California De luxe hotel off the Legion off Honor

See also: Legion of honor (homonymy)

Located in Lincoln Park, in the west of the city, this museum is one of most remarkable of San Francisco. The sight on the Golden Spoils Bridge, the collection of some 80 works of Rodin like its architecture, directly inspired of the museum of the Légion of honor of Paris, make an appreciated place of the tourists of it. Built in remembering 3 600 Californian soldiers died in France during the First World War, it opened its doors in 1924 thanks to the efforts and with the fortune of the Spreckels family.

The collections are varied (sculptures, objects, paintings of all the continents and since the Moyen-âge). The great names of painting are present there: El Greco, Brown the, Rubens, Rembrandt, David, Billhook, Monet ( Large Channel of Venice , Nymphea ), Degas, Renoir, Manet, Pissaro, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Picasso ( the Speaker ), Dali, Matisse, etc Of the temporary exhibitions is regularly organized there.

History of the museum

In 1915, Mrs Alma Spreckels fell in admiration in front of the French house built for the International exhibition from San Francisco. This building was the counterpart of the Palais of the Legion of honor to Paris, high at the 18th century on left bank of the Seine and called in the beginning “Hotel of Salm”. It had been conceived by the architect Pierre Rousseau in 1782 for Prince Frederic III of Salm-Kyrbourg. It was then acquired in 1804 by the State to install there the Order of the Légion of honor.

Alma Spreckels persuaded her husband, Adolph B. Spreckels, a tycoon of sugar, to make building the new museum of art of the town of San Francisco. When the exposure of 1915 was finished, the French government gave the authorization to build a permanent counterpart; but the First World War stopped work until 1921.

Arranged on a site baptized “the end-of-world” ( Land's End ), the museum opens its doors the November 11th 1924 in memory of the Californian soldiers died on the battle fields of the north of France.

The architect George Applegarth had wished a modern museum in a model reduced to the three-quarters of the original building of Paris. He was renovated and increased by Edward Larrabee Barnes and Mark Cavagnero between 1992 and 1995 to reinforce his structure, work made necessary by the seismic risk in the area.

Recent acquisitions

anthropomorphic Egyptian Sarcophagus, towards 664/343 before J. - C., wood of cedar. Gift of Diane B. Wilsey.
Andrea della Robbia (1437 - 1525), Virgin with the Child with Putti , about 1490-1495, relief in ground-cooked painted.
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (1829 - 1908), Love and the young girl ( Coils and the Maiden ), 1877.

Gallery

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