William Herbert Dunton (otherwise known as Buck), Illustrator

 William Herbert Dunton (otherwise known as Buck), Illustrator 

 

William H. Dunton: Vaquero (1909); Briscoe Museum

                  He stands, smiling, holding a lasso.  One foot rests partially on his silver-trimmed Mexican saddle with its wide pommel, spread at his feet.  His suede vaquero garb with decorated frogging and tall sombrero are very similar to an actual Mexican ranger's outfit from the Guerra collection displayed near the painting at the Briscoe Museum, as well as the sombrero, lasso and spurs below it.  His pose, white teeth, straight black hair and olive complexion give him a raffish attractive aspect that is brought out even more so by the white background. Modulated only by its white brushstrokes, there is no ground line, only the signature of the artist, W Herbert Dunton at the bottom left.

                  This painting by Dunton was the cover design for the March,1909 issue of The Cavalier (not to be confused with the later, Playboy-like publication of the 1950's). The blank

expanse of background is occupied by the large blue title of the Magazine behind the figure and red publication information to the left.

Duncan Reynaldo as The Cisco Kid

                  Just around the time this issue had come out, Dunton had visited with vaqueros in Chihuahua state, and made numerous sketches of them in action.  This figure is more of a "poster child." We would now think of this as a stereotypical vaquero image, and it seems to have reverberated for decades (think "Cisco Kid).  But it's so attractive and even a little dangerous--not related to any of the contents of the May 1909 issue, but to lure you inside the

magazine and buy it.

                  At the time he designed it, Dunton was one of the most in-demand illustrators of his era. During what cultural historians called "The Golden Age of Illustration"--approximately from 1850 to 1925--illustrators were highly thought of artists, and well paid too.  Books of fiction featured lavish color pictures, and magazines had them as well. The artists would be given stories by the editors of such well-known weeklies and monthlies as Harper's, Scribner's, and Cosmopolitan, and a specified number of illustrations half and/or full-page for it, with a deadline to submit.  The illustrator was expected to provide pictures to amplify and illuminate episodes in the text--much as we still see in children's books.  Many illustrators also did serious paintings (think Winslow Homer and Childe Hassen for example).  The illustrator was allowed to keep his or her original designs after they were used, exhibit and sell them, much as they did with their easel paintings.  By Dunton's day, the method of reproduction was photomechanical, allowing the artist to do their originals in whatever medium they preferred.  Dunton's were mainly oil on canvas, while Frederic Remington's "Hasty Intrenchment Drill in the United States Army, also in the Briscoe, done for Harper's Weekly in 1896, was in mixed media of pencil, pen and gouache on paper.

                  During most of this period, colored images for journals were mostly reserved for cover art; actual story illustrations were done in black and white.  The Briscoe Museum collection has two more examples of Dunton's magazine work, and both were for half pages. The first of these, a half-page example also included three more half pages and one full-page that Dunton made for an issue of The Cosmopolitan (Vol. 41, #21) in 1910 to illustrate the story "Propriety Pratt, Hypnotist. A Demonstration That Dispelled 'Wolfville's' Doubts" by Alfred Henry Lewis. Lewis, a reporter and journalist, also wrote stories about the fictional western town of Wolfville, between 1893 and 1913.  All of them were written in a sort of "old west" dialect, and this one was no exception. It concerned a rather dubious traveling hypnotist-showman, who was not having much success in his trade until he inadvertently managed to reveal a robber, complete with his loot. 

                 The caption under this illustration bears this out: "The Evenin' Before The Professor is to Onlimber On Us He Shows in Red Dog, An' Dan Boggs Rides Across To Be Present."  It's a line right out of the story's text. Dan Boggs was a continuing character in the Wolfville stories, and Dunton has him riding at ease in a yucca strewn desert landscape with a distant town, presumably Red Dog, in the background (in the last illustration Dan Boggs, back to the viewer, cigarette in hand, rides away through the same desert).  All the half-page illustrations have the vital characters in the middle of the space with the edges left white and no defining frames.  This is Dunton's usual presentation.  Full-page illustrations occupy the whole page with larger figures and a simple frame and more sophisticated lighting and props to further the story.  All are in black and white and the originals are rendered with brush on canvas, except the last, which appears to be more of a line drawing.

                  

        As is characteristic of illustrations of the era, costumes and setting elements are meticulously researched and shown.  In Dunton's case, the western elements are as authentic as possible to evoke the story--for Dunton, this would not have been difficult: he had spent years during his twenties working on ranches, hunting and living the cowboy life as it then existed.  He probably had brought back authentic clothing and gear from those years to use as reference.

                  Without the caption, this picture is generic of American southwestern life at the time and could stand in as an opening shot in a western film for several decades to come as well as a lead-in into Lewis's Boggs tale (two of the other illustrations for the story are much more text-specific).

William Herbert Dunton: Battery of U.S. Field Artillery

                  The other black and white oil sketch for a story, this time for Collier's Magazine and marked by the journal's stamp with additional editorial mark-up lines on the unpainted border of the canvas.  This one has no identifying caption; the title "Battery of U.S. Field Artillery Going Into Action" being a descriptive afterthought for exhibition purposes.  A group of military riders--at least seven of them--four on horseback and three on an artillery wagon to their rear, dash across stony desert, broken only by a yucca plant in the left foreground.  The action is conveyed not only by the horses, but the riders, dominated by one in the foreground, his body thrown backwards and emphasized by his extended right arm with the quirt in his hands lengthening the diagonal even further, as well as the rushing riderless horse in front of him.

                  This is certainly a military theme and the landscape suggests the southwestern United States or Northwestern Mexico; does it possibly relate then to the Pancho Villa raid into Columbus New Mexico in 1916 and General Pershing's cavalry and artillery retaliatory expedition soon after?  But the 1916 issues of Collier's extant show no such illustration for any story, although there are quite a number of photographs of the campaign in the issues of that year.

                  The dramatic action painting cries out for a caption, which would certainly help to explain the picture's message of military urgency.  There is therefore a paradox here: the Red Dog illustration is more to set a mood rather than to narrate anything, while the "Battery of Field Artillery" is very narrative--but of what?

                  William Herbert Dunton's career had two distinct phases, that of a successful and prolific illustrator based on the east coast, the second as a serious easel painter who was a member of the Taos Association of Artists in New Mexico, where he lived after 1914, until he resigned from it in 1922, though he remained there until his death in 1936. This shift reflects the idea of the artist-as-illustrator as well as studio painter that existed before the famous Armory Show in New York in 1913, and the subsequent divorce of serious art from commercial artist after this time, when the term "illustrator" became increasingly more pejorative by critics and art historians. Since the serious artist relied on exhibitions and sales for a livelihood, it is not surprising to learn that during the last two decades of his life Dunton was obliged to live in straitened circumstances from the time that he moved west until his death in 1936, though he continued to do commissioned illustrations through the early 1920's to supplement his income, as well as commissioned portraits. The Briscoe Museum has none of Dunton's later paintings, which show his development away from narrative, but they are fully examined and analyzed by Michael Grauer in his biographical article for a Dunton retrospective exhibition at the Panhandle-Planes Historical Museum in 1991. A more recent retrospective of the artist and his paintings at the Harwood Art Museum in Taos and the Phoenix art museum, just ended its run in June, 2024.

                  

 

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The entire story of "Propriety Pratt" with Dunton's five illustrations, can be read at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013738102&seq=21  There is also a second story, "Old Man Enright's Uncle.  Wolfville Entertains a Disciple of Munchausen" by the same author, also illustrated by Dunton, in a later issue of the same year.

The most accessible study that best explores Dunton, his life and the complexity of his career is W.H.Dunton and American Art, by Michael Grauer, and can be found reprinted at https://tfaoi.org/aa/4aa/4aa97.htm.  It formed an introductory essay for a retrospective of the artist's work at the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum on the campus of West Texas A&M University in Canyon Texas.

A lecture Michael R. Grauer about Dunton can be accessed on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU52OHzUd0w

There is also a monograph by Julie Schimmel, The Art and Life of W. Herbert Dunton 1878-1936), Austin, University of Texas Press, 1984.

The Briscoe Museum: A New Use For an Old Building (with some additions

 

 

 

PART 3 - The Briscoe Museum of Western Art

 

The history and evolution of the Library and Circus Museum into the Briscoe Museum of Western Art has been well chronicled.  The building was vacant from the closing of the Circus Museum in 2001 until 2006, when a lease was signed to renovate the structure as a museum of western art.  All the history and politics of this period pertaining to this decision, and the principal persons involved in it (notably Jack Guenther and his wife for its idea, donation of artworks and mustering financial support through involvement of the Briscoe family) have been spelled out in Emily Wilson's introduction in the recently published catalogue, The West Starts Here. A Decade at The Briscoe. The wonderful discussion of what is now the three-part Museum consisting of the now-renovated original library building, the wholly new Jack Guenther Pavilion designed by Lake Flato Architects next door and the McNutt Sculpture Garden next to that designed by the Ten Eyck Landscape Studio is fully discussed and analyzed in an article by Kevin McClellan inThe Architect's Newspaper, published in 2014, shortly after the Museum opened to the public.

As well as the Guenther Pavilion, designed to harmonize with the existing Library/Circus structure, but with contemporary integrity, Lake Flato Architects was also responsible for the renovation of the library and its conversion into a truly functional museum space.  The exterior continued to look as it had always been--edifying inscriptions and all, (though large bronze pieces now flank the main entrance instead of Hertzberg's elephants), with the addition of bridges and passages linking the old building and the new.  This included the demolition of the

Briscoe Museum Lobby

six-story stack area facing the river and redesigning it to accommodate galleries.  With the stacks gutted, the designers were left with three stories of open space.  The solution was to consolidate the mezzanine and the first story where the book stack tower had been and add the third story above it encompassing most of the building space on that floor.  The central space behind the lobby was therefore taller and more open, but by keeping the old mezzanine level with the staircase as a passage, it allowed an entrance there to the second floor of the Guenther pavilion (the Presa Street exit was closed off), and additional exhibition space was added at this level as a continuous balcony surrounding the open center space.  The third floor was divided into five galleries. 

During the restoration, a sealed closet was revealed within the stack space.  It contained several books, including a partial 16th-century King James Bible and later posters.  The reason for its existence is still a mystery.

The ground floor layout remained similar to the original library, with the former children's space converted and redesigned as a gift shop to the right of the lobby entrance, and the old reading 
room to its left divided into an activity space, renamed the Clingman Gallery at the front, a passageway leading to the Guenther Pavilion, and a second special purpose room off the other side of the passage (more on this later).

The only part of the interior that remained intact was the lobby.  "Intact" may be the wrong word here, since what was necessary to recapture its original appearance was to give it a thorough cleaning.  Restoration Associates, who restored the coffered ceiling and buffalo nickel frieze, reported that before work began, the gilt ceiling had become nearly black--tobacco stained--with stress cracks in it from decades of neglect.  The restoration, with workers often on their backs on a high scaffold, took some time, recasting the plaster coffering, and regilding the whole thing--not with metallic leaf this time, but with non-toxic mica-based paint, also used to restore the buffalo nickels.  Original lighting sconces and chandeliers were also cleaned and restored, and the electricity modernized.  What was once cork flooring was replaced by travertine, and the cowhide staircase was replaced by bison hide.  The polished stone on the entry way and its brass transom and doorway were likewise cleaned.

The restored lobby is a work of art unto itself and the warm interior is allowed to shine.  Aside from a Gutzon Borglum bronze head of Abraham Lincoln, small bronzes by Remington and Russel (and a small Russel painting of a buffalo hunt), the only other work of art in it is John Colman's Visions of Change, a colossal bronze showing a buffalo jump and presiding Native American on one side and a tired-looking cowboy overseeing a herd of longhorns on the other--it is so big that the transom had to be removed and then replaced to get it in the door.  An admissions desk is found where the old card catalogues once stood, and behind that is the new two-story gallery space with a full-sized replica of a Wells Fargo Stagecoach.  This room is light-filled with floor-to ceiling windows, facing the Riverwalk.  To the left, under the mezzanine

Mezzanine

walkway is a space for new acquisitions, while to the right rear is the Women's Gallery which contains works of women artists as well as some paintings by men illustrating female subjects.

The mezzanine level has narrow galleries surrounding the open space with paintings and sculpture, and in tribute to Dolph Briscoe, his desk and memorabilia in the area leading to the Guenther Pavilion walkway at this level.

There are five galleries on the top floor; the largest two with diverse works--painting and

3rd floor large galleries

sculpture again, but also saddles, spurs, a chuckwagon and old weapons and traps which brings home the idea that what we call "western art" encompasses far more than conventional paintings and sculpture.

A small gallery named for Kate Marmion, the late granddaughter of Governor Briscoe, has changing exhibitions of smaller paintings and photographs, many of them dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The third floor is completed by two galleries on the opposite side, one dedicated to a scale model of the siege of the Alamo--as populous and large as Hertzberg's model circus, and other Alamo-related material--some of them artifacts, others

Alamo matter

(painting and sculpture) dedicated to telling the legend as it later developed.  The second gallery houses the Guerra Family collection--paintings, clothing and saddles from Mexico, one of which dates to the 18th century.

Finally, back down on the ground floor is the Clingman Gallery, the multi-purpose remains of the original library reading room enhanced by an added vintage fireplace, its upper walls enhanced by sound baffles masked by large canvasses of WPA-era National Parks.  But something of the

Clingman Gallery (former library reading room)

original library is preserved too: glass-fronted vintage bookcases, now filled with a whimsical and changing display of small objects and artifacts.

Across the passage is a unique room: the Kampmann Library Portal.  In the Kampmann's original deed of land to the city, there was a stipulation that the site always be used as a library. It's a small space with some relevant library books and computers for access to the greater library system--which makes the Briscoe the only Museum in America that has a public library in it! 

        

All the exterior inscriptions and images pay tribute to the building's original purpose, but Shakespeare and Cervantes could use some updating--maybe to busts of Sandra Cisneros and Larry McMurtry?

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The very best history of the Briscoe Museum's conception and carrying out is Emily Crawford Wilson's introduction in the Briscoe's recent catalogue, The West Starts Here, A Decade at the Briscoe, published by the Briscoe Western Art Museum in 2024, and available through https://briscoemuseumstore.org/products/the-west-starts-here-a-decade-at-the-briscoe.

 

Kevin McClellan's article, "The Briscoe Western Art Museum," The Architect's Newspaper, January 24, 2014 can be found online at: https://www.archpaper.com/2014/01/briscoe-western-art-museum/

 

Details of the restoration and construction process was reported in the San Antonio Light, October 30, 2013, p. 107.  A conversation with one of the Restoration Associates revealed the use of mica-based metallic paint. 

 

For the mystery closet, see Scott Huddleston, "Texas museum's forgotten closet yields treasures.  San Antonio's forgotten closet yields tresures: 1615 King James Bible. Civil War War photos among 200 items discovered," San Antonio Express-News, Nov. 8 2010.

The Briscoe Museum: A New Use For an Old Building (with some additions)--continued

PART 2: The Circus (1942-2002)

The Library with upper floor additions (1943)

In 1941, plans were made to add another story to the front wings of the San Antonio Public Library, making it level with the rest of the facade and the stacks..  This would provide not book, but gallery space to house a special, very large collection of 40,000 items of circus memorabilia donated by local lawyer and politician Harry Hertzberg--willed to it after his death in 1940 (Herzberg also donated 800 books, mostly about circuses, but also rare books he had personally owned.

 On the exterior, these additions duplicated those of the ground floor, creating a higher, uniformed facade.  Inside, they expanded the old office space on the third floor to house two spacious exhibition galleries containing highlights from the collection.These galleries were opened to the public in January 1943. A catalogue summarizing their contents was published by the library around the same time.  

Numerous posters and photographs on various circus topics adorned the walls, while an antique ticket wagon, such objects as bull-hooks to control elephants, a coach belonging to the celebrated midget Tom Thumb, and a life-sized mechanical model of a famous 19th-century Viennese Clown filled the gallery spaces.

A scale model of an entire traveling tent show, complete with train cars, the big top, auxiliary tents and miniature performers occupied almost the entire floor space of the second gallery.

 

While regular folks were checking out books downstairs, they could also come up and stroll these galleries.  But for scholars and circus aficionados, this large research collection offered much more, and it attracted many people from all over the United States to consult its holdings.  It may have attracted some tourists too: the first part of San Antonio's Riverwalk, virtually adjacent to the building, had been opened in 1941, at just about the same time when construction of new addition was inaugurated.

 

During the period of the Carnegie Library and the newer addition until the late 1940's, public libraries were segregated, but African Americans (called "Race Patrons" at the time) were permitted into the Circus galleries as individuals and school groups during designated hours Thursday evenings. This would become moot when the library system was quietly integrated in the late 1940's.

 

The dual function of the library/circus galleries continued until 1967, when the library and book collections outgrew the building.  The library moved to new quarters up the block at the corner of Martin and South St. Mary's streets the following year, and 27 years later, as the Central Library to its present location, Ricardo Legorreta's architectural marvel--which in turn was renovated in 2023.

 

After the move, the former Public Library building was taken over by the circus collection, renamed the Hertzberg Circus Museum, still fulfilling the Kampmanns' donation terms for the building, as the collection was still part of the library, and Hertzberg's collection of books were still available there for consultation.

 

More space meant more room for more exhibits, and what had been library public spaces were soon filled with additional pieces from the collection. Most of the two original galleries had been occupied with displays of some of Hertzberg's favorite topics: P.T. Barnum, Tom Thumb and the opera singer Jenny Lind.  Now the available galleries created from reading rooms, children's rooms and the lobby itself, were crammed with all sorts of objects: storyboards  and miscellaneous circus memorabilia along available walls, and display cases. Except for the lobby

Tom Thumb's Carriage and Gentry Brothers Wagon in Lobby: after 1967

up to the balcony, all the walls were painted white. Tom Thumb's coach, a second ticket booth from Gentry Brothers' Circus and other objects now occupied part of the former lobby, with no regard for its art deco origins--with so much stuff along the walls and on the floor, why look up at the ceiling--or even notice wall sconces and matching pendant lights at all?

 

A sculpture of an elephant, once in Harry Hertzberg's garden, stood outside the main entrance.  It was subsequently joined by a twin, contributed by a private donor, and in later years these two flanked the entry.

 

Due to the donation specifically to the library of Hertzberg's collection, the Hertzberg Circus Museum remained under the care of the San Antonio Public library system, and the latter was responsible for its maintenance.  In the 1940's and early 1950's tent circuses, big and small, were still crisscrossing the United States, and bringing a grand spectacle to cities and rural towns alike, wherever there were rail lines.  But by the the late 1960's, things began to change drastically.  For one thing, the public library had expanded to nearly 30 branches all over the city, and allotted funds had to cover them all.  By the mid 1980's, when my daughter and I visited it, circuses as they existed in the days of Barnum, barely still--losing out to Mass Media, so nearly everyone could access a wide range of entertainment 24/7 at home (and particularly in pandemics).  Wild animal acts disappeared with the movement for animal rights and conservation.  Evil clowns in horror films were pretty much making them "family unfriendly." The

Sideshow Items: after 1967

many variously "freaks" of the side shows had become persons with disabilities; sumo wrestlers replaced fat men, and tall people could make fortunes in professional basketball, where they became admired and well-paid celebrities.  Daring acrobats could be Olympic gymnasts or find a home in the glitz and bling of Cirque de Soleil.

 

The San Antonio Public Library staff itself were conservators and disseminators of books, not museum curators, and the Hertzberg Circus Museum was suffering from neglect.  By the time we visited, the museum had become rather grimy and seemed more glum and strangely weird than anything else, with its cold dusty lighting and a circus soundtrack playing scratchily in the background.  We left after ten minutes.  

Hertzberg's will had specified that if for any reason the library no longer wanted it or could care for it, the entire collection be transferred to the Witte Museum. The circus museum was closed in 2001, and everything went to the Witte two years later.  The books and his collection of 500 World War I recruiting posters were absorbed into Special Collections at the main branch of the library.  In its new home, circus items are seldom exhibited, except those two outside elephants, which now, brightly restored, stand outside the Naylor Pavilion facing Broadway.

 

After its closure, the building would remain closed and vacant until 2013.

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The original two-gallery collection and its history was nicely profiled in Memories of San Antonio (which is where most of the photos here come from): https://memoriesofsanantonio.com/2023/01/12/the-famous-harry-hertzberg-circus-collection-opened-in-san-antonio-80-years-ago-today/

 

The circumstances of the museum's closing are briefly related in the Library Journal, New York, Vol. 128, Issue 14 (Sept. 1, 2003), p.22.

 

The libraries' integration is chronicled by Paula Allen, "Library's Integration Quietly Rolled Out in 1949, San Antonio Express-News, February 25, 2024, p.A4.

 

A nice catalogue of the Museum in its original two galleries, entitled Circusana, a Guide Book for the Harry Hertzberg Circus Collection, was published by the San Antonio Public Library c.1943.  It can be accessed online at: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015031946430

 

Jonathan Dewbre's brief video, taken during the Hertzberg's heyday can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpBL5TfNJqk.  It gives nice views of the miniature circus.

 

In 2018, PBS's American Experience featured a two-part series on the history of the Circus in America.  While no longer available at PBS, it can be purchased at Amazon.com either for streaming or in DVD form.

The Briscoe Museum: A New Use For an Old Building (with some additions)

                       PART 1: The San Antonio Public Library (1930-1967)

San Antonio Public Library c.1930

1

 

I've already mentioned the history of the buffalo nickel frieze inside the Briscoe Museum. The present-day building has a long history, and now is one element of a three-part museum with a modern exhibition space and event center, and a sculpture garden.  But the main structure that houses its permanent galleries has had two previous lives, first as San Antonio's second public library, and then as a circus museum.

Prior to this, the site had several uses, and I am providing links below for that earlier history and the politics and process about how it finally became the Briscoe. Here, I'd like to talk about the main building itself.  Its location, at the corner of Market and Presa Streets, just off the San Antonio River, had already housed a Carnegie Library opened in 1903, on land donated to the city by Caroline and John Kampmann specifically as a site for a municipal public library.  This elegant neo-Roman building, typical of Carnegie libraries around the United States, outgrew its space within two decades, and a flood downtown critically damaged it in 1921.  By 1928, architect Herbert S. Green was awarded a contract, first to remodel the old building, and subsequently to design a completely new on to replace it.  It was opened with a lot of fanfare in August 1930.

              

Library Main Entrance with Allegories

Green conceived of the building in the then-popular art deco style with clean geometric lines. The tall three- story facade was flanked by two single story wings.  Behind this the structure rose to the height of the facade; and contained the heart of the library, its book stacks. To the rear were two lower wings that matched in size those in front, also holding stacks.. The restrained decorations on its exterior echoed the refined purpose of the library with some literary mottoes thought appropriate by white masculine thinkers of the early 20th century. Over the Presa Street entrance surrounded with classical decorative motifs, a quote by the now-forgotten poet William Ellery Channing: "In The Best Books Great Men Talk To Us.  Give Us Their Most Precious Thoughts, And Pour Their Souls Into Ours." On the building's opposite side is one by James A. Garfield: "Next In Importance To Freedom And Justice Is Popular Education, Without Which Neither Freedom Nor Justice Can Be Permanently Maintained."  This one, surmounted by a frieze of a book within a rayed ring flanked by two Bison, seems ironic in the light of present-day book banning by our Texas legislature.

               

The inscription over the main entrance features the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson between two lions and two opened books: "Books Are The Homes of American People."  This doorway is recessed into a coffered niche that rises nearly the height of the facade, Higher up over the main doorway is a frieze of five venerable buildings which were considered important for for San Antonians: the Parthenon, the Alamo (the completed facade of 1849), Mission Concepción, the U.S. Capitol, the old court of King's College, Cambridge (supposedly the first public library in the world), and the Lincoln Memorial. Finally, flanking the arched portal to either side, near the top of the facade are two busts, to the left, Cervantes and to the right, Shakespeare. These figures represented two of the foremost figures of the European author's canon--Cervantes, perhaps because of the first Hispanic Europeans to settle San Antonio, the Canary Islanders, and Shakespeare for the city's subsequent Anglo-Saxon occupants?

The rest of the exterior decoration was sparing: a frieze of garlands along the upper story, and a couple of footed stands with urns on them on either side of the doorway. On the recessed wall by the Presa Street doorway was a plaque with the Gettysburg Address on it--a survivor of the library's Carnegie predecessor. The exterior was thus a cultured manifestation of the building's noble purpose--indeed the August 3, 1930 issue of the San Antonio Light called it "[An] Elaborate Monument to Literature."

Library Lobby

This dignified decor was continued in the library's impressive two-story lobby--an art-deco-neoclassic fusion. At its top, a gilded plaster ceiling of neoclassic coffering, with a frieze below it containing those buffalo nickel faces.  On three sides, the walls are divided into two decorative stories, the upper painted a dark green, the lower covered by wood paneling with a palmette frieze at its top.  Tying the two levels together are flat green pilasters, with gilded flattened

Library, Catalogues

capitals with geometric marking.  The wood paneled lower portion is divided on its fourth side (facing the entrance) by a wooden-railed balcony which forms a mezzanine; this creates a lower-ceilinged recess under it, which stretches beyond the lobby to the two side entrances.  The mezzanine was reached by a staircase with its risers covered in cowhide.  The staircase continued to a third floor that contained offices.

         

In addition, to the left and the right of the lobby was a reading room to the left and a room dedicated to children on the right (this room's function was later changed and the children's section was relocated to the basement).  The main entry to the library
was flanked by glass windows and pilasters of polished stone.

Library Reading Room

This was what you, in the citizen-borrower part of the building would see and use.  The greater, taller bulk of the building behind this contained six low-ceiling floors of stacks, which housed the
books--the heart of any library.  In 1930, the library operated on a closed stack system: except for some popular books on shelves in the reading room, and a limited access to some first-floor stacks off the same room, prospective readers and borrowers would select their choices from a card catalogue located along the lobby's back wall.  Once submitted, employees called runners would fetch the books from their designated place in the stacks. Everything was classified under a number code called the Dewey Decimal System, as it still is today in public libraries.  Back in the day every book had a corresponding typewritten catalogue card with author, title, and call number.  After the client received the book, they would go to the check-out desk located to the left front of the library.

           

At some point, the rather dimly lit lobby with its wall sconces and its art deco pendant lighting proved impractical for card catalogue scanning and book checkout space, and so drop fluorescent light fixtures were installed, partially obscuring the original coffered decorations above them. Wall air conditioners were also mounted into the windows flanking the main entrance.

Library with Air Conditioning units and fluorescent  lights

                 

The library proved successful and popular.  Soon satellite branches popped up around the city, but this original building was its hub--until the collection and demand outgrew it in 1967, when it was moved. But just over a decade after its founding, changes were afoot.

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All black and white photos courtesy of San Antonio Public Library.  The colored one was taken by the author

There are two sources for the history of the site and the initial Carnegie Library: the first is Emily Crawford Wilson's introductory essay for the Briscoe's Catalogue, The West Starts Here, San Antonio, Briscoe Art Museum, 2023, pp.13-33.  The other is "210 W. Market St - A History," a handout published by the San Antonio Public Library Portal, n.d., which can be accessed at: https://guides.mysapl.org/libraryportal/BuildingHistory

 

For the 1930 library in its original state, see:  "New S.A. Library Opens its Doors to the Public,San Antonio Light,  Aug. 3, 1930, pp.1,22.

                                          The Procession by Paul Moore 

 

                                                    Part III - A Meditation

 

Paul Moore is certainly among the greatest sculptors of his generation, not only with collectors and admirers of American Western art, but anywhere, including numerous commissions for portraits of his contemporaries, public monuments, including the colossal Oklahoma Centennial Land Run Monument in Oklahoma City, a 365 foot epic consisting of 45 human figures and numerous horses and wagons--all life sized, to smaller compositions many of which depict scrupulously researched Native Americans of many different tribes.  In addition, he is a Professor of Sculpture at the University of Oklahoma and has passed his craft down to his sons. He is also a prolific collector of objects and artifacts and has a profound knowledge of the history of American sculpture.  There are two full-length interviews, one produced by the National Sculpture Society (2021) and the other (2017) in the Gallery of America series produced by PBS.  A grand selection of his varied works is available to see on his own website Crown Arts, Inc.  I give you links to all three below. So much has been written and videotaped about him and his body of work by so many who know him, that I urge anyone who is interested to seek expert information from the abovementioned sources.

 

Here, I write only about two small pieces. I have never met Paul Moore, and my only direct experience of his work is The Procession, now in the collection of the Briscoe Museum, which was in the 2020 Night of ArtistsShow and a James Bowie Sculpture prize that year, (this work had also won the prestigious Prix de West the previous year), and another of his works Suspension To The Sun which was featured in the 2021 Night of Artists; I include a photo of it here with some trepidation since I do not know where it is now and who holds the copyright for the reproduction (I hope I will be forgiven).

 

Paul Moore - Suspension to the Sun

Both these works were done around the same period, during the time of Covid, and are part of a group of mixed media pieces that examine the fusion of Native American with Christian beliefs. Some are like altarpieces, and unlike The Profession, these images are confined to their European Gothic frames (except for a Bison head that rides outwards like a cuckoo clock when its doors are opened). Suspension to the Sunshows a single figure centered in front of a plain rectangular frame.  The figure is suspended above the ground by means of ropes (here invisible) tied to wooden pegs that pierce his shoulder muscles.

 

The inspiration for this, as Moore explains on his website, is the Mandan ceremony, called the O-Kee-pa, held in spring when young men of the tribe endured an initiation ceremony that lasted four days.  Part of it consisted of the young men having similar piercing of their shoulder and back muscles as well as by darts and suspended from the ceiling of the Mandan Medicine

George Catlin - Okee-pa Ceremony: The Cutting

Lodge by ropes.  This was only the beginning, for the suspension was not to kill, but an ordeal to achieve visions in a state of trance.  They then went through other ordeals.  George Catlin had been present at the ceremony in 1832 and recorded four episodes from it with broad brushstrokes. Catlin's rapidly-painted initiates look slender and ragged, and they are seen from the distance within the lodge.

 

Moore presents the man, but in a very different way.  The figure is presented frontally, his pierced shoulder muscles looking almost like straps.  His spread-out arms and hand gestures suggest endurance, and also part of his self-offering.  For Catholics, the frontal suspended figure, including the slightly joined feet, may evoke Jesus on the Cross, but his head, tilted backwards to the light, implies an ecstatic experience emphasized by the gold leaf behind him that reflects the studio lighting above it.  The closest thing I can think of is Caravaggio's Conversion of St. Paul, but that light-encompassing figure lies foreshortened away from the

Caravaggio -St. Paul

viewer on the ground, and he's struck blind by his vision. And the heroic nature of Moore's young man with a rope crown, which from the viewer's angle resembles a laurel wreath, tilts towards, and receives the light--an ecstatic vision that climaxes his ordeal. It's a depiction of the crowning moment of a vision quest, part of an age-old and universal initiation. This is a living hero--but all the muscular tension makes it hard to contemplate for long.

 

This work has a similar spiritual power to The Procession, but the effect on the viewer is different.  I as a viewer can receive a powerful spiritual jolt from Suspension, but its upward-gazing intensity can only inspire the onlooker for a short time, and we can never share it. The wooden block, placed in front of the picture with its label, is also a distancing mechanism. The viewer is not invited to participate in this ritual, but to experience it in their own inner thoughts.   The Procession is just the opposite: it appears to move towards you, soon you will be embraced by its spirituality--drawing you in.

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Paul Moore's Suspension in the Sun can be seen on his website: https://crownartsinc.com/art-gallery/ols/products/xn-suspension-to-the-sun-ol9lnb

Others in this same series can be accessed at the same website; click on the years 2019 and 2020.

 

George Catlin's Okee-pa scenes (1832) consist of four paintings.  Three are in the Anschutz Western Art Museum, Denver.  The fourth ("The Cutting Scene") is in the Denver Art Museum https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/edu/object/cutting-scene-mandan-o-kee-pa-ceremony.  These scenes were reissued under Catlin's supervision as lithographs, starting in 1841, and he lectured on them too.  See also George Catlin and His Indian Gallery, Washington, Smithsonian Institution, 2002, pp. 48, 210-215.

                                         The Procession by Paul Moore:  

 

                                            Part II - Other Assorted Processions

 

Both composers and visual artists have had their hand in evoking processions in their respective media.  A lot of narrative musical compositions conjure them up as aural narratives, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Since music moves through time, it's easy to conjure up the auditory experience of a passing parade, soft in the distance, getting louder as it passes by, and then diminishing in volume as it moves away--continuity being established by a repeated cadence, so a person could imagine a passing caravan in Alexander Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880), or a more dynamic one in Ottorino Respighi's Pines of Rome  (1924) where a ghost army of Roman Legionnaires emerges faintly from shadows along the Appian Way to stop very loudly in front of you.).  Even more relevant to Moore's work is Isaac's Albéniz' El Corpus en Sevilla (1906), for its similar theme and its cadence, though on a far more elaborate and theatrical scale.

 

To understand how singular Paul Moore's The Procession is in its visual impact and emotional charisma is, it's also worth doing a bit of classical art historical comparisons.  There are many works of visual art that have processions and parades as their principal subject.  The problem here is to show movement through static media. I am restricting my examples to religious processions, which offers examples going as far back as far as we have organized societies and artists to commemorate them.

 

A famous procession in Egypt, the feast of Opet was celebrated in Luxor from the New Kingdom right up to the introduction of Christianity.  It commemorated the season when the Nile flooded, bringing the time of farming, and was extended to fertility in general.  The parade was the grand finale, when images of the city's greatest gods, Amon-Ra, his wife Mut and their son Khons were ceremoniously carried on boat-like floats from Karnak to Luxor. This journey was depicted in a relief from the Red Temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Karnak, with marchers bearing the boat

Feast of Ophet Temple of Amon-Ra

containing the shrine of Amun-Ra.  Following Egyptian conventions at the time, the shallowly carved representation of marchers, bark and shrine is in a single visual plane, along with accompanying hieroglyphics in the same two-dimensional space.  The bearers are in identical poses, suggesting a cadenced stride of a military cohort.  Movement? Yes, but in two dimensions and not in your own viewing space. It's something you can read rather than taking in in with one glance.

 

Over many centuries, religious processions were generally shown with the participants moving along a horizontal plane, shown with far more three dimensionality, but always parallel to the onlookers, not intruding into their space. The original, brightly painted frieze of the Parthenon is a nice example: a horseman might twist on his mount, but neither he nor his gaze is directed out of his plane.

 

Gentile Bellini - Procession in St. Mark's Square

The same can be said of the marchers in Gentile Bellini's Procession in St Mark's Square (Venice, Accademia) : in spite of the deep perspective of the square behind them, the marchers are still seen marching parallel to the picture's viewer, but not deviating from their confined zone.

 

It's when we get to 19th and early 20th centuries that romantic narratives of religious processions really get going, the painted equivalents of Borodin, Sorolla and Respighi.  But how parades and their progress is conveyed has to be done statically, unless it is things like Chinese hand scrolls, where the time of a journey is sequenced by rolling through it, achieved by only unrolling and then rerolling a portion of it to reveal a moment of progress.

 

Solomon A. Hart -Simhat Torah at Livorno Synagogue

An example of a narrative of a procession in a single painting is Simchat Torah at Livorno Synagogue by the British-Jewish academician Solomon Alexander Hart in the New York Jewish Museum (1850).  It commemorates the annual celebration of the Torah.  In this scene all of the torah scrolls are being processed through this Italian synagogue by the leading members of the congregation, led by the Rabbi.  As in Moore's sculpture, the marchers of various ages wind from the ark where they are kept, behind the reader and some singers on the elevated bimah or
reading platform.  They are draped in prayer shawls as they carry the scrolls, covered richly colored cases and polished silver staves or crowns.  Unlike Moore, the action stays within the setting, and appears to be passing towards the right, where an elderly congregant walks to meet them so that he can touch the scrolls with his own shawl.  Other male figures, to the left and right, watch the scene in reverence. Maybe Livornese Jewish males dressed in such oriental robes for festivals back then.  Hart had visited the old synagogue in Livorno and this is an accurate recording of the building.  It is beautiful and sumptuous, but presumed spectators in front of the canvas are viewers only to a passing spectacle; they are not invited to participate. 

 

Ilya Repin Religious Procession in the Kursk Governate

Marchers and witnesses alike in Ilya Repin's Religious Procession in the Kursk Governate (1880-1883) (Tretyakov Museum) are also a passing spectacle, but on a much grander and more chaotic scale. A lot has been written about this painting and its societal commentary, and I give you references to the best of these analyses available online below.  The main point here is that like Hart's painting, the vast procession and its spectators are all conceived on a diagonal that passes to the right of the viewer, but not into his or her space and part of its purpose is to focus on varying individuals and the diverse roles they play.  The viewer is emphatically not a participant in the event nor is invited to be.

 

Closest in the shared tradition of Catholic holy religious processions to Moore's work is Joaquín Sorolla's Los Nazarinos (1914) showing a Holy Week Procession (which is close to Albéniz' musical procession too).  A group of hooded figures parade with a crucifix and a paso image of  the Virgin under a canopy, down an urban street in Seville--identified as so by the iconic tower of the city's cathedral in the background.  It has been observed, though, that there is no street in the city that offers this particular view of the tower; the black caparotes of the marchers, and the image of the Virgin are not specific to a particular confraternity or church. Though processing generally forwards, the figures are directed slightly to the left, as is the gaze of the left hooded

Joaquin Sorolla -Los Nazarenos

foreground figure, and the crowd of spectators hems the marchers in.  And there is a further difference: the Nazarinos painting is part of a large series of murals commissioned by Archer Huntington for the Hispanic Society in New York and carried out by Sorolla between 1911 and 1919.  The Nazarinos are located in a corner, with a much larger painting of bulls being wrangled to transportation at its left (El Encierro)at its left, and a painting of Toreros in Seville's bullfight to its right, and is therefore an incident within a much larger entity depicting various regions of Spain and their typical activities.

 

It can be said that the church in Moore's Procession is generic too.  He did small works of acrylic paint and gold leaf of various southwest mission facades, but the isolated one in The Procession appears more generic.  And none of these painted or sculpted comparisons discussed above have the same jolt of movement outwards, and the almost magic realism of the procession leader, at once someone identifiable and yet Everyman. Coming at you.

 

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Recordings of Borodin's Steppes exist in several versions in YouTube, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4tlQxaHetI.  Those Legionnaires really march in a  remastered recording of Fritz Reiner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9El5Hzh3jM, while Gustavo Díaz-Jerez rendition of Corpus is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_55-4CpCro.  But there are many versions of each piece to choose from online. Have fun and close your eyes!

 

Feast of Opet relief shown is from the Red Temple of Opet.  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/history-magazine/article/ancient-egypt-royal-feast

 

An Explanation of the Parthenon frieze and its participants by Paulina Wegrzyn can be found at "The Parthenon Friezes: Their Story Explained" TheCollector.com, August 2, 2020, https://www.thecollector.com/parthenon-frieze/.

 

For Bellini's painting, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procession_in_St._Mark%27s_Square

 

Chinese hand scrolls: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chhs/hd_chhs.htm

 

Old photos of Livorno's synagogue before its destruction can be seen at https://livornodailyphoto.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-old-synagogue.html

 

For two of the best accessible analysis of Repin's monumental work, see the article by Ben Pollit for the Kahn Academy at https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/x4910f52e:eastern-europe-1800-1900/wanderers/a/ilya-repin-krestny-khod-religious-procession-in-kursk-gubernia

 And also the analysis by David, the author of a blog on Russian icons at  https://russianicons.wordpress.com/tag/ilya-repin/

 

On Sorolla see Wikipedia for information and a complete list of the Visions of Spain

paintings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_of_Spain

A specific discussion of Sorolla's Nazarinos, its context and meaning is available at:

Dr. César Lopez Gomez- Joaquin Sorolla "Los Nazarenos," 1914. Nueva York, Hispanic Society of America -- https://cesarlopezgomez.com/joaquin-sorolla-los-nazarenos-1914-nueva-york-hispanic-society-of-america/