William de Leftwich Dodge
1867 – 1935

Dodge with detail from "The Purchase", one of six murals totaling 200 feet in length,
located in the Tower of Jewels at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.

 

 

The de Young Museum is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Panama–Pacific Exposition with the exhibition, Jewel City: Art from San Francisco’s Panama–Pacific International Exposition

RECENT PRESS:

Dodge Mural

1915 fair’s huge mural sees the light after years in hiding

100 years: de Young showcases works of art not seen together since the 1915 SF world’s fair

 

The murals were located in the arch of the Tower of Jewels, just below the coffered ceiling,
hung as two 100 foot triptychs facing one another.

 

William de Leftwich Dodge was born in 1867 in Liberty (renamed Bedford), Virginia, but spent most of his childhood and adolescence between Paris and Munich where his mother resided to pursue her art study. In 1895 he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme.

At age nineteen he was awarded the gold medal of the American Art Association for a history painting depicting the death of Minnehaha, the subject of Longfellow's popular poem, Hiawatha (now in the collection of the American Museum of Western Art, Denver). This and other of his figurative work was painted from life and based on careful research to ensure its historical accuracy. In 1893, while still very young, he was commissioned to decorate the dome of the central building of the Colombian Exposition, the famous "White City" in Chicago.

He emerged as one of the most prominent muralists of the era, at a time when murals were regarded as an essential element of most public architecture, theaters, municipal buildings, and even some private homes. Dodge died in New York in 1935.

Emery Battis. Artist Biographies for the exhibition American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000).

 

"Portrait of the Artist", an article about my grandfather and his commission to create the murals in the Northwest Pavilion of the Library of Congress - Thomas Jefferson Building.

 

 

 

Atlantic and Pacific

 

 

Discovery

 

The Purchase

 

 

Gateway of All Nations

 

 

Achievement

 

 

Labor Crowned