Talk:Waldo Peirce

Hayford, perhaps I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know (so excuse me in advance), but, having a few minutes on my hands, I breezed through the Net and found some factoids:

1. In the “BIDDLE FAMILY PAPERS, SERIES 2: George Biddle Correspondence” at Georgetown University [1], there is, in box 2 18, “lunch with poet Waldo Peirce, an evening with Witter Bynner and meeting with Harry S. Truman (ALS 11/16/1954)”. Poet Waldo Peirce?

2. I’m not sure if you’re already intending on including this in your list of museums: “Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco - Waldo Peirce, Circus on the Move, 1937” (which is mentioned here: [2])

3. And: Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco - Waldo Peirce, On the Beach (His wife and twins), 1936; which is mentioned here: [3]

4. You probably know this: “In artist Waldo Peirce’s 1943 letter to Sally Jane Davis, Peirce shows that his affections are divided among three women, each happily eating a piece of his heart. The letter is among the 60 works of art in More Than Words: Illustrated Letters from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, organized by SITES and the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.” Mentioned here: [4] And the letter is here: [5]

Sorry if all this is already well known! Jeffrey Scott Bernstein 16:41, 17 October 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for all the above info! I really haven't done much Web searching for Waldo info: 99% has come from various books and stuff that I had lying around. I do know that he was a friend of George Biddle, who once wanted him to go to Tahiti with him for a spell. Waldo went to France instead. As for being a "poet", that must be the fact that he wrote a lot of doggerel that, probably, circulated among his friends. I'll put in the S.F. Museum -- it wasn't listed in the lists I looked at. And I'll check out the 3 women letter and see what I can do with it. I know that for many years my mother was always joking that Waldo was constantly complaining about paying alimony to three women at the same time, hehe.... Hayford Peirce 17:07, 17 October 2007 (CDT)

This article's radiant with color and charm and laugh out loud humor! As a fringe benefit, it’s fascinating. Someone wave a magic approval wand . . .Jeffrey Scott Bernstein 19:32, 13 November 2007 (CST)

This interesting article seems well documented ; but, as I am not an expert in American painting, I am not in a position to comment on the article content. Pierre Petit 06:58, 17 November 2007 (CST)

Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco

Apparently, this does not really exist. It is a link to, or joint effort by, the deYoung Museum of S.F. (out in Golden Gate Park) and the Palace of the Legion of Honor, a museum in Presideo Park. I can't find any exact info about these two paintings. The deYoung, of course, has Bellow's portrait of Waldo. I have feeling that the deYoung probably owns those two other Waldos, or had them *loaned* to them at some point, and have either stuck them away in a basement or have returned them to their owner. Or, of course, the same may be true with the Legion of Honor. I'll ask the Waldo expert Bill Gallagher what he knows of this. I lived in S.F. for a number of years and never heard of this place. And I have some old S.F. phone books that don't list it either. Hayford Peirce 17:33, 17 October 2007 (CDT)

Letter

This looks to me like a poem. His wife was in the Waacs for a while during the war, stationed, I believe in Louisiana, so I imagine this is a letter to, say, her mother, saying that his three women are his wife, his mother-in-law, and his daughter, or something along those lines. I've asked Bill Gallagher about this. I think one of my books mentions something along these lines. Hayford Peirce 17:45, 17 October 2007 (CDT)