"Wind and Spray" at The Palace of Fine Arts

I have been looking at this photo of Anna Coleman Ladd’s sculpture, “Wind and Spray,” created for the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition, ever since I became interested in the almost shocking story of this artist’s dedication to maimed soldiers in World War I. 

At almost the same time, I have been observing a classical rotunda in San Francisco from the highway at the juncture where the Golden Gate Bridge arrives in the city, ever since my daughter moved there in 2019. 

It was not until this past weekend that I realized The Palace of Fine Arts, this rotunda, is where the children of “Wind and Spray” once danced, seemingly unaware of the colossal clump of neoclassicm lumbering behind them.  

The redwood-sized classical columns of the Palace, like the redwood forest itself, seem to emerge in groupings along a lagoon not visible from the highway.  And yet, exactly as we pulled into the parking lot this past weekend, I could see through some food trucks and tourists that there was water around the building, and I immediately saw the Ladd photograph in my mind.  I immediately knew where I was, and I knew that sculpture was here, or had been here, even though I had never bothered to find the place that was the Panama Pacific Exposition when I wrote about it.  I think I believed it had been torn down, or it had something to do with Panama, a regrettable unresearched moment for me. 

And another favorite artist, Frank Duveneck, was also featured here, standing in front of this Palace at that same exposition, being awarded a special honor.  His artist friends were there to help him celebrate.  

Both Duveneck and Ladd had special connections to Cape Ann.  Duveneck painted in Gloucester for fifteen summers after his wife tragically died.  The Duveneck Boys, a group of adoring artist friends, followed him there, which is considered one of the moments that established Cape Ann as a serious art colony.  Ladd had a summer studio in Manchester-by-the-sea.  

Duveneck was at the end of his career at the Exposition; he would die four years later, at sixty-seven, and, at thirty-seven, Ladd was in the middle of her career.  Four years later she would establish a mask-making studio in France for soldiers whose faces had been grotesquely disfigured in the World War I trenches.  

Sadly, the lagoon corner where the “Wind and Spray” children once rang-around-the-rosie is only ennobled by a single water plume.  I’d love to know what happened to the bronze children.    

I will be giving a talk on Anna Coleman Ladd on November 21st at the Manchester-By-The-Sea Museum, Manchester, MA. 

If you are interested in more on Ladd and Duveneck, here is the link to the Anna Coleman Ladd video and here is the Duveneck video.