When much of the city of San Francisco was destroyed by the fire from the 1906 earthquake , William Crocker and his bank were major forces in financing reconstruction . His father , Charles Crocker ( 1822-1888 ) , had been a builder of the Central Pacific Railroad . Crocker 's wife Ethel ( née Sperry ) was the leading patron of French Impressionist art in California at that time . In the 1890s , Crocker 's wife , and California Impressionist Lucy Bacon , who studied in France under Pissarro , lent William Kingston Vickery , owner of the San Francisco art gallery Vickery , Atkins & Torrey , a number of French Impressionist paintings . Vickery then supervised a series of these loan exhibitions in San Francisco and introduced Impressionism to California in the form of paintings by Monet , Eugène Boudin , Paul Cézanne , Camille Pissarro , Pierre-Auguste Renoir , and Edgar Degas . Mrs. Crocker also sponsored the studies of the Zoellner Quartet with César Thomson in Belgium . After six years in Europe , the quartet returned to the United States , and became a tireless force promoting classical music outside established centers and in Southern California
1906 earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
William Henry Crocker