Today, even with a declining industry, the traditional annual blessing of the fishing fleet is an important observance for the entire community and acknowledges the key role of those who farm the seas, often at great risk to themselves. Local clergy officiate at the Blessing and a flower wreath is cast upon the waters honoring the fishermen lost at sea.

Thanks to the temporary closing of the National Galleries East Building on the Mall in Washington D.C., visitors to the Legion of Honor can behold some amazing works.

The paintings in this exhibition are smaller in scale and were originally meant for display within domestic interiors, not museums. They often portray private and personal subjects most familiar to the artists, and were often given as gifts to friends and family.

This profile of Carmen Goudin is quite interesting with the light from the side illuminating an attentive expression. Carmen Gaudin was a favored model used by Henri Toulouse Lautrec in the early 1890's, and is most known for Lautrec's painting The Laundress. She was known to make her living as a laundress, model and prostitute. Lautrec had discovered Carmen while she was leaving a restaurant in 1885. He was reportedly attracted to her for her beauty and tawdriness.

Pierre Bonnard was a member of the avent-Garde post impressionist group, "the Nabis." His paintings have a dreamlike quality, achieved with a unique sense of color and complex imagery and composition.

In Edouard Manet's day, still life was not held in as high regard as paintings with human figures. They were a lower genre, but enjoyed a good market as decorative items for middle class homes. In Oysters, Manet employs a technique used by earlier dutch painters. He breaks the picture plane by the placement of the fork in the foreground. His thick fluid brush strokes appeal to the senses, as would a plate of raw oysters.

Alfred Sisley rarely painted figures, remaining consistent in his love of plein air impressionism. Although he was born to a wealthy family, the family's fortunes were lost due to the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He lived the rest of his life in poverty. His paintings did not increase in value until after his death. His painting Meadow received more than its share of admiring views during our visit to the Legion.

Camille Pissarro believed in the dignity of all people, and often celebrated the dignitiy of common peasants in his paintings. While other impressionists chose their subjects from modern life and leisure, Pissarro preferred rural scenes with common folks pausing from their labors as shown here in The Fence. Critics labeled his work as "unadorned rusticity."

In his twenties, Irish novelist George Moore studied art in Paris. He never made it far as a painter, but he enjoyed the camaraderie of key artists and writers including Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Alphonse Daudet, Stephane Mallarme, Ivan Turgenev and Emile Zola.

Two portraits by Pierre-Auguste Renoir were most warm and intimate. His Young Woman Braiding her Hair captures this woman in a private contemplative moment, lost in a thought with matter of fact eyes, a slightly down turned mouth, and drooping shoulders.

Young Woman Braiding Her Hair 1876
Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1841 - 1919

Woman with a Cat was done in the same year as Young Woman Braiding her Hair, and it appears to be the same model. This time, she's in a more upbeat mood, sharing a tactile moment with her cat. Her cheeks glow as she enjoys the cat's purr while luxuriating in the softness of her pet's fur.

The National Gallery's East Building is closed for renovation. While the work is being done, 70 of the National Gallery's impressionist and post impressionist paintings are spending the summer at San Francisco's Legion of Honor. Along with the Legion's own permanent collection, this exhibition is a delight for art loving visitors.

On view are works from late 19th and early 20th century painters including Eugene Boudin, Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Vincent Van Gogh, and Edouard Vuillard.

desire to aid the Art Association as much as possible, agreed to paint a lot of cartoon pictures on paper to be hung about the streets as an advertisement of the exhibition.

John Martin, the Secretary of the Association, caught at the idea as an excellent one and caused a lot of posters to be printed, containing "Fifteenth Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association," with a large blank space below for a picture.

To fill in the blank spaces, Rix (Julian Rix 1850-1903), Tavernier (Jules Tavernier 1844-1889), Deakin (Edwin Deakin 1838-1923), Strong (Joseph Dwight Strong 1852-1899), Bouvy (Firmin B. Bouvy 1822-1881), Holdredge (Ransome Holdrege 1836-1899), Dick Bush (Richard James Bush 1843-1914), Belle Osbourne

(Belle Osbourne Strong 1858-1953), Anne Hopps (1848-?), Mrs. H.E. Highton, Yelland (Raymond Dabb Yelland 1848-1900), Robinson (Charles Dorman Robinson 1847-1933) and others met at the studio named and worked industriously all day.

While Rix was engaged in painting "On the Verge," representing Denny in a circus costume on the edge of a cliff with two anchors out behind him; Tavernier materialized Rix's brink in an unmistakable portrait as well as a caricature of the most pronounced variety.

Meanwhile Robinson secured a caricature of Tavernier down to the last curl of his mustache, and Strong created a portrait whose innocent spectacled eyes and projecting chin were Robinson all over with a cloud of imbecility added. The artists worked quickly and well, Miss Osbourne's studies being especially rapid and graceful.

He was renowned for not paying his bills. Although his paintings sold well, his taste for entertaining friends more than consumed any profits.

But when it came to painting, San Francisco Argonaut publisher Jerome Hart explained the talent of Jules Tavernier by writing, ""He could do anything with a brush -- or without a brush, for he could paint with his spatulated thumb. His brain worked like lightening, and when he was taken in travail with an idea, his wonderful hands -- for he sometimes painted with both of them -- strove to keep up with his electric brain."

The Walt Disney Family Museum
This museum tells Walt's story from the early days.
(on the Parade Grounds) 104 Montgomery Street,
The Presidio of San Francisco, CA 94129
-- view location on Google Maps --