What I liked best about the murals was their splendor of coloring, and their pictorial suggestiveness and vigor of characterization. Perhaps there was a little too much effort on the part of the painter to suggest animation. But why, I asked, had Du Mond made most of the faces so distinctively Jewish?
My question was received with an exclamation of surprise. Yes, the strong Jewish types of features were certainly repeated again and again. Perhaps Du Mond happened to use Jewish models. It hardly seemed possible that the effect could have been intentional.
When I pointed to one of the figures, a youth holding out a long bare arm, and remarked that I had never seen an arm of such length, my criticism brought out an unsuspected principle of art. "The Cubists would say that you were altogether too literal. They are making us all understand that what art ought to do is to express not what we merely see with our eyes, but what we feel. If by lengthening that arm, the painter gets an effect that he wants, he's justified in refusing to be bound by the mathematical facts of nature. Art is not a matter of strict calculation, that is, art at its best and its purest. It's a matter of spiritual perception. All the resources of the artist ought to be bent toward expressing a spiritual idea and making it alive and beautiful through outline and color."
"But how about the mixture of allegory and realism that we see in these murals and in so much of the art here? Don't you find it disturbing?"
"Not at all. There's no reason in the world why the allegorical and the real should not go together, provided, of course, they don't grossly conflict and become absurd. What the artist is always working for is the effect of beauty. If a picture is beautiful, no matter how the beauty is achieved, it deserves recognition as a work of art. In these murals Du Mond has tried to reach as closely as he could to nature without being too literal and without sacrificing artistic effect. He has even introduced among his figures some well-known Californians, a Bret Harte, in the gown of the scholar, and William Keith, carrying a portfolio to suggest his painting."
In that inner court we noticed how cleverly Faville had subordinated the architecture so that it should modestly connect the great central courts. McLaren was keeping it glowing on either side with the most brilliant California flowers. The ornamental columns, the Spanish doorways, and the great windows of simple and yet graceful design were all harmonious, and Guerin and Ryan had helped out with the coloring.
VIII
The Court of the Four Seasons
As we entered the Court of the Four Seasons the architect said: "If I were to send a student of architecture to this Exposition, I should advise him to spend most of his time here. Of all the courts, it expresses for me the best architectural traditions. Henry Bacon frankly took Hadrian's Villa for his model, and he succeeded in keeping every feature classic. That half dome is an excellent example of a style cultivated by the Romans. The four niches with the groups of the seasons, by Piccirilli, screened behind the double columns, come from a detail in the baths of Caracalla. The Romans liked to glimpse scenes or statuary through columns. Guerin has applied a rich coloring, his favorite pink, and McLaren has added a poetic touch by letting garlands of the African dew plant, that he made his hedge of, flow over from the top. See how Bacon has used the bull's head between the flowers in the ornamentation, one of the most popular of the Renaissance motives. And he has introduced an original detail by letting ears of corn hang from the top of the columns. Those bulls up there, with the two figures, carry the mind back to the days when the Romans made a sacrifice of the sacred bull in the harvest festivals. This Thanksgiving of theirs they called 'The Feast of the Sacrifice.' "
Crowning the half dome sat the lovely figure of Nature, laden with fruits, by Albert Jaegers. On the columns at either side stood two other figures by Jaegers, "Rain," holding out a shell to catch the drops, and "Sunshine," with a palm branch close to her eyes. At each base the figures of the harvesters carried out the agricultural idea with elemental simplicity in friezes that recalled the friezes on the Parthenon. Here, on each side of the half-dome, we have a good example of the composite column, a combination of the Corinthian and the Ionic, with the Ionic scrolls and the acanthus underneath, and with little human figures between the two.