Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller - Old and Rare Books

Sleeping Beauty. Four Architectural Concept Design Illustrations by Willy Pogany for Murals at W. R. Hearst Estate Wyntoon Commissioned by Julia Morgan [ORIGINAL COLOR DRAWINGS SIGNED BY POGANY]

Pogany, William Andrew (Vilmos András Pogany)

(1935). Original artwork. Loose leaf. Sleeping Beauty* color drawings: main panel (8 x 16 7/8"); top panel (7 1/4 x 6 1/4"); two wing panels (9 3/4 x 7"). Complete one of a kind concept design on four panels (14 7/8x 30 5/8") in graphite pencil, color pencils, watercolor, and gouache.

Exquisite original panorama of four color drawings constituting the design for a building facade named Sleeping Beauty. The drawings were presented in a four panel set by Willy Pogany to renowned architect Julia Morgan, William Randolph Hearst's preferred architect. Pogany had been commissioned by Julia Morgan to design and paint fairy tale murals for the three houses at Heart's Wyntoon estate, California. The name inspired by the Native American tribe of the Wintu people who originally inhabited the area. Though the Sleeping Beauty house (known as Angel House today) was built, Pogany's murals were executed only at the Cinderella House and the Bear House.

Wyntoon is a private estate north of San Francisco owned by the Hearst Corporation. The estate was originally developed by San Francisco attorney Charles Stetson Wheeler, his client Phoebe Apperson Hearst and her son William Randolph Hearst. The original seven story house in the Gothic style of a Rhine River castle was completed in 1902 but burned down in the winter of 1929.

William Randolph Hearst decided to build an even larger castle designed by Julia Morgan who also had contributed to his mother's castle. Though the Great Depression put an hold to Heart's plans he had already moved 10,000 stones of a dismantled 700 year old Spanish Cistercian monastery to a warehouse in San Francisco to give Wyntoon the desired ancient air. Hearst also had shipped the great tithe barn of Bradenstoke Priory in England to his castle at San Simeon.

When Hearst realized he could not afford the $50 million project at Wyntoon he asked Julia Morgan to design a "Bavarian village" in the medieval style of Germany and Austria instead. Hearst sent Julia Morgan to Germany and Austria to study suitable buildings and Morgan designed a group of guest houses with romantic names such as Cinderella House, Sleeping Beauty, and Bear House. In addition to commissioning exterior inscriptions, decorative patterns and carved Gothic decorations the Hungarian muralist and Hollywood set designer Willy Pogany was commissioned to paint murals depicting Russian and German fairy tales.

Wyntoon was completed in stages from 1935 to 1941, and appeared in an article in Life Magazine in 1935. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, blackout conditions were imposed on Hearst's home at San Simeon, Hearst and his partner the actress Marion Davies moved to Wyntoon to live at Bear House with their Dachshunds, entertaining guest including Clark Gable, film director Louis B. Mayer, aviator Charles Lindbergh, and industrialist Joe Kennedy with his son J. F. Kennedy, the future US president.

In very good condition, centerpiece with minor fraying and two small chips along right edge. Some age-toning generally with some slight damp-staining in top and center piece, a little more pronounced in right panel. Fine condition. Item #55756

* "Willy Pogany created these drawings for Mr. Hearst's estate called Wyntoon in Northern California." (Mary L. Levkoff, Museum Director, Hearst Castle, San Simeon, California; Hearst the Collector, Abrams, 2008)

Vilmos András Pogány(1882-1955) was born in Szeged, Hungary. Pogany became a prolific artist and illustrator known for his Art Nouveau style, intricate pen and ink work, and fairy-tale themes. He was well established in London, Paris and Munich before he moved to New York at the age of thirty-three in 1915. Here his illustrations first appeared in Hearst publications like Town and Country, Theater Magazine and American Weekly. Pogany also designed sets for ballet, opera (Le Coq d'Or) and film (Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times). At the West Coast he designed movie set decoration for every major studio. He designed and illustrated some 150 children's books. A seizable collection of his papers and work is held at the Archive West, Orbis Cascade Alliance. The Wyntoon murals were completed in 1937, leaving only one cottage without murals. In mid 1937 Hearst declared bankruptcy and the judge halted the Wyntoon projects.

Awards Pogany received include gold medals at the Budapest and Leipzig Expos, the London Masonic Medal, and he was a Fellow of the London Royal Society of Art. The New York Society of Architects awarded him the silver medal for his mural in the August Heckscher's Children's Theater showing Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and Jack in the Beanstalk. In 1915 at the Panama Pacific Expo he received the Gold Medal for his work The Valkyries, and he was awarded the Hungarian Silver Blue Medal.

William Randolph Hearst (1860-1951) was one of the most influential forces in the history of American journalism. Mercilessly caricatured in Citizen Kane Hearst also became a conspicuous movie producer and a voracious collector. An obituary estimated that Hearst alone had accounted for 25 percent of the world's art market during the 1920s and 1930s. He also was an imaginative patron of architecture and design and the greatest individual donor to the Los Angeles County Museum. A remarkable figure in American history, Hearst was part of California's heritage and a dominant personality in Los Angeles.

Julia Morgan started her own architectural firm in 1904, establishing herself quickly as a sought after residential architect. One of Morgan's first commissions was to remodel and complete Phoebe Hearst's Hacienda del Pozo de Verona in Pleasanton, California. Characteristic for her architecture was the inclusion of elements intrinsic to the California Arts and Crafts movement. One of her first independent projects was the bell tower on the campus of Mills College in Oakland, which withstood the great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. In 1919 William Randolph Hearst hired Julia Morgan for the first of what was to become a long list of Hearst projects, to design the main building and guest houses for his ranch in San Simeon, California. Morgan designed more than 700 buildings in California. She received many honors and was the first female architect to receive the AIA Gold Medal in 2014 (posthumous), the highest honor of the American Institute of Architects.

Price: $45,000.00