The Life and Times of Jo Mora by Peter Hiller

Author:Peter Hiller [Hiller, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography | Artists | Illustrators | Authors | Sculptors | California | West (U.S.)
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
Published: 2021-05-13T18:21:08+00:00

An unpainted portion of the Portolà diorama, in Mora’s workshop, ca. 1939. (Photograph by Lewis Josselyn. Courtesy of the Barbara Josselyn Asa Collection.)

Von Saltza was dismayed at how the State had handled the consequences of the fire in the California State Building, noting that their artistic team could have replaced the diorama in half the time it originally took them to make it, as they now had the molds and the knowledge. However, the State made the decision to put the insurance money in its general fund instead of paying the artists to replace the work.

The renowned painter Maynard Dixon, in his April 10, 1939, review of the diorama in San Francisco’s The News, wrote: “Here is real authentic historical material competently and vividly presented by a man who thoroughly knows his subject. No question here of whether or not it is ‘art’—it is first-class reference matter and well worth studying.”

During Mora’s many years of living and working in Monterey, he became best known for creating a distinctive and colorful series of maps, or cartes, as he referred to them. These historically accurate, humorous, and collectible prints have entertained viewers for generations. Their intricate detail requires a leisurely viewing in order to absorb the wealth of historical information, ranging from facts about California to the diversity of American Indian culture.

Mora’s carte depicting the City of San Francisco can be found as an illustration in his book A Log of the Spanish Main, published in 1933 and 1934 by the Recorder Printing and Publishing Company in San Francisco. It was written as an open diary for the use of passengers aboard Grace Line ships during cruises on the “Spanish Main”—in this case the eastern coastline of the United States, through the Panama Canal, and up the west coast of Central and North America.

In this excerpt from his lively preface to the book, Mora chronicled critical moments in San Francisco history:

Came then the tragic fire of 1906 and swept most of it to ashes! Sympathetic outsiders shook their domes, for it would be many a generation before such a scar could be healed. But the old pioneer spirit was there, and figuratively they crawled into old cowhide boots and red flannel shirts, opened these at the collar, rolled up their sleeves and waded in as their dads had in the days of ’49. That new pueblo popped up as if by magic of the old wishing ring! In 1915, a new city entertained the world at her Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The reconstruction had long been over, and the muses had once more taken lodging with these Bohemians.

Clearly, Mora fully embraced the Golden State, and certainly the San Francisco Bay Area. Later in A Log of the Spanish Main he writes:

It’s a city of grace and character, with hills that defy the goats if not the flivver and the cable car. But it makes for racing blood and husky lungs. The fog rolls in at times—aw, sure it does—but it keeps up the sale of men’s light overcoats.

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