Ralph Stackpole

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.{{sfn|Starr|2002|p=151}} At sixteen, he came to San Francisco to study at the California School of Design (now San Francisco Art Institute) beginning in 1903; he was influenced strongly by Arthur Frank Mathews, muralist and painter at the school. He met painter Helen Arnstein (later Helen Salz) while both were teenagers, and she became his first girlfriend. Arnstein, the daughter of wealthy Jewish art lovers and one year Stackpole's senior, described him as "a remarkable draftsman" who painted and sketched constantly.{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/sketchesimprob00salzrich |title=Sketches of an improbable ninety years|last=Salz |first=Helen Arnstein |author2=Suzanne Reiss |year=1975 |publisher=The Regents of the University of California and the Trustees of the Judah L. Magnes Memorial Museum|access-date=April 16, 2010|location=Berkeley }} She was less impressed with his sense of color than with his precision in line. Stackpole polished his craft by working with artists at the Montgomery Block, playfully called "Monkey Block", a bohemian hangout which included studios for painting and sculpture. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, he used a grant of {{US$}}200 (${{formatnum:{{Inflation|US|200|1906|r=-2}}}} in current value) to travel to France to attend the École des Beaux-Arts in the class of Antonin Mercié in 1906–1908, exhibiting at the Salon in 1910.{{cite book |title=Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts |first=Juliet Helena Lumbard |last=James |url=http://www.books-about-california.com/Pages/Sculpture_of_the_Exposition/Biographies.html |chapter=Appendix: Biographies of the Sculptors |publisher=H. S. Crocker Company |year=1915 |location=San Francisco |access-date=April 23, 2010 |archive-date=February 13, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110213135654/http://www.books-about-california.com/Pages/Sculpture_of_the_Exposition/Biographies.html |url-status=live }} It was in Paris that he became friends with painter Diego RiveraRivera, Diego ‘’Portrait of America: With an explanatory text by Bertram Wolfe’’, Covici Friede, Publishers, New York, 1934 p. 12. He painted under Robert Henri in New York in 1911.{{sfn|Starr|2002|p=151}}

Stackpole returned to San Francisco in 1912 and married Adele Barnes, two months younger than he, an art student of Xavier Martínez and one of the first graduates of the California Academy of Arts and Crafts. Adele Stackpole was a perfectionist in many ways, including the precision of her bookplate engravings and the demands she placed on her relationships. On June 15, 1913, the Stackpoles' son, Peter, was born in San Francisco.{{cite web|url=http://www.creativephotography.org/documents/findingAid/AG169StackpolePic.pdf |title=Finding Aid for the Peter Stackpole Archive |publisher=Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona |access-date=April 15, 2010 |location=Tucson |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080720013216/http://www.creativephotography.org/documents/findingAid/AG169StackpolePic.pdf |archive-date=July 20, 2008 }}

Stackpole was part of the foursome that founded, early in 1913, the California Society of Etchers (CSE). The other founders were Robert B. Harshe, an etcher and art professor at Stanford University, etcher and educator Pedro Lemos, who taught at the San Francisco Institute of Art, and Gottardo Piazzoni, an Italian-American painter and muralist who was Stackpole's master in France. The CSE exhibited twice in 1913, and grew to 78 artist members and five associate after two years.{{cite book |title=Art in California |publisher=R. L. Bernier |date=1916 |location=San Francisco |pages=116–120 |chapter=The California Society of Etchers |last=Harshe |first=Robert B. |author-link=Robert B. Harshe }} In 1926, the annual publication listed 46 artist members and 156 associate members: Stackpole was still a member. Decades later, the CSE merged with another group to become the California Society of Printmakers.

File:Stackpole 1915 Industrial tympanum.jpg

Around the same time, Stackpole was commissioned to sculpt architectural features for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition, a major assignment that was to take two years to complete, even with the aid of assistants. To give a grand entrance portal to the Palace of Varied Industries, he completed a copy of the main entrance to the Hospice of Santa Cruz, built in Toledo, Spain in the 16th century. Stackpole's design replaced the original figures of Catholic saints with figures of industry.{{cite book |last=Macomber |first=Ben |url=https://archive.org/details/jewelcityitspla02macogoog |title=The Jewel City |publisher=J.H. Williams |year=1915 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/jewelcityitspla02macogoog/page/n32 28], 33, 195–196}} His works for the Palace of Varied Industries included "Man with a pick", "Tympanum group of Varied Industries", "New World Receiving Burdens of Old", "Keystone figure", and "Power of Industry". Stackpole also 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, Stackpole produced a kneeling "Venus" on the Altar of Inspiration. Visitors wishing to view "Venus" were kept some {{convert|50|yd|m|-1}} away by a man-made lagoon.

With Piazzoni, Stackpole went to France again in 1922, taking his family; he enrolled his nine-year-old son in the École alsacienne, a private school in Paris. The two artists wished to investigate the most modern trends in Europe,{{cite journal|last=Ryan |first=Beatrice Judd |date=March 1959 |title=The Rise of Modern Art in the Bay Area |journal=The California Historical Society Quarterly |volume=38 |issue=1 |pages=1–5 |doi=10.2307/25155221 |jstor=25155221 }} and they encountered Diego Rivera.{{sfn|Starr|2002|p=235}} While there, Stackpole's marriage unraveled, and he returned to the Bay Area in 1923 with a 24-year-old French still life artist and model named Francine Mazen, nicknamed "Ginette"; his wife and son returned after the school year to take up residence across the bay in Oakland. Stackpole obtained a divorce, and then married Ginette in Mexico.

In late 1923, Stackpole organized a major art exhibit, in partnership with Piazzoni. This was the first large-scale art show in San Francisco since 1915; there had been no expected rush of artists after the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The exhibit, held in Polk Hall in the Civic Auditorium, was companion to a nearby print exhibit which included Gauguin and Matisse works. Critic and author Laura Bride Powers felt that the event was a disappointment—it displayed "inconspicuous examples" of leading artists, and failed to show any Picasso, avant-garde or Dadaist works.{{cite book |last=Bosa |first=Nancy |title=The Society of Six: California colorists |publisher=University of California Press |year=1997 |page=101 |isbn=0-520-21054-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GlweSlTMfqMC&pg=PA101 |access-date=2016-10-05 |archive-date=2020-08-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819112009/https://books.google.com/books?id=GlweSlTMfqMC&pg=PA101 |url-status=live }}

In 1926, Stackpole delivered the William A. Coleman Fountain to the city of Sacramento, a Moderne work (centrally located in what is now known as Cesar Chavez Park) which celebrated the city's completion of a difficult water filtration project.{{cite web |url=http://www.sacramentoheritage.org/files/Tour_1_-_J_and_K_Street_Walking_Tour_-_Map.pdf |title=Sacramento Walking Tour Map |publisher=Sacramento Heritage |access-date=April 16, 2010 |archive-date=July 27, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727230850/http://www.sacramentoheritage.org/files/Tour_1_-_J_and_K_Street_Walking_Tour_-_Map.pdf |url-status=live }}{{cite journal |url=http://www.sachistoricalsociety.org/userfiles/file/v6i1-4a15.pdf |title=Turning Mud Into Liquid Gold: A History of Sacramento's Water Supply, 1849–1924 |last=Carunchio |first=Kevin |journal=Sacramento History Journal |volume=VI |number=1–4 |publisher=Sacramento Historical Society |pages=275 |access-date=April 16, 2010 |archive-date=July 27, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727230447/http://www.sachistoricalsociety.org/userfiles/file/v6i1-4a15.pdf |url-status=live }} That same year, Stackpole traveled to Mexico City to see Rivera working on some of his 124 frescoes in the courtyard of the Secretariat of Public Education.{{sfn|Starr|2002|p=235}} Returning with a small Rivera painting, Stackpole gave it to San Francisco Arts Commission president William Gerstle (who was initially unimpressed), and began a several-year effort to bring Rivera to work in California.{{sfn|Starr|2002|p=235}}

Stackpole accepted an offer to teach at his former school, its name having changed to the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) [now San Francisco Art Institute]. For a stretch of almost twenty years,{{cite web |url=http://www.paramounttheatre.com/history3.html |publisher=Paramount Theatre |work=Detailed History |title=Ralph Stackpole (1885–1974) |access-date=April 23, 2010 |archive-date=January 8, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100108012750/http://www.paramounttheatre.com/history3.html |url-status=live }} he taught a number of subjects. Dorr Bothwell studied sculpture under Stackpole, then the head of the Sculpture Department, and thought him to be sexist—she said he told the women in the class that "the place they really belonged was in bed."{{cite book |last1=Trenton |first1=Patricia |first2=Sandra |last2=D'Emilio |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q0PoEZcs_csC&pg=PA25 |title=Independent spirits: women painters of the American West, 1890–1945 |publisher=Autry Museum of Western Heritage; University of California Press |year=1995 |page=25 |isbn=0-520-20203-1 |access-date=2016-10-05 |archive-date=2020-08-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819200533/https://books.google.com/books?id=Q0PoEZcs_csC&pg=PA25 |url-status=live }}

File:Stackpole-Industry-siteplacement.jpg building.]]

Kenneth Rexroth wrote of Stackpole in 1929 that "He knew everybody in town from top to bottom ... and he took us everywhere."{{sfn|Starr|2002|p=151}} Stackpole's sizable San Francisco studio at 716 Montgomery (adjacent to Montgomery Block) served as a social center for San Francisco's artist community. Photographer Dorothea Lange rented upstairs studio space there in 1926, and Helen Clark and Otis Oldfield, both artists, married there the same year.{{cite web |url=https://archive.org/stream/oldfieldsfartcom00helerich/oldfieldsfartcom00helerich_djvu.txt |publisher=Internet Archive |title=Otis Oldfield and the San Francisco art community, 1920s to 1960s: oral history transcript |year=1982 |access-date=March 28, 2018}} Lange's husband Maynard Dixon had his studio next door, and the Stackpole and Dixon families were close—both men were members of the Bohemian Club.

Throughout the 1930s, Stackpole worked frequently with architect Timothy Pflueger on various commissions. Beginning in 1929 when the two men first met, Stackpole was given responsibility for selecting the artists who worked to execute and augment Pflueger's basic design scheme for the San Francisco Stock Exchange and its associated Tower, especially the Luncheon Club occupying the top floors of the Tower.Poletti, 2008, pp. 90–91. Stackpole said later of the experience, "the artists were in from the first. They were called in conference and assumed responsibility and personal pride in the building."{{cite journal |last=Stackpole |first=Ralph |date=May 1948 |title=(untitled)|journal=Art & Concert}} At the Sansome Street tower entrance, Stackpole worked on a scaffolding with a crew of assistants to direct carve heroic figures in stone.Poletti, 2008, pp. 92–93. After the building was completed, Stackpole was finally successful in winning a commission for Rivera; Pflueger became convinced that Rivera would be the perfect muralist for decorating the staircase wall and ceiling of the Stock Exchange Club. This was a controversial selection considering Rivera's leftist political beliefs in contradiction to the Stock Exchange's capitalist foundation. Into the mural, Rivera painted a figure of Stackpole's son Peter holding a model airplane.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}}

During his stay, Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo lived and worked at the studio, becoming in the process lifelong friends with Stackpole and Ginette. They met tennis champion Helen Wills Moody, an avid painter-hobbyist, who soon agreed to model for Rivera at the studio.{{cite web |url=http://wikimapia.org/1055476/716-Montgomery-Street |publisher=Wikimapia |title=716 Montgomery Street, San Francisco |access-date=April 23, 2010 |archive-date=May 23, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100523130312/http://wikimapia.org/1055476/716-Montgomery-Street |url-status=live }} Neighbor Dixon saw the attention, and the American money being given to Rivera, and with etcher Frank Van Sloun organized a short-lived protest against the Communist artist. However, both Dixon and Van Sloun quickly realized that the San Francisco art world "oligarchy" who were obviously smitten with Rivera, including Stackpole's well-connected patrons, were the same group that they themselves would need to support their own art aspirations.{{sfn|Starr|2002|p=235}}

For much of 1931, Stackpole partnered with other artists to decorate Pflueger's Paramount Theatre in Oakland, an Art Deco masterpiece. A bas-relief scene of horses, waves and a central winged figure was placed over the stage's proscenium arch, finished in gold-toned metal leaf—the work jointly designed by Stackpole and Robert Boardman Howard.Poletti, 2008, p. 118. The design worked into Pflueger's metal grille ceiling grid likely came unattributed from Stackpole's sketches. Pflueger was an able project leader; Stackpole later described his involvement: "He was the boss alright, as an architect should be ... He would call the plays just as a symphony conductor does ... There wasn't a lock, molding, or window that he did not inspect in the drawings and in the actual building with the utmost thoroughness and care."Poletti, 2008, p. 128.

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. Chiseling into {{convert|15|ST}} of Yosemite granite, he wore goggles and a mask. The unveiling ceremony took place in the cold of New Year's Eve, with Mayor Angelo Rossi joining Stackpole, Pflueger and artisans in smocks.

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". This conversation, and the 1932 exhibit by Group f/64, a collection of innovative photographers such as Weston and Ansel Adams, was later seen as foundational to Peter Stackpole's conception of photography.

In July 1933, Stackpole completed a model of a design to be incorporated into the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge's central anchorage on the western side. The anchorage, to be constructed of concrete rising {{convert|197|ft}} above the water, was to display over much of its height a bare-chested male figure standing solidly between the two suspension spans. However, Arthur Brown, Jr., Pflueger's colleague on the Bay Bridge project, did not like the scale of the figure, which belittled the bridge. Engineer Ralph Modjeski agreed, writing "The gigantic figure which is proposed for the centre anchorage is out of place for a structure of this kind and would not harmonize with the end anchorage."Poletti, 2008, pp. 164–166. Stackpole's design was abandoned in favor of a largely flat expanse of poured concrete.

In 1933 and 1934, Stackpole took part in the Public Works of Art Project assignment to paint murals for Coit Tower.{{cite news |last=Rexroth |first=Kenneth |url=http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/sf/1964.htm#Ralph%20Stackpole%20and%20the%20Coit%20Tower%20Murals |work=San Francisco Examiner |publisher=Bureau of Public Secrets |title=Ralph Stackpole and the Coit Tower Murals |date=February 23, 1964 |access-date=April 23, 2010 |archive-date=March 8, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100308235002/http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/sf/1964.htm#Ralph%20Stackpole%20and%20the%20Coit%20Tower%20Murals |url-status=live }} Many of the murals were executed in styles reminiscent of Rivera, and Stackpole himself was portrayed in five of them;Johnson, 2003, p. 20. in one he is shown reading a newspaper announcing the destruction of a Rivera mural in New York.

In 1937, Stackpole received a commission to sculpt his interpretation of Colorado River explorer John Wesley Powell, for display in the Main Interior Building of the U.S. Department of Interior. It was to be a companion piece to Heinz Warneke's portrayal of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Warneke learned that Stackpole intended a water scene, so he changed his portrayal of Lewis and Clark to be one of them on land. Stackpole and Warneke delivered their stone reliefs in 1940, and the two panels were mounted on either side of the stage of the building's auditorium.{{cite book |last=Cunningham |first=Mary Mullen |author2=Heinrich Warneke |title=Heinz Warneke, 1895–1983: a sculptor first and last |publisher=University of Delaware Press |year=1994 |series=American Art |pages=87 |isbn=0-87413-470-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AXqhAnQMtgkC&pg=PA86 |access-date=April 16, 2010 |archive-date=August 18, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200818224626/https://books.google.com/books?id=AXqhAnQMtgkC&pg=PA86 |url-status=live }} Another work of Stockpole's, "Dispossessed," one of his most notable canvases and a painting of great power and (unfortunately but apparently) permanent relevance, is also in Washington, D.C., at the Smithsonian.

File:Ralph Stackpole "Worship".jpg

In 1938, Stackpole was contacted by the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. While visiting the 1915 fair, in San Francisco, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, FDR had seen Stackpole's figure of Reverence, also known as Worship, on the long-gone altar at the Palace of Fine Arts.{{cite book |last1=Hailey |first1=Gene |title=California Art Research: Ralph Stackpole, Jo Mora, Beniamino Bufano |date=1 January 1937 |publisher=California Art Research Project |page=[https://archive.org/details/californiaartres14hail/page/n48 17] |url=https://archive.org/details/californiaartres14hail |access-date=16 February 2019}} It had stuck in his mind somehow. He wanted one. 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. FDR agreed, with regular inquiries on the progress of the piece over the next five years. In April 1943, Stackpole explained the result about to be revealed:

:The changes of 28 years, in the world, in you, and in me, made the exact copying or reproduction of the first statue unattractive... So I did the job as I would do it now... here are a few things I thought of when I was working. Big mass movements in thinking and labor naturally reflect in art. The slender and graceful belong less to us now. I’ve tried to make heavy and strong forms. She is more bent and the burden heavier.{{cite web |title=Kneeling Woman (1943) by Ralph Stackpole |url=https://fdrlibrary.tumblr.com/post/150815484834/kneeling-woman-1943-by-ralph-stackpole-in-1943 |website=Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library |access-date=16 February 2019 |archive-date=6 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200806143356/https://fdrlibrary.tumblr.com/post/150815484834/kneeling-woman-1943-by-ralph-stackpole-in-1943 |url-status=live }}

This was not what the President had remembered or wanted. He 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.{{cite news |last1=Faber |first1=Harold |title=Project Interrupts Solitude Of Statue F.D.R. Spurned |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/31/nyregion/project-interrupts-solitude-of-statue-fdr-spurned.html |access-date=16 February 2019 |work=New York Times |date=31 July 1987 |archive-date=16 February 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190216212119/https://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/31/nyregion/project-interrupts-solitude-of-statue-fdr-spurned.html |url-status=live }}

File:Pacifica-1938-Stackpole.jpg was the central spirit of the Golden Gate International Exposition.]]

Pflueger made certain that Stackpole was given a major commission for art in preparation for the Golden Gate International Exposition, also called the Pacific Pageant, a world's fair to be held on Treasure Island between San Francisco and Oakland. Stackpole worked to create an {{convert|80|ft|adj=on}} tall frame-and-stucco embodiment of Pacifica, the theme of the exposition. By November 1938, when Life photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt was capturing images to promote the event, Pacifica was ready for his camera. The magazine carried the image of this, Stackpole's most monumental work, "a peaceful, contemplative, almost prayer-like female figure" intended only for temporary placement.{{cite web |url=http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/Looking/hardtimes.html |title=Hard Times, High Visions: Golden Gate International Exposition |year=2001 |publisher=Library, University of California, Berkeley |access-date=April 17, 2010 |archive-date=November 29, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141129070410/http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/Looking/hardtimes.html |url-status=live }} The heroic sculpture stood in front of a {{convert|100|ft|adj=on}} tall "prayer curtain" of regular star-shaped steel bangles that rippled in the wind.{{cite book|last=James |first=Jack |author2=Earle Weller |title=Treasure Island "The Magic City" 1939-1940 |publisher=Pisani Printing |location=San Francisco |year=1941 |pages=35|url=https://archive.org/stream/treasureislandma00jamerich#page/n2/mode/1up/ |access-date=April 17, 2010 }} Vivid orange and blue lights washed the curtain at night, while Pacifica, the image of Peace, was brilliant in white. Over two years, 16 million visitors came to the exposition.James, 1941, p. 166. When it was over, Stackpole proposed that the sculpture be recast in a more permanent form—steel, stone or concrete—and positioned prominently on an island in the San Francisco Bay, perhaps Alcatraz or Angel Island, in a manner similar to the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.{{sfn|Starr|2002|p=151}}The plan was not seriously considered by civic leaders whose attention was on the gathering war clouds in Asia and Europe. The sculpture and most of the exposition buildings were dynamited in 1942, and the U.S. Navy took ownership of the island as a base in World War II.{{sfn|Starr|2002|p=151}}

File:Stackpole-CaliforniaLaborSchool.jpg

In the early 1940s, Stackpole left the CSFA to teach privately. In April 1945, he led a sculpting class at the California Labor School, a leftist organization advocating equal rights for workers. From 1941 to 1945, he served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the first commission member from the West Coast.Thomas E. Luebke, ed., Civic Art: A Centennial History of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 2013): Appendix B, p. 555.

In 1949, Stackpole moved to Chauriat in the Puy-de-Dôme area of central France, returning with his second wife Ginette to her birthplace.{{cite book |last=Karel |first=David |title=Dictionnaire des artistes de langue française en Amérique du Nord: peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs, graveurs, photographes, et orfèvres |publisher=Presses Université Laval |year=1992 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/dictionnairedesa0000kare/page/555 555–556] |isbn=2-7637-7235-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionnairedesa0000kare/page/555 }} There, his art became less figurative and more abstract, both in sculpture and in painting.{{cite book |last=Albright |first=Thomas |title=Art in the San Francisco Bay area, 1945–1980: an illustrated history |publisher=University of California Press |year=1985 |page=315 |isbn=0-520-05193-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aGN3vXcZl74C&pg=PA315 |access-date=April 15, 2010 |archive-date=August 18, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200818215625/https://books.google.com/books?id=aGN3vXcZl74C&pg=PA315 |url-status=live }} He kept a flow of correspondence with his old friends in San Francisco, including Helen Salz, who described his letters as devoid of any mention of sculpture or painting, or any project that Stackpole might have been working on—instead, he wrote of musicians and music, and of his encounters with people. Salz bought a Stackpole bust of poet George Sterling and donated it to the University of California in 1955–56, to be displayed in Dwinelle Hall. In early 1964, Stackpole visited San Francisco to see his family, and he called up his old friend Kenneth Rexroth. In his San Francisco Examiner newspaper column, Rexroth wrote of having lunch with the Stackpole family, and reminded his readers that the man had been known "for 20 years or more [as] San Francisco's leading artist."

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

Some of Stackpole's sculptures, paintings and drawings were destroyed in the Oakland firestorm of 1991, a blaze which leveled the home of Peter Stackpole. Floyd Winter, a neighbor, helped rescue a very few items "moments before the conflagration consumed the house".

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• 1915—Venus, Altar of Inspiration, Palace of Fine Arts{{cite book |url=http://www.books-about-california.com/Pages/The_Jewel_City/The_Jewel_City_Appendix_A.html |first=John J. |last=Newbegin |title=The Jewel City |chapter=Appendix: Sculptures |publisher=H. S. Crocker Company |location=San Francisco and Tacoma |year=1915 |access-date=April 23, 2010 |archive-date=February 13, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110213085024/http://www.books-about-california.com/Pages/The_Jewel_City/The_Jewel_City_Appendix_A.html |url-status=live }}
• 1927-William Coleman Memorial Fountain, Sacramento, California
• 1928–1932—figures carved in Yosemite granite at the San Francisco Stock Exchange (301 Pine) and Tower (155 Sansome) including Bountiful Earth{{cite book |title=At Work: Art of California Labor |last=Johnson |first=Mark Dean |author2=Gray A. Brechin |author2-link=Gray Brechin |author3=Tillie Olsen |year=2003 |publisher=Heyday Books |isbn=1-890771-67-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=40L2xr23q94C |access-date=2016-10-05 |archive-date=2020-08-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200818175843/https://books.google.com/books?id=40L2xr23q94C |url-status=live }} (also known as Mother Earth{{sfn|Starr|2002|p=151}} and Agriculture) and Industry (1931){{cite web |url=http://www.cityclubsf.com/history.html |publisher=The City Club of San Francisco |title=History |access-date=April 23, 2010 |archive-date=March 24, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100324142337/http://www.cityclubsf.com/history.html |url-status=live }}{{cite book |title=Painting on the Left: Diego Rivera, Radical Politics, and San Francisco's Public Murals |last=Lee |first=Anthony W. |year=1999 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=0-520-21977-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sEvM9s8NekkC |access-date=2016-10-05 |archive-date=2016-06-17 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160617053532/https://books.google.com/books?id=sEvM9s8NekkC |url-status=live }} (also known as Man and His Invention{{sfn|Starr|2002|p=151}})
• 1930—the proscenium ceiling panel at Oakland's Paramount Theatre
• 1934—mural at Coit Tower: Industries of California (left and right halves)
• 1938–1939—figures at the Golden Gate International Exposition including the heroic embodiment of the Exposition, the {{convert|80|ft|adj=on}} tall frame-and-stucco figure of Pacifica{{cite magazine |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760554-2,00.html |magazine=Time |date=January 2, 1939 |title=Pacific Pageant |access-date=April 23, 2010 |archive-date=October 26, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121026062059/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760554-2,00.html |url-status=dead }}

File:William_Coleman_Memorial_Fountain,_Sacramento,_California,_USA,_Ralph_Stackpole,_sculptor.jpg|William Coleman Memorial Fountain, Sacramento, California

Image:Stackpole-155Sansome.jpg|Stackpole's heroic figures were direct-carved in situ on a scaffold over the entrance of the Stock Exchange Tower

Image:Stackpole-Agriculture-detail.jpg|Detail of Bountiful Earth (1932). This and two other Stackpole sculpture groups were unveiled outside of the San Francisco Stock Exchange on December 31, 1932Poletti, 2008, p. 102

Image:17_30_126_coit_tower.jpg|Industries of California mural at Coit Tower

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• Beniamino Bufano
• Frederick E. Olmsted

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;Notes

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;Bibliography

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• {{cite book |title=Art Deco San Francisco: The Architecture of Timothy Pflueger |last=Poletti |first=Therese |author2=Tom Paiva |year=2008 |publisher=Princeton Architectural Press |isbn=978-1-56898-756-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tcUhJJJwCoIC |access-date=2020-10-18 |archive-date=2020-08-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801014614/https://books.google.com/books?id=tcUhJJJwCoIC |url-status=live }}
• {{cite book |title=The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s |last=Starr |first=Kevin |year=2002 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-515797-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9HnIh_auw9MC |access-date=2016-10-05 |archive-date=2014-09-12 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140912095005/http://books.google.com/books?id=9HnIh_auw9MC |url-status=live }}

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• [http://www.books-about-california.com/Pages/The_Jewel_City/Illustrations/The_Jewel_City_Page_138.html Image from The Jewel City: Stackpole sculpture over the portal of the demolished building "Palace of Varied Industries" (1915)]
• [http://manybooks.net/support/n/neuhause/neuhauseetext04artex10.exp.html Eugen Neuhaus. The Art of the Exposition] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160125225429/http://manybooks.net/support/n/neuhause/neuhauseetext04artex10.exp.html |date=2016-01-25 }} —list of art works at the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939)
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20090513020430/http://muralsandmosaics.org/rivera2.html National Museum of Murals and Mosaics. Presenting: Diego Rivera's The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City] —image of Ralph Stackpole painted by Diego Rivera (1931)

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Category:1885 births

Category:1973 deaths

Category:American alumni of the École des Beaux-Arts

Category:American muralists

Category:Sculptors from Oregon

Category:American modern sculptors

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Category:Federal Art Project artists

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Category:San Francisco Art Institute faculty

Category:American social realist artists

Category:Section of Painting and Sculpture artists

Category:20th-century American sculptors

Category:20th-century American male artists

Category:American male sculptors

Category:20th-century American painters

Category:American male painters

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Category:Sculptors from California