Ralph Stackpole is my 1st cousin (once removed). As a teenager, my father James Jordan, lived with Ralph (his cousin) and Ralph’s wife during the 1930’s in Oakland California. 

 

Ralph Stackpole was born on May 1, 1885, in a southwest Oregon town called Williams in Josephine County. In 1901, at sixteen years of age, he entered the Mark Hopkins Art Institute of San Francisco. While there, Ralph became in­terested in sculpture. He apprenticed at the studio jointly occupied by Arthur Putnam, the celebrated animal sculptor, and Gottardo Piazzoni, the internationally known landscape painter. 

On April 18, 1906, an earthquake struck San Francisco followed by the fire which laid waste the major part of the city. Ralph Stackpole's early work and personal belongings were destroyed along with the studio of Putnam and Piazzoni. 

Later that year, he joined his former instructors, Putnam and Piazzoni and their families by moving to Paris and enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, in the sculpture class under the renowned teacher; Anton Mercie.

While in Paris, Stackpole lived in the Montparnasse section in Paris and rented a studio in an old monastery. There he lived the typical life of a Parisian art student exposed to the movements and tendencies in modern art that took place in Paris at the time. Here, Ralph eagerly to an active part of the great growing modern art movement and gathering of artistic talent in Montparnasse, like Henri Matisse. Many other artists also gathered in Montparnasse, like Jacob Macznik, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, surrealist Max Ernst, cubist Marcel Duchamp, even former SF Bay Area writer Gertrude Stein, and, in his declining years, Edgar Degas. All became part of the École de Paris, (meaning Paris School) a general heading for the many artistic styles,

 

Later, as an artist and instructor at the SF Institute of Art for many years, he taught his students that the pictorial fidelity is not a par­amount objective of art.

Henri Matisse, the famed post-impres­sionist, when passing through San Francisco en route to Tahiti in April of 1926, stopped and visited with Stackpole. The high­light of his visit was a studio dinner given in his honor by Ralph and attended by patrons and leaders of the local SF art community. 

More to come … a lot more.