How did San Francisco's art shops look 100 years ago?
Lucy B. Jerome, art reporter for the San Francisco Call,
describes some of the works she saw
as part of a gallery and art shop tour in the summer of 1909.

One hundred years ago, San Francisco's active artists were well known, so much so that newspaper articles could refer to them by using only their last names. Persons like Gordon Coutts, Arthur Best, Nels Hagerup, L. P. Latimer, Carl Jonnevold and Giuseppe Cadenasso were once referred to in the present tense.

Though city studios are largely deserted and sketching trips are the order of the day, a number of paintings by the local artists are to be seen at the several art shops. These comprise work of both recent and earlier date. Willis Davis, for instance, has a brilliant study of springtime, depicting the square corner of an old adobe house with a trellised passageway, over which great bunches of spring flowers droop and sway in glowing richness. A cluster of red geraniums in full sunlight forms a striking color note, while bushes of blue pelargoniums, white April lilies and tiny pink opening buds make an ensemble at once vivid and soft. The sunlight falls in a broad bar across the grayish white of the adobe, adding to the effect of glistening luster and intense life, which is the dominant impression the canvas conveys.

In the same building is a painting by Gordon Coutts, somewhat after the French fashion, and depicting a picture decidedly French in type. A corner of a garden or park -- it may be Golden Gate -- reveals a number of benches in the warm sunlight, filled by women and children in particolored gowns, evidently out for a holiday. The violent red of the hats worn by two or three women, the flashing pink stockinged legs of the children and the more subdued note, struck by the more somber attire of the men, aided by the intense green of the quivering trees thrown out against a dark archway make a study of light, brilliant coloring quite attractive both in composition and in its unusual brightness.

Eugen Neuhaus is represented by a strong piece of composition entitled “Where the Waves Break.” a wide stretch of dark blue sea with a few powerfully delineated rocks at the right of the foreground and a white swirl of water among the brown shadows. this is one of the strongest and most individual paintings that Neuhaus has produced, and in contrast with his quieter and more pastoral scenes is interesting. Newhaus is said to have discovered in Benicia a new Mecca for artists who roam the country in search of exquisite bits of landscape to paint, which, he says, is fully equal to Monterey or Carmel in paintable nooks and which he considers full of charm, both historic and pictorial. At present he is on the spot himself sketching, and fired with enthusiasm, expects to have material which will result in a number of distinctive canvases when the sketches are worked out and placed before the public.

Chapel Judson has a magnificent sky effect of white masses of breaking clouds hanging low over a running stream which meanders placidly along between wooded banks. This is conceived in his usual poetical style and is handled in a broad, interpretative manner which conveys a clear impression of the scene rendered. Near this is a large canvas -- one of Valencia’s -- picturing an old house on the crest of a lonely hill in the moonlight. The work is striking by reason of certain impressiveness in the spacing, though somewhat rigid in composition.

One of the best things Arthur Best has done is on view at a dealer’s on Van Ness avenue and is called “Storm Over Tamalpais.” Large dignity, solemnity and something of the grandeur and loneliness of the mountains are seen in this work, in which the cloud effects are well handled and the feeling of impending rain and wind quite apparent. The canvas is ambitious and augurs well for a continuance of this line of work. Alice Best has two good portraits of two young women -- one of Miss Keightley, the other of Miss Parker, a Hawaiian by birth, both of which are interesting studies painted in Mrs. Best’s usual pleasing style.

Hagerup has a good strong canvas of the Golden gate -- a glowing sunset against a dark expanse of waters, with the dark outlines of the forts showing through the suggested mists that seem creeping up to veil the land. While pitched in a somber key, the painting is yet infused with a radiant softness and an enveloping effulgence which tempers the sensation of melancholy induced by the first glance. These marine scenes of Hagerup’s have received commendation from several painters, who perceive the strength of conception and vigor of handling that marks them.

The extremely interesting small water colors are the two geese pictures by Ethel Wickes, who, with her sister, had a studio in San Francisco three years ago, but who since then has joined the colony of art workers at Monterey and Carmel-by-the-Sea. One of these pictures shows a line of white, pink billed geese, with wings placidly folded and a general air of deserved content about them, heading for home in a narrow goose path over the quiet hills. The geese are singularly well drawn and placed, and the effect of the darkening hills with a skyline of evening beauty and the single goose line waddling in a comfortable serenity along is at once interesting and amusing. The other sketch shows the same geese at feeding time, and presents all the characteristics of a country scene at that hour.

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At Cadenasso’s studio on the brow of Russian hill are to be seen four new canvases -- all picturing the artist’s favorite subject -- the poetical, mysterious eucalyptus tree. Cadenasso claims to be the first painter to discover and render on canvas the beauty of the eucalyptus on the Pacific coast and it is asserted that in so doing he has struck a new note in landscape painting. Originality and poetic feeling are the ends for which this painter strives, and viewing the purple misted masses of trees which he has painted in the largest of these new pictures with his usual delicate interpretative power one can not deny that they are rendered with real feeling and insight into their moods.

Cadenasso is distinctly a painter of the flat lands, and his work representing a scene near Lake Aliso, an evening subject where the last rays of light are just passing, is full of exquisite beauty tinged by the faint melancholy which all such scenes possess. His “Moonrise on the Marsh,” also a eucalyptus presentation, shows excellent tone values and gradations, and a third work, picturing eucalypti so pale as to be barely visible, depicts the trees as seen through a veil of fog.

Cadenasso said that he had work which had been sold to two private galleries in the east -- those of Arthur E. Childs in Boston and Richard Ford in New York -- and that the eucalyptus as a paintable subject had found much favor there.
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L. P. Latimer intends taking a sketching class for a month of July to Cazadero and vicinity, where there are some of the most beautiful redwood studies to be found in the state. On his return he expects to be actively engaged in working up these sketches and some delightful results may be looked forward to by those who appraise this painter’s work at its true value.
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E. W. Currier is fishing at Glen Alpine lake near Tahoe, where he is landing the finny beauties at a highly encouraging rate. Currier’s trout studies will be remembered by those who saw them last year. Fish depiction is rather rare, but interesting from a fisherman’s point of view, as well as from that of the painter.