Two small courts hid in the colonnaded wings east and west of the Tower of Jewels. Todd called them 'delightful little enclosures somewhat easy to overlook.' Each ended in an apse where a mural fountain poured over the lip of a broad semicircular basin. The eastern one was Edith Woodman Burroughs' Fountain of Youth.
Its central figure was a nude girl of twelve or thirteen, 'with youth's quaint stiffness of form, and all its innocence and helplessness and hopefulness.' Around the walls a frieze in an archaic manner showed the old and young on the perennial search for the fountain, which Todd found 'quaint and curious and humorous and human and sad.' The Official Guide summed up its mood in one word: 'Naive.'
It was one of several prominent works by women at the fair. The Guide's account of the Woman's Board lists it alongside Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's El Dorado in the opposite wing and Evelyn Longman's Fountain of Ceres.
The central note here was the nude figure of a little girl, perhaps 12 or 13 years old, adolescent, with youth's quaint stiffness of form.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LV
At a glance
- Listed fifth among the exposition's nine fountains in the Official Guide.
- Stella G. S. Perry, in her 1915 book on the exposition's sculpture and murals, called it 'a pure, tender, and appealing bit of work!' (quoted by Todd).
- Burroughs also showed a 'Garden Figure' in the Fine Arts sculpture court (Todd vol. 4).
Afterward
Not recorded as preserved; presumably lost with the Tower and its wings in 1916 (Todd vol. 5).
Where it stood
Fountain of Youth stood at about 37.80220 N, 122.44054 W on today's map. The whole fairground over the city →
Sources
- Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2, ch. LV, ch. LXI
- Official Guide of the PPIE (1915), Exposition Sculpture; Woman's Board