33 Facts About Ralph Stackpole

Ralph Ward Stackpole was an American sculptor, painter, muralist, etcher and art educator, San Francisco's leading artist during the 1920s and 1930s.

Ralph Stackpole worked as a laborer early in life to support himself and his mother following the death of his father in a lumber mill circular saw accident.

Ralph Stackpole met painter Helen Arnstein while both were teenagers, and she became his first girlfriend.

Arnstein, the daughter of wealthy Jewish art lovers and one year Ralph Stackpole's senior, described him as "a remarkable draftsman" who painted and sketched constantly.

Ralph Stackpole was less impressed with his sense of color than with his precision in line.

Ralph Stackpole returned to San Francisco in 1912 and married Adele Barnes, two months younger than he, an art student of Xavier Martinez and one of the first graduates of the California Academy of Arts and Crafts.

Adele Ralph Stackpole was a perfectionist in many ways, including the precision of her bookplate engravings and the demands she placed on her relationships.

Ralph Stackpole was part of the foursome that founded, early in 1913, the California Society of Etchers.

In 1926, the annual publication listed 46 artist members and 156 associate members: Ralph Stackpole was still a member.

Ralph Stackpole's design replaced the original figures of Catholic saints with figures of industry.

Ralph Stackpole sculpted figures of "Thought" on the columns flanking the half domes of the west facade of the Palace Group.

At the Palace of Fine Arts, Ralph Stackpole produced a kneeling "Venus" on the Altar of Inspiration.

Ralph Stackpole obtained a divorce, and then married Ginette in Mexico.

In late 1923, Ralph Stackpole organized a major art exhibit, in partnership with Piazzoni.

In 1926, Stackpole delivered the William A Coleman Fountain to the city of Sacramento, a Moderne work which celebrated the city's completion of a difficult water filtration project.

That same year, Ralph Stackpole traveled to Mexico City to see Rivera working on some of his 124 frescoes in the courtyard of the Secretariat of Public Education.

Ralph Stackpole accepted an offer to teach at his former school, its name having changed to the California School of Fine Arts [now San Francisco Art Institute].

However, both Dixon and Van Sloun quickly realized that the San Francisco art world "oligarchy" who were obviously smitten with Rivera, including Ralph Stackpole's well-connected patrons, were the same group that they themselves would need to support their own art aspirations.

For much of 1931, Ralph Stackpole partnered with other artists to decorate Pflueger's Paramount Theatre in Oakland, an Art Deco masterpiece.

Ralph Stackpole worked through ten months of 1932 on a monumental pair of sculptures flanking the grand entrance of the Stock Exchange: a male and a female grouping showing the polarity of agriculture and industry, showing in their rounded human shapes the influence of Rivera.

Ralph Stackpole took his son Peter to visit their photographer friend Edward Weston in Carmel in the early 1930s, and the two older men spent the day discussing photography, "the difference between making and taking a photograph, between the intended and the random".

In 1933 and 1934, Ralph Stackpole took part in the Public Works of Art Project assignment to paint murals for Coit Tower.

Many of the murals were executed in styles reminiscent of Rivera, and Ralph Stackpole himself was portrayed in five of them; in one he is shown reading a newspaper announcing the destruction of a Rivera mural in New York.

In 1937, Ralph Stackpole received a commission to sculpt his interpretation of Colorado River explorer John Wesley Powell, for display in the Main Interior Building of the US Department of Interior.

Warneke learned that Ralph Stackpole intended a water scene, so he changed his portrayal of Lewis and Clark to be one of them on land.

In 1938, Ralph Stackpole was contacted by the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Ralph Stackpole responded that the original had deteriorated, and was lost, but that he would be happy to undertake another version in travertine as a commission.

Ralph Stackpole ordered it to a secluded area of Hyde Park, where it was re-discovered in 1987, identified, then concealed all over again within a new ring of trees according to FDR's wishes.

Pflueger made certain that Ralph Stackpole was given a major commission for art in preparation for the Golden Gate International Exposition, called the Pacific Pageant, a world's fair to be held on Treasure Island between San Francisco and Oakland.

Ralph Stackpole worked to create an 80-foot tall frame-and-stucco embodiment of Pacifica, the theme of the exposition.

In 1949, Ralph Stackpole moved to Chauriat in the Puy-de-Dome area of central France, returning with his second wife Ginette to her birthplace.

In early 1964, Ralph Stackpole visited San Francisco to see his family, and he called up his old friend Kenneth Rexroth.

Ralph Stackpole died in France in 1973, his wife in 1978.