California Palace of the Legion of Honor

California Palace of the Legion of Honor
Location	100 34th Avenue, San Francisco, California, USA
Coordinates	37°47′02″N 122°30′04″W
Type	Art museum
Visitors	177,608 (2010)
Public transit access	San Francisco Municipal Railway
Website	http://legionofhonor.famsf.org/

The California Palace of the Legion of Honor (often abbreviated Legion of Honor) is a part of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF). The name is used both for the museum collection and for the building in which it is housed.

History

Statue of El Cid silhouetted by a solar corona in front of the Legion

The Legion of Honor was the gift of Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, wife of the sugar magnate and thoroughbred racehorse owner/breeder Adolph B. Spreckels. The building is a three-quarter-scale version of the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur also known as the Hôtel de Salm in Paris by George Applegarth and H. Guillaume. It was completed in 1924.

The museum building occupies an elevated site in Lincoln Park in the northwest of the city, with views over the Golden Gate Bridge. Most of the surrounding Lincoln Park Golf Course is on the site of a potter's field called the "Golden Gate Cemetery" that the City had bought in 1867. The cemetery was closed in 1908 and the bodies were relocated to Colma. During seismic retrofitting in the 1990s, however, coffins and skeletal remains were unearthed.

The plaza and fountain in front of the Palace of the Legion of Honor is the western terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across America. The terminus marker and an interpretive plaque are located in the southwest corner of the plaza and fountain, just to the left of the Palace.

Collections

The Legion of Honor displays a collection spanning more than 6,000 years of ancient and European art and houses the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts in a neoclassical building overlooking Lincoln Park and the Golden Gate Bridge.

European Art
The museum contains a representative collection of European art, the largest portion of which is French. Its most distinguished collection is of sculpture by Auguste Rodin. Casts of some of his most famous works are on display, including one of The Thinker in the Court of Honor. However there are individual works by many other artists, including François Boucher, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, David, El Greco, Rubens, and many of the Impressionists and post-Impressionists—Degas, Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Seurat, Cézanne and others. There are also representative works by key twentieth century figures such as Braque and Picasso, and works of contemporary artists like Gottfried Helnwein and Robert Crumb.

The Grand Canal, Venice, 1908 by Claude Monet

Collection Highlights

• St. Francis Venerating the Crucifix. El Greco, 1595
• St. John the Baptist. El Greco, 1600
• The Tribute Money. Peter Paul Rubens, 1612
• The Age of Bronze. Auguste Rodin, 1875
• Trotting Horse. Edgar Degas, 1881
• The Kiss. Auguste Rodin, 1884
• The Grand Canal. Claude Monet, 1908
• Waterlilies. Claude Monet, 1914

Symphonic organ

Main article: Spreckels Organ

The symphonic organ

In 1924 John D. Spreckels commissioned the Ernest M. Skinner Company of Boston to build the symphonic organ. The museum organ, which is housed inside the museum above the main galleries, has 4 manuals and pedals, 7 divisions, 63 ranks, with a total of 4,526 pipes. Symphonic music is especially effective on the museum organ with its battery of pneumatically-operated percussion instruments and set of tubular chimes. A thunder pedal is used for the musical representation of storms. All together, the organ comprises one Great Organ, a Swell Organ, a Choir Organ featuring a 16 foot Contra Dulciana, Choir Organ Echo, a Solo Organ, Solo Organ Echo, an Arch Organ outfitted with 8 foot Arch Clarion, a 64 foot Gravissima and a 32 foot Bourdon Profunda, in addition to the final Traps that were enclosed in the Choir: Bass drum, castanets, Chinese block, crash cymbal, gong snare drum (f), snare drum (ff), and a tambourine triangle.

Gallery

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  Statue of The Thinker by Auguste Rodin in the front of the museum

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  Fountain in the front

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  Statue in front is El Cid by Anna Hyatt Huntington

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  Joan of Arc on horseback

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  Female side of Aesthetic teapot designed by R. W. Binns and modeled by James Hadley, 1881

Film Appearance

• The Palace is seen in the Alfred Hitchcock movie Vertigo (1958) when Scottie follows Madeleine Elster to the museum, where she stares at one painting for a considerable time.
• The Palace appears in the first Armistead Maupin Tales of the City books and mini-series. The character of Mary Ann Singleton (played by Laura Linney) arranges to meet her neighbor Norman Neal Williams (played by Stanley DeSantis) at the museum, where he meets his fate.
• The character Dr. Crippen in the spoof Maltese Falcon sequel The Black Bird has an office in the Palace.

See also

• 49-Mile Scenic Drive

External links

• Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco - Legion of Honor page
• Photo of Hôtel de Salm, Paris