The third panel represents the Ideals in Art. There are seven figures, the Greek ideal of beauty dominating all in a classic nude. Below this Religion is portrayed, in a Madonna and Child. Heroism is shown in Jeanne d'Arc, mounted on a war-horse and flinging abroad her victorious pennant. A young girl represents youth and material beauty, while at her side a flaunting peacock stands for absolute nature, without ideal or inspiration. A mystic figure in the background holds the cruse of oil. Over all of them floats a winged figure holding a laurel wreath for the victorious living, while a shadowy figure in the foreground holds a palm for the dead.
The fourth panel represents the inspirations of all Art, five figures symbolizing Music, Painting, Architecture, Poetry, and Sculpture. Flying above these are two winged figures, one holding a torch flaming with the sacred oil that has been brought from the altar, the other drawing back the veil of darkness, revealing the tangible, visible expression of Art to mortal eyes.
The four single panels symbolize the four golds of California; the poppies, the citrus fruits, the metallic gold, and the golden wheat. The idea of the four golds is particularly novel and will some day yield far more interesting results, and I hope the subject will not be allowed to lie idle. It is a very fine idea, too good not to be used permanently in some dignified building in California.
The Court of the Four Seasons offers a decorative scheme of eight panels above the doorways in the colonnades and two large panels in the orchestral niche on the south. All of these ten paintings were done by Milton Bancroft, one of the younger of the Eastern decorator-painters, who took his task seriously enough, without rising in any of his decorations above the conventional, with the exception of the "Autumn" and the two larger panels in the half dome.
All of the seven decorations belonging to the set of eight smaller ones are rather academic in their monotony of symmetrical compositions, not sufficiently relieved by variety of detail. These decorations have to excess what Reid's decorations are lacking in, namely, repose. Their coloring is quiet and in thorough harmony with the architecture.
Bancroft's two more importantly placed decorations are, fortunately, his best efforts. "Art Crowned by Time" and "Man Receiving Instruction in the Laws of Nature" are very effective in their stateliness and thoroughly decorative quality. They show the artist's allegiance to the great decorations of the Renaissance in many quaint ways of filling out the background spaces by puttos holding tablets, simple bits of architecture, and conventionalized trees. His figure of "Art" is unique among his figures in the decorative pattern used on the mantle which falls gracefully from her shoulders. All the other Bancroft decorations are devoid of this use of surface patterns, which are so helpful and interesting in decorative arrangement.
It is only a few steps from the Court of the Four Seasons into the Court of Palms. In entering through the orchestral niche one passes directly underneath the lunette which holds the very decorative canvas by Arthur Mathews, the acknowledged leader in the art of California. It must be said that it does not seem right, in the light of what has been contributed by men from elsewhere, that Mathews' superb talent should have been employed only in one panel. His "Victorious Spirit," a rich and noble composition, has certain enduring qualities which are not to be found in a single one of any of the others. Simply taken as a decoration, his picture is most effective by its richness of color, and without going into the question of its meaning, it is thoroughly satisfactory as a decoration.
Childe Hassam's lunette, said to represent "Fruit and Flowers," is almost anaemic alongside Mathews' fullness of expression. Nobody ever suspected Childe Hassam of being a decorator, no matter how admittedly important a place he holds in the field of easel painting. The composition of his decorations is frugal in every sense, largely owing to the small scale of his figures. In the physical center of the composition nothing of interest happens, and the composition breaks almost in two. The coloring is insipid, and altogether not in keeping, in its extreme coldness, with the happy warmth of the travertine surrounding it.
Directly opposite, Charles Holloway presents himself in a very happy painting called "The Pursuit of Pleasure." A study of this picture can result in nothing but complete satisfaction. It is well and interestingly composed, lively in arrangement, in good scale, and not lacking in a certain feeling of repose, so essential in a good decoration, and, for that matter, in any work of art.
In the great arch of the Tower of Jewels the most elaborate decorations of Mr. William de Leftwich Dodge, of New York, command attention first of all by their fine and lively colors. These decorations show a most experienced artist, treating a wide variety of interrelated subjects with great skill. These enormous canvases, sixteen by ninety-six feet in size, are divided into a triptych, each picture continuing its central scheme into two smaller side panels.