One hundred years ago, among windswept sand dunes on the northwestern edge of San Francisco overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a great art museum was built in the style of an 18th-century neoclassical Parisian palace.
Today, the Legion of Honor, with its dramatic architecture and comprehensive collections, is considered one of the most compelling and best-sited small museums in the world.
The Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park is seen while under construction, which was completed 100 years ago in 1924.
Courtesy FAMSF Archives
Dedicated to the memory of the 3,600 Californians who lost their lives in France during World War I, the Legion of Honor, as it is now known, is celebrating its centennial later this year with a series of celebrations beginning in November.
“Throughout the Legion’s 100th anniversary year, our galleries will feature an exciting array of loan exhibitions and updated collection displays featuring time-honored favorites and spectacular recent acquisitions,” said Thomas P. Campbell, director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
The California Palace of the Legion of Honor museum, as it was first known, was a gift to the City from San Francisco philanthropists Alma de Bretteville Spreckels and her husband, Adolph B. Spreckels. Alma Spreckels, born in San Francisco, was a Francophile who donated funds to the French cause during World War I. In 1914, she traveled to Paris and acquired her Auguste Rodin sculptures, along with antiques and paintings.
Ten years later, the Legion opened on Nov. 11, 1924 — the anniversary of Armistice Day.
In 1924, Alma Spreckels appointed Cornelia Bentley Sage Quinton as director of the Legion, a post she held until 1930. Quinton had been director of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y., since 1910, making her the first woman to be appointed as director of a major U.S. museum. To design her dream museum, Alma also selected young San Francisco classical architect George Adrian Applegarth, a graduate of the Paris Ecole des Beaux-Arts and a protege of Berkeley classical architect Bernard Maybeck.
Applegarth traveled to Europe to view the best European museums and study their galleries, temperature modulation and museum displays. The building’s symmetrical neoclassical structure was based on the exquisite plan of the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris, completed in 1787. The interior, with its harmonious repetition of dramatic arches, the soaring entry and cathedral ceilings, is entirely Applegarth’s creation and delivered Alma Spreckels’ goal: a city tribute to American patriotism and an homage to French history and artistic traditions.
Today, the central rotunda welcomes guests and orients them toward the large-scale galleries. Some visitors head directly to Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies,” framed by his smaller luminous canvases. Others admire the grace and craftsmanship of the decorative-arts galleries.
For many art lovers, visiting the Legion has led to a deep lifelong relationship. Marin County interior designer Roger Thomas said he first visited the Legion with his family when he was 7 years old.
“I was struck by the power and muscularity of the Rodin sculptures and the beauty and harmony of the neoclassical architecture,” Thomas said. “My work designing interiors, furniture, fabrics and architecture has been influenced by the Legion ever since.”
Architect George Adrian Applegarth based the symmetrical neoclassical structure of the Legion of Honor’s front exterior on the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris.
HENRIK KAM PHOTOGRAPHY
Grateful for the museum’s leadership, Thomas and his husband, Arthur Libera, recently donated a signed Jean-Michel Frank 1930s chair in honor of Denise Hale. The two were so impressed with the inspired art exhibitions created by Furio Rinaldi, curator-in-charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, that they provided major support for this past winter’s highly successful “Botticelli Drawings” exhibition.
For connoisseurs of etchings, drawings and prints, the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts is a destination. Founded in 1948, it houses one of the world’s largest and most prestigious collections of works on paper. To enjoy: 150 Rembrandt drawings and prints, Picasso prints and works by Francisco Goya.
Elsewhere in the Legion are a full-length portrait of a duchess and her daughter by Anthony Van Dyck, an exquisite bronze trotting horse by Edgar Dégas, a petite marble sculpture by Camille Claudel and an oil portrait by Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun.
A new masterpiece is Canaletto’s “The Grand Canal,” donated to the museum in 2022 by Diane B. Wilsey in honor of Ann Getty.
“The Legion of Honor has every pleasure, from the harmony of its architecture, to ancient arts, historic Parisian rooms, Cézanne, Rembrandt drawings, graphic works on paper, 18th-century French portraits, porcelains, the Monets, decorative arts — a treasured asset of San Francisco,” said Wilsey, chair emerita of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
The 2019 acquisition of the restored Salon Doré from the 18th-century Hôtel de la Trémoille in Paris enhanced the museum’s holdings of French historic rooms, underscoring the California-France relationship that will continue to inspire visitors for a century to come.
“The Legion of Honor has been a cherished destination and place of reflection for over 99 years, and in its 100th year, we look forward to celebrating the generations of San Franciscans who have made it into the world-class museum it is today,” Campbell said.
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40 Floral Years
Three miles away, in Golden Gate Park, FAMSF’s San Francisco Auxiliary launched the first Bouquets to Art event 40 years ago and invented an annual tradition at the de Young museum, inspired by a successful flower show, Art in Bloom, presented at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1976. With the support of approximately 25 floral designers, the three-day de Young debut was a huge hit that attracted thousands of art and flower lovers into the galleries to experience paintings and sculptures anew — and it’s only flourished since.
“The event is now a cherished Bay Area tradition that expands visitors’ perspectives on art in our collections,” Campbell said of the exhibition, which runs this year from June 4-9. Tickets are available at the FAMSF website. “This year, we are delighted to highlight floral traditions from Maui and Mexico in the Bouquets to Art lecture program.”
San Francisco Garden Club President Tammy Braas-Hill, 2024 co-chair with Nora Quattrin, attended the event with her mother for many years.
“I admire the florists and garden clubs and students as they express their knowledge and emotions in petals, leaves, branches and even wild-grown and field-foraged plants,” she said.
Since its founding, Bouquets to Art has raised more than $9 million for arts education, outreach and the acquisition of rare trophies for the permanent collections. This year, 125 florists, floral designers, floristry students, garden clubs, event designers and flower growers will create floral displays paired with selected art, sculpture and cross-disciplinary works from FAMSF permanent collections.
Bouquets to Art 2019 — the 35th iteration of the event — featured 115 floral designers.
Gary Sexton/Courtesy FAMSF
“The combination of fine paintings and sculptures and beautiful flowers make this the most delightful fundraiser,” said San Francisco floral designer Michael Daigian, who has created floral art for every one of the 40 Bouquets to Art shows.
For the opening event in 1984, Daigian said, he was assigned a Dutch still-life painting with arrays of tulips and branches in the classical manner.
“I arrived with buckets of flowers and copied the artist’s bouquets with pale pink and cream tulips, crab apple blossoms and pale blue delphiniums,” he said. “It was very romantic, paying homage to the museum’s collection.”
This year, Daigian will be working in a very different style and palette.
“After requesting it for four years, I’ve finally been assigned the dramatic painting, ‘Acordada (Caballos y Zapatistas),’ by José Clemente Orozco, a colleague of Diego Rivera,” he says of the somber depiction of a scene from the Mexican Revolution in blood red and black.
San Francisco floral designer Patric Powell also has an impressive loyalty to Bouquets to Art. This year his company, Bloomers, will participate for the 35th year. For inspiration, Powell and his associate Cryssina Loflin were offered an elegant white marble statue, “Dalilah,” by William Wetmore Story.
Loflin, a former student of City College of San Francisco’s floristry program, had participated in Bouquets to Art in a special collaboration founded by Steven Brown, head of the school’s floristry department. Students are selected each year to create and model fashions in flowers and leaves. Last year, Loflin crafted a romantic gown by attaching an embellishment of miniature bunches of white-flowered gypsophila and white roses to create a cloud-like skirt, which she wore to the opening party.
All de Young permanent collection galleries — including those that display American painting, sculpture and decorative arts from the 17th to 21st centuries; arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas; and international modern and contemporary art — are open for the show.
“By examining well-known masterpieces through a cross-disciplinary floral lens, we open ourselves up to the possibility of seeing familiar art works anew,” said Lauren Palmore, associate curator of American art at FAMSF, who recently published an outstanding tribute to the show, “Bouquets of Art: A Flower Dictionary from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.”
Braas-Hill said she’s looking forward to the lecture by San Francisco floral and event designer Raul Duenas, who will speak of the Mexican heritage and spiritual myths of the hummingbird.
“Here’s to another 40 years,” Braas-Hill said. “Art comes alive with an abundance of flowers and beauty for all to appreciate.”
