Ralph Ward Stackpole (May 1, 1885 – December 10, 1973)[2] was an American sculptor, painter, muralist, etcher and art educator, San Francisco's leading artist during the 1920s and 1930s.

Stackpole worked as a laborer early in life to support himself and his mother following the death of his father in a lumber mill circular saw accident.

Arnstein, the daughter of wealthy Jewish art lovers and one year Stackpole's senior, described him as "a remarkable draftsman" who painted and sketched constantly.

After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, he used a grant of US$200 ($6,800 in current value) to travel to France to attend the École des Beaux-Arts in the class of Antonin Mercié in 1906–1908, exhibiting at the Salon in 1910.

Around the same time, Stackpole was commissioned to sculpt architectural features for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition, a major assignment that was to take two years to complete, even with the aid of assistants.

[10] With Piazzoni, Stackpole went to France again in 1922, taking his family; he enrolled his nine-year-old son in the École alsacienne, a private school in Paris.

Critic and author Laura Bride Powers felt that the event was a disappointment—it displayed "inconspicuous examples" of leading artists, and failed to show any Picasso, avant-garde or Dadaist works.

Photographer Dorothea Lange rented upstairs studio space there in 1926, and Helen Clark and Otis Oldfield, both artists, married there the same year.

"[20] At the Sansome Street tower entrance, Stackpole worked on a scaffolding with a crew of assistants to direct carve heroic figures in stone.

[citation needed] During his stay, Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo lived and worked at the studio, becoming in the process lifelong friends with Stackpole and Ginette.

[23] Neighbor Dixon saw the attention, and the American money being given to Rivera, and with etcher Frank Van Sloun organized a short-lived protest against the Communist artist.

A bas-relief scene of horses, waves and a central winged figure was placed over the stage's proscenium arch, finished in gold-toned metal leaf—the work jointly designed by Stackpole and Robert Boardman Howard.

The unveiling ceremony took place in the cold of New Year's Eve, with Mayor Angelo Rossi joining Stackpole, Pflueger and artisans in smocks.

[8] This conversation, and the 1932 exhibit by Group f/64, a collection of innovative photographers such as Weston and Ansel Adams, was later seen as foundational to Peter Stackpole's conception of photography.

[8] In July 1933, Stackpole completed a model of a design to be incorporated into the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge's central anchorage on the western side.

The anchorage, to be constructed of concrete rising 197 feet (60 m) above the water, was to display over much of its height a bare-chested male figure standing solidly between the two suspension spans.

[30] Another work of Stockpole's, "Dispossessed," one of his most notable canvases and a painting of great power and (unfortunately but apparently) permanent relevance, is also in Washington, D.C., at the Smithsonian.

While visiting the 1915 fair, in San Francisco, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, FDR had seen Stackpole's figure of Reverence, also known as Worship, on the long-gone altar at the Palace of Fine Arts.

[33] Pflueger made certain that Stackpole was given a major commission for art in preparation for the Golden Gate International Exposition, also called the Pacific Pageant, a world's fair to be held on Treasure Island between San Francisco and Oakland.

The magazine carried the image of this, Stackpole's most monumental work, "a peaceful, contemplative, almost prayer-like female figure" intended only for temporary placement.

[39] He kept a flow of correspondence with his old friends in San Francisco, including Helen Salz, who described his letters as devoid of any mention of sculpture or painting, or any project that Stackpole might have been working on—instead, he wrote of musicians and music, and of his encounters with people.

[5] Salz bought a Stackpole bust of poet George Sterling and donated it to the University of California in 1955–56, to be displayed in Dwinelle Hall.