The San Francisco Bay Area, large as it is, lacks some of the great art collections one might expect from it, although when I say great, one must take into consideration what art I am generally speaking of. One of the area's gems is truly the Palace of the Legion of Honor, tucked out in the corner of San Francisco, far from the downtown core and generally accessible, built within a very attractive park with great vistas of the Golden Gate. I regretted not bringing my plein-air setup, but it was a rare day off. Well, mostly--I had signed for a couple hours that morning at a game store in Berkeley.
Often, when you visit a museum with some knowledge of things they have in their permanent collection, you come away disappointed because inevitably some favorite gem is not on display, as works are rotated in and out over the years for variety and conservation purposes. When we visited the Legion the first time, perhaps around '00 or so, we greatly enjoyed it and were surprised at some of the things shown there. Seeing it again 8 years later, I enjoyed the familiar, but was surprised anew at things I'd either forgotten or that weren't up at the time.
The museum is decently large, and tends towards a generally chronological order such that if you begin at room 1 and move along numerically you are pretty tired by room 19, the last room in the tour. That, dear reader, is a shame, because you then do not appreciate those last rooms as your feet and lower back start hurting or your less interested friend or date starts eying their watch.
Allow me to set your tour for you this way, assuming you generally share my tastes in art. Enter the Palace and immediately follow the signage to the end of the gallery. There are some fabulous works in various rooms along the way but you must resist and pass them for the time being until you arrive at room 17. Begin your tour here. Continue to room 18. Then, once again assuming you share my interests, you can skip the final room 19 and work your way back to room 1. These two rooms alone are worth the price of admission, but other gems in earlier rooms provide the bonus content.
In these rooms I was stunned to discover that the Palace had possession of Bougeaureau's famed "Pieta" which is much much larger than I was prepared for. Last time, they had another of his works (still up) which is beautiful and which I purchased a poster of back then, but the Pieta was simply stunning. I spent a considerable amount of time admiring his handling of hands and feet and marveling at his virtuosity.
In the same room, however, was a fantastic painting I do not recall from my last visit, by an artist I'd never heard of, but which ended up being the highlight of this visit. Partially because I lived in Spain and visited Seville, José Jiménez y Aranda's "Holy Week in Seville" was a feast of complexity, composition, figure work, brushwork and talent. The Russian painter Konstantin Makovsky's giant work was similarly stunning, but because it was so big you could not possibly take in the top half, I kept my nose to Aranda's painting far longer, being a manageable 3' tall.
Get in close and have a look
So many good works and a beautiful building as well. If you stop into San Francisco and want to take in some paintings, your first stop should most definitely be the Palace. Though the De Young has some gems as well, I've found it to be a little more uneven in past visits in terms of what they had up. And you can catch a Maxfield Parrish in either one, so while "Daybreak" alone is often enough to bring visitors to the De Young, you can get a good Parrish fix at the Palace, too.
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