This panel is more pleasing under illumination. In
the opposite portal is Childe Hassam's painting, Fruits and Flowers.
This again is a conventional treatment, showing very obviously vegetable
and human fruits and flowers. The arrangement is tediously symmetric,
the coloring is rather weak, and there is a wooden stiffness about the
figures. The panel makes a pleasant spot of color, but is by no means up
to the standard of the canvases in Hassam's room in the Palace of Fine
Arts.
The panel over the main doorway, at the north end of the court, is by
Arthur F. Mathews, and is far superior to the other two, though
unfortunately placed in a dark spot. It is called by the artist A
Victorious Spirit. The central figure, gorgeously suggesting the Spirit
of Enlightment, protects Youth from the discordant elements of life from
materialism and brute force, as represented by the rearing horse and
militant rider. Youth is attended by the peace-bringing elements of
life, by Religion, Philosophy or Education, and the Arts. The symbolism
here is sound, the composition and drawing unusually good, and the
coloring quite wonderful-especially in the orange-yellow robe of the
Spirit. The full deep colors are in sharp contrast with those of most of
the Exposition murals.
No one should leave this court without first pausing to enjoy the vista
through the north doorway, showing Albert Jaeger's spirited Sacrificial
Bulls on the Agriculture and Food Products Palaces, the long colonnade
of the Court of the Four Seasons, and the bit of bay and hills beyond.
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