The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-10-06


gold, the richest, softest, the most subdued
and unobtrusive of all colors on the globe.
II is more than old gold, it is quiet clay,
clay to which God laid hand in the first
fashioning of man, the patient, silent
brown of earth, the mother of all colors,
into which all others melt. as man melts
back into the clay from which he came.
The color OF Mexico is red, the dominant
color, as if in testimony of the blood that
has been she'd there so continually from
the time when Cortez burned his ships at
Vera Cruz. The color of Oregon is emer-
aid, the dairy maids green. But Califor
MIA, true to her story and traditions, is
solid old gold, the tawny lions gold.
A savage prefers new brass, because it is
brighter. We read now and then of some
new rich man or woman buying some rus
set old bronze abroad and having it pol
ished up to an lmpudent brightness. so as. to
make 1t challenge admiration in his or her
hall; destroying what nature has spent
centuries In softening and making restful
and quiet. Colors have sense. a language
ali their own. You can hear the comm on
est eounter-jumper talking of loud col
ors as you contemplate his wares. No
loud color ever vet had a friend among
cultivated people. True, nature is the
mother of all colors, even the loudest and
livelieSt, but she is such a harmonious
mother that she never even arrays
geranium in RED or a poppy in yellow
without garmenting of green to soften
its gaudy tones.
China must have adopted her hideous
yellow flag far back in the dawn of history,
and then before she had deve Hoped a civil
lied sense Of color the blight OF ar
rested development must have fallen upon
10 a mo Ch IA will
never paint picture or write q poem
while that braZen flag fiaunts so contin-
ually from her battlements.
There is a huge, lazy old lion in the Lon
don Zoo, so tawny and so Californian in
his unasserted majesty that l used to go
the yellow fog when nomesick and lone
some. He looked so like as if brother of
California. His tawny flank had life in it,
ike the life you see in the flank or hollow
of some suuburned California hill of grasses
when the embers of the year glow low and
fervid, quivering with color, heat, life.
60 out where our great, tawny hills
with their tumbled names have pushed
out their long, strong paws into the plain,
and the hills lie there resting huge nose
on the pushed out paws, and see the
TANKS OF the hills quivering, glowing,
breathing under the heat, the coIors hid
ing, shifting, sitting through the grasses
every seeond-colors that are alive and
there you can see, O million times magni-
fled, my old London lion, and com pre-
bend If you care to why loved him so.
This soft and restful color that is alive
that listens, pulses and Sc entirely per-
vades our tawny California in seasons
peculiarly our own. True, you can see
this life, this living, quivering color, in
Nevada and Utah and Arizona, especially
the latter, but ii has not the old-gold rich
ness, not the lions strength in it, in those
places; for the soil beneath is more aka
line and lighter in tone. This color which
is so alive, so quietly and yet so intensely
alive, and so rich IN its lion hue and
strength, is not born of a day. 1t is the
flower of the full, fervid year. You see it
only perfectly as the season winds to its
close and song OF the grashopper is heard
In the land. And it is only out of the long
ardent season, the glowing cruclble of the
California year, that this lions gold is
melted. 1t Is no more to be found on the
other side of the Rocky Mountains than is
gold dust in the ground. The "autumnal
tlnts" and the majestic march of the sea-
son" of which they sing and speak SO
much on the Atlantic side is an imperti-
nence ID comparison as new brass to old
gold. But down in Virgins on the Pied
mont side in the region of Jefferson's
grave there is to be found some very rich
and quiet color, especially when the sassa-
mas lanes Lie lIOUl TIC SuuS6L VI the wear,
The leaves of this tree take on russell, no.
loud but rich, ripe, restful, almost akin to
old gold, so quiet and strong and steady as
the tree flames up OUT of the ground
that you might fancy Elijah ascending to
heaven in his chariot of fire.
Last week three migratory women
walked painting up to my open door. They
were from Boston, New York, or some
other remote and colorless region the
other side the Rockies. For, although
they had walked q glorious mile over and
amid my tawny living and breathing lions,
they had not seen even SO much as the
tossing name and tail of single one of
them. And. horrors of all horrors one of
these foreign women had red parasol |
Fancy r-paint. CORY, bull-fghting, roar
ing red parasol right in the midst of all
this universal and harmonious quiet
OF old gold. 1t was as if she had
run dagger to the heart of my old
lion and gloated to see the blood. l
wanted to scream, to run out and yell fire
hre! IRE! They wanted to see me, they
said; wanted to see me with their mouths,
for their mouths were all and all at once
wide open. And all this sea of gold and
glory OF silent, living color right under
their feet! Shut your mouth and open
your eyes in CALIFORNIA; October.
For Gods sake, madam, shut up-shut
up that frightful old parasol. You will
set the old gold grasses afire with i'll"
And l reckon they thought me rude for
they at once began chorus of complaints
about the distance and the drought and
the dust, especially the dust-God's rest
full, quiet dust of old gold. But for all l
said to them, that bloody and belligerent
parasol in the hands of that blind Amazon
from far-off, colorless Boston or New York
moved detiantly about the grounds for a
full hour. 1t almost literally burned a
hole in one of the prettiest autumn days l
ever saw, day garmented in gold and
imperial purple. And / now give notice
that the very next time / see such an ex-
asperating red parasol coming up nv rest
full hills of old gold am going to turn nv
bull loose and head him in that direction.
Now do not fancy that claim to be any
sort of Columbus in this discovery of liy-
ing and breathing color in California. 1t
is nothing new to our painters-let me say
to our great painters. For we have great
painters, the very greatest in possibilities,
because we have the very greatest light.
ground color. But I do not know that
any one of them has yet dared to paint
this color-I will not say riot of color.
or convention of color, or symphony
OF color, but rather, in the absence
of a better word. this silence of color, on
canvas. And itmay be next to impossi-
BILE to do it. You may guess how hard it