Emperor Norton in the Artistic Taxonomy of Antonio Sotomayor

San Francisco Art Commission Survey of 1953 Offers Elusive Date for Famous Painting — And a New Way of Seeing It

One of the best-known and -loved works of Emperor Norton-themed art is at the Palace Hotel, in San Francisco.

Detail of Emperor Norton mural, 1935, by Antonio Sotomayor (1904–1985), in The Pied Piper, at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco. Photo © 2011 Scott Cox.

The detail shown above is from one of two murals at the Palace painted by Antonio Sotomayor (1904–1985). Born in Bolivia and beginning his art studies there, Sotomayor had immigrated to San Francisco in 1923 to continue his studies. Shortly after arriving, he took a job as a dishwasher at the Palace. But, when his employers discovered his artistic gifts, they quickly changed his job description, making him a kind of artist-in-residence for the hotel.

When Sotomayor painted the two murals for the Palace in the 1930s, he was about to emerge as the unofficial “artist laureate” of San Francisco — a role he cultivated for some 50 years, until his death.

The murals, painted as a pair, are in the large room just beyond — and accessed through — the hotel’s Pied Piper Bar, where Maxfield Parrish’s monumental 1909 painting, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” — commissioned by the Palace — presides.

Walking into the room, one takes a few steps, turns 180 degrees and there they are. The Norton mural is on the left.

The “grille room” of The Pied Piper, at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, in 2009. Source: Five Star Alliance.

The smaller room, with the bar and the Maxfield Parrish, long has been known as the Pied Piper Bar, or the Pied Piper Room. But, today, the two rooms are united by a single menu — and the Palace refers to the rooms collectively as “The Pied Piper.”

In the 1990s and 2000s, the joint identity of the two rooms — the bar and what sometimes is known as “the grille room” — was “Maxfield’s.”

But, when Sotomayor painted the murals, the larger room had its own name and identity. It was a dedicated cocktail lounge, with its own bar, known as the Happy Valley Room.

Here’s the Norton mural in the Happy Valley Room, shortly after the mural was completed and installed. For those accustomed to seeing a banquette below the mural, the view is a little disorienting.

Scene in the Happy Valley Room of the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, 11 April 1935. Source: San Francisco Public Library.

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The Sotomayor murals at The Pied Piper are pretty well-known by Nortonians and by San Francisco history buffs more generally. But, details on exactly how and when the murals were produced are hard to find — and, once found, can be ambiguous.

For example, any reference to a date for the murals typically is along the line of “the 1930s.”

So, I was pleased to discover the following listing for the murals in A Survey of Art Work in the City and County of San Francisco — prepared for the San Francisco Arts Commission in 1953.

“Emperor Norton and Lotta Crabtree.” Listing for two murals, 1935, by Antonio Sotomayor, in Martin Snipper, A Survey of Art Work in the City and County of San Francisco, Art Commission, City and County of San Francisco, 1953. Source: Internet Archive.

The survey was prepared for the Commission by Martin Snipper (1914–2008), a longtime painter, art historian and public arts advocate who went on to serve the Commission as executive director from 1967 to 1980.

Snipper pins the date of the murals to 1935.

And, notice the distinctions he draws between them: “Emperor Norton surrounded by important literary figures of the period” and “Lotta Crabtree and theatrical figures of the period” [emphases mine].

Good, close-up, full photographs of these murals are elusive. But, here are two that give a sense of the spirit and substance of each:

“Literary” mural (l) and “Theatrical” mural (r) in The Pied Piper, at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco. Photos © 2014 The Loup Garou via Trip Advisor.

With Bret Harte over his left shoulder and Mark Twain seated further to his left, Emperor Norton is in the company of writers, if not entirely so. The figure over Harte’s left shoulder is the Emperor’s fellow eccentric, The Great Unknown.

In the companion mural, at right, the actor and comedian Lotta Crabtree is in the carriage. The more central figure, in the foreground, is Freddie Coombs a.k.a. George Washington II — another eccentric of the Old San Francisco scene.

Both Crabtree and Coombs were “theatrical.” Some may think that the theatrical Emperor Norton would have been better situated in this grouping.

Martin Snipper and Tony Sotomayor were contemporaries. Moreover, given their respective positions within San Francisco’s art world, it surely is a certainty that the two men knew one another.

Did Snipper get his “literary” and “theatrical” classifications for these murals from Sotomayor? Was Sotomayor making a point in associating Emperor Norton more with Twain and Harte than with Crabtree and Coombs? Or is this Snipper’s doing?

Either way, it’s interesting and instructive to position the Emperor more as a literary figure than a theatrical one. In 2018, as part of The Emperor Norton Trust’s Emperor Norton at 200 series, I gave a talk at the San Francisco Public Library reviewing some 50 of the Emperor’s Proclamations. The talk reprised a talk I originally had given in 2016. For both talks, I used the subtitle “The Best Proclamations You’ve Never Heard Of.” The original title was “The Good Emperor.” For the Library, I tweaked the title to “The Literary Emperor” (video here).

This still seems right. Emperor Norton was a gifted writer. Indeed, it’s worth wondering whether someone like Mark Twain would have taken someone like Emperor Norton as seriously as he did, if the Emperor had not distinguished himself on that score.

And: Emperor Norton’s interests and influence are better preserved in his pithy Proclamations than in anything else of him that survives.

Something to think about.

As a parting shot, here’s a rarely seen photograph of Antonio Sotomayor painting the theatrical mural in 1935.

Here’s hoping that somewhere there’s a similar shot of him painting the literary one — with the Emperor front and center,

Photograph captioned “The young artist at work on his Old California mural in 1935,” in article, “An appreciation of 55 years of Sotomayor’s art,” San Francisco Examiner, 15 October 1978, Sunday magazine, p.3. Source: Newspapers.com.

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