32 COLIN CAMPBELL COOPER

Samarkand meant “the land of heart’s desire” in the archaic Persian tongue. It identified the fabulous Asian City where a Mythical Queen Scheherazade spends her 1001 Arabian nights. In Santa Barbara, the melodic oriental name was first applied in 1920 to a deluxe Persian style hotel where a former boys’ school was re-christened “The Samarkand Persian Hotel”. The interior of the Samarkand was redecorated in Persian style with red, brown, gold and orange colors predominating. The oriental motif was carried out in murals and oil paintings in the foyer, lobby, dining room, lounge, library and other public rooms. One of its muralists was the world-famous Albert Herter.

The grand opening of the Samarkand Persian Hotel came on New Year’s Eve 1920, a soiree that ranks as one of the most luxurious in Santa Barbara’s high society annals. Among the entertainers that night were Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, America’s premier dancing team of the period. The next day’s newspaper accounts of the gala event said, “Miss St. Denis’ Hindu dances captivated the audience, the Samarkand captivated the dancers.”

In 1927 Fred Hogue wrote for the Los Angeles Times: Colin Campbell Cooper, one of the Santa Barbara group, has two canvases of California flowers in the present exhibition. He is one of the best-known painters in the West. His California canvases when displayed in the East opened to him the sacred portals of the “N.A.”

Some of those canvases will come back, but not until Colin Cooper is dead. A fine example of his art is the Spanish terrace of the Hotel Samarkand in the present exhibition. I walked through this terrace in May, when silver moonbeams were smiling on the clusters of flowers in what is one vast arbor of roses. Colin Cooper painted it on an April afternoon, when the golden poppies had not yet folded their petals for the night, when the violets and the purple pansies were still visible in the sheltering grass, with the flowering vines clinging in the alabaster pillars and the cold April sunlight casting its purple shadow on the orange-tinted tiles of the promenade.

When the grounds of the Samarkand were landscaped the management called the artists into consultation and the result is one of the crowning glories of Santa Barbara which, taken in its ensemble, is a jewel of art.”