the Suffragist Movement was gaining steam. Burke wanted to instill in her young women the firm belief that they were entitled to equal status not only in the the arts, but in business world, sports, politics and all facets of life. Providing them with the educational tools to succeed was the paramount mission for her faculty (see below).
Miss Burke's School 1915 faculty, 2310 Broderick St., Pacific Heights. From left to right, (seated) Miriam Suplee, Helen Hahone, Marian Regensborger, and Lizzie Kennedy "Grandma" Burke; standing, Katherine D. Burke, ? Agar, Clara Dunbrow, Olive Wolf, Helen Kennedy, ? Bowman, Ruth Cox, Clotilde Fahliesen, Florence Pilkington and Leonie, the maid. Courtesy Burke School archives. From San Francisco's Pacific Heights and Presidio Heights by Tricia O'Brien, Arcadia, 2008, p. 76.
In 1914 Edith and her sister took Marjorie to Paris on one of their periodic European dress buying trips. ("Gown Importers in Probe Before Federal Jury," San Francisco Call, December 14, 1912, p. 10). Stopovers in Florence and Rome were her first exposure to the architectural and artistic splendors of Europe. Edith knew that this impressionable trip would be a perfect supplement to the education Marjorie was rapidly absorbing at Miss Burke's. (Rueben Clark, unpublished manuscript from Marjorie
Easton’s archive, "The Princess Imperials with Five Changes of
Costume," 6/27/74).
Marjorie Eaton, ca. 1916. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
Julia Morgan, Paris, 1899. Avery Morgan photograph. From Boutelle, p. 32.
After a few additions to the Broderick St. location as the student body continued to grow, in 1916 Miss Burke commissioned her friend Julia Morgan (see above) to finally design her "House of Dreams Come True." The brand new Beaux-Arts school built at 3065 Jackson St. in Pacific Heights was characteristic of much of Morgan's work. I have not as yet been able to determine how Burke and Morgan became friends but they possibly met through the half dozen projects Morgan had in the neighborhood on Pacific and Jackson Streets between 1908 and the time of the school commission. Some of Morgan's local clients also could have had children enrolled at Miss Burke's. And for Marjorie's convenience the school was now within easy walking distance of the Eaton residence. (Stoney, Kathrine, "Class History," Works and Days: Miss Burke's School, 1920 Year Book, p. 15 and Reder, Erica, "Julia Morgan Was a Local," The New Fillmore, February 1, 2011).
Main entrance, Miss Burke's School, 3065 Jackson St., San Francisco, Julia Morgan, architect, 1918. (From Steilberg, Walter T., "Some Examples of the Work of Julia Morgan, Miss Burke's School, San Francisco," Architect and Engineer, November 1918, p. 53. Author's note: Walter Steilberg was working for Morgan at this time and later designed the Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood estate in Los Gatos in 1925 and the house Field's daughter Katherine and her husband James Caldwell lived in behind his home in Berkeley in 1929-30. See more discussion later below).
Miss Burke eagerly had Morgan present the school's plans to the student body as they were developed. She most likely used the design and construction processes as learning experiences for the impressionable young women to illustrate what sorts of careers were possible for them if they so chose to apply themselves. Morgan let the $60,000 construction contract for the school to D. B. Farquharson and broke ground in June of 1917. ("Miss Julia Morgan Plans Private School," Architect and Engineer, June 1917, p. 79).
Main floor plan and courtyard, Miss Burke's School, 1917, Julia Morgan, architect. (Steilberg, p. 53).
In the November 1918 issue of Architect and Engineer which was totally dedicated to Morgan's recent work Walter Steilberg described her design for Miss Burke's.
"A day school for girls. As the lot had only one street frontage and as good lighting, sun everywhere and privacy were imperative requirements, the principal rooms were grouped around a central garden court, the corridors being kept to the "blind" sides of the building and the less important rooms placed on the street frontage and the rear court. The capitals of the columns in the court are modeled after those of the Italian Building at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, as a recall of the days which are dear to the memory of every Californian." (Steilberg, p. 41).
The entire school "marched up to witness the placing of our flagpole. Before very long this beautiful building was completed and we girls had great fun moving books and such things as we could carry." (Stoney).
Courtyard, Miss Burke's School, 3065 Jackson St., San Francisco, Julia Morgan, architect. Miss Burke's School Yearbook, 1922.
Formal library, Miss Burke's School. (O'Brien, p. 76).
Stair hall, Miss Burke's School. (Miss Burke's School Yearbook, 1922 and Steilberg, p. 54).
The important impressions left by the remarkable design work of Morgan and literally watching the new school rise from its foundations left an indelible mark on young Marjorie and instilled in her a lifelong love of architecture and interior design which will be illustrated in depth later in this essay. The class histories in the 1919 and 1920 yearbooks further bear out that Marjorie's time at Miss Burke's was informed by the Women's Suffrage Movement, World War I and the 1918 influenza epidemic.
Works and Days: Miss Burke's School, 1920 Year Book.
Marjorie Eaton, 1920. From Works and Days: Miss Burke's School, 1920 Year Book, edited by Marjorie Eaton, Class of 1920, p. 10.
Marjorie Eaton art work, Works and Days: The Year Book of Miss Burke's School, 1919, p. 53.
Marjorie was one of Miss Burke's more active, outgoing and talented students evidenced by her art work and a short piece of anti-war fiction entitled "A Modern Gareth" being published in the 1919 Year Book (see above). Marjorie was selected by Miss Burke to edit the yearbook during her senior year. Her main interests were art, drama and dancing. Marjorie's yearbook drawings exhibit the maturing skills that gave her the confidence that fueled her desire to become an artist. Her drama and dancing classes similarly inspired her later acting career.
Marjorie Eaton art work, Works and Days: The Year Book of Miss Burke's School, 1920, p. 51.
Marjorie Eaton art work, ibid, p. 41.
In a section of the year book titled "The Senior's Daily Round," Marjorie cleverly included montages of characteristically posed cutout photos for each girl in the senior class backed by caricaturesque stage sets of her own design. Nicknamed "Buddha" by her classmates, Marjorie listed the highlights of her activities of her last four years below.
"The Dreams Steal By" while Marjorie dreams her dreams. Class President Spring Term '17; Class President, '18; Stunts Committee, Junior Cabaret, '19; Editor 'Works and Days', p. 20.
Eaton, Marjorie, "The Senior's Daily Round," Works and Days: The Year Book of Miss Burke's School, 1920, p. 17.
Miss Burke taught Modern English covering Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, Omar Khayyam, Goldsworthy, Kismet and much more. Marjorie also took dance, interior decoration, sewing, and drawing classes and performed in the Junior Cabaret. The girl's athletic teams competed against the likes of the Miss Anna Head and Miss Ransom's Schools in Berkeley, Miss Harker's in Palo Alto and the Claremont Girls School.
"Parade of the Flags" assembly in Courtyard, Miss Burke's School. Ibid, p. 25.
Besides their exposure to Julia Morgan's architecture and interior design aesthetic, Miss Burke brought in numerous illustrious speakers to inspire the girls. For example as Marjorie chronicled in the 1920 year book,
"April 22. Today we had a unique afternoon. Vachel Lindsay chanted and recited some of his poems. As the audience had never heard anything along the same lines, a feeling of astonishment perhaps best describes the general feeling over the queer syncopated rhythm. ...
Vachel Lindsay, 1913. Photographer unknown. From Wikipedia.
April 30. What a wonderful day this has been. We were enchanted by the exquisite witchery and melody of Mr. Witter Bynner's readings of his own poetry; he put a final glory upon our joy by singing some haunting, beautiful negro melodies. This indeed will always be to us a memorable visit." (Ibid, pp. 55-6). (Author's note: Marjorie likely reconnected with Bynner and "Spud" Johnson during her time in Taos as described later below.).
Witter Bynner, 1920. Passport photo.
Ad from Good Housekeeping, June 1920, p. 10.
Upon graduation Marjorie struck a bargain with her pragmatic parents. She agreed to study something practical such as architecture or interior decoration for two years in return for a study trip to Europe. Perhaps Marjorie was inspired by Julia Morgan's architecture and interior design for under the advice of Miss Burke she enrolled in related classes at the School of Fine Arts, Crafts and Decorative Design in Boston. The school offered classes in design, painting, drawing, illustration, costume design, interior decoration, crafts, jewelry, silversmithing and woodwork (see ad above). Marjorie's parents thought that a practical career choice would emerge from this curriculum.
C. Howard Walker, n.d., photographer unknown. From Arts and Crafts Architecture: History and Heritage in New
England by Maureen Meister, University Press of New England, 2014, p. 33.
The school was headed by prominent Beaux-Arts architect C. Howard Walker (see above), one of the founding members of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts and Katherine B. Child. The faculty during Marjorie's time in Boston included Walker (lectures in architecture, interior decorating and historic styles and student critiques), Child (design and research), Howard E. Smith (painting and drawing), Russell Hyde, illustration (see below), Frank J. Robinson and Reginald Pearce (silversmithing, jewelry, modeling and pottery). Eaton recalled that her architectural plans were not exceptional but her sepia figure drawings were and the school retained them. (Marjorie Eaton Biography, Gerald Peters Gallery). (Author's note: Walker was named President of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts in 1922 and was awarded the Society's gold medal in 1929.).
Announcement for C. Howard Walker Boston Architectural Society lecture, October 18, 1921 drawn by Russell Hyde. From Roger Hayward Collection, Oregon State Library.
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., 1909-15, Guy Lowell, architect.
Marjorie's classes under Walker and Child included museum work which provided her much inspiration and exposure to the collections and exhibitions of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (see above). Walker and Child had previously headed the design department of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts thus would have instilled in their students the behind-the-scenes workings of the art world. During her time in Boston renowned artist John Singer Sargent was working on an ambitious
mural program, incorporating sculpture and architectural ornamentation for the
MFA’s Rotunda. (Architectural History, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
L'Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, Paris, 1907. Photograph by J. E. Cliche. From internet.
Painting class at L'Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, Paris, n.d., photographer unknown. From internet.
After two years in Boston Marjorie cashed in on her parents' promised trip and traveled to France in the summer of 1922, beginning her lifelong quest for a life in the arts. Marjorie visited countless museums and worked at L'Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in the Montparnasse section of Paris (see above). Then enrolled at L'Academie was Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti who was studying under former Rodin assistant Antoine Bourdelle (see below). At the end of the undoubtedly exciting and formative summer Marjorie was retrieved by Edith who also purchased another trunkful of haute couture dresses for her shop. (Mayfield, p. 2 and New York Passenger Lists and Passport Applications, Ancestry.com).
Alberto Giacometti and Rodin's Model, Carmen at L'Academie de
la Grande Chaumiere, Paris 1922. From Archives of American Art.
Catalogue for California School of Fine Arts, Season 1923-24.
California School of Fine Arts (formerly the Mark Hopkins Institute and residence), 999 California St., San Francisco, Wright and Sanders, architects.
After her return Marjorie continued her studies throughout 1923 and 1924 at San Francisco's California School of Fine Arts, formerly known as the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art originally located in the donated Hopkins mansion (see above). After it was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake a "temporary" replacement building was built on the same site by 1907 and was renamed the San Francisco Institute of Art (see below). It was again renamed the California School of Fine Arts in 1916. Besides Director Lee Randolph, the period faculty during Eaton's attendance included the likes of E. Spencer Macky (Dean of Faculty) and his wife Constance, Maynard Dixon, Ralph Stackpole, Rudolph Schaeffer, Ray Boynton, Lucien Labaudt, Gottardo Piazzoni and others. (CSFA Catalog, 1920).
San Francisco Institute of Art, California and Mason Streets, Nob Hill, Loring Rixford, architect, 1907. (From "Work Begun on Temporary Building for Art Association," San Francisco Call, February 4, 1907, p. 5).
Faculty, California School of Fine Arts, Season 1923-24, p. 4.
Nude study by Marjorie Eaton, 1923. From California School of Fine Arts, Season 1923-24, p. 18.
Marjorie Eaton (unidentified subject), 1922. Courtesy Susan Kirk, niece of Marjorie Eaton.
It was here that Marjorie completed her first oil painting (see above) and became lifelong friends with faculty, especially the Mackys, and fellow students Helen Forbes, Maxine Albro, Margaret Bruton, Ruth Cravath, Edward Hagedorn, Forrest Brissey, and Anna Katharine "Katie" Skeele who became one of her closest lifelong friends. Marjorie was an "A" student and was encouraged by her teachers the Mackys who included her work in the school's catalogues for both 1923-24 and 1924-25 (see above and below). (Class Records, San Francisco Art Institute Archives, courtesy of archivist-historian Jeff Gunderson).
"Nude" by Marjorie Lee Eaton, 1924. Courtesy of Susan Kirk. Also published in California School of Fine Arts, Season 1924-25, p. 20.
Painting class, California School of Fine Arts, ca. 1923-24. Marjorie Eaton, second from left of model. Courtesy of Susan Kirk.
"Nude" by Marjorie Eaton, 1924. Courtesy Santa Fe Art Auction.
"Portrait Study," E. Spencer Macky, ca. 1924. From de Young Museum Collections.
Eric Spencer Macky by Johan Hagemeyer, 1948. From Bancroft Library Hagemeyer Collection.
Eaton's closeness with her CSFA teachers was evidenced by her 1923-24 life drawing class instructor Spencer Macky painting her portrait sometime ca. 1924. "Miss Marjorie Eaton" was exhibited in the 48th Annual San Francisco Art Association Exhibition at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in April 1925 and later the same year at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. Macky also exhibited in the same show a portrait of longtime Schindler friend from their 1915-20 Chicago days, Alexander Kaun, who was by this time head of Slavic Studies at Berkeley (see below). Schindler designed a weekend getaway and studio for Kaun and his sculptor wife Valeria on Richmond Point in 1934. (For more on this see my "Alexander "Sasha" Kaun Beach Cottage, Richmond,CA, R. M. Schindler, Architect, 1935")
"Alexander Kaun" by Spencer Macky. From Forty-Eighth Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association, at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1925, p. 57.
Valeria Kaun, Oakland Tribune, November 29, 1927 p. 4.
Kaun Cottage, Richmond Point, 1934. R. M. Schindler, architect. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection. (Author's note: Architect William Wurster designed a house next door in 1935.)
Armin Hansen in his studio, Monterey, n.d., Photographer unknown, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum, from Armin Hansen: The Artful Voyage by Scott Shields, Pomegranite, 2015, p. 51.
Eaton attended the popular summer class of Armin Hansen (see above) in Monterey in 1923. Her work was exhibited in the Monterey Peninsula Industries and Arts Exhibition that August. Hansen served as the organizer of the art section of the exhibition and as one of the selection jury members. Likely also in that class was Margaret Bruton who would soon be joined in Monterey by sisters Helen and Esther (see below), all of whom Marjorie would have befriended. Other budding artists studying with Hansen around this time were August Gay, Jeannette Maxfield Lewis, Helen Forbes and Clayton Sumner Price. The Brutons were so enamored of Monterey that the entire family arrived from Alameda in 1924 and built an adobe second home and studio. (Interview with Helen and Margaret Bruton conducted by Lewis
Ferbrache in Monterey, California December 4, 1964, Archives of American Art).
From left, Helen, Esther and Margaret Bruton posing in front of Esther's "Corn Dance" painted in Taos in 1929. Photo by Imogen Cunningham, 1936.
Margaret Bruton recalled Hansen's teaching technique as "more of a mutual association than a structured class. The students decided on the locations and hired the models and paid Armin for his criticism. He was spared as much of the mechanics as possible. He was an excellent teacher in that he inspired his students without imposing any rigid formulas." (Society of Six California Colorists by Nancy Boas, Bedford Arts Publishers, San Francisco, 1988, p. 136).
Juana Briones Adobe, 1905.
Marjorie's parents, Edith and George, purchased the historic Juana Briones Adobe (aka "Alta Mesa") and surrounding acreage in Palo Alto ca. 1924-5 as a country retreat. Edith would later receive the property as part of her and George's late 1920s divorce settlement.
Aerial view of the Briones Adobe, "Alta Mesa," Palo Alto, ca. 1925.
The Mackys were frequent guests. Constance Macky painted Marjorie's grandmother Anna Cox Ward posing in front of "Alta Mesa"in 1925 (see below). (Constance Macky, California Art Research, Vol. 15 edited by Gene Hailey, Works Progress Admistration, 1936-37, pp. 90, 112).
Anna Cox Ward in front of Briones Adobe aka "Alta Mesa" by Constance Macky, n.d., ca. 1925. (California Art Research, Vol. 15, Constance Macky edited by Gene Hailey, Works Progress Administration, 1936-37, p. 112). Courtesy Susan Kirk.
Thomas Bouchard and Marjorie Eaton, Florence, 1926. Bouchard self-portrait courtesy Susan Kirk.
Thomas Bouchard by Marjorie Eaton, 1926, Florence. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
With financial support from her parents, the peripatetic art student
Marjorie traveled to Florence, Italy and studied at the state art school where
she learned fresco techniques while continuing to hone her easel work. The presence of young photographer Thomas Bouchard may have played a part in attracting Marjorie to Florence evidenced by the portrait Marjorie painted of him while there. She met the young lensman during her sojourn in Santa Barbara the previous year. Eaton spent part of
1926 and most of 1927 in Europe as reported in period Miss Burke's School
Yearbooks. ("Faculty, Seniors and Alumni Notes," Miss Burke's School, Works and Days, 1925-26, San Francisco, California, June 1926 and 1928 and New York Passenger Lists, Ancestry.com). (Author's note: Eaton and Bouchard may also have crossed paths in New York ca. 1933-35 during her time there at the Art Student's League and assisting Diego Rivera as discussed later herein.).
"Paysage Mirmande," Andre Lhote, 1925.
During this period Eaton also spent some time in southern France
where she met and studied with the celebrated cubist painter Andre Lhote,
who regularly summered at Mirmande, halfway between Lyon and Marseille (see
above). Eaton may have been introduced to Lhote by the Mackys as Spencer
studied with Lhote in 1926 and lectured on his "French Experiences"
at the Beaux Arts Club on November 6th of the same year. (Spencer
Macky, California Art Research, Volume 16, WPA Project 2874, San
Francisco, 1937, p. 34).
Andre Lhote and class at his l'Academie Andre Lhote, Montparnasse, ca. late 1920s.
Lhote was supportive of Eaton's potential and in an attempt to lure her to continue her studies at his Paris school promised to exhibit her work at his new l'Academie Andre Lhote in Montparnasse (see below catalog for example). Precluding this however, Marjorie's parents were separating around this time and her funds were cut off.
Student exhibition catalog, l'Academie Andre Lhote, March 10-30, 1926. From Acedemy Andre Lhote.
While Eaton was preoccupied with her European studies a dynamic force of modernism in the form of Galka Scheyer arrived on the California art scene. She was the agent and dealer for the Expressionist painters Alexej Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Lyonel Feininger she affectionately named the "Blue Four."
R. M. Schindler (right), Richard and Dione Neutra and son Frank, Schindler House, ca. 1928. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Papers.
Scheyer arrived on the doorstep of architect R. M. Schindler and his wife Pauline in West Hollywood after a cross-country trip from New York via Chicago. The contact had been provided by Barry Byrne who had befriended Scheyer client Feininger at the Bauhaus in 1924. After trying to market her Blue Four on the East Coast without much success she decided to try her luck in California. Schindler introduced her to his coterie including recently arrived fellow Viennese architect tenant Richard Neutra (see above), former tenant and managing director of the Otis Art Institute and curator at the Los Angeles Museum Karl Howenstein, U-C Southern Branch art teacher Annita Delano and his frequent collaborator and client, interior designer Herman Sachs (see below), and many others in their ever-widening artistic circles. Sachs in turn piqued Scheyer's interest with sightseeing trips including a tour of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer back lot. (Galka Scheyer, collective letter to Blue Four,
Sacramento, 21 July 1925, Galka Scheyer and the Blue Four Correspondence,
1924-1945 edited by Isabel Wunsche, Benteli, 2006, p. 91). (Author's note: For much more on Scheyer's move to California from New York in the summer of 1925 see my "Galka Scheyer and Barry Byrne, Bauhaus Connections,1924-1925").
Herman Sachs and Galka Scheyer, Los Angeles, June 1925. Photographer unknown, possibly Gela Archipenko. From Wunsche, p.
Dorothea Lange by Edward Weston, 1920. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, Edward Weston Collection.
After a hectic two weeks in Los Angeles and Hollywood Scheyer continued to San Francisco where in August she set up her initial Blue Four marketing headquarters in the Hotel Normandie. She perhaps crossed paths with Schindler's close friend Edward Weston who was just then returning to Los Angeles after six month interlude in San Francisco during his 1923-26 Mexican sojourn. While in San Francisco Weston was renting the photography studio of Dorothea Lange (see above) who was one of the first artists Scheyer would fortuitously meet upon her San Francisco arrival.
Edward Weston and Johan Hagemeyer, Gump's, Feb., 9 to Feb. 21, 1925. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, Edward Weston Collection.
Weston was able to arrange a joint show of his Mexican work with his then Carmel-based friend Johan Hagemeyer at Gump's Department Store. This exhibition provided San Franciscans important early exposure to Diego Rivera (see below) and Mexico and perhaps influenced Bay Area artists such as Ralph Stackpole and Ray Boynton to make their own pilgrimages to check out the excitement being generated by the Mexico City mural movement. (Author's note: Schindler had exhibited at Hagemeyer's Carmel Gallery during the summer of 1924. For more on this see my "The Schindlers in Carmel, 1924").
Diego Rivera by Edward Weston, 1923. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, Edward Weston Collection.
Maynard Dixon and Dorothea Lange, ca. 1923. From This Recording.
Armed with Bay Area contact information from Schindler and his circle Scheyer quickly befriended Weston's close friend Dorothea Lange and her prominent artist husband Maynard Dixon (see above). One of Eaton's teachers at the California School of Fine Arts, Dixon quickly became an ardent supporter after viewing Scheyer's Blue Four portfolio and provided her numerous helpful introductions into Bay Area art circles. Around this time Dixon gifted "Mme Moderne Kunst" the below sketch others which remain in her collection at the Norton Simon Museum. (Barnett, pp. 452-3).
Dixon, Maynard, "Portrait of Galka Scheyer," 1925. (From Barnett, p. 452).
Scheyer's timing couldn't have been better. In early September she met noted Swiss composer Ernest Bloch who had just been named artistic director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music coinciding with her first Blue Four lecture at the Conservatory on September 19th. This also marked the beginning of a five year romantic relationship with Bloch (see below). (Author's note: As discussed later below Bloch's daughter Lucienne would in 1933 assist Diego Rivera on his New Worker's School murals alongside Marjorie Eaton and Louise Nevelson.).
Ernest Bloch, 1929, Photo by Dorothea Lange. From Johnson, Willard, "From Log Cabin to White House, A Note on Ernest Bloch," The Argus, January 1929, p. 1.
"Suffragette" (Galka Scheyer) by Ernest Bloch, ca. 1926. (Barnett, p. 426).
Scheyer began an ongoing relationship with Ernest Bloch soon after she moved into the Hotel Normandie in San Francisco in August 1925. They continued seeing each other until 1930 coinciding with his time as director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Scheyer accumulated almost 20 of his watercolors (see above for example) in her art collection during their time together. (The Blue Four Collection at the Norton Simon Museum by Vivian Endicott Barnett, Yale University Press, 2002, pp. 426-435). (Author's note: Marjorie was certainly privy to Galka's romantic ties to Bloch thus his later relationship with Louise Nevelson must have been an interesting topic of discussion while they were roommates in New York as was Bloch's daughter Lucienne's relationship as Diego's helper on the New School mural panels.). (Scheyer to Archipenko, May 19, 1926, Galka Scheyer Papers, Norton Simon Museum).
Lucienne Bloch working on the Rivera murals at the New Worker's School. Photographer unknown.
Roi Partridge, 1922. Photo by Edward Weston. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, Edward Weston Collection.
Also in early September, Dixon and Lange introduced Scheyer to close Weston mutual friends artist Roi Partridge and his photographer wife Imogen Cunningham (see above and below). To Scheyer's good fortune, Mills College art faculty member Partridge had just been named director of the brand new Mills College Gallery of Fine Arts.
Imogen Cunningham, 1922. Photo by Edward Weston. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, Edward Weston Collection.
"Girl on Sofa" (Portrait sketch of Beatrice Judd Ryan) by Frank Van Sloun, 1933. (From Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco).
Dixon also introduced Scheyer to studio neighbors sculptor Ralph Stackpole and later Rivera mural collaborator Frank Van Sloun and Beatrice Judd Ryan (see above). Ryan had just opened the Galerie Beaux Arts at 116 Maiden Lane, the first ever gallery dedicated solely to modern art in San Francisco. Eaton's California School of Fine Arts instructors Dixon and Gottardo Piazzoni, Van Sloun and Bohemian Club and San Francisco YWCA Building architect Lewis P. Hobart were on Ryan's Club Beaux Arts board of directors and she frequently exhibited all of their work. (The Life of Maynard Dixon by Donald J. Hagerty, Gibbs-Smith, 2010, p. 160 and Wunsche, p. 107 and Dungan, H. L., "Artists and Their Work," Oakland Tribune, ).
After seeing Scheyer's Blue Four portfolio Ryan immediately signed her up to lecture at the Galerie Beaux Art's grand opening on September 28th. Ryan later fondly reminisced of the importance of Scheyer's arrival upon the San Francisco art scene,
"There were, of course, many influences that colored the main stream. For example, Madame Galka Scheyer came from Germany sponsoring the Blue Four: Klee, Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Feininger. Maynard Dixon and a few of the local artists were deeply interested in the collection, especially the work of Klee and Kandinsky, but it wasn't until 1929, when both the Legion of Honor and the Oakland Museum held exhibitions of their work, that collectors became interested and bought." (Ryan, Beatrice Judd, "The Rise of Modern Art in the Bay Area," California Historical Society Quarterly, March 1959, pp. 1-5).
"Hoover's Home at Stanford," San Francisco Chronicle, July 1, 1928, Rotogravure Pictorial Section, p. 3. (From Mrs. Hoover's Pueblo Walls by Paul V. Turner, Stanford University Press, 2004, p. 11).
At one of these early lectures Scheyer met Arthur B. Clark, Chair of the Art and Architecture Department at Stanford University. Wearing his architect hat Clark had designed numerous residences for professors on the Stanford campus and in surrounding Palo Alto, most notably the modernist home for future president Herbert Hoover and his wife Lou who played a prominent role in the house's design (see above).
Clark was intrigued by Scheyer's magnetism and grasp of her lecture material, especially the way she integrated graphic arts, painting, sculpture, music, literature and architecture into her lectures. He invited her to conduct the first exhibition of the Blue Four on the West Coast at Stanford (near Marjorie's mother's new Palo Alto compound) in late October. Scheyer spent a glorious week in Clark's campus home while presenting a series of lectures to his class in conjunction with the exhibition. Clark gave Scheyer a tour of the campus and his architecture and a concert featuring Bach was held in her honor. (Galka Scheyer collective letter the Blue Four, October 30, 1925, Wunsche, pp. 124-5).
"Prophetess of the Blue Four," San Francisco Examiner, November 1, 1925
Scheyer's "first great success," the Stanford exhibition, was highlighted in the San Francisco Examiner the following week (see above). She considered the full-page spread in San Francisco's most prominent newspaper her "second great success." Her "third serious success" was a San Francisco lecture series arranged by noted San Francisco vocal concert impresario and booking agent Ida Gregory Scott in her sixth floor studio in the Kohler & Chase Building (see below). (Ibid).
Kohler and Chase Building, 26 O'Farrell St., San Francisco, Frederick H. Myer, architect, 1909.
"My impresario, Miss Scott, has arranged a series of 3 lectures in San Francisco for me, with flyers [see below], which I hope will be very nice; I will send one to you. Title: "From Cave-Painting to Skyscraper." Everything has been carefully thought out." (Galka Scheyer collective letter the Blue Four, October 30, 1925, Wunsche, pp. 124-5).
"Cave Drawings to Sky Scrapers" lecture series, November 17, 24 and December 1, 1925. Ida Gregory Scott Studio, Kohler & Chase Building, San Francisco. From Getty Research Institute, Peg Weiss Papers.
Paul Elder Bookstore and Gallery, 239 Post Ave., San Francisco. From Paul Elder & Co. Blog.
Through Dixon's benevolence Scheyer started 1926 off and running. Scheyer was beginning to create some notice and was able to book a "Graphic Art of the Blue Four" exhibition at the Paul Elder Gallery for January 18-23, 1926 (see above and below). Her illustrated lecture "What Is Impressionism, Expressionism, Futurism, Cubism?" opened the exhibition of Blue Four etchings, woodcuts and lithographs. (Author's note: The Paul Elder Bookstore at 239 Post incorporated many Bernard Maybeck-designed elements relocated from a previous location. Paul Elder also published in 1915 Bernard Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts and Lagoon.).
Madame Scheyer lecture and Blue Four exhibition announcement, January 1926, Paul Elder Gallery. (Peg Weiss Papers, Getty Research Institute).
Nude, Edward Hagedorn, ca. 1926, Barnett, p. 455.
Scheyer's introduction of the Blue Four to the San Francisco art scene had an immediate impact on at least a few of the fledgling artists at the California School of Fine Arts. For example, Eaton's 1922-25 classmate Edward Hagedorn quickly began brashly employing Expressionist techniques of Scheyer's stablemates with the impact of creating front page scandals in William H. Clapp's 1926 and 1927 Oakland Art Gallery annual exhibitions. For example, Hagedorn was the center of a huge publicity storm over a nude accepted for the 1926 show which was hung upright instead of reclining as he had intended and another nude that was rejected (see above and below). ("Picture of Nude Girl Painted by Hagedorn Barred From Auditorium," Oakland Tribune, February 23, 1926, p. 1 and "Painters of 2 Art Nudes Fight Back," Oakland Tribune, February 8, 1927, p. 1).
Oakland Tribune, February 28, 1926, p. 1.
Florence Wieben Lehre holding a Hagedorn self-portrait, Galka Scheyer and William H. Clapp, Oakland Tribune, February 5, 1927, p. 2.
Hagedorn, Edward, "Galka Scheyer Viewing Portraits of Galka Scheyer," ca. 1926-28, From Edward Hagedorn: California Modernist, Restlessness and Restraint edited by Stuart and Beverly Denenberg, Denenberg Fine Arts, West Hollywood, 2009, p. 8.
In her first 1926 collective missive she wrote to the Blue Four of the success of the exhibition at the Paul Elder Gallery and a concurrent "Graphic Art of the Blue Four" exhibition at Mills College arranged through her new friend Roi Partridge. This resulted in two lectures at the State University for Teachers in San Jose and one at California School of Fine Arts. Another lecture titled "The Living Line and Form" was presented at the Elder Gallery in conjunction with an exhibition on which Scheyer helped curate of the graphic work of her new friends Maynard Dixon and Ralph Stackpole. (Dungan, H. L., "Art and Artists," Oakland Tribune, February 21, 1926, p. S-5. Author's note: Dixon also had a concurrent show at the Club Beaux Arts. Dungan, H. L., "Artists and Their Work," Oakland Tribune, February 28, 1926, p. 10-M)
"The Blue Four, "Exhibition catalogue, Oakland Art Gallery, May 2nd to May 31st, 1926. (Wunsche, p. 176).
Scheyer also proudly related news of upcoming lectures at the University of California in Berkeley and a large exhibition at the Oakland Art Gallery (see above and below) under the direction of prominent "Society of Six" artist William H. Clapp who soon named Scheyer "European Representative" for the Oakland Art Gallery. The San Francisco Chronicle called the Oakland show the "Most Significant Exhibition brought to an American Museum since the Armory Show." (Galka Scheyer collective letter to Blue Four, San Francisco, January 31, 1926, Wunsche, pp. 128-9 and SF Chronicle, May 26, 1926).
Oakland Municipal Auditorium and Art Gallery, 10 10th St., John J. Donovan and Henry Hornbostel, architects, 1915.
Floor plans, Oakland Municipal Auditorium, John J. Donovan and Henry Hornbostel, architects. From Donovan, John J., "Problems That Have Been Solved in Oakland's New School Buildings," Architect and Engineer, March 1915, p. 68.
The Gallery was located in a corner of the second floor in the cavernous Oakland Municipal Auditorium at the south end of Lake Merritt. The Gallery was part of the Oakland Library Department under future Schindler client Minna McGauley (see below), President of the Library Board of Directors, to whom Clapp reported. McGauley was also President of the Oakland Ebell Club and vice-president of the Western Women's Club and very active in women's activities and causes.
Minna McGauley, 1928. From "A Few of the Eminent Women of California," in Women of the West, 1928 Edition edited by Max Binheim, Publisher's Press, Los Angeles, p. 8.
Oakland Art Gallery, second floor, Oakland Municipal Auditorium. From Boas, p. 102.
"Springing Ponies" by Franz Marc, Dungan, H. L., "Art and Artists," Oakland Tribune, August 22, 1926, p. S-5
In August of 1926 Scheyer organized an exhibition of Franz Marc's woodblock prints at the Oakland Art Gallery (see above). In dire financial straits after the death of her husband, Maria Marc had just sent Scheyer a shipment of her husband's prints in the hope she could make some sales. Scheyer purchased some for her own collection and quickly collaborated with Clapp to exhibit the work. The exhibition then traveled to the Los Angeles Museum in December which coincided with Scheyer's Blue Four exhibition at UC-Southern Branch organized by art department faculty Annita Delano and Barbara Morgan following its October-November run at the Los Angeles Museum (see below). A joint exhibition of Marc prints and the work of her Anna Head School students followed at the Paul Elder Gallery in January of 1927. Scheyer again placed Marc's prints at the Fine Arts Gallery in San Diego later that year. (Dungan, H. L., "Artists and Their Work," Oakland Tribune, August 22, 1926, p. S-5, Millier, Arthur, "Art and Artists: Superb Graphic Art in German Prints," and "Modern Art, Subject of Monday Lecture," Los Angeles Times, December 5, 1926, p. C-38 and Barnett, p. 383. For more on the Los Angeles exhibitions see my "The Foundations of Los Angeles Modernism: Richard Neutra's Mod Squad" (Foundations)).
"The Blue Four," Los Angeles Museum of Art, October 1926. Courtesy of Getty Research Institute,
Peg Weiss Papers.
While in Los Angeles for her Blue Four exhibitions Scheyer met Schindler-Weston mutual friends Sam and Harriet Freeman after the opening of the Los Angeles Museum of Art show. Harriet invited her to stay in their Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house in Hollywood (see discussion later below). While in the Southland Scheyer recruited artists for the Oakland Art Gallery's 5th Annual Exhibition slated for the following February. Artists in the Schindler circle whom she successfully enlisted included her new UC-Southern Branch art teacher friends Annita Delano, Barbara Morgan and Louise Pinckney Sooy, E. Roscoe Shrader, Peter Krasnow, Boris Deutsch, Kem Weber, Henrietta Shore, Stanton MacDonald Wright, Edouard Vysekal, William Wendt, and others. ("80 Artists to Exhibit Work at City Gallery," Oakland Tribune, February 2, 1927, p. C-5 and Foundations).
During November 1926 while Scheyer was in Los Angeles, Beatrice Judd Ryan hosted an exhibition of Diego Rivera mural study drawings at the Galerie Beaux Arts which had just traveled across the Bay from University of California art teacher Ray Boynton's Berkeley exhibition. Boynton had visited Diego in Mexico City during the summer and arranged to bring 100 Rivera mural studies back for exhibition. The drawings then made their way to the Los Angeles Museum of Art in May of 1927 (see below), along with some Archipenko paintings and sculptures most likely arranged by family friend Scheyer, and then on to San Diego Gallery of Fine Arts in August. ("Mexican Artist's Work Is Displayed," Oakland Tribune, November 2, 1926, p. 10).
"Millier, Arthur, "Art and Artists," Los Angeles Times, May 15, 1927, p. 28.
As she had experienced first hand Julia Morgan's design for Miss Burke's School become a reality, Marjorie was also witness to the development of the new California School of Fine Arts campus. She was perhaps privy to design decisions being made by her teachers and close friends the Mackys and William Gerstle as the plans were being completed before she left for a European study trip in 1926. ("Faculty, Seniors and Alumni Notes," Miss Burke's School, Works and Days, 1925-26, San Francisco, California, June 1926).
California School of Fine Arts, Chestnut and Jones Sts., San Francisco, Bakewell & Brown, architects, 1927. Architect and Engineer, June 1927, p. 85.
It is not yet known when Marjorie left for Europe in early 1927. She might have been on hand for the renewal of the previous season's "Art Wars" at the Oakland Art Gallery's annual exhibition in February. The "nudes" of Hagedorn and Forrest Brissey again created a major stir making headline news in all of the Bay area newspapers. (see below for example).
"Ask Removal of Art Nudes," Oakland Tribune, February 7, 1921, p. 1.
Selection jurist Scheyer and Oakland Art Gallery Director William Clapp were undoubtedly exuberant over the controversy. The glee among both the Northern California artists (and their participating Southern California counterparts recruited by Scheyer during her recent Los Angeles sojourn) was also palpable evidenced by the below correspondence between Clapp's "Society of Six" mates Selden Gile and Louis Siegrist.
"Dear Siegriest: "Merrily we roll along." Everything is sitting keen. Lots of publicity and excitement. The gallery has been thronged yesterday and today. They have had to get a boy to run the elevator, Florence [Wieben Lehre] has to stick to the phone all the time. Everybody this side of hell rings up and wants to know how to get to the gallery. They have two petitions in the gallery, those wishing the pictures to come down and those to retain them - the retainers are way ahead. Of course the newspapers are tickled to death, it gives them a chance to get in on the front page, so they swallow everything that Clapp gives them and go to it. The S.F. artists are keeping an eye open and post all the articles in the California School [of Fine Arts]and at the Beaux Arts Gallery. It's good for a week yet." (Selden Gile letter to Louis Siegrist, Oakland, February 8, 1927, cited in Boas, p. 134).
"Painters of 2 Art Nudes Fight Back," Oakland Tribune, February 8, 1921, p. 1.
San Francisco Chronicle art critic Gene Hailey, obviously not yet a convert, weighed in with:
"The cold fact is that these nudes [by Hagedorn and Brissey] which have scandalized the Club and City circles of Oakland are not even pretty nudes. They are "more to be pitied than censored" - for they are so frankly not fleshy, nor fleshly. They exist in a sad wooden, angular plane and are linear descendants, if not the maiden aunts, of Nude Descending the Stairs which so upset New York in 1912 [sic]. Yet she is now accepted in art annals with the deference due a primitive madonna." (Hailey, Gene, "Is it Bad Art or Bad Nudes," San Francisco Chronicle, February, 1927, cited in Boas, p. 134).
"Decision on Art Nudes Put Up to Banker," Oakland Tribune, February 9, 1927, p. 1.
Likely through the largess of Maynard Dixon Scheyer finally landed a proper Blue Four Exhibition in San Francisco at the California School of Fine Arts a month later. Scheyer's show was actually the first exhibition to be held in the recently dedicated School. Spencer Macky reminisced of his introduction to the Blue Four,
"...Galka Scheyer. My gosh, couldn't she talk! ... She was very dynamic; she was one of those people that almost repelled you because she was so dynamic, you know. ... [The Blue Four] were first shown in San Francisco. The first persons [Scheyer] came to see were those of us at the School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and we encouraged her, we gave her a little exhibition there, we showed the things around, you know. But we didn't take them too seriously, at least, I didn't.
A friend of mine, Marjorie Eaton, was a very, very close friend to Galka Scheyer. She seemed to be able to catch the idea, like young people can, whereas an old academician like myself couldn't. She was a student of mine; I taught her drawing and painting, and everything, but she went off on a tangent, you see. And she got in with all that. And she got to appreciating, got to know some of these people, and she bought their pictures. Wheels within wheels, aren't there?" (E. Spencer Macky and Constance Macky: Reminiscences, Oral History Interview conducted by Corinne L. Gilb and Paul Mills, Bancroft Library, 1954, pp. 86-88).
Bay Area modern artists's and Scheyer's fortunes got another boost with the advent of a new journal of art criticism, The Argus hitting the newsstands with its inaugural issue in April 1927. It was founded by respected San Francisco Examiner art critic Jehanne Bietry Salinger (see below) at the strong urging of Marjorie's California School of Fine Arts teachers Ralph Stackpole and Gottardo Piazzoni. ("Editorial," The Argus, September 1928, p. 2. Author's note: Salinger was the mother of John F. Kennedy's press secretary Pierre Salinger.).
Jehanne Bietry Salinger, 1947. Photo by Johan Hagemeyer. Courtesy of Bancroft Library, Johan Hagemeyer Collection. (Author's note: Salinger was the mother of JFK's press secretary Pierre Salinger).
Salinger's introductory manifesto concluded with:
"The Argus wants to be constructive and wants to be progressive; with all due respect to traditions this publication is above all intended to be a tribune for the young. The young, here, is not meant from the standpoint of years but as a classification under which to recognize all those who go with and ahead of their time, who have audacity and faith." (Salinger, Jehanne Bietry, "The Ambition of The Argus," The Argus, May, 1927, pp. 1, 3).
Indeed the first issue reviewed at length the San Francisco Art Association's 49th Annual Exhibition at the recently completed California School of Fine Arts which came hard on the heels of Scheyer's Blue Four show. Singled out in Salinger's inaugural review were CSFA faculty Stackpole, Lee Randolph, Lucien Labaudt, Ray Boynton and Dixon and Hagedorn, Margaret Bruton, John Emmitt Gerrity, Matthew Barnes, and others.
Anna Head School, Bowditch St. at Channing Way, Berkeley,
1892, Ernest Coxhead, architect.
Salinger also covered Scheyer's activities with her students at the Anna Head School (see above and below) and her Blue Four and European Modern Art exhibitions at the Oakland Art Gallery, Berkeley Art Museum, and Berkeley Playhouse in the East Bay and San Francisco venues such as the East-West Gallery, Beaux Arts Galerie and Paul Elder Gallery. She also published articles by and about Scheyer's growing circle of friends including Edward Weston, Peter Krasnow, Kem Weber and Alexander Kaun who were all also among the Schindler-Weston circles in Los Angeles.
"Mme. Galka Scheyer Tells of Her Students' Work," The Argus, June 1927, p. 7.
Krasnow, Peter, "Recalling Happy Memories," Galka Scheyer Blue Four lecture, Schindler House, 835 Kings Road, West Hollywood, ca. 1927. (Barnett, p. 459).
Schindler House, Kings Road, 1922. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Papers.
"Madam Scheyer - clever, vivacious, - with a nice line of talk for club women and art students: she has climbed all over the culture hungry! However, I don't dislike her as some of my friends do. She amuses for awhile and can be simple when she knows the futility of pose. ... but I did buy a Kandinsky lithograph, - how could I resist it at $3? Kandinsky seems to me one of the few moderns whose work will live: he has something very personal, genuine, - he has both intellectual and emotional ecstasy. This print will bring me much joy." (The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Volume II: California, July 21, 1927. pp. 29-30 and "Foundations").
"Portrait of Lucretia [Van Horn]" by Diego Rivera, 1926. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
During Eaton's year-long absence, her and Scheyer's soon-to-be close friend Lucretia Van Horn (see above) and family moved to Berkeley from San Antonio. Lucretia's husband Colonel Robert Van Horn (see below) was named head of the Military Science and Tactics Department (R.O.T.C.) at Berkeley where he served from 1927 until 1934. From her husband's previous posting in San Antonio, Lucretia made summer forays to Mexico City in 1925-26 to assist on Rivera's "Ballad of the Agrarian Revolution" murals on the third floor of the Ministry of Education Building.
Colonel Robert O. Van Horn, Commander of the Army R.O.T.C. at Berkeley from 1927 to 1934. From The University of California: A Pictorial History by Albert G. Pickerell and May Dornin, University of California Press, 1968, p. 54.
Rivera, Diego, "Guarantees - The Debris of Capitalism," Ministry of Public Education, 1926. (Lucretia Van Horn at right center).
As a reward for her efforts Rivera did a study of Van Horn and painted her into the panel titled "Guarantees - The Debris of Capitalism" (see above). Van Horn also commissioned her "Portrait of Lucretia" and other work which she eagerly loaned to San Francisco exhibitions featuring Rivera's work. The first of these exhibitions came shortly after Van Horn's larger-than-life arrival upon the Bay Area arts scene in the East-West Gallery in the just completed Western Women's Building (see below).
Western Women's Club Building, 609 Sutter St., San Francisco, Bliss and Faville, architects, 1927. East-West Gallery on second floor. SFPL Photo Collection. (Author's note: The building is across the street from the San Francisco YWCA where Scheyer lectured throughout early 1928.).
"Western Women's Club Building," San Franciscan, ca. 1927.
The earlier-mentioned Minna McGauley, head of the Oakland Library Department which included Clapp's Oakland Art Gallery, was also vice president of the Western Women's Club. The Club commissioned Bliss and Faville to design their new headquarters building on Sutter Street in downtown San Francisco. The same architects designed the Oakland Public Library where McGauley's office was located (see above). McGauley proudly described the Club's new building,
"As a group-venture and because of its unique scheme of financing, the magnificent Western Women's Club building in San Francisco, dedicated to the Womanhood of the West, conceived and built by women for women, costing one million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, is an outstanding civic and business venture. There, a minimum of two thousand enter its doors daily; club members number over nine thousand, and, together with membership of the tenant organizations, represent over twenty-five thousand women dedicating themselves daily to the welfare, betterment and happiness of humanity." (McGauley, Minna, "Women of the West," in Women of the West, 1928 Edition compiled and edited by Max Binheim, Publishers Press, Los Angeles, 1928, pp. 11-12).
Mildred Taylor, Director, East-West Gallery. Formerly director of the City of Paris Dance Studios of Elise Dufour.
The East-West Gallery's inaugural exhibition under new director Mildred Taylor (see above) was of now renowned Santa Fe artists B. J. O. Nordfeldt, Andrew Dasberg, Jozef Bakos and Raymond Jonson, most of whom Eaton would soon meet. Taylor was previously the manager of Elise Dufour Dance Studio at San Francisco's City of Paris department store and was married to artist Blanding Sloan. ("East-West Gallery to Open in San Francisco This Month," The Argus, August 1927, p. 3. Author's note: The Schindlers met Taylor and Sloan in Carmel during the summer of 1924 and collaborated with Mildred on an art installation in Los Angeles in 1931. (See my "The Schindlers in Carmel, 1924").
Diego Rivera, East-West Gallery, October 12, 1927. Courtesy Albert Bender Papers, Mills College.
The arrival of the dynamic and charismatic Lucretia Van Horn helped spur the October exhibition of Diego Rivera's work at the new Gallery (see above). Lucretia's Rivera portfolio combined with the material gathered from the 1926 Mexico pilgrimages of Ralph Stackpole and Ray Boynton and the patronage of Albert Bender, Florence Alston Swift, Charles Erskine Scott Wood, Dr. Leo Eloesser and others made possible this first significant multi-media exhibition of Rivera's work in the United States. Galka Scheyer's by then friend Florence Wieben Lehre's positive review was obviously informed by Lucretia as she included a photo of Rivera's mural depiction of her to illustrate her weekly Oakland Tribune column (see below).
Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Artists and Their Work," Oakland Tribune, October 30, 1927, p. S-31.
(Author's note: One of the exhibition's lenders, Florence Alston Swift, had also recently worked with Rivera in Mexico and perhaps met Van Horn at that time. Swift's husband Henry was an avid photographer who became part of Group f.64 with Edward and Brett Weston, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke and others (see below for example)).
Lucretia Van Horn by Henry Swift, 1932. From Seeing Straight: The f.64 Revolution in Photography edited by Therese Thau Heyman, Oakland Museum of California, 1992, p. 72.
Wearing her San Francisco Examiner art critic hat, Salinger wrote of Rivera's local admirers,
"The pilgrims who have of late flocked to Mexico to meet Rivera, and especially those who have approached him closely, as have Ray Boynton, Ralph Stackpole and Mrs. R. O. Van Horn, speak of the man with almost worshipping expressions. He is pictured by them as a cheerful, good-humored paterfamilias, as a jolly companion, and as a sympathetic human being who loves the laboring man of Mexico and enables him through the interpretation of his daily life." (Salinger, Jehanne Bietry, "Great Work of Mexican Artist is on Exhibition," San Francisco Examiner, October 16, 1927).
All of the paintings Rivera shipped to San Francisco for the exhibition were sold to Bay Area patrons. Most of these same works were then reloaned for the November 1930 Rivera show at the Palace of the Legion of Honor discussed later below. ("Paintings in Rivera Exhibition Sold Here, San Francisco Chronicle, November 20, 1927).
Albert Bender, 1928. Photo by Edward Weston. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
Alexander Kaun by Johan Hagemeyer, 1932. From Bancroft Library Hagemeyer Collection.
Shortly after the Rivera exhibition closed Albert Bender hosted a gala going away banquet for California School of Fine Arts sculpture teacher Edgar Walter at the new campus. Speakers paying tribute to Walter and Bender included the Mackys, Lee Randolph, Charles Erskine Scott Wood, Scheyer's lover Ernest Bloch and Berkeley faculty members Worth Ryder and future Schindler client Alexander Kaun. Ansel Adams performed on the piano along with numerous vocalists. Other attendees included Maynard Dixon and Dorothea Lange, Roi Partridge and Imogen Cunningham, Gottardo Piazzoni, Mildred Taylor, Blanding Sloan and Hamilton Wolf. (Salinger, Jehanne Bietry, "Bender Entertains Artists," San Francisco Examiner, November 27, 1927).
Just before Marjorie returned from her lengthy stay in
Europe Scheyer collaborated on an exhibition of modern graphic work at the
Berkeley Playhouse Association. She included from her collection work by Franz
Marc, Feininger, Jawlensky, Arthur Segal and her recent disciple Edward
Hagedorn to display by Bay Area modernists now in her circle including her
Oakland Art Gallery associate William Clapp, Hamilton Wolf and John Emmett
Gerrity. ("Art and Artists: Exhibition Held at Berkeley
Playhouse," Berkeley Daily Gazette, December 10, 1927, p. 7).
Following the East-West Gallery Rivera show Van Horn exhibited with Marjorie's 1922-25 California School of Fine Arts classmate Edward Hagedorn, and her former 1923-24 Monterey summer school teacher Armin Hansen and numerous others at the same venue in December 1927. All three sold some work. This was most likely around the time that Scheyer befriended Van Horn (see below for example). (Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Artists and Their Work," Oakland Tribune, December 25, 1927, p. 3-S).
Galka Scheyer by Lucretia Van Horn, ca. 1927-28. From Barnett, p. 473.
Art critic Junius Cravens opined of the same show,
"Another surprise is the work of Lucretia Van Horn. Mrs. Van Horn has been working, in Mexico, with Diego Rivera, and has been strongly influenced by him and other contemporary Mexican artists. While her work is frankly of that school it is imbued with a certain ornate delicacy and richness of her own that saves it from complete capitulation to her masters. Her watercolor of a flower subject is a gorgeous piece of work." ("Art Notes," The Argonaut, December 17, 1927).
Schnier, Carl, "Hagedorn," "Self-Portrait," The Argus, May 1927, p. 4.
Salinger was fascinated by an Edward Hagedorn self-portrait,
"Forcing itself upon the onlooker by some indescribable attraction which is derived neither from linear nor by any easily defined qualities, there is also, in this show, a self-portrait by Edward Hagedorn, in front of which people shudder but to which they come back, time after time, as though taken by its intellectual qualities." (Salinger, Jehanne Bietry, "East-West Gallery's First Sale Succeeds," San Francisco Examiner, December 18, 1927).
Emily Edwards, Spanish Governor's Palace, San Antonio, 1933 From Saving San Antonio: The Preservation of a Heritage by Lewis F. Fisher, Trinity University Press, 2016.
In January of 1928 Beatrice Judd Ryan jumped on the recent Mexican art bandwagon with a show at her Galerie Beaux Arts 116 Maiden Lane in San Francisco. Included were noted Mexican artists Jose Clemente Orozco, Maximo Pacheco, Xavier Geurrero and French emigre Jean Charlot and resident and visiting Americans Pablo O'Higgins, Lucretia Van Horn and her close friend from San Antonio and fellow Rivera mural assistant Emily Edwards (see above). Edwards had recently curated a similar show in San Antonio which completely sold out. Edwards similarly arranged this exhibition, collecting and bringing the work with her from Mexico on behalf of the artists when she moved to Oakland in late 1927. Edwards spent most of 1928 reconnecting with Van Horn and exhibiting with her at various Bay Area venues. (Author's note: During her stay Edwards rented an apartment in downtown Oakland a block away from Marjorie Eaton's 1928 place of employment, Schlesinger's Department Store. (Oakland City Directory, 1928). Edwards returned to Mexico in 1929 where she spent most of the rest of her life compiling and publishing books on the history of Mexican muralism.). (Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Artists and Their Work," Oakland Tribune, January 1, 1928, p. 4).
Argus editor Jehanne Bietry Salinger said of Van Horn's contribution,
"The drawings by Lucretia Van Horn have a strange fascination and a warmth that her consummate skill does not succeed in killing. This artist, who readily admits that she has been reborn to herself and to art, expresses in her work a soul which seems to respond all at once to a fiery mysticism and to the most pagan appeal of beauty. While her line is sharp and masculine, her tones have a feline-like lustre, a distinctively feminine quality. And it is only when able to see many of her drawings together that one can begin to grasp the soul and temperament which are reflected in them." (Salinger, Jehanne Bietry, "In San Francisco Galleries," The Argus, February 1928, p. 5).
As evidence of the quickness that Van Horn established herself into a highly respected position in the Bay Area arts scene, the following month she was selected to speak on the KFRC radio series "Art Talks" under the auspices of The Argus. Other speakers in the series included Bay Area art luminaries Lucien Labaudt, Otis Oldfield, Maynard Dixon, Hamilton Wolf, Howard Putzel, Beatrice Judd Ryan, and Jehanne Bietry Salinger. ("Here and There, The Argus, March 1928, p. 15). The May 1928 issue of The Argus reported that Van Horn "had just received news from Mexico City that Diego Rivera has been appointed Director of the Art Institute of Moscow and is to continue his work in Russia temporarily. (The Argus, May 1928, p. 12).
"Modern Graphic Work," Berkeley Playhouse, Oakland Tribune, December 4, 1927, p. 6.
In Europe for most of 1927, Marjorie was most likely accompanied by CSFA classmate Katie Skeele who returned to the U.S. at the end of summer for a teaching post. Marjorie stayed on until December. (Miss Burke's 1928 yearbook and New York Passenger Lists, Ancestry.com). Just before Eaton returned, Scheyer collaborated with an exhibition of modern graphic work at the Berkeley Playhouse (see above). She included from her portfolio work by Franz Marc, Arthur Segal, Feininger, Jawlensky's son Andrej, and her recent disciple Edward Hagedorn to display alongside Bay Area modernists now in her circle such as William Clapp, Hamilton Wolf and John Emmett Gerrity. ("Art and Artists: Exhibition Held at Berkeley Playhouse," Berkeley Daily Gazette, December 10, 1927, p. 7, and The Argus, December, 1927, p. 10).
Eaton's return coincided with a fresh flare-up of the Oakland "Art Wars" with a protest over the Oakland Art Gallery's plan to install a "lay board of censorship" to avoid the controversy caused by the exhibit of the nudes of Hagedorn and Forrest Brissey the previous two years. Over 150 artists signed a petition against the new policy. Among the signers were Scheyer, Ernest Bloch, the Macky's, Brissey, Dixon, Roi Partridge, Paul Elder, Alexander Kaun, Gerrity, Lee Randolph, Piazzoni and numerous others in Marjorie's circle. Upon hearing from their Gallery director Clapp that the artists were indeed serious in their demands the Oakland Library Board voted to cancel the Oakland Art Gallery's annual exhibition. ("150 Artists in Petition Rap Art Jury," Oakland Tribune, January 14, 1928, p. C-3, "Board Calls Off Exhibit in Art War," Oakland Tribune, January 18, 1928, p. D-18).
"Moderns Lead in Numbers in Art Exhibition," Oakland Tribune, February 12, 1928, p. 12-A.
The artists quickly retaliated with the formation of the Oakland Art League. Besides Eaton's soon-to-be new best friends Scheyer and Van Horn, the new League's Board included Sam Hume, Forrest Brissey, John Emmett Gerrity, and Ray Boynton and her former CSFA teachers Spencer Macky, Gottardo Piazzoni and with Gertrude Partington Albright being named as advisory governors. The defiantly independent Oakland Art League opened its inaugural exhibition at Roi Partridge's sympathetic Mills College on February 12th. Eaton's exhibiting friends and former teachers included Dixon, the Mackys, Ralph Stackpole, Randolph, Piazzoni, Hamilton Wolf, Florence Alston Swift, Boynton, Brissey, Gerrity, William Clapp and his "Society of Six" and numerous others. ("Oakland Art Exhibit Opens At Mills Today," Oakland Tribune, February 12, 1928, p. 12-A and Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Artists and Their Work," Oakland Tribune, February 17, 1929)
"Portrait - Marjorie Eaton" by Constance Macky, 1928. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
After the holidays Eaton quickly reconnected with her faculty friends at the new CSFA campus. Recalling the success her husband had with his 1925 prize-winning portrait of Marjorie, Constance Macky welcomed one of her favorite students back by asking her to pose as well (see above). Mrs. Macky's Marjorie portrait also received much publicity. Macky's first exhibition of the work was at the All Arts Club's fourth annual exhibition at Berkeley's Northbrae Community Center. Scheyer's by then close friend, and Clapp's Oakland Art Gallery assistant, Florence Wieben Lehre featured a reproduction of "Portrait - Marjorie Eaton" in her April 15, 1928 Oakland Tribune column. The exhibition also included work by Marjorie's other CSFA faculty members Maynard Dixon, Spencer Macky, and Lee Randolph, as well as Clapp, Worth Ryder, Eugen Neuhaus, and other local notables (see below). (Author's note: Coincidentally, the same article reviewed Scheyer's exhibition of the work of her Anna Head School students at the Oakland Art Gallery.).
Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Artists and Their Work," Oakland Tribune, April 15, 1928, p. 6.
Mrs. Macky received much praise and a First Prize for "Portrait— Marjorie Eaton" which was also exhibited at the 75th Annual California State Fair in Sacramento and the San Francisco Art Association Annual Exhibition. Marjorie's features and modeling skills were singled out in period reviews which would have bolstered the budding artist's ego. (California Art Research, Vol. 15, Constance Macky, edited by Gene Hailey, Works Progress Administration, 1936-37, p. 116).
"The 1929 Art Association Annual has more provocatively interesting work than any other Association exhibition in years. 'Portrait' by Constance Macky, is one of the most outstanding paintings of the exhibition. The vitality and youth of the present age are expressed in this seemingly self-contained portrait.
Dressed in restrained modern smartness the woman is patently the cultured product of our present civilization. But under the transparent skin and behind the warm lips there is a barbaric spirit, an element of vigor that belies the calm poise. Here more truly than in any flaming youth or flapper type is the embodiment of modern woman. This painting received the second Anne Bremer award for a work by a California artist." (San Francisco Chronicle, April 21, 1929).And:
"....What is more strictly portraiture, is shown in the paintings by Spencer and Constance Macky. Prof. Spencer Macky's study of a woman, 'The Kimono,' as it is called, is convincing enough as a true representation of the subject, but it must yield before Constance Macky's portrait of Marjorie Eaton in this respect.
Herself a painter, Marjorie Eaton is an unusually good model for the portrait artist for her Latin cast of features and olive complexion. She is rarely exotic, reminiscent of the models used by Italian masters of the Renaissance and Mrs. Macky has made full use of these intrinsic suggestions." (San Francisco Examiner, September 1, 1929).
"Freedom in Creative Art Applied by Children," San Francisco Examiner, February 5, 1928. Courtesy of Getty Research Institute, Peg Weiss Papers.
Around this time Scheyer began to gain much recognition for the creative art of her Anna Head School students. She lectured on and arranged numerous exhibitions of her pupil's art in the Bay area, Carmel and Los Angeles, garnering much positive publicity in the process. Through Clapp's largess the student's work was selected to be exhibited at the Sixth Annual Congress for Art Education to be held in Prague in the summer of 1928 under the auspices of the Oakland Art Gallery and its "European Representative" (see above article). Clapp also agreed to an exhibit of the "Free, Imaginative and Creative Work by Children" at the Oakland Art Gallery in April 1928 and again the following year. (Foundations)
B. F. Schlesinger's (formerly Kahn's) Department Store (aka the Rotunda Building), Broadway, 16th and San Pablo, Oakland, Charles Dickey, architect, 1912, 1923 addition. From Google Maps.
Perhaps not yet envisioning a career as an artist despite her years of peripatetic studies, Eaton found employment at the B. F. Schlesinger & Sons Oakland store (see above) after returning from her 1927 European sojourn. Money may also have been an issue as her parents were recently divorced. Likely in an effort to placate her mother with whom she was still living, she took a job working as an interior decoration "stylist" drawing upon her training at the School of Fine Arts, Crafts and Decorative Design in Boston.
By this time Eaton had undoubtedly heard of Scheyer and her Blue Four portfolio via the Mackys, Hagedorn and/or other artists in her circle but they did not actually meet until Marjorie approached her after one of her lectures at the San Francisco YWCA in February of 1928. In an oral history interview Marjorie recalled,
"I had taken a job as a [department store] stylist in Oakland, and I was commuting back and forth. I was so tired most of the time that I stayed at the [Oakland] YWCA (see above and below) - I couldn't make it back [to San Francisco] again." (Audiotape interview of Marjorie Eaton by Betty Estersohn, July 16, 1981 cited in "Marjorie Eaton," by Jan Rindfleisch, et al, p. 15 in Staying Visible: The Importance of Archives by Jan Rindfleisch, Helen Euphrat Gallery, De Anza College, Cupertino, 1981).
Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St., 1915. Julia Morgan, architect.
The Oakland YWCA, just a block east of Schlesinger's, was designed by Marjorie's Miss Burke's School architect Julia Morgan and was completed in 1915 around the time the school was commissioned. It seems plausible that Miss Burke would have taken the girls to see Morgan's Oakland handiwork during one of their East Bay sporting events against the Anna Head School, et al. Marjorie would have felt a welcoming calm and architectural inspiration from Morgan's work after a hard day at the department store.
Oakland YWCA, Julia Morgan, architect. From Architect and Engineer, November 1918, p.
Announcement for Galka Scheyer class, "Modern Art - of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," San Francisco YWCA Newsletter, ca. February 1928. Courtesy Peg Weiss Papers, Getty Research Institute.
Seeing the brochure at the Oakland YWCA on Scheyer's lecture
series on "Modern Art - of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" at the San
Francisco YWCA (see above and below) Eaton made a point to
commute across the Bay to attend. She reminisced,
"Galka was making lectures at the YWCA in San Francisco and she was bringing her art right to the people. I was amazed how she got to them ... She said, "Just decide on what you like, don't worry about the things that you don't understand and what you don't like. Just find something that you like and go from there." And she got marvelous supporters and finally they became collectors. It meant a lot to their lives." (Rindfleisch, p. 15).
San Francisco YWCA, 620 Sutter St., Lewis P. Hobart, architect, 1916. From SFPL Photo Collection. (Author's note: Building is across the street from the Western Women's Building, home of the East-West Gallery which opened the year before (see later discussion)).
Eaton was greatly impressed by Scheyer's accomplishments and commitment. Emboldened by her lectures and intrigued by her persona, Marjorie mustered the courage to invite Scheyer to her Commonwealth Ave. studio for a critique."I recall vividly when I met Galka. She had come up from Los Angeles and was living at a little hotel [Monroe] on Sacramento Street near the Fairmont Hotel. She had with her all the paintings that she had brought from Germany of the German Expressionists, including Paul Klee. … This was the first trip, and she was showing to people [who] bought these things. I imagine she didn't go back for a couple of years at this time.
"I invited Galka to my studio. ... I undid my [recent European] paintings - and she saw that I was gifted. I got very excited. The stimulation that she could bring out, do for people, was colossal. She could remake a person, really. She must have been in her early forties. She was German ... an artist, a poet, a painter herself. She had gone to Oxford. Galka was so enthusiastic about my work…that she attacked my father for letting me ... waste my time, standing on my feet in a department store … wasting my life on transportation.
I was very instrumental in Galka meeting people, and yes, she for me. You see our lives were interwoven. They continued to be interwoven. And she [and Lucretia] would come down on the weekends [to Palo Alto] to recover from her wild life lecturing..."(Rindfleisch).
Marjorie was also fascinated and impressed with Galka's work at the Anna Head School which undoubtedly triggered memories of her not so long ago days at rival Miss Burke's. Scheyer would not hesitate to call on Eaton and their new mutual friend Lucretia Van Horn to substitute for her occasionally when her Blue Four business took her to Los Angeles and elsewhere. In April Scheyer previewed at the Oakland Art Gallery her "Free, Imaginative and Creative Work by Children" exhibition she was taking to Prague that summer. (Author's note: For much on Scheyer's promotion of her children's art teaching techniques see my "Foundations").
Gjura Stojana, Carmel, 1930. Photo by Johan Hagemeyer. Courtesy Bancroft Library University of California, Hagemeyer Collection.
This is perhaps around the time Scheyer first began introducing Eaton to artists from the Schindler-Weston circle in Southern California. Schindler client Gjura Stojana had a one-man show at Marjorie's alma mater, the California School of Fine Arts in March of 1928 with Scheyer, Eaton and Weston almost certainly in attendance at the opening. Stojana was also part of the comprehensive Hale Brothers Department Store traveling exhibition during the following fall and winter discussed later below. Scheyer met Stojana along with Edward Weston, Peter Krasnow, Henrietta Shore, Boris Deutsch, Annita Delano, Barbara Morgan and numerous others during her Blue Four exhibitions at the Los Angeles Museum and UCLA in the fall of 1926. Galka also made numerous 1927 forays into Los Angeles including her three month stay at Schindler's Kings Road house that summer while Marjorie was in Europe. (The Argus, March and October, 1929). (Author's note: Galka Scheyer, Kings Road guest-studio tenant while studying modern architecture with Schindler for three months over the summer of 1927, was not only witness to Pauline's departure but apparently facilitated Neutra's Lovell Health House commission by talking to Lovell, Schindler and Neutra about their mutual concerns of who would (or wouldn't) be working on the Health House design. (Sweeney, P&F, p. 171 and "Braxton Gallery, 1928-1929, Hollywood" by Naomi Sawelson-Gorse in The Furniture of R. M. Schindler, UCSB, p. 87).
The Furniture of R. M. Schindler edited by Marla C. Berns, essay by David and Patricia Gebhard, University Art Museum, UC-Santa Barbara, 1996. (Cover photo, Pauline Schindler studio, Kings Road, by Roger Sturtevant, 1930).
Eaton was introduced to Schindler shortly after this evidenced by a June 13th telegram and a quite friendly June 22nd letter informing him how she might be able to help him market his uniquely modern furniture. From the letter it was evident that she had seen firsthand the furniture he had designed for his Kings Road House, his Lovell House in Newport Beach and for her close friend Eileen Eyre's Vaudeville dance partner Harriet Freeman's Frank Lloyd Wright House in Hollywood. (see above and below). (Eaton to RMS, June 22, 1928, Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection).
Living room, Freeman House, 1962 Glencoe, Hollywood, Frank Lloyd Wright, architect, 1924, furniture by R. M. Schindler, 1928. Photograph by Julius Shulman, 1953.
"Miss Ornduff advertising manager of Schlesingers Portland store is making two day business trip to Los Angeles arriving Thursday morning June 14. Can you show her all your houses and particularly Mrs. Lovells furniture. She will telephone you on arrival. We will indeed appreciate this." (Marjorie Eaton telegram to R.M.S., June 13, 1928, Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.).The following week she wrote,
"Dear Mr. Schindler -
Mother has not yet seen your pictures (see below). However she & I are very anxious to own two or three. It is mother's idea to frame and display them at her shop. I think the approach through her clientele is an excellent plan. My mother's personal enthusiasm can sell any idea. Unfortunately you did not give me time to take them home.
R. M. Schindler, 1927. Edward Weston portrait. Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
"Mr. B. F. Schlesinger is prejudiced in favor of French influence for modern furniture. My propaganda is: America the unconscious creator of modern construction; discovered by scientific Germany where modern furniture began to grow inspired by the machine - refined in Austria & decorated & stylized in France! Of course the French cubists are responsible for much of the craft work. "Art Craft." Am I wrong? Correct me. So I maintain we must return to American designers."
City of Paris Department Store, Clinton Day, architect, 1896. Interior remodeled after 1906 earthquake by Bakewll & Brown.
"I have not yet met B. F. Schlesinger - but will work commencing July 2 for one week in the City of Paris [see above] where B. F. has headquarters. It is my plan to become more intimate with the more creative and influential Mr. Hyde (draperies) & Abrot (unintelligible) who is importing Fr. modern furniture (largely pieces inspired by D.I.M.). [Decoration Intérieure Modern].
Our new shoe dept. is being designed by Mr. Mansfield, the Portland store interior decorator - (who is riding on the success of his late modern - beauty salon). He is a young man - local talent with unmistakable imagination & feeling but exceedingly stubborn and opinionated & like all interior decorators - utterly disregards fundamental architectural principals. Ferrel - has been coaxed back on the job but works with Mansfield under strife. I am the arbitrator!
After I learn to know better Messrs. Hyde & Abrot - lately returned from Europe - I will introduce them to your work. I have been too anxious here. They have more influence with B. F. than Mrs. Hobbs. Am I not becoming a politician?
Write me what you thought of Miss Orndoff. I have heard that she was greatly impressed by you. She is very influential in the northern [Portland] store.
If you do not send me choice copies of your best pictures for Mother - I will write you soon to send back the pictures for Hyde and Abrot's benefit. In the meantime I will find the names of sympathetic furniture people. Portland is very progressive.
Au revoir,
Marjorie Eaton" (Eaton to RMS, June 22, 1928, Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection).
Eager to spread the gospel on her philosophical ideas on children's art education Scheyer left for Europe for the summer of 1928 for the earlier mentioned conference on art education in Prague. She also made an obligatory stop at the Bauhaus to reconnect with her beloved Blue Four and replenish her inventory. She was accompanied by her new UCLA art teacher friend Annita Delano. (Foundations).
While Scheyer was in Europe Edward and Brett Weston had a successful one-man show at the East-West Gallery. The exhibition resulted in the sale of numerous prints to patron Albert Bender who immediately donated the work to Mills College. (The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Vol. II, California, p. 70 (DBII)).
Argus editor Jehanne Bietry Salinger favorably reviewed the exhibition,
"Shells, wooden toys, smokestacks, plumbing fixtures, limbs of the body, torsos, insides of flowers, are not transformed by the artist in terms fl stories of emotional expressions of life. They are neither transposed. They are merely observed by a keen mind and an esthetic eye and caught in then most interesting and most characteristic features with a remarkable mechanical device, the camera. In this case, the camera plays, in the hands of its owner, the part splendidly trained chisel or of a free and beautifully deft brush, and because the personality of the cameraman is here most coherent and in rich in ideas and imagination, because he has a beautiful feeling for life, we cease to see things under their realistic appearance, but, instead, through his lens so directed, splendid forms that are detached from their immediate surroundings and have become of universal interest and appeal." (Salinger, Jehanne Bietry, "In the Galleries," The Argus, July-August 1928, p. 8).
In her San Francisco Examiner review of the same exhibition Salinger extolled, "If a book on the art of the western coast is ever to be written one name will stand out as of unusual significance - Edward Weston of L. A. is the man." (DBII, p. 64).
Weston, Edward, "Photography - An Eighth Art?" The Argus, July-August, 1928, p. 3.
The monetary success and the great press prompted Weston to relocate to San Francisco, first staying in close friend Johan Hagemeyer's studio at 2682 Union St. before a more permanent move to Hagemeyer's Carmel studio in early 1929. (Vagabond). Salinger immediately asked Weston to write an article for the August issue of The Argus (see above). Eaton would almost certainly have met Weston by this time through Scheyer and Schindler and would likely have seen Weston's show at the East-West Gallery. Weston also photographed Marjorie's mother Edith and her dog around this time (see below).
Edith Cox Eaton, Palo Alto, ca. 1930. Photo by Edward Weston. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
Van Horn, Lucretia, "Fruit Vendors" ca. 1927. Fine Art Dealers Assoc.
Van Horn was singled out for praise for her Rivera-inspired
"Fruit of the Earth" at the Oakland Art Gallery's first no-jury
exhibition. (Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Artists and Their
Work," Oakland Tribune, June 24, 1928, p. S-5).
"Mexican Girl," Lucretia Van Horn, 1928. (Salinger, Jehanne Bietry, In San Francisco Galleries," The Argus, September 1928, pp. 8- 9).
Salinger favorably reviewed an August exhibition at the
East-West Gallery featuring the entire Van Horn family.
"[Mrs. Van Horn's] passionate interest for painting, drawing and other mediums of art expression she has communicated to her husband, Col. Robert Van Horn and to her two daughters, Margaret and Cre-Cre, with the result that everything rotates round the passion in the home where she presides.
The entire collection of work which she presented to the public early this month has been produced in the past year, with the exception of a few oils and drawings done in Mexico. The outer form of her art bears a strange kinship to that of the Mexican master, Rivera, but it does not take very long to discover that her personality is one which only takes on the etiquette of the friends she beloves but with it her own atavism, be it what it is, in this case a very complex and very sophisticated background. Her work belongs to the class of the intellectual art, yet it is intellectual only insofar as it is naive and childish in its awkward forms. On the other hand, it is warm and dynamic m the richness of the colors and m that indescribable touch which is the only and sure sign of true art." (Ibid).
"Two Pueblo Women in Walter Ufer's Studio" by Marjorie Eaton, ca. 1929. Courtesy Gerald Peters Gallery.
Eaton was likely armed with letters of introduction from Schindler's 1914-1920 Chicago Palette & Chisel Club mates Victor Higgins, Walter Ufer and E. Martin Hennings who were all for a time members of the renowned Taos Society of Artists. Marjorie painted at least one painting in Ufer's studio around this time (see above). Her friends Margaret and Esther Bruton and their mother sojourned to Taos and Santa Fe for six months in 1928-29 and all seemingly would have crossed paths during their time there. (For more on this see my "Edward Weston and Mabel Dodge Luhan Remember D. H. Lawrence and Selected Carmel-Taos Connections" (Weston-Luhan)). (Author's note: The Brutons and their mother also traveled to Mexico in 1935 around the time that Eaton was there. California Art Research, Volume 16, WPA Project 2874, San Francisco, 1937, p. 22).
Hale Brothers Department Store, 901 Market St., San Francisco, Reid Brothers, architects, 1912. Photo ca. 1922.
Catalogue for Exhibition of Modern Art, Hale Brothers Department Store, September 1928. (Peg Weiss Papers, Getty Research Institute).
Upon returning from her busy summer in Europe Scheyer immediately resumed her hectic pace of exhibitions and lectures. Learning of the Hale Brothers Department Store (see above) Exhibition of Modern Art organized by her Oakland Art Gallery sponsor William Clapp and Forest Brissey, Scheyer's first order of business was to get 15 of her newly acquired Blue Four paintings included in the show when it traveled across the Bay. The exhibition reopened on October 4th in the Hale Brothers Oakland outlet Whittthorne & Swan at Washington and 10th Streets three blocks south of Marjorie's workplace at B. F. Schlesinger's. Scheyer lectured in conjunction with the exhibition on October 5th and 11th. ("Exhibition on Modern Art Opens in Oakland October 4 in Oakland," The Argus, October, 1918, p. 17).
Whitthorne & Swan Department Store (owned by Hale Brothers), Washington and 10th, Oakland, William Knowles, architect, 1920.
"Exhibition of Modern Art," Oakland Tribune,
October 3, 1928.
The exhibition was part of a burgeoning movement by big city department stores in the wake of the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes to educate the public on the tidal wave of "Art Deco" modern furniture and decorative objects coming onto the market. Having been witness to the Art Deco craze sweeping New York department stores such as Macy's, Wanamaker, Loeser & Co., and Lord and Taylor (see below) on her way to and from Europe and the Bauhaus during the summer, Scheyer was brimming with ideas to help market the work of the Blue Four and other artists by then in her stable.
"exposition of MODERN french decorative art," 1928. (From Selling Good Design:Promoting the Early Modern Interior by Marilyn F. Friedman, Rizzoli, 2003, p. 54 via the Dorothy Shaver Papers, National Museum of American History.
Scheyer was undoubtedly excitedly comparing notes from her
trip findings with Eaton and her European trip traveling companion and by then
strong Los Angeles supporter Annita Delano on the techniques of department
store marketing of modern home furnishings and art. Delano was also
involved with organizing a similar exhibition, "An Exposition of the
Decorative Arts of Today" at Bullock's in Los Angeles scheduled for
December. (Foundations). For
example Scheyer wrote the Archipenkos whom she had visited in New York on her
way back from Europe,
"Hale Brothers in San Francisco have ordered some ceramic, and you may expect their order presently, but they want more photographs as soon as possible. I am negotiating also with Oakland about it. There is a great future here for these things, for they are having here modern exhibitions as they had at Lord and Taylors. I have lectured twice with, I hope, more to follow." (Scheyer to Gela Archipenko, October 5, 1928. from Galka Scheyer Collection, Norton Simon Museum).
Perhaps having seen this done in New York or Paris, Scheyer proposed to Hale Brothers executives "that a model modern home to be designed by Schindler (see below) inside the store [sic] be built that shall serve the twofold purpose of being 1) educational and 2) remunerative. [It was] to show the relation of all arts - in the modern way - to everyday life." Scheyer's proposal included naming her soon-to-be "Enter Madame" casting patron Sam Hume and William Clapp to the venture's advisory board as President, and General Director, herself as Art Director and as patrons her lover Ernest Bloch, Arthur Clark, Worth Ryder, Ralph Stackpole, and Maynard Dixon. (Hertz-Ohmes, Andrea, "Galka Scheyer and the Blue Four: The Introduction of European Avant-Garde Art to Northern California" in From Exposition to Exposition: Progressive and Conservative Northern California Painting, 1915-1939 edited by Joseph Armstrong Baird, Jr., Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, 1981, p. 22).
Scheyer had Schindler draw up a floor plan for presentation to Hale Brothers executives. The proposal was intended to be built around an elevator so that store visitors would enter directly into the "modern home." The music room was designed not only to illustrate how a modern family could surround themselves with the latest in modern furnishings and household items but flexible enough to conduct music recitals, art exhibitions and lectures (see below). Unfortunately Scheyer was unable to convince Hale Brothers to adopt the proposal.
Floor plan sketch for a Modern House for Mme. G. E. Scheyer
at Hale Brothers Department Store, San Francisco, R. M. Schindler, architect.
(Peg Weiss Papers, Getty Research Institute).
From English, Harold, "Le Modernier Cri de Paris," The Argus, October 1928, p. 5.
Site of old Berkeley Playhouse, 2169 Allston Way across Oxford St. from the Berkeley campus. From Goodle Maps.
While deeply involved with the Hale's Brothers proposal Scheyer's ego was certainly given a huge boost when she was invited to play the lead role of opera singer Madame Lisa Della Robia in the Berkeley Playhouse Association's November production of "Enter Madame."
"Enter Madame," starring Mme. Galka Scheyer, Berkeley Playhouse, The Argus, November, 1928, p. 24.
The Berkeley Drama Department under the direction of the legendary dramatist Sam Hume had staged a production of the 1920 three-act Broadway comedy written by Gilda Varesi and Dolly Byrne on October 31, 1922 in Berkeley's Wheeler Hall with Hume (see below) playing the Madame's husband.
In fact it was Hume's largess which enabled Scheyer to land the role as she excitedly shared with her friend Gela Archipenko.
Undoubtedly in town with numerous mutual Southern California friends to view Scheyer's acting debut in "Enter Madame," Schindler lectured on "The House of the Future" at the Beaux Arts Galerie on November 6th (see above) with Eaton and Scheyer also likely in attendance. The previous month Schindler's former Chicago and current Berkeley professor friend and future client Alexander Kaun lectured at the same venue. The lecture likely came about due to the largess of Scheyer who also arranged for Schindler to stay at Anna Head's residence in Berkeley. (R.M.S. letter to Edith Cox Eaton, April [?], 1929 also referenced later below. ).
Scheyer's stage patron Hume had recently moved into his new "castle" with his second wife Portia (see above). He was also named director of the newly formed Berkeley Art Association, an offshoot of the Berkeley League of Fine Arts, around the time he recommended Scheyer for the "Madame" role. The Association announced in late 1928 the opening of the Berkeley Art Museum in a repurposed storefront on Shattuck Ave. next door to the Berkeley Public Library (see below). More than a coincidence, Hume's inaugural exhibition was curated by Scheyer who loaned her collection of reproductions used in her lectures "Important Paintings of the Last 100 Years." Scheyer gave two follow-up lectures on "Modern Art Movements" at the same venue in January 1929. (Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Art Activities in Berkeley and Beyond," The Argus, December 1928, p. 10).
Still basking in the afterglow of her sympathetic "Enter Madame" reviews the whirlwind Scheyer curated a show for Jawlensky's son Andreas at the Oakland Art Gallery in late November (see above for example). Florence Wieben Lehre commented
Sam Hume in costume from Berkeley Bohemia: Artists and Visionaries of the Early 20th Century by Ed Heny, Shelley Rideout and Katie Wadell, Gibbs-Smith, 2008, p. 90.
In fact it was Hume's largess which enabled Scheyer to land the role as she excitedly shared with her friend Gela Archipenko.
"Some very interesting news that will amuse you is that I am to "blaze forth" as a great actress. I am to take the lead in "Enter Madame" which will be put on in November. It was to have been played earlier than this, but they postponed the production until I could take the part - so be sure to send me orchids for my opening performance. This play will be performed at the Playhouse in Berkeley under the direction of a Mr. Glass, to whom I was recommended by Sam Hume - once director of the Greek Theatre. He said no one else could play the part but me. I wish you were here to help me study my part." (Scheyer to Gela Archipenko, October 5, 1928, Galka Scheyer Papers, Norton Simon Museum).The Berkeley Playhouse also served as an exhibition venue for the Berkeley League of Fine Arts. Included among the League's 1923 founders were soon-to-be Schindler partner Carol Aronovici, Perham Nahl and Bernard Maybeck, who for a period served as the organization's president. Lucretia Van Horn was elected to serve as second vice-president under Maybeck in 1929. (Author's note: Longtime Schindler friend and later AGIC partner Carol Aronovici who was then a professor of city planning at Berkeley. For much on the Schindler-Aronovici friendship see my "The Schindlers and the Hollywood Art Association" and "The Schindlers in Carmel, 1924").
Club Beaux Arts lecture schedule announcement, fall 1928. (Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection).
Undoubtedly in town with numerous mutual Southern California friends to view Scheyer's acting debut in "Enter Madame," Schindler lectured on "The House of the Future" at the Beaux Arts Galerie on November 6th (see above) with Eaton and Scheyer also likely in attendance. The previous month Schindler's former Chicago and current Berkeley professor friend and future client Alexander Kaun lectured at the same venue. The lecture likely came about due to the largess of Scheyer who also arranged for Schindler to stay at Anna Head's residence in Berkeley. (R.M.S. letter to Edith Cox Eaton, April [?], 1929 also referenced later below. ).
Hume Castle, 2900 Buena Vista Way, Berkeley, John Hudson Thomas, architect, 1927. (photo: Thomas W. Tenney, 1971)
Scheyer's stage patron Hume had recently moved into his new "castle" with his second wife Portia (see above). He was also named director of the newly formed Berkeley Art Association, an offshoot of the Berkeley League of Fine Arts, around the time he recommended Scheyer for the "Madame" role. The Association announced in late 1928 the opening of the Berkeley Art Museum in a repurposed storefront on Shattuck Ave. next door to the Berkeley Public Library (see below). More than a coincidence, Hume's inaugural exhibition was curated by Scheyer who loaned her collection of reproductions used in her lectures "Important Paintings of the Last 100 Years." Scheyer gave two follow-up lectures on "Modern Art Movements" at the same venue in January 1929. (Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Art Activities in Berkeley and Beyond," The Argus, December 1928, p. 10).
First home of the Berkeley Art Museum to the left of the Berkeley Public Library, 2270 Shattuck Ave., 1928. From Google Maps.
Andrej Jawlensky, "Lausanne," 1918. (From Barnett, p. 368).
"Pastels, Oils, Drawings and Lithographs" by Andrej N. J[awlensky], Oakland Art Gallery. Courtesy Norton Simon Museum, Galka Svcheyer Collection.
Still basking in the afterglow of her sympathetic "Enter Madame" reviews the whirlwind Scheyer curated a show for Jawlensky's son Andreas at the Oakland Art Gallery in late November (see above for example). Florence Wieben Lehre commented
"Andrej's were little songs voiced in pastels, oils, lithographs and drawings in various mediums, and the showing served as a fitting prelude to the symphony that is to follow, and in which we are bound to experience a strange, wild, visual music such as our local artists could never give to us. For Europe is Europe, and genius is genius (not that we haven't genius of our own, but it is different indeed)." (Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Art Activities in Berkeley and Oakland," The Argus, December 1928, p. 10).
Hotel Durant, 2600 Durant Ave., Berkeley, William H. Weeks, architect.
The February 1929 issue of The Argus reported that Van Horn and Spencer and Constance Macky exhibited at the Sixth Annual Exhibition of the Berkeley League of Fine Arts at their new gallery space in the recently completed Hotel Durant (see above) along with Lucien Labaudt, Edward Hagedorn, Hamilton Wolf and numerous others. Constance Macky's portrait of Marjorie might have been on display but Marjorie's work was conspicuously absent. She may have still been in Taos at the time or felt that she was not yet ready for exhibiting. The same issue announced that the spring output of Galka Scheyer's art class at the Anna Head School would be available for a traveling exhibition. The same month Hagedorn shared a two-man show at the East-West Gallery with Matthew Barnes, perhaps through board member Van Horn's largess. Hagedorn's work caused such a stir that earlier-mentioned gallery director Mildred Taylor resigned in frustration. ("Art in Raw Stirs Nude Row In Women's Club Ranks," Oakland Tribune, February 13, 1929, p. D-3). (The Argus, February 1929, p. 11, and San Francisco News, February 9, 1929).
Temple Emanu-El, Lake St. and Arguello Blvd., San Francisco, 1927, Bakewell and Brown, architects. Gabriel Moulin photo.
Peter Krasnow exhibition catalogue, Temple Emanu-El, February 1929. From Peter Krasnow Artist File, LACMA
February also found Weston-Scheyer-Schindler intimate Peter Krasnow exhibiting at the Temple Emanu-El where he was commissioned to create a ceremonial chest (see above). The Temple was designed by soon-to-be Diego Rivera friend Arthur Brown, Jr. and was completed around the same time as Brown's California School of Fine Arts. Architecture aficionado Eaton would have watched with great interest as both of Brown's building were under construction, especially since the Temple was only a few blocks from the family's Commonwealth Ave. home. Schindler collaborated with Krasnow on the design of the chest which was first displayed at the Los Angeles Public Library before it was installed in the Temple (see below). ("A Long Short Month," The Argus, March, 1929, p. 9. See more on the ceremonial chest at Vagabond).
Exhibition poster designed by R. M. Schindler for Schindler and Krasnow's
ceremonial chest, Los Angeles Public Library, 1928. From Peter Krasnow Artist File,
LACMA.
While
visiting Weston in San Francisco in December 1928 just before his move to
Carmel, Krasnow took Weston to the Temple to proudly show him the chest. Weston was profoundly moved by Krasnow's carved door panels and wrote in his Daybooks, "I take my hat off to you Peter, for a superb piece of
work both in conception and technical execution. Tears came to my eyes,
..." ((DBII, p. 98).
Three sliding panels carved by Peter Krasnow tell
symbolically the story of the ancient Hebraic culture. Ceremonial Cabinet in
the Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco. Photographer unknown. (Edward Weston?).
(Ibid).
"Modernistic Art by U.C.L.A. Instructors," Los Angeles Evening Herald, March 12, 1929, p. B-1. Archives of American Art, Annita Delano Papers, Roll 3001.
Evidence of the cross-pollination between Northern and Southern California artists promoted by Scheyer can be seen in the above March 12, 1929 issue of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Galka's by then close UCLA art professor friend Annita Delano, who had accompanied her to Europe the previous summer, was recruited to exhibit her work at the Oakland Art League's 1929 exhibition. (Author's note: For much more on the Scheyer-Delano relationship see my "The Foundations of Los Angeles Modernism: Richard Neutra's Mod Squad."). (Author's note: Delano also had a one-woman show at The East-West Gallery in the new Western Women's Club Building in August. Typed letter signed from Mrs. C. E. Curry, Director to Miss Delano, August 9, 1929. Listed on the letterhead as gallery advisers were Marjorie Eaton friends Lucretia Van Horn, E. Spencer Macky, Albert Bender, Lucien Labaudt, Gottardo Piazzoni, Worth Ryder and others.)
Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Artists and Their Work," Oakland Tribune, April 14, 1929, p. 21-M.
The Blue Four were again on exhibition at the Oakland Art Gallery during April (see above). Apparently not a big fan of Scheyer and Kandinsky, Ray Boynton stirred a passionate debate with a letter to the editor of The Argus sent from Carmel just before the exhibition opened. An excerpt reads,
"It is an astonishing experience to have one of the illuminati explain to you the significance of a Kandinsky, for instance. You are made to feel that you are being initiated into a cult whose symbolism is being carefully revealed to you, and that you are yet too low to understand its mysteries." (Boynton, Ray, "Letter to the editor, The Argus, February 9, 1929. Author's note: Boynton was then on Pauline Schindler's Carmelite editorial advisory board along with Scheyer, Edward Weston, Richard Neutra, Carol Aronovici, and Dora Hagemeyer, Johan's sister-in-law. Vagabond).Alexander Kaun and William Clapp leaped to Kandinsky's defense with rebuttal letters the following month in what was to be the last issue of the highly respected magazine which was absorbed by Art Digest. Florence Lieben Wehre offered a very positive review of the exhibition. Lehre's review ended with:
"The exhibition of paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, which will occupy the Oakland Art Gallery, beginning April 8, was assembled in Europe last year by Mme. Galka E. Scheyer specifically for this showing, and it promises to be one of the most provocative exhibitions of the year. Kandinsky's work, being the antithesis of the conventional in picture making, and devoid of the little sensuous graces which one usually associates with works of art, is sure to arouse discussion. Realists, impressionists and ultra-modernists alike will probably rail against it. But, for a generation past, Kandinsky's work has stimulated thought in the foremost art centers of Europe and, if it does no more than that for the East Bay, it will be worthwhile. At any rate, Oakland is not "debunking" Kandinsky — and it never will." (Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Oakland May Abolish Juries," The Argus, April 1929, p. 7).
The San Francisco Art Association's 51st annual show was held concurrently at the California School of Fine Arts with Constance Macky's "Portrait - Marjorie Eaton" winning the $200 second prize (see earlier discussion above). Also exhibiting and receiving a first place medal in Class A Portraits was another "scandalous" nude by Edward Hagedorn. Art Digest editor Peyton Boswell smartly checked with the US Post Office before distributing an uncensored reproduction of Hagedorn's nude (see below). The awards jury ironically included the Kandinsky averse Ray Boynton and the hanging committee included Eaton's CSFA teachers Spencer Macky, Maynard Dixon, Ralph Stackpole, Lucien Labaudt, and Gertrude Partington Albright. Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Artists and Their Work," Oakland Tribune, April 14, 1929, p. 21-M.
"Prize Painting at San Francisco's Annual Is Ruled 'Unmailable'", Art Digest, May 1, 1929, p. 8.
"Nude" by Edward Hagedorn, 1929. (Denenberg, p. 52).
Lake
Merritt Boat House, 1520 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, John Galen Howard and
John Debo Galloway, 1906 and Walter Reed, 1913. (Now Oakland Historical
Landmark No. 139).
In the midst of the ongoing Oakland Art Wars Clapp had to walk a tightrope, trying to both keep his cohort of modern artists happy while holding the conservative Library Board of Directors at bay. This made the task of creating a more appropriate museum space difficult to say the least. Scheyer convinced a very hesitant Clapp to allow her to make a pitch to the Board for a new gallery. The Board agreed to Scheyer's proposal to bring up Schindler to prepare preliminary plans for converting a wing of the nearby Lake Merritt Boathouse (see above) into a tea room and a new art exhibition venue (see two below). (Scheyer to Kandinsky, April 26, 1929, Wunsche, p. 163).
Sketch for a Proposed Museum at Lake Merritt, R. M. Schindler, January 1929. Courtesy Jocelyn Gibbs, Curator, UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection).
After his site visit Schindler prepared the above floor plan for converting a wing of the existing boat house to a new tea room. At Board president McGauley's acquiesence and in collaboration with Scheyer he also submitted the below master plan for a proposed Cultural Center surrounding Lake Merritt which would include venues for the Oakland Opera, an open air theater, aquarium, art gallery/academy, conservatory of music, Masonic Temple, Christian Science Church, commercial exhibition space and a hotel tied together with unifying elements and in close proximity to the Municipal Auditorium.
Sketch for a Proposed Cultural Center at Lake Merritt, R. M. Schindler, January 1929. Courtesy Jocelyn Gibbs, Curator, UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection).
After perhaps consulting with his Berkeley faculty city planning friend and Architectural Group for Industry and Commerce (A.G.I.C.) partner with Kings Road tenant Richard Neutra, Carol Arovonici, Schindler eagerly submitted his visionary civic proposal in January 1929.
"Dear Mrs. McGauley,
I am sending you a preliminary sketch for your "Cultural Center" scheme on Lake Merritt. I am sorry I can not explain it in person.
Considering the Municipal Auditorium the most important present landmark I have tied everything to it by relating all important features to its axis. The lake and the street scheme surrounding it are now entirely shapeless and I have tried to give it an illusion of form by a repetition of parallel rows of trees.
The head of the proposed bridge to the peninsula is formed by the hotel and the building for the commercial exhibits "We Live Today." This later building should be a sky-scraper and its location on the lot which you reserved for the opera relates it more conveniently to the business life of the city and makes it a fitting link between the city and the more abstract cultural center. The opera, the open air theatre and conservatory of music form a group with a direct, impressive outlet into the street system.
The arrangement of the buildings in the center itself although formal, avoids the old tendency towards feudal, arrogant isolation. All buildings are related in all directions to the lake and the other buildings and all views from the center towards it will be alive and dramatic.
The content of the group in the cultural center is entirely tentative. Please give me your opinion and your criticism in order that we may develop the scheme into a ripe one." (UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection, Box 12, Folder 223, McGauley, Mrs. E., 1929).
Unfortunately art censorship and the narrow-mindedness of the Oakland Library Board over the latest flare-up of the Oakland "Art Wars" ultimately killed Clapp's and Scheyer's (and Schindler's) dream of a new independent exhibition space in a lakefront location not far from the Central Library and Municipal Auditorium.
Shortly thereafter, in March, Lucretia Van Horn was elected second honorary vice president of the Berkeley League of Fine Arts League under president and former Julia Morgan mentor Bernard Maybeck.
"Attrappen" by Paul Klee, 1927. From internet.
Manuel Alvarez Bravo with Eaton's Klee "Attrappen" and travel trunk. Photo by Marjorie Eaton, 1935-6. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
"My Dear Mr. Schindler,
Marjorie and I have become seriously interested in selling our city house and building a new one, preferably upon one of our lovely hills overlooking our wonderful bay. We have a few lots in mind but do not want to become too interested in them until we have expert opinion as to costs and possibilities of excavating, grading, etc. We should both love to have you build for us and are wondering if you are thinking at all of coming to San Francisco in the near future. It would not take you long to help us to a decision. Also I should like to have some sort of approximate idea of costs of building a house such as we need. We want a house with four bedrooms - two of them of medium size with bath accessing room, etc.During April Schindler replied to Edith,
"Dear Mrs. E. C. Eaton,
At the time I stayed in San Francisco I visited Mrs. [Anna] Head. And after seeing her view across the Bay, I could not understand how anybody in this town was willing to live without being able to see it in front of his windows. I am sure it will repay you for all of the inconvenience of the change. (Author's note: Galka Scheyer had obviously introduced Schindler to her employer Anna Head in the hope of him obtaining a commission related to her Berkeley school.).
The cost of the house as you describe should be between twelve and twenty thousand depending on the construction, equipment, and grade conditions. It is hard to give you more definite figures before the plan is more known in detail.
My own work in connection with it would probably be the design and supervision. I could very well build it too except for the expense of the trip. I am building right now in Catalina [Wolfe House], which is really much harder to reach than San Francisco. However there is a possibility that I shall do another house in your city and if this is the case, the railroad fare would not matter any more.
Just now I am finishing up some work for Miss [Aline] Barnsdall which will keep me here another week. I shall make arrangements to come up after this, if that is satisfactory to you. Should it be during the week or for the week end?
With my best greetings to all of the cult" (R.M.S. letter to Edith Cox Eaton April ?, 1929, Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection).(Author's note: This and later correspondence seemingly indicates that Schindler likely stayed at the Eaton ranch in Palo Alto on his way up to, or back from, the Bay area to attend Scheyer's "Enter Madame" and discuss the design of a new exhibition space for the Oakland Art Gallery with Scheyer and Clapp further discussed below.).
"Dear Mr. Schindler
Tomorrow the bank will appraise our house. Then I can see what I am able to do about financing the new one. I am unwilling to place myself in an uncomfortable position so please do not do any further work on the plans until I communicate with you again. I am not discouraged as I feel that it can all be arranged satisfactorily, still I do not want you to spend your valuable time until I am sure that we can proceed. Also I am a bit disturbed at the idea that you may not be here much during the carrying out of your plans. It was nice having you here these two days. We all enjoyed you so much.
Cordially,
Edith Eaton"
P.S. Please tell me what your trip cost and I will send check.
E.C.E. (Edith Cox Eaton letter to R.M.S., May 8, 1929, Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection).
Schindler made good use of his time while in San Francisco meeting with Marjorie and Edith. Through Scheyer's largess his work was exhibited at the Berkeley Art Gallery as part of "Better Homes Week." Director Samuel Hume organized the exhibition of "architecture, landscape design, home furnishings, handicrafts and household arts, the latter phase being in charge of the household arts department of the University of California." ("Better Homes Week Program is Completed," Oakland Tribune, April 1929, p. E-16).
Hollywood Brown Derby Restaurant Building, 1620-28 N. Vine
St., Hollywood, Cecil B. DeMille, owner, Carl Jules
Weyl, architect, 1928. Note the Hollywood Brown Derby space at the
left and the Braxton Gallery space just to the right of the center car.
Despite Galka's and Marjorie's efforts to land commissions for Schindler none of their efforts bore fruit until Scheyer connected with Los Angeles gallerist Harry Braxton in May of 1929. Upon hearing from Gela Archipenko of Braxton's success selling 16 of her husband's pieces to movie director and major art collector Josef von Sternberg and herself making a quick sale to the director, it didn't take much for Scheyer to convince the dealer to open a gallery in a more high profile location in Hollywood. Scheyer introduced Braxton to Schindler and a contract was quickly signed for the design of an avant-garde gallery at 1624 Vine St. in a commercial development financed by Cecil B. DeMille. The new gallery would open in September next door to DeMille's Hollywood Brown Derby Restaurant (see above and below). ("April's Fine Art Shows," Los Angeles Times, April 9, 1929, p. C-16).For more details see my "Richard Neutra and the California Art Club: Pathways to the Josef von Sternberg and Dudley Murphy Commissions"(Art Club)).
Braxton Gallery, 1624 N. Vine, Hollywood, R. M.
Schindler, architect, 1929. Viroque Baker photo. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.).
Sunmount Sanitarium, Santa Fe New Mexico, 1929 postcard.
As Schindler was beginning work on the Braxton Gallery design Scheyer fell ill from the cumulative strain of the exhausting pace she was trying to maintain. She was frantically cataloging and repricing her inventory for a permanent move to Los Angeles in time for a planned series of individual Blue Four exhibitions after the new gallery's opening. Perhaps at Marjorie's advice, she checked herself into the Sunmount Sanitarium in Santa Fe that summer to recuperate (see above). Eaton spent a few days with her before returning to Taos to reunite with Katie Skeele and her new artist friends from the previous summer. (Wunsche, pp. 115-116).
Capwell Department Store, Broadway, 20th St. and Telegraph Ave., Oakland, Starrett and Van Vleck, architects, 1929.
When Marjorie returned from Taos in the fall she went to work at Oakland's Capwell Department Store a few blocks north of her old place of employment, Schlesinger's. The brand new emporium had opened to much fanfare in early August. Here she remained employed until returning to Taos again the following summer.
Having recuperated by the fall of 1929 Scheyer began dividing her time between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. The Blue Four exhibitions were delayed until the spring of 1930 to accommodate von Sternberg's European travel schedule allowing Scheyer to maintain her connections to the Anna Head School and the Oakland Art Gallery. She spent part of the winter and New Year's Eve in Carmel with recently deposed editor and publisher of the town's progressive weekly newspaper The Carmelite Pauline Schindler and her fellow editorial advisory board member Edward Weston. Schindler was licking her separation-induced wounds and preparing for the next stage of her life. Scheyer was making plans for her permanently moving her base of operations to the Los Angeles art scene in anticipation of the upcoming Braxton shows. (Vagabond and Art Club).
Storer House, 8161 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, 1924, Frank Lloyd Wright, architect.
In early 1930 the peripatetic Pauline landed on her feet in none other than Frank Lloyd Wright's Storer House on Hollywood Blvd. (see above). She had grandiose plans to act as agent for a band of "Contemporary Creators" including her estranged husband, Richard Neutra, Kem Weber, Jock Peters, John Weber, J. R. Davidson, and Wright himself. Her first order of business was to curate a traveling exhibition for the group which she intended to follow up with a book on modern architecture. She was quickly joined by Scheyer who was quite busy organizing and promoting her upcoming Blue Four exhibitions at the Braxton Gallery.
Exhibition Poster for "Contemporary Creative
Architecture of California", UCLA April 21-29. Courtesy of the
UC-Santa Barbara, University Art Museum, Architecture and Design Collections,
R. M. Schindler Collection.
Blue Four Exhibition Catalogue, Braxton Gallery, March 2 to May 15, 1930. Courtesy of the Getty Research Institute, Peg Weiss Papers.
Schindler and Scheyer were soon joined by Brett Weston who took advantage of Pauline's invitation to open his first ever independent photo studio. Schindler commissioned her former Walt Whitman School student to photograph many of the projects she included in her exhibition. Scheyer became among the first to purchase the fledgling lensman's work. Both introduced him to wealthy collectors and held private viewings of his work at the Braxton Gallery. (See my "Brett Weston's Smokestacks and Pylons, 1927").
Brett Weston business card, ca. 1930-31, designed by Pauline
Schindler. Brett Weston portrait of Vasia Anikeef, Carmel, 1929. From the
Weston Collection. © 1981 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board
of Regents.
Shortly after her successful Braxton Blue Four shows Galka had enough cash on hand to finance a collecting trip to Bali with Gela Archipenko. Scheyer likely heard good things of Bali from John Bovingdon and Jeanya Marling who had just returned from an extended stay. Bovingdon and Marling had moved into the Chace-Neutra studio at Schindler's Kings Road House upon the Neutra's departure in May. Scheyer moved into the same studio upon her return from Bali in early 1931. (Vagabond and Art Club).
Diego Rivera and Clifford Wight, Detroit, 1932. From Diego Rivera: The Detroit Industry Murals by Linda Bank Downs, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1999, p. 40.
Marjorie's friendship with Schindler continued to blossom evidenced by the below May 1930 letter shortly after Scheyer and Schindler had visited Weston in Carmel. Ever on the lookout for possible commissions for her good friend, during one of her frequent trips to Carmel and Monterey she found some potential clients. She also presciently envisioned soon-to-be Rivera mural assistant Clifford Wight (see above) and Schindler designing a studio for her on Telegraph Hill. The informative letter also indicates that Schindler was by then also well acquainted with Marjorie's teacher Spencer Macky and Scheyer's Oakland Art Gallery patron William Clapp and Scheyer's Southern California patrons Walter and Louise Arensberg. (Author's note: During her stay in Carmel Eaton almost certainly would have crossed paths with Mabel Dodge Luhan and her husband Tony and Ella Young who were spending the spring in the coastal artist colony. As she had with D. H. Lawrence, Luhan was trying to lure Jeffers to spend some time at her compound in Taos.) (See my "Edward Weston and Mabel Dodge Luhan Remember D. H. Lawrence and Selected Carmel-Taos Connections").
"Dear R.M.S.,
Miss Denny tells me you will lecture in Carmel May 10th - Sat. night. I hope you will continue to call your subject "The future of Carmel" etc. It is bound to stimulate curiosity I should think. I am driving down especially to hear you. I wouldn't miss an opportunity to hear you speak for anything! (Author's note: Schindler's lecture was in conjunction with his estranged wife Pauline's Contemporary Creative Architecture of California Exhibition at the Denny-Watrous Gallery in Carmel. (Vagabond)).
I have been visiting the Wilson Sr. family up in the Carmel Valley. At the time I seemed to have some influence with them regards architecture. And I have been talking myself blue both to the older family & Phillip & Grace (?) Mr. Jim Thoburn to have you make a plan to remodel their corner building (it is invisible as it is & does not attract business). I told them that I knew the little investment would double their business - & then they could determine whether they wanted you to continue up the block. This family is so divided that it is impossible to wield them. The old man is over sensitive and ineffectual. He told me he was interested in your making a plan for the property on the [Carmel] point (little cottages) but the plan - whether or not accepted would be 6% of the entire cost, and consequently that frightens him. He asked me to be decent and not mention this to you. Thinking it over I thought possibly he had misunderstood. (Author's note: In 1924 Schindler had assisted in the design of a Carmel Point cottage for his old Chicago friend Ralph Fletcher Seymour which Eaton was likely aware of. See "The Schindlers in Carmel, 1924.").
I myself am contemplating buying the other Ferriti house. She has reduced her price $1,000. The Ferriti house is where John [Ewing] lived - it also has the 3 ft. alley leading to the front of Filbert St. If I buy it I should so much like you to make me a plan for remodeling. I want to spend the minimum. Will be satisfied to get only rents of $25 to $35 a month - just to hold the property and protect myself. My real ambition is to buy out Cappero [sic] the plumber - on the front of Filbert - but that I can only do later. Now I have no ambition to remodel this dirty hole, and want to put the job into your and Clifford Wight's hands (the sculptor). Two months should finish the work - then I go to N. Mexico! (Author's note: The property in question was a block east of the soon-to-be site of Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill where Diego Rivera's 1931 mural assistant Clifford Wight would coincidentally paint some murals in 1934. It was also a block north of the site of Richard Neutra's 1940 Sidney Kahn Residence on Calhoun Terrace, the same street Diego Rivera would first stay when he arrived in 1940 to paint the "Pan American Unity" mural on Treasure Island. For much more on this see my "Packard Family Architectural Connections").
Will you accompany me back to S. F. on Monday 12th? I have to [teach] Galka's class Tues. the 13th so therefore must return. Please let me know if you will drive back with me or in your own car. If you should not be able to drive back with me Mon. I may then plan to take the train down or drive down from San Mateo with Jim Wilson & return with him Sun. night.
Has Galka gone to Honolulu? If so did she make any arrangements for selecting my Paul Klee picture that I am buying before the exhibition opens? I was to arrive on May 1st for the opening of the exhibition and have instead decided to remain at the Alta Mesa ranch. My choice runs 1st - "New Houses" (see above) from her private collection - and 2nd - "Seeds" to be shown at Braxton. Think I will take a chance and wire her this tonight. (Author's note: The Klee exhibition at the Schindler-designed Braxton Gallery opened on May 1st and ran to May 15th. See more at Vagabond).
Expect you to take Carmel by storm. All best wishes from
Marjorie
If you answer me before Monday address the ranch. I teach [Galka's class at the Anna Head] school on Tues. - then will be in S. F. for 2 days.
P.S.: Have just learned that Mr. Clapp & Mr. Spencer Macky are now to San Diego to Pac. Coast Art Association Convention and most probably will be in L.A. Sun. morning & as I don't know their L.A. address I am writing to them to get in touch with you when they arrive. But to save time and mistake - suppose you make an appointment with the Arensbergs [Walter and Louise] - & drop Mssrs. Macky & Clapp a note to Balboa Park Art Gallery c/o Mr. Poland [Director of the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego] and let them know the hour & day (either Sat. or Sun.) you have arranged.
Love to Harriet & Sam [Freeman] also.
Marjorie" (Marjorie Eaton to R. M. Schindler, April 29, 1930. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection. Author's note: At this point Schindler was likely still hoping for a commission for the new exhibition space for Clapp's Oakland Art Gallery. Maintaining contacts with these museum directors would also have been in his best interests.).
Schindler had just received a commission to assist fellow Viennese Joseph Urban and Ely Jaques Kahn on the remodel for the Bonwit Teller store in New York, thus the Carmel lecture Marjorie referenced above was postponed. (Author's note: On the same site now sits Trump Tower.).
He replied advising her not to come to Carmel. She answered,
He replied advising her not to come to Carmel. She answered,
"Dear R.M.S.
We all congratulate New York in her choice of architects! All anxious to hear detailed description. I most certainly intend to wait for you to make my Telegraph Hill plan. So far have paid only deposits and haven't yet succeeded in getting the mortgage. However this will be settled next week, so there is really no worry. There are many ways of getting credit & money.
Be sure to let me know when you arrive in S.F. so that I will be here - and not visiting Galka in L.A. Mother's Vallejo St. lot is now selling at $18,000 cash! Only yesterday mother decided that you should build when she learned the sad news. Hurry & come & help us select a new building site before we buy a community apartment house. This is serious! We have to move from 140 Com[monwealth] July 1st.
Best compliments from,
Marjorie Eaton" (Marjorie Eaton to R. M. Schindler, May 15, 1930. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.).Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
"Hartmann Reading Poe at Schindler's," pen and ink, Boris Deutsch, January 8, 1928. From the exhibition catalog The Life and Times of Sadakichi Hartmann, 1867-1944, UC-Riverside, 1970.
Eaton next dispatched a newsy letter to Schindler indicating the strong cross-pollination between New Mexico and California she was deeply involved in. She brought her close old friend Katie Skeele and her new friend Jim Morris to meet mutual Schindler-Scheyer friend Boris Deutsch (see above for example), the Arensbergs and Harry Braxton. Since she was not mentioned in the below letter Scheyer had likely already left on her Bali collecting expedition with Gela Archipenko.
"Dear R.M.S.
Back again from New Mexico - Visiting in the south for a few days enroute San Francisco. Anxious to see you - have made a few plans. Wondering if they will fit - Have a modern Santa Fe artist with me - name - Jim Morris (see later below) who would like to meet some of the best California painters & perhaps give an exhibition at Braxton.
Thought I'd drive him & Katherine [sic] Skeele (who wants to meet you) out tomorrow (Thursday afternoon) to see Boris Deutsch (see below) & have dinner date with him in L.A. and see Arensberg collection after dinner. Could we call on you after dinner & see collection?
Next - Jim Ewing will arrive Saturday at your house to drive with me back to S.F. via Carmel. Could Jim Morris & I stay all night Friday with you - to be ready to meet J. Ewing Sat. morning?
Will phone you from Hollywood tomorrow (Thursday) around - 6 - to - 7:30 -
Best wishes from
Marjorie" (Eaton letter to RMS, n.d., ca. spring 1930. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Papers). (Author's note: Eaton seemingly would have been returning from attending the American Federation of Arts' Third Regional Meeting West of the Mississippi in Santa Fe on April 16-18 at the New Mexico Museum as many artists in her and Scheyer's California circles were in attendance. ("The Santa Fe Meeting, American Magazine of Art, June 1930, pp. 312-319)).
Marjorie Eaton (sitting far right, second row) and friends,
likely Santa Fe or Taos, 1930. Courtesy Susan Kirk. Others include Mabel Dodge
Luhan secretary "Spud" Johnson (standing second from right), Celtic
mythologist and Edward Weston-Ansel Adams muse Ella Young (seated middle with
hat), and to her left Eaton's lifelong friend sculptor Ruth Cravath and perhaps
two to Cravath's right, James Morris. (Author's note: Ella Young had been
driven to Taos and Santa Fe that summer of 1929 by Ansel and Virginia Adams
where for the next year she divided her time staying with Luhan and Mary
Austin. For more on this see my "Edward
Weston and Mabel Dodge Luhan Remember D. H. Lawrence").
52nd Annual Exhibition, San Francisco Art Association, May 3 to June 1, 1930. Courtesy San Francisco Art Institute Archives.
"Portrait of Juan" 1930. Marjorie Eaton. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
Marjorie brought with her from Taos her recently completed "Portrait of Juan" which she entered in the San Francisco Art Association's 52nd Annual Exhibition at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in May (see above). Also exhibiting and winning a prize with her "Drawing" was Lucretia Van Horn (see below). Other fellow prize-winners included Eaton's former California School of Fine Arts teachers Maynard Dixon and Ralph Stackpole and Edward Weston's close friend by then Carmel resident, Henrietta Shore.
"Drawing," 1930. Lucretia Van Horn. Courtesy San Francisco Art Institute Archives.
Also exhibiting were Eaton's former CSFA teachers Lucien Labaudt, Lee Randolph, Spencer and Constance Macky who won a prize the previous year for her portrait of Marjorie, and Schindler's Taos and former Chicago friends Victor Higgins and Walter Ufer who allowed Eaton and Skeele to use his Taos studio on occasion as discussed earlier above. One of Spencer Macky's accepted submittals was a portrait of previously mentioned long-time Schindler friend Alexander Kaun (see earlier above). Schindler-Weston-Scheyer mutual friends Boris Deutsch, Peter Krasnow, Arthur Millier and numerous others were also on display. ("California's Fifty-Second Annual Is Nation-Wide in Scope," Art Digest, May 1, 1930, p. 9).
Boris Deutsch, "Self-Portrait," n.d. From internet.
"News of the Art World, Deutsch Wins at San Diego," Los Angeles Times, June 8, 1930, p. II-20.
Marjorie and Katie's visit was also around the time of the annual exhibition of Southern California Artists at the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego where both Boris Deutsch and Skeele walked away with prizes (see above). Deutsch won the $500 purchase prize for his "Girl with the Yellow Shawl" (see below) and Skeele also won a $100 prize for her "Taos Pueblo" (three below).
Boris Deutsch, "Girl With A Yellow Shawl," 1930.
Katharine Skeele, "Self-Portrait," n.d.
"Taos Pueblo" by Katharine Skeele, 1930.
James Morris in his studio, 616 Canyon Rd., Taos, ca. late 1930s. Photo by T. Harmon Parkhurst. Courtesy Palace of Governors Photo Archives.
Eaton's travel-mate James Morris had arrived in Taos about the same time as Skeele and Eaton and had a studio he shared with Charles Barrows at 616 Canyon Rd. (1930 Census). Like Marjorie, he would later study at the Art Student's League in New York and spend time in Mexico where he would befriend Carlos Merida. Like Skeele he was also employed for a time with the WPA's Federal Arts Project (see below for example). (Santa Fe Bohemia: The Art Colony, 1964-1980 by Eli Levin, p. 28 and Artists of the Canyons and Caminos: Santa Fe: Early Twentieth Century by Edna Robertson and Sarah Nestor, Gibbs-Smith, 2006, p. 147).
James S. Morris, "Lightning," late 1930s, Museum of New Mexico, done under the Federal Arts Project. (Robertson, p. 147).
Marjorie wrote Schindler in July asking him to design a frame for her new Jawlensky which she wanted to take to Taos with her. She also asked him to store any paintings that Galka may have left for her until she passed through Los Angeles to collect them on her way to Taos. (Marjorie Eaton letter to R. M. Schindler, July 10, 1930. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Papers).
Brett Weston photo of "Prometheus" by Jose
Clemente Orozco. (Millier, A., "Orozco's Fresco Complete," Los
Angeles Times, July 6, 1930, pp. II-7, 12.
It was also around this time that Jose Clemente Orozco completed his mural "Prometheus" at Pomona College which was photographed by Brett Weston (see above). Scheyer seemingly could have met Orozco while staying with Pauline Schindler during her spring Blue Four exhibitions at the Braxton Gallery, perhaps during his portrait session with the younger Weston (see below), but her trip to Bali took her out of the country for most of Orozco's time in California. Others in her and Eaton's San Francisco circle including Van Horn would certainly have made pilgrimages to Los Angeles for a viewing of Orozco's first U.S. mural and/or his fete at the California Art Club in Wright's Barnsdall House. (For more on this see my "Richard Neutra and the California Art Club").
Orozco and Reed spent the summer in San Francisco reconnecting with old friends and family while preparing for an exhibition of Mexican art opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in November. While staying in San Francisco they arranged an exhibition of Orozco's lithographs, "The Horrors of War", at the Beaux Arts Galerie in May and the Courvoisier Gallery in June. In July Reed and Orozco visited Edward Weston in Carmel where through the photographer's largess his Mexican amigo exhibited at Carmel's Denny-Watrous Gallery in late August and early September. Orozco also exhibited in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles Museum and Jake Zeitlin's Book Shop in October. (Dungan, H. L., "Art and Artists," Oakland Tribune, May 25, 1930, p. 7, Weston, Edward, "Orozco in Carmel," The
Carmelite, July 31, 1930, p. 3 and Millier, Arthur, "Art Season Is Under Way," Los Angeles Times, October 12, 1930, p. II-16). (For more on Orozco's first stay in San Francisco see my "Orozco in San Francisco, 1917-19"
Jose Clemente Orozco, Los Angeles, June 1930. Brett Weston photo. From Pijoan, Joseph, "Orozco's Great Fresco," Touring Topics, October, 1930.
Jose Clemente Orozco, Carmel, July 20, 1930. Edward Weston photo © 1981
Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents.
Marjorie wrote again from Taos in November,
Juan Mirabel by Maynard Dixon, September 1931. Courtesy Susan Kirk. Author's note: Dixon visited Taos in the summer and fall of 1931, likely at the invitation of his former star pupil, Marjorie Eaton.).
Weston fondly wrote of the visit,
Eaton relatedly reminisced of her first knowledge of Lloyd Rollins who would eventually grant her a one-woman show.
Schindler lecture announcement. The Carmelite, September 4, 1930, p. 4.
Back from his short-term New York gig, Schindler lectured in Carmel the first week of September 1930 at Denny-Watrous Gallery following up on his estranged wife's earlier traveling Contemporary Creative Architecture exhibition and Scheyer's previous Blue Four exhibition. Coincidentally, Orozco's lithographs were on display during Schindler's lecture. Schindler lectured again on "Modern Architecture" two nights later at the Rudolph Schaeffer Studio in San Francisco where he perhaps again crossed paths with Orozco (see below). Never one to miss a Schindler lecture Eaton would have been in attendance if she was not already back in Taos. ("Orozco Lithographs on Display," The
Carmelite, August 28, 1930, p. 6 and "Where To: Art," The San Franciscan, September 1930, p. 5).
Rudolph Schaeffer School of Rhythmo-Chromatic Design, 136 St. Anne St., San Francisco.
While planning her return to Taos, Eaton eagerly wrote Schindler of her finding for him another prospective client, a new aviator-engineer friend named Ewing. She asked if he could arrange tours of his Wolfe House on Catalina, Packard House in Pasadena and Neutra's Lovell Health House and a viewing of the Arensberg's art collection with Ewing and her close friend and mentor Spencer Macky before returning to Taos.
"Dear R.M.S.
I am leaving Friday night for Hollywood. Expect to arrive Saturday night. Will spend Sunday and Monday morning there - then off to New Mexico. Am driving with another aviator in my little Ford.
Can you give us some time while we are there? This aviator-engineer is ready to build on Telegraph Hill. Wants to see all examples possible of modern architecture and pictures. We will fly Sun. afternoon with you to your Catalina buildings. We will pass through Pasadena on the way out to N.M. visiting your others. Want to see Dr. Lovell's Neutra home - etc. etc.
This aviator is young - enthusiastic - imaginative, an inventor - a business promoter (broker) has designed & built airplanes & naval ships - introduced the first miniature golf links in S.F. - helped Lucien Labaudt with the Artist Ball - and actually wants to carry out my ideas for Telegraph Hill. He has a little money and the rest can be borrowed. I have only known him 3 weeks - yet I am sure he is the only live wire in S.F. in our line. He knows the Chiddesters [sic] well. Mr. Macky, head of the Art Association will be in L.A. at the same time at some L.A. Art Association convention. Will you arrange that we can visit the Arensberg collection? Please do that for us. Mrs. Arensberg invited me to come again - so will you please arrange the time - and explain that I want to bring charming Spencer Macky and Mr. Ewing - (friend of the Chiddesters)!! Can't wait to see all those pictures again (you arrange the time; we can fly to Catalina Monday morning if necessary).
The Indians have arranged a permit for me in the reservation at Taos! Give my love to John [Bovingdon] and Jeanya - surely we will see them. Can't wait to see you and present my new find. Isn't it thrilling? Until Sunday morning. Will phone at 7:45.
As Ever, Marjorie
Inclosed [sic] cheque is for frame. Will pay balance when arrive and collect picture to take with me." (Marjorie Eaton to R. M. Schindler, ca. summer-fall 1930. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection. Author's note: Like the Arensbergs, Drew and Nell Chidester were prominent patrons and collectors of Blue Four art and photographs by Edward and Brett Weston and the Group f/64.).
"Taos Feast" by Marjorie Eaton. Frame design perhaps by R. M. Schindler.
"Dear R.M.S.
It has completely slipped my mind about the remaining part of my frame bill (see above for example). Please pardon the delay. Never, it seems, have I been so happy - living this Taos - primitive life. My house is one long room - white washed walls - vega-beamed top and dirt floors. Whenever it seems to need a house cleaning the Indian ladies come with fresh mud. Juan [Mirabal] is inexhaustively beautiful (see left below). My heart is overflowing with love and joy because I am painting.
I shall stay on until the last gun is fired. Will hope to see you if I pass through Hollywood. Greet John [Bovingdon] and Jeanya [Marling] for me.
Faithfully
Marjorie" (Marjorie Eaton to R. M. Schindler, November 13, 1930. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection).
From left, Juan Mirabal, Katie Skeele, Augustin Mirabal, Marjorie Eaton, Taos, ca. 1931. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
Just a few weeks after Orozco packed his summer output of oil paintings and left for New York with Alma Reed, Rivera and his young bride Frida Kahlo arrived in San Francisco. After more than three years of planning, Rivera had finally been commissioned to do his first U.S. murals, largely through the efforts of Ralph Stackpole who convinced San Francisco Art Association president William Gerstle and architect Timothy Pflueger to commission murals for the new California School of Fine Arts and Pacific Stock Exchange Building. They were aided in this effort by fellow Rivera admirers Ray Boynton and Lucretia Van Horn and well-connected arts patron Albert Bender. (For the best discussion and most detailed history of Rivera's 1930-31 San Francisco commissions see Painting on the Left: Diego Rivera, Radical Politics and San Francisco's Public Murals by Anthony W. Lee, University of California Press, 1999, chapters 3 and 4).
Like Rivera, Stackpole spent some formative years in Paris in 1906-08 after the San Francisco earthquake, leaving just before Rivera's 1909 arrival. Stackpole returned to Europe in 1920, spending three years in Italy and Paris as Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921. Stackpole finally met and befriended Rivera and closely studied his work during his Mexican vacation in the winter of 1926. Stackpole again reconnected with Diego in Mexico during his 1928 honeymoon. (Ralph Stackpole, California Art Research, Vol. 14 edited by Gene Hailey, Works Progress Administration, 1936-37, pp. 39-43).
Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Timothy Pflueger and Ralph Stackpole, November 10, 1930. Photographer unknown. Courtesy San Francisco Public Library Historical Photograph Collection.
Lloyd LaPage Rollins at 683 Brockhurst, 1932. From Seeing Straight: The f.64 Revolution in Photography edited by Therese Thau Heyman, Oakland Museum of California, 1992, p. 17.
Also a recent Bay Area returnee was 1921 Berkeley grad Lloyd LaPage Rollins (see above). Rollins had been taking graduate school classes at Harvard and was working on the staff of the college's Fogg Art Museum. ("U. C. Graduate Will Head S. F. Art Gallery," Oakland Tribune, May 12, 1930, p. 6-B and Peters). (Author's note: Rollins would have crossed paths with MoMA's Philip Johnson while working at Harvard's Fogg Museum.).
Rollins was named the new Director of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor (see above) and the de Young Museum in the fall of 1930. In a shrewd move to quickly ingratiate himself with prominent local artists he established a gallery at the Palace dedicated to the sole purpose of featuring the work of California artists. His inaugural show for this new gallery included a cross-section of Northern and Southern California work by Lucretia Van Horn, Schindler-Weston-Scheyer mutual friend Peter Krasnow, Lucien Labaudt, Margaret Bruton, Millard Sheets, Ray Boynton, Maxine Albro, Lorser Feitelson, Clarence Hinkle and others. (Kistler, Aline, "Passing Shows," San Franciscan, November 1930, p. 49).
Exhibition Catalogue, Diego Rivera, California Palace of the Legion of
Honor, November 15 to December 25, 1930. Introduction by Katherine Field
Caldwell. From author's collection. (Author's note: Caldwell was the daughter
of Sara Bard Field as mentioned earlier above).
Rollins's next effort was his first large-scale exhibition
as Director of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. It was an
exhibition on the work of Diego Rivera that after years of planning, largely
through the efforts of Ralph Stackpole, Ray Boynton, Lucretia Van Horn, Albert
Bender, Timothy Pflueger and William Gerstle finally resulted in Diego Rivera's
welcome to San Francisco (see catalog above from author's collection).
Knowing of his close friend Diego Rivera's exhibition at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor and his exciting San Francisco mural commissions, Edward Weston decided come up from Carmel to pay him a surprise visit. Weston also wanted to bask in the concurrent exhibition of his own work at the Vickery, Atkins and Torrey Gallery and socialize with his photographer friends Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and husband Maynard Dixon, and Imogen Cunningham and husband Roi Partridge. (See much more on this reunion at my "Edward Weston, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, December 1930"). (Author's note: This close knit group of photographers around this time met and befriended Rollins who soon began personally collecting and exhibiting their work).
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Ralph Stackpole's studio December 1930. Photograph by Edward Weston. Collection Center for Creative Photography. ©1981 Arizona Board of Regents.
Weston fondly wrote of the visit,
"I met Diego! I stood behind a stone block, stepped out as he lumbered downstairs into Ralph's courtyard on Jessop Place, - and he took me clear off my feet in an embrace. I photographed Diego again, his new wife - Frieda - too: she is in sharp contrast to Lupe, petite, - a little doll alongside Diego, but a doll in size only, for she is strong and quite beautiful, shows very little of her father's German blood. Dressed in native costume even huaraches, she causes much excitement on the streets of San Francisco. People stop in their tracks to look in wonder. We ate at a little Italian restaurant where many of the artists gather (Author's note: Coppa's? See more at "Orozco in San Francisco, 1917-19."), recalled old days in Mexico, with promises of meeting soon again in Carmel. Pflueger - architect - was another contact worthwhile. He sat to me - on the roof of Ralph's." (The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Volume II, California, pp. 198-9). (Author's note: Edward Weston was featured with a two-page spread in the San Franciscan concurrent with the welcoming exhibition of his Mexican amigo Diego Rivera at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor.).
Frida Kahlo by Edward Weston, December 1930.
Eaton relatedly reminisced of her first knowledge of Lloyd Rollins who would eventually grant her a one-woman show.
"My friend Eileen Eyer [sic] had a girlfriend . . .whose brother was Lloyd Rollins, who became joint Director of the De Young Museum and the Legion of Honor. He was young and full of ideas. (The De Young had accepted everything that had ever been given, and it was all in the basement. So he [Lloyd] had a big auction for bad art.) .. " Well, Eileen was pretty enthusiastic about my drawings, my work. I guess they were pretty good ... but ... I thought how dare she recommend me to him. But I met him, in fact I introduced him to Galka, and he had a big show of The Blue Four at the De Young Museum. They [Lloyd and Galka] came to blows a little bit because she wanted to have one picture very high up and another picture low down, below the eye level, and another one at the ceiling .. . diagonal movement on the walls. And he said, 'I've broken every law, rule around here. This we cannot have. We have to have a conventional hanging.' (Rindfleisch).
Like Scheyer, Rollins also encouraged Marjorie to give up her day job after her by then close dancer friend Eileen Eyre's enthusiastic introduction sometime in late 1930. Intrigued by what he saw in Eaton's work, Rollins promised to give her a show if she painted exclusively for three years, and this was all she needed to make the earnest jump to Taos as discussed elsewhere herein. (Author's note: Eyre was an early 1920s classmate of Rollins at Berkeley. Both were quite active in the college arts scene and performed together in the their senior year. See period Blue and Gold Year Books for example.).
At this time and also based on Eaton's personal opinion of Schindler's and Weston's mutual friend and client Gjura Stojana's work from his previous exhibition at her alma mater and Southern California viewings, she touted him to Rollins prompting the newly hired museum director to write Schindler for the artist's contact information (see below).
Lloyd LaPage Rollins to R. M. Schindler, December 31, 1930. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
This likely later emboldened Schindler to ask Marjorie's dancer friend Eileen (see below), whom he had likely previously met at one of Eaton's get togethers at the ranch in Palo Alto, to put in a good word for him with Rollins for an exhibition of his work (see Schindler-Eyre discussion later below).
Eileen Eyre, 1927. Photo by former Carmelite Arnold Genthe.
From AMICA.
Searching for an exhibition venue to save face after being excluded from the recent Museum of Modern Art's "Modern Architecture International Exhibition" and its scheduled August stopover at Bullock's Wilshire during the 1932 Olympics, Schindler had his eyes on San Francisco where he had an admiring "fan club." He successfully landed the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park through his romantic connection to Eileen Eyre, head of a Vaudeville dance troupe which formerly included another sometime girlfriend Harriet Freeman. Schindler wrote to Eyre,
"I am trying to arrange for an exhibit of my work in San Francisco - and thought under other places the Legion of Honor Palace (is that the right name?) Do not quite know how to address your friend [Director Lloyd LaPage Rollins] there (is he still both there & friend?) Aren't you coming down again? - Or wouldn't I know about it?" (RMS to Eileen Eyre, April 17, 1932, de Young Museum Exhibition Archives. Author's note: Schindler's eventual April 1933 exhibition was one of the last for Rollins who was soon thereafter ousted by the conservative board for his less than discreet extra-curricular affairs.)
In a message written on Schindler's letter forwarded to Rollins Eyre wrote,
"This just came to me. You may recall meeting Schindler last spring or fall at [Marjorie] Eaton's ranch. He is quite poor & I guess must be rather desperate. But as he worked years with Frank Lloyd Wright he must know Modern Architecture. I simply gave him your name& also Gutherie's - thinking one of you might be interested..." (Eileen Eyre to Lloyd LaPage Rollins, ca. April 1932. de Young Museum Exhibition archives.).(Author's note: Rollins agreed to exhibit Schindler's work and scheduled it in the spring of 1933 concurrently with his photograph collection and the work of Henrietta Shore and her student Xenia Kashevaroff. (Schindlers-Westons-Kashevaroff-Cage and Their Avant-Garde Relationships").
In conjunction with his big one-man show, an April article announced that Schindler was scheduled to lecture on "Architecture Today" in the Little Theater at the Palace of the Legion of Honor on May 7, 1933. (Oakland Tribune, April 9, 1933, p. 8-S). (Author's note: While Schindler's exhibition was on display other concurrent exhibitions were at the Legion of Honor which included an exhibition of paintings by artists such as Picasso, Rivera, Orozco, Raymond Jonson, Grace Clements, Lucretia Van Horn and her former disciple David Park, and another of photographs by Edward Weston and Ansel Adams and most of their fellow Group f/64 photographers. (Dungan, H. L.,"Art and Artists," Oakland Tribune, April 30, 1933, p. 8 and "Schindlers-Westons-Kashevaroff-Cage"). (Author's note: Annita Delano had an exhibition which preceded Schindler at the Legion of Honor mentioned in Millier, Arthur, "Anita Delano's West," LAT, April 9, 1933, p. I-6).
Schindler was in good company as Rollins held a group exhibition at the Palace of the Legion of Honor which overlapped the tail end of his exhibition which included the work of Rivera, Orozco, Picasso, Lucretia Van Horn and her rapidly progressing protege David Park and other local modernists. (Dungan, H. L., "Art and Artists," Oakland Tribune, April 30, 1933, p. 8).
In January of 1931, while Rivera was working on his Allegory of California mural at the Pacific Stock Exchange, an exhibition of the work of the members of the San Francisco Art Association was held at the California School of Fine Arts. The show included the work of Eaton, Lucretia Van Horn, Hamilton Wolf, Forrest Brissey, Henrietta Shore, Maxine Albro, John Emmett Gerrity and numerous others. (Berkeley Daily Gazette, January 22, 1931).
"The Embroiderer" by Lucretia Van Horn, ca. 1927-30. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Around this time Albert Bender purchased at least two of Van Horn's works and donated them to the de Young Museum in early 1931 (see above and below).
"Mexican Family" by Lucretia Van Horn, ca. 1927-30. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
After his Palace of the Legion of Honor exhibition featuring drawings, paintings and watercolors, including some from the collections of San Franciscans Albert Bender, Dr. Eloesser, William Gerstle, Lucretia Van Horn, Ralph Stackpole and others, Rivera had a joint exhibition of his sketches with lithographs by Orozco at the Eaton's former employer's City of Paris Department Store in February of 1931. It is not known whether Marjorie was still connected with the store or had anything to do with arranging the exhibition.
"Allegory of California" by Diego Rivera, Pacific Stock Exchange Building, 1931. (Author's note: Ralph Stackpole's son Peter was painted into the center of the fresco holding a model airplane).
While Diego Rivera was working on his "Allegory of California" at the Pacific Stock Exchange Building in early March 1931, Rollins put on a one-man show for Weston's close friend Peter Krasnow at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor (see catalogue above). Around the same time Eaton, Katie Skeele and their by then Taos friend Ernest L. Blumenschein, and Schindler-Weston friends from Los Angeles Boris Deutsch, Peter Krasnow, Edouard Vysekal, Conrad Buff and numerous others exhibited in the Oakland Art Gallery annual exhibition. Rivera's assistant Maxine Albro, Krasnow and Weston's fellow Carmelite Henrietta Shore were exhibiting in concurrent one-man shows at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. (see above and below for example). (Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Artists and Their Work," Oakland Tribune, March 1, 1931, p. S-11, March 8, 1931, p. S-9 and March 15, 1931, p. C-3).
The following week the work of Lucretia Van Horn and Hamilton Wolf, John Emmett Gerrity and Hope Gladding were among the over 100 paintings exhibited at the Third Annual No-Jury Show at the Berkeley Art Museum. Van Horn's "Drawing" was a "nude, stocky young girl who is made interesting by the remarkable luminosity and fullness of form with which the artist has endowed her." (Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Artists and Their Work," Oakland Tribune, March 15, 1931, p. C-3).
Catalogue Exhibition of Peter Krasnow, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, March 8 to April 20, 1931. Courtesy LACMA.
Van Horn became good friends with Ralph Stackpole who had spent January of 1926 in Mexico with Rivera while Diego was working on the Chapingo frescoes at the Agricultural School. Her first meeting of Diego the following summer was discussed earlier. She seemingly had free rein to enter the inner sanctum of Stackpole's studio where Diego and Frida were staying. Van Horn introduced her protege David Park and Gordon Newell to Stackpole for whom they apprenticed while he was working on the statues for Timothy Pflueger's Stock Exchange building thus they were on the outer fringes of the excitement surrounding the Rivera circle. (David Park: A Painter's Life by Nancy Boas, University of California Press, 2012).
Recently returned from a six-month trip to the East Indies and Bali, Galka Scheyer brought back a collection of work (see above for example) she exhibited at the Oakland Art Gallery during April of 1931. The same month Rivera was named to the awards jury for the Fifty-Third Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association along with his San Francisco host Ralph Stackpole, Lucien Labaudt, Charles Stafford Duncan, Edward Bruce and Marian Simpson. (Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Artists and Their Work," Oakland Tribune, March 29, 1931, p. C-3).
Likely through the largess of Lucretia Van Horn, Scheyer met Rivera and introduced him to the work of her Blue Four. She lent them works by Kandinsky to decorate their living space at Stackpole's studio. He was intrigued enough, especially by the work of Kandinsky, to sponsor her exhibition at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Diego wrote an introduction for Scheyer's Blue Four exhibition at the Palace of the Legion of Honor (see below). It was also most likely that around this time Van Horn introduced Rivera to Marjorie Eaton thus beginning their mutual lifelong friendships.
San Francisco Examiner, April, 1931.
"The Blue Four" exhibition catalogue, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, April 8 to May 8, 1931. Courtesy of Getty Research Institute, Peg Weiss Papers.
While Scheyer's Blue Four exhibition was on display at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Rivera was hard at work on his second San Francisco mural, "The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City" at Eaton's alma mater, the California School of Fine Arts (see below).
"The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City" by Diego Rivera, CSFA, May 1931.
Scheyer parlayed her May Legion of Honor success at Rollins's venue into another show at Capp's Oakland Art Gallery later that summer which coincidentally overlapped with a Hans Hofmann exhibition at the Palace of the Legion of Honor (see Rivera and Hofmann reviews below).
Lehre, Florence Wieben, "Art and Artists," Oakland Tribune, August 16, 1931, p. 6-S.
A kindred friendship quickly developed between Frida, Diego and Galka evidenced by Scheyer's follow-up Blue Four exhibition in Mexico City later that year (see catalogue below).
Galka Scheyer, Mexico City, November 1931. From Frida Kahlo: Her Photos edited by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Editorial RM, 2010, p. 270.
"Cuatro Azules" exhibition catalog, Biblioteca Nacional de Mexico, Mexico City, November 24 - December 1, 1931.
The catalog included reviews of the artists work by none other than Diego himself. According to Rivera, bringing this exhibition to Mexico was like “taking the noose into the hanged man’s house.” In other words, it was tantamount to taunting the academics and the more conservative social realists with an exhibition of works by the European avant-garde, even though the work was similar to Mexican instinctive, spontaneous art. The organizers were also keenly aware of the general public’s limited ability to understand art that, due to its language, “might . . . not mean much to most, [but] will convert quite a few.” (ICAA). (Author's note: Scheyer's time in Mexico would set the stage for Marjorie Eaton's stay in the later 1930s.).
Review of "'Cuatro Azules' Los Pintores Vanguardistas, El Popular, [December] 1931. (Wunsche, p. 227).
Blue Boy with Banana by Diego Rivera, 1931.
While in Mexico Scheyer commissioned Rivera to paint "Blue Boy with Banana." (Receipt for $470 from Rivera dated November 13, 1931 in Galka Scheyer Papers, Norton Simon Museum). Scheyer also purchased work by Angel Bracho and other Mexican modernists for her own collection.
Upon returning from her Mexican foray Scheyer moved into the Schindler's Kings Road house where she soon proudly hung her "Blue Boy" (see above).
After Scheyer's return from Mexico an exhibition of Mexican children's art at opened the Galerie Beaux Arts in late December 1931. (Oakland Tribune, December 27, 1931). This was perhaps a collaboration between Scheyer and previously-mentioned Emily Edwards, Lucretia Van Horn's close Rivera mutual friend from San Antonio, who was by this time back in Mexico teaching art to children while compiling photos of Mexican murals for various book projects. Scheyer would have been armed with contacts provided by Edward Weston, Lucretia Van Horn and others and would have met Frances Toor and reconnected with Emily Edwards and bonded over their mutual interest in children's art.
At the same time as Scheyer's Blue Four exhibition in Oakland Hans Hofmann was also exhibiting at Rollins's Palace of the Legion of Honor. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to look at Hofmann's visitation in the Bay Area, on the heals of Rivera and Orozco's, to wonder why Eaton could next be found in New York studying under Hofmann and assisting Rivera on his murals.
Hans Hofmann, 1931, location unknown, possibly Berkeley. Archives of American Art, Hofmann Archive.
After studying at Hofmann's summer session at Berkeley, Eaton borrowed at least seven Jawlensky paintings from Scheyer to decorate her Taos studio which she returned the following December. (Barnett, Vivian Endicott, "The Founding of the Blue Four and Their Presentation in New York in 1924-1925," note 22, p. 54 in The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky and Klee in the New World edited by Barnett and Josef Helfenstein, Yale University Press, 1997).
Sixth Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, November 4 to December 2, 1931. Courtesy Archives of American Art.
"Blue Lakes" by Marjorie Eaton, 1931. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
In November of 1931 Eaton submitted art for the juried Sixth Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists at the Legion of Honor. This exhibition included paintings by invited New York artists. Eaton's painting "Blue Lakes" had good company, including work by Lucretia Van Horn, Helen Forbes, Mary Cassatt, Agnes Pelton, and a portrait of Frieda and Diego Rivera (see below) by "Senora Frieda Rivera" of Mexico City. This was the first public showing of Frida Kahlo's work. ("Art and Artists," Oakland Tribune, November 8, 1931, p. 22). (Rindfliesch, Jan
Frieda and Diego Rivera, 1931 by Frieda Kahlo. Courtesy FridaKahlo.org.
Marjorie also exhibited in the 53rd and 54th annual San Francisco Art Association exhibitions at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor during 1931 and 1932. Her one-woman show at the same venue was on display during February-March of 1932. The show included two rooms with 35 paintings and drawings. She received a mixed review in the February 1932 issue of The Fortnightly which criticized her mixed styles. Her mentor Hans Hofmann had an article in the same issue titled "On the Aims of Art." (pp. 7-11). (Author's note: At the SFAA's 54th annual exhibition in 1932 Marjorie was in good company as Millard Sheets was awarded first prize for his painting "Six a.m. at the Car Stop" and Lucretia Van Horn's "Water Color" received an honorable mention. The jury was comprised of Lloyd La Page Rollins, Spencer Macky, Helen Forbes and Edgar Walter.).
Announcement for Marjorie Eaton Exhibition, Palace of the Legion of Honor, February 1932. Courtesy of Susan Kirk. (Author's note: As discussed elsewhere herin Schindler used Marjorie and her dancer friend Eileen Eyre's friendship with Legion of Honor director Lloyd LaPage Rollins to land his own one-man show a year later.).
In December 1931, Roi Partridge's Mills College Art Gallery presented an exhibition of the work of Lucretia Van Horn, Diego Rivera, Hans Hofmann, Boris Deutsch, Xavier Martinez and others from the collections of Blue Four patron Charlotte Mack, Vera Jones Bright and Florence Alston Swift. Reproductions of work by Matisse, Manet, Gauguin, Chagall and other Europeans were also shown. Of Van Horn art critic Dungan wrote, "If these are recent works then Mrs. Van Horn is getting more and more modern." The same month Lloyd LaPage Rollins presented consecutive exhibitions of photography by Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham, hers concurrent with etchings by her husband Roi Partridge at the de Young Museum, and shows by Boris Deutsch and Helen Forbes at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. (Dungan, H. L. "Many Works of Art at Mills College Show," Oakland Tribune, December 6, 1931, p. 6-S). (Author's note: The husband of Florence Alston Swift was later Group f.64 member Henry Swift who took the portrait of Lucretia Van Horn seen earlier herein).
Returning from Taos the same month, Marjorie was included in the San Francisco Art Association group show at the Legion of Honor with friends Van Horn and CSFA faculty members. A reviewer wrote of Eaton's piece, "the head of a Pueblo Indian looking out of the largest picture frame in captivity," of Van Horn, "Portrait of a little girl: very, very modern - the portrait, not the girl. The child has a long expressionless face and a sad little body." California School of Fine Arts faculty members Spencer Macky, Lee Randolph, Maynard Dixon, Gottardo Piazzoni, Hamilton Wolf, Lucien Labaudt and others were also included.
Hard on the heals of her February 1932 exhibition Rollins had promised her at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, Eaton had another exhibition of her paintings and drawings in October at the Mills College Art Gallery. (Arts Magazine, October 1932, p. 24). Lucretia and her husband visited Marjorie in Taos in October of 1932. (Letter from Lucretia to her daughter Margaret, October 10, 1932. Courtesy Tom Hunt).
In the intervening July, the Fifty-fourth Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association was held with Marjorie's friend Esther Bruton, Millard Sheets, Frederick Monhoff, Ina Perham Story, and Eugene Maier-Krieg all winning awards. Lloyd LaPage Rollins was on the selection jury. ("San Francisco - Annual," The American Magazine of Art, Vol. 25, No. 1 (July 1932), pp. 64-65).
Siqueiros at the far right and Eliel Saarinen in the light-colored suit, Los Angeles Museum, July 28, 1932. From The Official Report of the Games of the Xth Olympiad, Los Angeles, 1932, p. 754.
The same month found Rollins again in the news with his appointment to the 1932 Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games art jury alongside architect Eliel Saarinen and yet another noted Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros who was then spending an eventful year in residence in Los Angeles (see above). (For much on Siquerios's time in Los Angeles see my "Richard Neutra and the California Art Club.").
Horse Show: Horses in Art From Ancient Times to the Present
Day, November 19, 1932 through January 1, 1933, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum,
San Francisco. (From my collection).
After the Olympics the ambitious Rollins rounded up and chronologically and subjectively herded 549 items for this
omnibus display of horse art throughout the ages. What I found most intriguing
about the show was Rollin's tongue-in-cheek inclusions of the work of, and from
the collections of, his ever-widening circle of mutual artist friends. Rollins
borrowed work from his 1930-31 exhibitor Diego Rivera, Marjorie
Eaton and her close friends Esther Bruton, Maynard Dixon and recent Rivera mural
assistant Maxine Albro. Rollins also made a special trip to Carmel where he
found work by Edward Weston and his close friends Jean Charlot and Henrietta
Shore, Marjorie's former teacher Armin Hansen, William Ritschel and
others. (For much more on this exhibit see my "Edward Weston, Jean Charlot, "Spud" Johnson, Marjorie Eaton and Lloyd LaPage Rollins's 1932 "Horse Show"".).
Her relationship with Juan coming to an end and tiring of the Taos lifestyle, Marjorie was feted at a going away party in January of 1933. Artist Hanna Asher hosted over 60 people at tea at her Los Ranchito Road studio on January 10th to honor visiting Rabbi Krohn, and Marjorie who had announced to her circle of artist friends her impending departure for Germany. ("Society," Albuquerque Journal, January 12, 1933, p. 6). It was Eaton's intention to hook up with Scheyer and finally meet her Blue Four idols, especially Paul Klee, in person.
"Still Life" by Paul Klee, 1927.
As an example of Eaton's fondness for Klee's work, she purchased "Still Life" which was painted by Klee in 1927 and sent back to the U.S. on consignment with Scheyer in 1928. Marjorie purchased it for $750 in July of 1930 and loaned it to Blue Four exhibitions at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Braxton Gallery and the Oakland Art Gallery in 1931 and the Art Institute of Chicago in 1932. She sold the painting to Charlotte Mack in 1932, perhaps to finance her trip to New York to study under Hofmann and Arshile Gorky at the Art Students League. (Metropolitan Museum of Art proveance and exhibition history.).
Before leaving for New York Marjorie submitted one of her recent Taos paintings "Red Dancer With Rattle" for the Oakland Art Gallery's prestigious annual exhibition. By then well known to Clapp via her close friendship with Scheyer, Marjorie's piece was one of 268 selections of over 600 submitted. Hung in the "radical" gallery, Eaton was one of a dozen artists, including Phil Dike of Los Angeles, singled out for comment by Oakland Tribune critic H. L. Dungan who called the exhibition an unusually splendid show. Of Eaton's "Red Dancer" he opined,"An Indian in modern poster style. With something missing in the way of a "punch." ("Oakland Art Gallery Holds Annual Exhibit: Notable Display Opens, Show Well Chosen by Jury and Well Hung," Oakland Tribune, March 12, 1933, p. S-8).
Scheyer had arrived in Germany in November of 1932 unprepared for the turmoil surrounding Hitler's rise to power. The Bauhaus was disbanded by Hitler and the Blue Four scattered. After spending the holidays with relatives she became ill and spent three weeks in a sanitorium with Lily Klee. Eaton had planned to join Scheyer to meet Klee in person but was advised by Galka not to come because of the turmoil. After spending a week with each of the Blue Four Scheyer returned to the U.S. in May of 1933. She likely had a happy reunion with Marjorie and Frida and Diego who were all still in New York.
Louise Nevelson, 1931. Photographer unknown. Louise Nevelson Papers, Archives of American Art.
After heeding Scheyer's advice not to come to Europe Eaton instead enrolled at the Art Student's League in New York where she took classes from Hans Hofmann who had recently immigrated from Munich to avoid inevitable conflicts with the Nazis. He had spent the previous two summers teaching at Berkeley where Eaton likely crossed paths with him or may have even attended his classes between trips to Taos and Santa Fe. One of Marjorie's classmates at the League was Louise Nevelson who had also studied under Hofmann in Munich in 1931. During some travel in the Bavarian Alps and Austria Nevelson met some people in the German movie industry and was given a few bit roles (see above for example). She returned to Munich for another Hofmann class in March of 1932 just as he was preparing to permanently move to America. (Lisle, p. 80).
"Art Students' League Faculty," New York Times, May 29, 1933.
Hofmann's first U.S. visit was in the summer of 1930 to teach a summer session at the University of California, Berkeley after which he returned to Munich. In 1931 he taught another summer session at Berkeley (see earlier above) and the summer of 1932 at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles before again returning to Germany to finally prepare for his U. S. immigration. After returning to New York for good Hofmann began teaching at the Art Students League (see above for example) and in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the summers. Eaton certainly would have known of Hofmann's 1930-31 summer classes at Berkeley and Chouinard and would have attended if not already busy painting in Taos with Katie Skeele and her new love Juan Mirabal.
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo moved into an apartment on 13th St. in June 1933. (Gaines, William, "About New York," Oakland Tribune, June 24, 1933, p. B-20). Louise and Marjorie took an apartment on the ground floor of the same building. Louise introduced Marjorie to many friends in her circle including artists Arshile Gorky and Boris Margo and educator Will Durant. By summer Louise and Marjorie were spending a lot of time with Diego and Frida, often dining with them and their circle at a favorite Italian restaurant. Rivera soon invited Marjorie and Louise to assist with his New School murals. Eager to practice her fresco skills learned in Florence Marjorie assisted Rivera's plasterer. Louise helped for a while until she and Rivera began an affair under the nose of Frida. Ernest Bloch's daughter Lucienne (see below) recorded Diego's infidelities in her diary that summer. One day when Scheyer's former lover Ernest Bloch was visiting his daughter at the New School mural site he met Nevelson. They hit it off and had a serious flirtation over the next few days as he recorded in his diaries. (Lisle, p. 97).
Lucienne Bloch, Diego and Frida at the New School, 1933.
Fine Arts Building, Art Students' League, 215 W. 57th St., New York, H. J. Hardenburgh, architect, 1892. From the Museum of the City of New York.
The Art Student's League of New York 1932-33 Catalogue
The Art Students League catalogue indicates that Hans Hofmann and Schindler client Herman Sach's close friend George Grosz were both teaching there at the time Marjorie and Nevelson were in attendance. Marjorie had by then befriended Herman Sachs via Scheyer and would have known of his earlier representation of Grosz's work in the U.S.
Louise Nevelson, self-portrait, 1933.
Marjorie spent the rest of 1933 in New York studying at the Art Student's League where she met and befriended Louise Nevelson (see above). Sometime in the summer of 1933 Marjorie introduced Louise to Diego Rivera who was then working in his fresco panels at the New Workers School right after the controversy swirling around Rivera's Rockefeller Center mural. The duo lived for a while in the same building at 8 W. 13th St. next door to what was then the New York Art School, now the Parsons School of Design. (Author's notes: Nevelson confessed to Ernest Bloch that she was attracted to both Diego and Frida. (Lisle p. 95). Rivera, Neutra and Schindler exhibited together in Brooklyn in spring of 1931, a fact that R.M.S. would possibly have shared with Marjorie before her departure for New York. Scheyer and Kahlo corresponded during this period as well regarding )
Diego Rivera by Louise Nevelson, 1933.
To ease tensions between Frida and Louise, the Riveras moved from 13th to the Hotel Brevoort sometime in September.
Rivera at work on mural panels at the New Worker's School, New York, 1933.
After paying for his supplies, the wages of his assistants, and a commission for obtaining the work, Rivera found himself with $7,000 of "Rockefeller money" remaining. He determined to leave New York with a particularly provocative example of his work. He chose the location of the Lovestoneites' New Workers School on West 14th Street, putting up movable walls in the rented building and creating the mural with his assistants at his own expense. The work, entitled "Portrait of America," included 21 panels in all, occupying 700 square feet of wall space. Rivera asked Marjorie and Louise to assist on the New Workers School murals. It was here that Marjorie was able to put her earlier frescoe training to work assisting Rivera on his mural panels. Nevelson spent a lot of time at the New School during her affair with Diego.
After a farewell reception and a series of lectures at the New Workers' School, on December 10, 1933 Louise and Marjorie saw off Frida and Diego as they returned to Mexico. Louise recalled, "We got together a group, put money together, and bought tickets for them. Took them bodily onto the boat and saw that they left." (Dawns and Dusks, p. 59).
While Marjorie was in New York studying at the Art Student's League and Rivera, her by then close friend Lucretia Van Horn exhibited along with Diego Rivera and Pablo Picasso and fellow western artists Raymond Jonson, Grace Clements, her protege David Park (see below) and others. ("3 Arts United in Exhibition at S.F. Gallery," Oakland Tribune, April 30, 1933, p. S-8).
Freeman House, 1962 Glencoe Way, Hollywood, 1924, Frank Lloyd Wright, architect.
Scheyer first briefly stayed at the Freeman House in 1926 after being invited after her first Blue Four exhibition in Los Angeles. Unbeknownst to Scheyer at the time, Harriet (see below) was the dance partner of Marjorie's good friend Eileen Eyre on the dance circuit in the mid-1920s. This may have been where Harriet's paramour Schindler first met Eileen as discussed earlier above. (San Bernardino County Sun, April 3, 1925, p. 8).
Harriet Freeman dancing in her living room, ca. 192. Photographer unknown.
Schindler had taken over from Wright as the Freeman's architect of choice designing furniture, remodeling and additions for them over the years beginning in 1928. Harriet bought a Jawlensky from Scheyer around this time (see below right for example). Marjorie had by the late 1920s had become aware of Schindler's fondness for Harriet Freeman and her dance partnership with her close friend Eileen Eyre, likely through Galka.
Freeman House living room, Frank Lloyd Wright, architect, 1924. Furniture by R. M. Schindler, ca.1928. Jawlensky painting in Schindler frame, right center. Julius Shulman photo. Courtesy Getty Research Center, Shulman Collection.
Like Marjorie, the Freemans had a great appreciation for fine art and architecture and Harriet's affair with Schindler seemed inevitable. Harriet likely couldn't wait to show off her new Schindler-designed furniture at his lecture on "The Modern House" (see announcement below).
R. M. Schindler lecture announcement, Freeman House, September 29, 1928. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Schindler Collection.
Besides living at the Schindler's Kings Road house in the summer of 1927 Scheyer also lived for varying periods of time at Frank Lloyd Wright's Freeman and Storer houses. She lived in the Freeman House upon returning from Europe in the summer of 1933 until her new Neutra-designed house on Blue Heights Drive was completed in February of 1934. She proudly wrote to the Blue Four collectively and individually about her hillside aerie and how she was planning an addition for them to stay in as soon as additional funds could be found. Through Neutra's help she was able to purchase her steep hillside lot for only $150. To further keep costs down she provided a modicum of the construction labor.
While Marjorie was still in New York at the Art Students League and assisting Rivera on the New School fresco panels, Scheyer moved back in with Harriet Freeman shortly after she returned from Europe in July 1933. She stayed until February 1934 at which point she moved into her new house at 1880 Blue Heights.
She proudly wrote, "... [I] found what was once the laundry room of a Frank Lloyd Wright house, remodelled into a small apartment." (see below). (August 2, 1933 collective letter to Blue Four, Wunsche, p. 219).
Freeman Apartment entrance, 1962 B Glencoe Way, Hollywood, R. M. Schindler, architect, 1932. From Chusid, p. 149. USC Freeman Archive.
Freeman Apartment living room, 1962 B Glencoe Way, Hollywood, R. M. Schindler, architect, 1933. Ibid.
Scheyer moved into the Freeman's new Schindler-designed guest apartment as soon as it was completed in July of 1933 (see above).
Richard Neutra, architect, Gregory Ain, associate. Architect & Engineer, December 1935, pp. 11-13.
Scheyer at last moved into her own space at 1800 Blue Heights Drive on February 13, 1934. She eagerly set up her first lectures just a few months after moving in. (Millier, Arthur, "Brush Strokes: Here and There," Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1934, p. A8). The house was published in the December 1935 issue of Architect & Engineer which was guest-edited by her close friend Pauline Schindler (see above and below). As was typical with Neutra, the house was also exhibited in the 1935 New York MoMA exhibition Modern Architecture in California and between 1934 and 1938 in at least 10 other global publications which must have provided a big ego boost to Ain (and Neutra).
"A Mountain Top Residence for Madame Galka E. Scheyer," ibid.
Around this time Rivera and Kahlo invited their New York helper Marjorie to Mexico City to continue her studies. Marjorie took them up on their offer and periodically took her portfolio to Rivera for critique. (Estersohn, Betty, videotape interview of Marjorie Eaton, "Creative Women Over Seventy Series," documentation for California History Center, De Anza College, 1977).
Isamu Nogochi portrait by Edward Weston, 1935. Inscribed from Noguchi to Kahlo with a red lipstick kiss from Kahlo on the verso. From Frida Kahlo: Her Photos by by
James Oles and Horacio Hernandez.
While in Mexico City Marjorie was witness to a 1935 affair between Isamu Noguchi, who also there working on his mural for the Abelardo Rodriguez Market, and Frida Kahlo, which was later documented in Noguchi's biography. According to Marjorie, they planned to rent an apartment together where they could meet. The lovers even ordered furniture that never arrived, because the seller thought that they were for Frida and Diego and showed up at the San Angel house to give the bill to Rivera. "That was how the romance between Frida and Noguchi ended," asserted Eaton. (Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi by Hayden Herrera, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2015, p. 153).
Evidence that Marjorie was in Diego and Frida's circle in Mexico City was her brief affair with up-and-coming photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Above is one of the numerous images he captured of Marjorie during this period. Below is one of numerous images Marjorie captured of Bravo. This particular image finds Bravo seated on Marjorie's chest below her Klee painting she liked to take along on her travels for continuing inspiration.
Ain was during 1935-36 working in a somewhat collaborative
arrangement with Harwell Hamilton
Harris in his award winning Fellowship
Park House in Silverlake. (Denzer, p. 50). Both erstwhile
Neutra classmates and apprentices were simultaneously gaining their architectural sea legs in
an extremely fertile design studio indeed. At this time Ain was designing his first solo project after leaving his mentor's employ, i.e., the second story addition to Scheyer's house which was completed in 1937. ("Foundations").
Galka Scheyer Residence, Hollywood, 1934, Richard Neutra, Architect, Gregory Ain, associate.
Galka Scheyer Residence, Hollywood, 1934, Richard Neutra, Architect, Gregory Ain, associate.
Galka Scheyer Residence second floor addition, 1937, Gregory Ain, architect.
On November 13, 1936 Ain obtained a building permit for the second story addition to Scheyer's home-gallery at 1880 Blue Heights Drive. Ain did not want to take the job without first obtaining Neutra's approval. He needn't have worried, however, as Neutra did not want to repeat the agony of dealing with the opinionated Scheyer for a second time (see above and below).
Galka Scheyer Residence second floor addition, 1937, Gregory Ain, architect.
Galka Scheyer Residence second floor addition, 1937, Gregory Ain, architect.
Around 1936 Marjorie left Mexico City for Pahuatlan, living for around a year with the locals. She spent her time painting and mentoring the budding artists in this mountainous area northeast of Mexico City. (Estersohn, Betty, videotape interview of Marjorie Eaton, "Creative Women Over Seventy Series," documentation for California History Center, De Anza College, 1977).
"Pahualica" by Marjorie Eaton, Mexico, 1936.
Marjorie Eaton's mid-1930s visits to Galka Scheyer's house in the Hollywood Hills likely planted the seed for her 1939 commission Gregory Ain to do what he did for Galka, i.e., design for her a space that could be built as economically as possible. Likely hearing good things about Ain from Scheyer, she commissioned the fledgling architect to design her new home. She had also likely discussed with Ain her desire to build in adobe, both to remind her of her of much happier times in Taos living and painting with Juan and the use of relatively inexpensive building material. In what must have seemed very fortuitous to Marjorie, she had also likely heard directly from Ain of his boyhood experience building with adobe while living at Llano Del Rio (see below for example). ("Ain Residences").
Her mother's historic adobe compound also assuredly set the example for what was possible on the property.
Williams, L. K., "Llano Colonists are Undaunted by
Storm," Western Comrade, December 1915, p. 20.
Marjorie brought preliminary plans to Galka's house from Palo Alto about the time that Scheyer was planning an exhibit of Picasso drawings at the Stendahl Gallery. Galka had her then secretary Hella Hammid mounting Picasso study drawings for his 1937 mural Guernica that were soon to be on display at the Stendahl Gallery where Galka had previously held numerous Blue Four exhibitions.
"Mural That Started War of Critics to Be Shown Here," Los Angeles Times, August 5, 1939, p. 16.
Ain came to Galka's house to discuss Marjorie's plans and became so excited over the Picasso drawings that the diagonal thrust running through them coupled with the preexisting planting of almond trees inspired Ain's design of her house. "The Picasso drawings inspired Gregory ... so that all the [adobe] bricks had to be made for the house had angles through them...". (Estersohn, Betty, Rindfleisch, Jan, and Bartels, Deanna, ("Marjorie Eaton" in Staying Visible: The Importance of Archives by Jan Rindfleisch, De Anza College, Cupertino, 1981, p. 17.).
Stendahl Gallery announcement for Picasso's Guernica exhibition, August 1939.
Marjorie Eaton House, Trace Road, Palo Alto, Gregory Ain, architect, designed 1939. Courtesy UC-Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collections, Ain Collection.
Adobe bricks drying in the sun in preparation for construction of the Eaton adobe, Palo Alto. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
A total of over 5000 adobe bricks were made for the house's walls (see above and below)..
Adobe bricks drying in the sun in preparation for construction of the Eaton adobe, Palo Alto. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
Eaton adobe under construction. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
Eaton adobe under construction. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
Eaton adobe under construction. Marjorie framed by doorway with Galka Scheyer and unidentified male in foreground. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
Construction of the house lasted throughout much of the 1940s as Marjorie was strapped for funds while deciding to transition into an acting career.
Eaton adobe under construction. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
Edith Cox Eaton (and unidentified) on amphitheater during construction ca. 1954. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
An small outdoor amphitheater was added adjoining the rear patio which served as a performance/rehearsal area for Marjorie after she had fully made the transition from painting to acting.
Marjorie framed by the proscenium on "stage" behind her house. The French doors opened onto the "stage." Courtesy Susan Kirk.
Marjorie died in her sleep in her mother Edith's beloved adobe ranch home home next door in April of 1986 a month after suffering a stroke.
Marjorie in front entryway of her house sometime after completion. Date and photographer unknown. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
Later addition, ca 1954 perhaps. Courtesy Susan Kirk.
Epilogue:
I appended this epilogue about Lucretia Van Horn to illustrate her importance to the Bay Area art world and hopefully convey a sense of her character and fortuitousness in befriending kindred spirit Marjorie and living close to her the later years of her life while Eaton was transitioning into acting.
"Exposure to a modern, streamlined approach helped Van Horn flatten and simplify her illustrative, academic style. The below "Two Women with a Squash" clearly shows Rivera's influence-rounded, simplified figures are pressed up against the flattened picture plane. At this time Van Horn frequently chose women outdoors as her subject matter. Exposure to Rivera's revolutionary politics more than likely contributed to Van Horn's sympathetic treatment of these peasant women nestled in the land.
The 1920s and early 1930s were Van Horn's most productive years. Like many of her peers, she was intrigued by the work of the European modernists and experimented with varying styles and approaches from cubism to surrealism. She worked in a variety of media from charcoal to ink to watercolor and oil. In Leaves (see below), the swirling, morphing organic forms that make up this mysterious landscape show influences of both symbolism as well as surrealism. The dark umbers, greens and browns add to the sense that this is a forest full of wonder, more fantastical than threatening." (JLW Collection).
"Leaves" by Lucretia Van Horn
In 1927 the family moved to Berkeley, California where Van Horn became a prominent member of the Bay Area art community. She served on the Board of the Oakland Art League with Galka Scheyer, Ray Boynton, Hamilton Wolf and other prominent Bay Area artists. From 1928 to 1932 she exhibited often with galleries in the Bay Area and New York and was included in exhibitions at the Oakland Art Gallery (now the Oakland Museum), the Berkeley Art Museum (1929) as well as in San Francisco Society of Women Artists and San Francisco Art Association shows in 1930, 1931, and 1932. She was one of the judges of the Oakland Art Gallery's 1932 annual exhibition. ("Oakland Art Gallery Annual Opens Tuesday," Oakland Tribune, February 29, 1932, p. S-6).
From David Park's excellent biography we read,
"Park was further welcomed into the Bay Area art world that summer [1929] when Evelyn Prentiss introduced him to Lucretia Van Horn at the Bishop's Book Shop. Van Horn had studied at the Art Students League in New York, at the Academie Julian in Paris, and with Diego Rivera in Mexico in the mid-I920s. She was a newcomer to the region herself but had quickly established herself in artistic circles and was soon exhibiting her paintings in San Francisco galleries. Lucretia and her attractive young daughter Margaret "took to David and made a protege of him," Prentiss later recalled.
Lucretia, a vivacious woman then in her forties, had huge, luminous dark eyes and a pulled-back hairdo that gave her an exotic look. Gordon Newell remembered that she would come into a room "like a windstorm, and everything would change; she was always the center of things." According to Newell, Lucretia was always encouraging Park to "paint, paint, paint!" Margaret was also an artist, as well as a pupil of Alfred Kroeber, one of the founders of modern cultural anthropology, who taught at Berkeley. She and Park may have been romantically attached, although the inscription on a portrait he drew of her seems merely friendly: "A mon amie et confrere Margaret Van Horn [signed] D. P."
A year or so after meeting the Van Horns, Park did a small, colorful oil that shows the family in their living room (see below). Unlike most of his works, the painting records a specific place. Lucretia, holding a cigarette, sits to one side in a fan-backed rattan chair. She looks smaller, less imposing, and more marginalized than one would expect from the way she is described by those who knew her. Margaret and her father recline across the width of the picture, and it is Margaret who commands the center. Her younger sister is in the background. Whether Park intended this arrangement to reflect his or Lucretia's view of the family is not clear, but the painting has a special poignancy, since it was made when Margaret, who was being treated for tuberculosis, was preparing to leave home to enter a sanitarium in Denver. She died the following year, at the age of twenty." (David Parks: A Painter's Life by Nancy Boas,University of California Press, Berkeley, p. 21).
The Van Horn Family by David Park, 1930.
Lucretia introduced Park and Gordon Newell to Ralph Stackpole for whom they apprenticed while he was working on his outdoor sculptures for the Stock Exchange Building, thus they likely met Rivera.
In 1932 the Van Horn's's daughter Margaret died. The heartbroken Lucretia understandably lost her enthusiasm for painting and her husband's promotion to brigadier general took them from Berkeley to Georgia where he assumed command of Fort McPherson near Atlanta in January 1934. Few of Lucretia's works exist after this date and no exhibition records have been found until 1943 when she again participated in the San Francisco Art Association exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Lucretia had moved into Marjorie's mother's house in Palo Alto after her husband died in 1941. There she remained in Marjorie's welcoming family compound until she passed away in 1970.
In 1932 the Van Horn's's daughter Margaret died. The heartbroken Lucretia understandably lost her enthusiasm for painting and her husband's promotion to brigadier general took them from Berkeley to Georgia where he assumed command of Fort McPherson near Atlanta in January 1934. Few of Lucretia's works exist after this date and no exhibition records have been found until 1943 when she again participated in the San Francisco Art Association exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Lucretia had moved into Marjorie's mother's house in Palo Alto after her husband died in 1941. There she remained in Marjorie's welcoming family compound until she passed away in 1970.
I hope that I have been somewhat successful in opening up to future researchers the much under-recognized importance of Galka Scheyer in the cross-pollination of the arts and architecture not only between Europe and America, but more importantly between the Bay Area and Southern California. The importance of San Francisco's California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) and its faculty are also greatly under-recognized, as is the fascinating career of Lucretia Van Horn. Lastly, there was also much to learn of Schindler's exploits in the Bay Area, mostly due to the largess of Scheyer.
Marjorie Eaton ca. late 1930s. Photo by Dorothea Lange.
Courtesy Oakland Museum of California, Dorothea Lange Collection.
Epilogue:
Marjorie Eaton's niece Susan Kirk is in the process of
making a film on the life of her enigmatic aunt. A promotional video of same
can be seen at the following link: