Montalvo's Maecenas

A great California fortune came to San Francisco's late Senator James Duval Phelan when he was 21. When he died in 1930, aged 69, he left $20,000 to Tennist Helen Wills Moody, $20,000 to Author Gertrude Atherton, scores of other bequests to natives whose brain or brawn had reflected credit on his beloved state.* Last week another of the Senator's benefactions posthumously bore fruit when the San Francisco Art Association awarded the first $2,000 Phelan Traveling Scholarship to Helen Elizabeth Phillips, a young sculptor who in all her 23 years has never been outside the Golden Bear State.

Blue-eyed, honey-haired Helen Elizabeth Phillips is a graduate of Redwood City's Sequoia High School, served apprenticeship in the stoneyards of the California School of Fine Arts under the sympathetic eye of Sculptor Ralph Stackpole. When Helen Phillips later entered the school, she found Sculptor Stackpole's vigorous, massive modernism much to her liking. Working directly on the stone like her tutor, Sculptor Phillips completed and exhibited two determined, crisply defined heads, took the Art Association's $300 Purchase Prize for a sturdy Young Woman (see cut). Her scholarship money will enable Sculptor Phillips to observe U. S. and German modern architecture, Mexico's Mayan pyramids and Toltec temples, the standard art spectacles of Italy and France.

According to the terms of the Phelan will, Miss Phillips' $2,000 traveling purse might just as easily have gone into an art gallery. It represents income from $100,000 which Senator Phelan wished either to be spent for "exhibition rooms in the School of Fine Arts," or for scholarships if the rooms were not fitted out in three years. Well satisfied with their fine new Art Museum in the Civic Center, the Association's trustees accordingly elected to use the money to send promising California artists abroad.

The money back of such generous art patronage was made by James Duval Phelan's father, who came to the U. S. from Queen's County, Ireland, sailed for California in the Gold Rush of '49, accumulated $10,000,000 as merchant, banker, real estate tycoon. Son James never cared for business, was nevertheless one of San Francisco's first citizens. At the height of the 1906 Fire, intrepid James Phelan filled his snorting, blunt-snouted Mercedes with dynamite, gallantly chugged out to the Potrero district, blasted a path that halted the fire at Van Ness Avenue.

In 1913 James Phelan visited Europe as an emissary of his friend Woodrow Wilson to urge foreign governments to attend the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Two years later he was elected to the Senate, first Californian Democrat to sit there since 1897. On the floor Senator Phelan was noted for his passionate outcries against the Japanese in California and off the floor for his charm, wit and worldly, well-planned parties. Warren Gamaliel Harding was particularly fond of the rich Californian's supremely mild $1 cigars. Short, neatly bearded, impeccably dressed, Senator Phelan was a figure of legendary elegance in San Francisco's life. At Saratoga, 50 miles away, he built the vast, Italianate Villa Montalvo, named after the Spaniard Garci Ordonez de Montalvo, from whose writings came California's name.* In the art collection gathered at Montalvo, candid San Francisco critics found little to praise. Senator Phelan wrote in his will that the art works should go to Nephew Noel Sullivan, that Montalvo itself should remain open as a centre where young California artists, writers, musicians might come to rest, work, seek inspiration. The Art Association was to see that this Maecenean gesture was carried through. Unfortunately, the interest on the $250,000 which James Duval Phelan set aside for the upkeep of Montalvo is only sufficient for the taxes and care of the grounds. Plans are now being formulated to realize the Senator's grandiloquent vision. Meanwhile Villa Montalvo stands shuttered, empty, dark.

--A life-long bachelor, shrewd Senator Phelan also took cognizance of another kind of Californian with a clause in his will stating that he was the father of no children, but if anyone convinced a court that he or she was wife, child or grandchild of James D. Phelan, such person should receive $50. --Name given to a mythical isle of plenty in Montalvo's popular early 16th Century romance, The Exploits of Esplandidn.

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