Monday, January 31, 2022 – MULTI-TALENTED ARTIST WHO CREATED SO MUCH ART IN THE WEST
MONDAY, JANUARY 31, 2022
586th Issue
JO MORA
(JOSEPH JACINTO MORA)
“RENAISSANCE MAN
OF THE WEST”
| Joseph Jacinto Mora (October 22, 1876 – October 10, 1947) was a Uruguayan-born American cowboy, photographer, artist, cartoonist, illustrator, painter, muralist, sculptor, and historian who lived with the Hopi and wrote about his experiences in California. He has been called the “Renaissance Man of the West”.[1] |
| Mora was born on October 22, 1876 in Montevideo, Uruguay. His father was the Catalan sculptor, Domingo Mora, and his mother was Laura Gaillard Mora, an intellectual born in the Bordeaux region of France. His elder brother was F. Luis Mora, who would become an artist and the first Hispanic member of the National Academy of Design. The family entered the United States in 1880 and first settled in New York City, and then Perth Amboy, New Jersey.[2] |
FROM WIKIPEDIA
CAREER
Jo Mora studied art at the Art Students League of New York and the Cowles Art School in Boston. He also studied with William Merritt Chase. He worked as a cartoonist for the Boston Evening Traveller, and later, the Boston Herald.[2]
In the spring of 1903, Mora arrived in Solvang, California. He stayed at the Donohue Ranch. He made plans to travel to the Southwest to paint and photograph the Hopi. He spent time at the Mission Santa Inés; those photographs are now maintained by the Smithsonian Institution. Mora visited many Spanish missions in California that summer by horseback. He followed the “Mission Trail”, also called the “Kings Highway“.
In 1904, Mora visited Yosemite.[3] Later, in 1904, to 1906, Mora lived with the Hopi and Navajo near Oraibi, Arizona.[4] He took photographs,[5] painted[6] and otherwise recorded the daily life of these Native Americans, including the Hopi Snake Dance. He learned the Native languages and made detailed drawings of what he observed.[7]
In 1907, Mora wrote and illustrated the comic strip Animaldom.[8]
In 1907, Mora returned to California and married Grace Needham. Their son, Joseph Needham Mora, was born on March 8, 1908. The Moras moved to San Jose, California, where Mora continued his work.
On 22 February 1911, the Native Sons of the Golden West Building, in San Francisco, with six terra cotta panels, by Domingo Mora and his son, Jo Mora, was dedicated.[9][10] In 1915, he served on the International Jury of Awards at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition and displayed six sculptures.[11] In 1915-16 two of his sculptural commissions were revealed: the bronze memorial tablet with the profile of the late Archbishop Patrick W. Riordan for the Knights of Columbus and the Cervantes Monument in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.[12][13] By 1919, he was sculpting for the Bohemian Club, including the Bret Harte Memorial plaque, completed in August 1919 and mounted on the outside of the private men’s club building in San Francisco.
Statue of Junipero Serra in Carmel Woods.
On July 22, 1922, for the opening day of the Carmel Woods subdivision, Mora had carved and painted a wooded statue of Padre Junípero Serra, which was installed within a small wooden shrine, surrounded by plants and a pair of wooden benches at the entrance to the development, at the intersection of Camino del Monte and Alta Avenue.[14][15]
In 1925, he designed the commemorative half dollar for the California Diamond Jubilee. During this period he also illustrated a number of books, made large murals, and published charts, maps (cartes) and diagrams of the West and Western themes. Beginning in 1937, Mora wrote and illustrated children’s books about the West. In 1939, a Works Progress Administration project was completed, with Mora bas-relief sculpture adorning the King City High School Auditorium building.
In 1921 the Mora family moved their primary residence to the largest art colony on the West Coast, Carmel-by-the-Sea. Mora received a commission for the bronze and travertine Cenotaph, for Father Junípero Serra in the Memorial Chapel at the west end of Mission Carmel.[11][16][17][18] He served on the board of directors of the Carmel Art Association, where his sculptures were exhibited between 1927 and 1934. He co-established Carmel’s first private art gallery which was operated by resident artists.[19] In 1931 Jo, his wife, and daughter Patricia moved to nearby Pebble Beach into a newly built home. Five years later in the adjoining large studios he completed his massive diorama, Discovery of the San Francisco Bay by Portola, for the California Pavilion at the 1939-40 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island. At a length of almost 100 feet, with 64 sculptures of Spaniards and Indians and over 200 animals, it was said “to surpass anything of its kind at the Fair.”[20][21] He fashioned smaller dioramas for the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, Oklahoma and the Sutter’s Fort Museum in Sacramento, California.[22][23]
Between 1908 and the late 1940s his sculptures, illustrations,[24] watercolors and etchings were frequently exhibited across the United States.[11][25][26]
| Technically the map is an overview of the scenic drive through the Monterey peninsula in northern California, now home to legendary golf courses and a world-renowned aquarium. At the very top of the map, there are drawings of two groups of people, “old” and “new” Californians. The old group consists of a cowboy and a padre and a group of women traveling in an ox-drawn wagon. The group of new Californians appears to be well-to-do tourists with golf clubs, a sleek convertible and a polo horse. Numerous drawings frame the border of maps, highlighting many of the indigenous species of birds and animals of the area as well as some of its historic buildings. The highlight of the map, though, has to be the center panel featuring a drawing of various forest-dwelling critters, all wearing human clothing. |
NEW DEAL ART
CARTOON IMAGE RESTAURANT MENU
SCOTTISH RITE TEMPLE, LOS ANGELES
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
Send your answer to:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
HINT: THEY ARE ALL IN THE SAME CITY
WEEKEND PHOTO OF THE DAY
BELLEVUE HOSPITAL MAIN BUILDING
JOHN GATTUSO, ANDY SPARBERG, LAURA HUSSEY
GOT IT RIGHT!
CREDITS
JO MORA ARCHIVES
WIKIPEDIA
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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