Painting Truth to Power

Artist's Intent? or Colonialist?

Arnautoff did not show the usual scenes of Washington’s life (the cherry tree, crossing the Delaware, etc.) but instead focused on our first president as a conflicted human being who grew in stature and understanding by working for the people. As an avowed Leftist, he surreptitiously intended his murals as a corrective to commonly used high school texts of the 1930s. In Arnautoff’s retelling of Washington’s life, our first president paved the way for public education and the creation of San Francisco. But these accomplishments came at a high price — the enslavement of African Americans and the subjugation of Native Americans. The message told through Arnautoff's symbols is that Washington lied to Native Americans.

7. Mount Vernon

The artist also divided this mural into three parts. On the left, Washington talks with his overseer. On the right, white craftsmen are at work. In the center and upper right, enslaved Black people dressed in white work shucking corn, picking and packing cotton (although cotton was never grown at Mount Vernon), and loading cargo, emphasizing the reality often ignored in the 1930’s when this mural was painted that Washington owned human beings as chattel and that his wealth was dependent on their labor. Today, historians recognize that many of our nation's founders endorsed and practiced the owning of slaves. At the age of 11, Washington inherited ten enslaved people from his father, and later as an adult, he purchased more enslaved people. During the  Revolutionary War, he began to question the institution of slavery and stopped buying and selling people. When he died, Washington left instructions to free the 123 enslaved people he owned, a rare act at the time and one that he hope would set an example for others.

4. Westward March to the Pacific

The artist says about this mural, “I had a desire to find some connection between George Washington and California. I could not find that, but I did discover that Washington was one of the first who visualized and discussed with his friends the tremendous possibility of the west.”

This fresco is in three parts. On the left, Washington stands over a map and points west while several other Founding Fathers including Benjamin Franklin, who gives him the side-eye, listen. 

In the center, Arnautoff depicted westward expansion by means of war: several pioneers move west, but he shows them in grisaille, gray tones. This is the only use of grisaille in all of the murals and something Arnautoff and his mentor Diego Rivera had used in previous works to identify something offensive or soulless. The settlers represent “the westward march of the colonizers by war,” and their way west is literally over the body of a dead Native American warrior. Arnautoff was challenging the usual 1930s-era depiction of the settlement of the west which typically consisted of white pioneers moving into empty territory - that is, treatment of westward expansion at that time often simply erased the First People. Arnautoff challenged that erasure by painting a single dead Native American, symbolic of the genocide perpetrated by the combined actions of the settlers and soldiers as they advanced westward.

On the right, he represents expansion with a settler and a Native American in apparent friendship. While they share a peace pipe, however, the settler holds fast to his rifle while the Native American Chief’s hatchet sits uselessly on the ground. Above their heads is a broken tree branch, a pointed comment and symbol for broken promises and broken treaties. 

In the upper right corner, 1935 San Francisco is shrouded in fog.

You can help

Your contribution to the Murals Fund helps the Alumni Association preserve the Arnautoff murals along with all the other art for which GWHS is the fortunate custodian and provide educational materials to GWHS students and interested art scholars. Click the button below or text EAGLES4LIFE to 53-555 and select the Murals Fund.