Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale, California)

Forest Lawn Memorial Park is a privately owned cemetery in Glendale, California, United States. It is the original and current flagship location of burial Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks & Mortuaries, a chain of six cemeteries and four additional mortuaries in Southern California.

History

Forest Lawn Memorial Park was founded in 1906 as a not-for-profit cemetery by a group of businessmen from San Francisco. Hubert Eaton and C.B. Sims entered into a sales contract with the cemetery in 1912. Eaton took over its management in 1917. Although Eaton did not start Forest Lawn, he is credited as its "Founder" for his innovations of establishing the "memorial-park plan". He eliminated upright grave markers and brought in works by established artists. He was the first to open a funeral home on dedicated cemetery grounds. He was a firm believer in a joyous life after death.

Convinced that most cemeteries were "unsightly, depressing stoneyards," he pledged to create one that would reflect his optimistic Christian beliefs, "as unlike other cemeteries as sunshine is unlike darkness." He envisioned Forest Lawn as "a great park devoid of misshapen monuments and other signs of earthly death, but filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, beautiful statuary, and memorial architecture."

Most of Forest Lawn's burial sections have evocative names, including Eventide, Babyland (for infants, shaped like a heart), Graceland, Inspiration Slope, Slumberland (for children and adolescents), Sweet Memories, Whispering Pines, Vesperland, Borderland (on the edge of the cemetery), and Dawn of Tomorrow.

Forest Lawn originally participated in racial segregation and "for decades refused entrance to blacks, Jews, and Chinese".

Forest Lawn Museum

thumb|[[La Vierge aux anges|Song of the Angels by William Bouguereau, 1881]]

The Forest Lawn Museum in Glendale opened in 1952 and is located next to the Hall of Crucifixion-Resurrection. It rotates art exhibitions twice yearly, and has hosted solo exhibitions for Henri Matisse, Winslow Homer, Ian Hornak, Francisco Goya, Rembrandt, and Marc Davis. In 2021, it held an exhibition on Judson Studios, the oldest family-run stained glass studio in the United States, which produced numerous stained glass windows for Forest Lawn in the Hall of Crucifixion-Resurrection and the Great Mausoleum.

Forest Lawn Museum's art collection consists primarily of original bronze and marble sculptures by European and American artists. The permanent collection also includes stained glass that used to be part of William Randolph Hearst's collection. Forest Lawn purchased the stained glass works in 1954. The windows date from c. 1315 to 1575, and display impressive examples of French, German, and Austrian craftsmanship in Gothic and Renaissance styles.

Song of the Angels

One of the most famous objects in the Forest Lawn Museum's permanent collection is an oil painting titled Song of the Angels by French artist William Bouguereau (1825–1905), who painted the artwork in 1881. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, as well as in Rome, and was considered a leading French academic painter in the nineteenth century. Legend has it that Bouguereau searched for a model for the painting's figures and found them in his first wife, Nelly Monochablon, who posed for the angels, one by one, and at last, with a child in her arms. The painting shows a mother and child, calmly asleep in a pastoral setting, while a trio of angels hovers nearby. It highlights Bouguereau's ability to render realistic flesh tones and subtle gradations of white.

Song of the Angels was once a part of the Wanamaker Collection in Philadelphia. It was acquired by Forest Lawn Memorial Park in 1940 for a chapel in the Church of the Recessional. Originally, a stained-glass window was going to be the focal point of the chapel, but instead Forest Lawn decided to purchase the painting from Schnittjer's gallery. A large gothic-style liturgical frame was built for the painting by Forest Lawn craftsmen, and it is still presented in this wooden frame at the Forest Lawn Museum.

In 2005, the painting traveled to the Getty Center in Los Angeles for a cleaning with funding from the Conservation Partnership Program. Chief Paintings Conservator, Mark Leonard, worked on the painting for months to remove the old varnish and restore its original colors. Song of the Angels was exhibited at the Getty Center, alongside a preparatory oil sketch and a later, half-size replica from Bouguereau's own hand.

Statuary and art

thumb|A replica of Michelangelo's [[David (Michelangelo)|David at Forest Lawn-Glendale|left]]

thumb|A replica statue of [[Daniel Chester French's The Republic in the Court of Freedom ]]

The Court of David

The Court of David at Forest Lawn-Glendale is located right before the Mystery of Life garden on Cathedral Drive and is centered around a seventeen-foot-tall replica statue of Michelangelo Buonarroti's David. The first Forest Lawn replica of David was installed at Forest Lawn on June 22, 1939. The statue was placed using a series of ropes and pulleys. The statue fell due to seismic activity in 1971. The head and right foot of the 1939 replica is on display at the Forest Lawn Museum. Later Forest Lawn copies fell in 1994 and 2020. A second small yellow copy was received in 1947.

The singer Tom Paxton wrote and recorded a satirical song, "Forest Lawn", which featured on his 1970 album Tom Paxton 6 (Elektra Records). The song was also recorded by John Denver for his second album Take Me to Tomorrow.

Notable interments

Forest Lawn is the final resting place of many prominent individuals from the entertainment industry. Individuals such as Humphrey Bogart, Walt Disney, Chico Marx, Gummo Marx, Larry Fine, Joe Besser, Clark Gable, Joseph Barbera, Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor are all buried or entombed at this cemetery.

References

External links