Frances Upson Young (1870-1950) was a member of the Laguna Beach Art Association as well as the Ruskin Art Club and West Coast Arts. She studied with Paul Lauritz, Lorenzo Latimer and Anna Hills. She resided in Laguna Beach beginning in the early 1930's and remaining there the rest of her life. She enjoyed painting California landscapes from the North Coast southward to the Mojave Desert.

She was born and raised in Cleveland, beginning her art studies at the Cleveland School of Art and continuing abroad at Ainwick and Oxford in England. At age 22, she married Robert Young, an attorney who soon would be named the first city attorney for Hollywood, California, before the town was annexed into Los Angeles. The couple was blessed with two children, Mary Young Salazar and Clarence Upson Young. Clarence achieved some fame as a screenwriter for the motion picture industry.

In 1932, a typographical error merged the bios of Frances Upson Young and Florence Young. Art historian Maurine St. Gaudens discovered the error. Read more ...

Florence Young (1872-1974) lived to be 101 years old. Her training is impressive, having studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Art Students League in New York. She studied with William Merritt Chase and the great Russian portraitist, Nicolai Fechin.

In 1920 at age 48, she cared for her parents while living in Long Beach, CA. She then moved to Alhambra (near Pasadena) home to an artist colony located on Champion Place,

often referred to locally as "Artist Alley." During the winter months, Norman Rockwell escaped Massachusetts winters and was a regular part year resident. Full year residents of "Artist's Alley" included some of Florence's friends, Sam Hyde Harris and Clyde Forsythe. Florence's home was five blocks away on Granada Avenue.

Florence enjoyed landscape painting throughout California, including the Monterey-Carmel area, Yosemite, the Eastern Sierra, the California desert, and

even made a painting trek north to Alaska.

In Florence's day, it was difficult for many women artists to get their work noticed. But Who's Who in American Art by Peter Falk compared Florence's work to some of California's most prestigious painters: Edgar Payne, William Wendt, Maurice Braun, Seldon Conner Gile, Percy Gray, the Wachtels, Hanson Puthuff and her Alhambra neighbor, Sam Hyde Harris.

Una Gray 1873-1930* According to Maurine St. Gaudens, author of Emerging from the Shadows, A Survey of Women Artists Working in California, 1860-1960, there was an exceptionally skilled painter named Una Gray active in

California as early as the 1890's. But, tragically, there is nothing known of her.

Suspicions are high that she may be the same Una Gray, born and raised in Nova Scotia who eventually studied at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. There are reports of her exhibiting her work in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania,

but there isn't the slightest wisp of evidence that she ever painted in California, except for the exceptional landscapes of California and Oregon which bear her name.

Grace Allison Griffith 1885-1955 Grace Allison Griffith created pastoral scenes of Sonoma County, often of the area surrounding her home on Vine Hill Road, just north of Sebastopol. He father Nathaniel Griffith is credited with having brought the Granvenstein Apple to Sebastopol.

A successful fruit rancher, Nathaniel Griffith was a good friend of horticulturist Luther Burbank.

Luther put Grace's talents to work - as she often did some botanical sketches and paintings for him which he used for governmental documentation of his work.

Her painting talent was first recognized while she was a student at Cogswell Polytechnic High School in San Francisco. She later studied with Lorenzo Latimer.

In 1919, Grace and her sister Alice maintained a studio in Honolulu where Grace created a number graceful watercolors of early 20th Century scenes of Oahu life.

In the 1920's, Grace visited and exhibited in Scotland and England. Her work was well received and she was invited to become a member of the Royal Watercolor Society. During Grace's lifetime, she often sold her paintings through Gumps in San Francisco and the Claremont Hotel in the Berkeley Hills. Today, her work is compared with some of the best of California's early watercolor artists, including Percy Gray.

In 1939, she married A. O. Harris of Berkeley, and lived there until her husband's death in 1950. Soon afterward, she moved back to the family farmstead in Sonoma County. She died there at the age of 70.

Anna Hills 1882-1930 Anna Hills was an exceptional impressionist, trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cooper Union in New York. She helped establish the Laguna Beach Art Association and helped establish the Laguna Museum of Art.

After her studies in Chicago and New York, she moved to Paris for four years in 1908. There, she studied at the Julian Academy and painted throughout France, Holland and the South of England.

In 1912, she moved to Southern California, and a year later, settled in Laguna Beach. According to Ruth Westphal (author of Plein Air Painters of California), Anna Hills became "a prominent figure in the art history of Southern California."

She found time to to serve six terms as president of the Laguna Beach Art Association. She used this position to express her passion for the beauty of the Southern California landscape. Ever the teacher, Anna could often be seen leading a class of plein air painters along the cliffs of Laguna Beach She was active in the public schools, promoting arts education.

Her favored locales were in and around Laguna Beach, Mission Capistrano, the California Coast north to Carmel, and she often spent the winter months in nearby Banning and Hemet from which she enjoyed painting excursions into the California and Arizona deserts.

Tragically for the California Art World, Anna Hills died of a heart attack at the age of 48 (according to the Fleischer Museum website).

Thelma Speed Houston 1914-2000 Thelma did a painting a day for 50 years! The joy she found in painting and teaching matched her self discipline. Her recent retrospective exhibition in Vista, California was attended by hundreds of her former students, each with stories of how Thelma and her painting touched their lives.

This California painter was born in Brooklyn and studied at the Pratt Institute in New York. As a young painter, she was a member of the Nassau Art League and exhibited at the New York World's Fair in 1939. Professionally, she worked as a stylist for the St. Andrews Textile Company of New York and later as a designer

for A Sulka and Company of New York and Paris. Her position allowed for her to travel extensively.

As a painter, she strived to capture the soul of the landscape, its intrigue and mystery. Her mix of colors, subject matter, and composition suggest a deep appreciation of the mystery of life and its many possibilities. Whether painting in Europe, Canada, Hawaii, or her adopted California, she felt blessed to “capture the color and excitement of a few moments in time.” Some of her paintings have a mythical dimension that point to deeper meanings and realities. They draw you in, and let you become a part of the landscape. Rather than fleeting moments in time and space, they are permanent expressions of an emotional landscape that speak to all. This is her legacy.

Orpha Klinker 1891-1964 Orpha was a Hollywood socialite, a portraitist, and also a California Desert Painter. She was included in Ed Ainsworth's famous book, Artists of the Desert. She once was given free run of Scotty's Castle in Death Valley when she was commissioned to paint a portrait of Death Valley Scotty.

Fascinated by history, she painted many of California's historic adobes, hoping to inspire interest in preserving them or at least to capture images of them before they all disappeared.

After one of her friends, Will Rogers, was killed in an Alaskan plane crash, Orpha painted a portrait of Will Rogers and his pilot friend Wiley Post. With the help of another friend, Howard Hughes, the painting was exhibited at the New York World's Fair in 1939. Orpha thanked Howard for helping to have the painting at the Fair, and thanked him with a gift, an award-winning print, Winter Touches the Desert #100.

This very print is available for sale, including this amazing handwritten thank you note from Orpha, July 13, 1939, written in her distinctive calligraphic printing style.

Once Wendy saw the finished watercolors, she was most pleased. She showed them to her friends, also expectant mothers. They told Wendy they'd love to have something similar for their babies' nurseries. And, from this group of expectant mothers, an idea was born. Prints! Wendy ordered a series of fine art lithographic prints of the watercolors, and successfully marketed them through local San Francisco baby shops.

Each numbered print bears Jean's signed certificate of authenticity. They are priced at $35 each, or $200 for the entire set of eight. Email or call Dan at the gallery if you wish to order one or the entire set. For a small shipping charge, we'll mail them to you. Art@BodegaBayHeritageGallery.com | 707-875-2911

It is difficult to imagine anyone voicing any objections to such a memorial, but there have been objections.

According to Santa Rosa's Press Democrat's April 24th issue, some critics have said the Plaza should be kept as a "venue for families, students, and civic events."

Really? Does anyone really believe the presence of General Vallejo's bronze statue on a park bench would get in the way of family fun, and would actually be of hindrance to students seeking to learn or those seeking to express civic pride? Sonoma Plaza will still be host to picnics, students, dogs chasing frisbees and Cinco de Mayo celebrations.

We don't agree with an objection to the General Vallejo Memorial from the city's Cultural and Fine Arts Commission in its vote, 4-3. This objection was to General Vallejo's "casual depiction sitting on a bench, his arm stretched over the back."

This criticism is readily rebutted.

Below are three photos of Memorials to Abraham Lincoln, all seated. In no way do any of these statues diminish or tarnish the legacy left by the 16th President.

Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery's congratulations to the City of Sonoma and to sculptor Jim Callahan. Your proposed Memorial to General Vallejo will do you proud. It will be a valuable addition to Somoma Plaza, and will help tell the story of California's Spanish and Mexican past, and its transition to becoming part of the United States.

Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery offers two paintings connected to the history of Sonoma's Plaza. The first is Captain Vallejo's Casa by Joshua Meador done around 1949. The painting depicts Captain Vallejo's home (General Vallejo's brother). Today, the building is the Swiss Hotel, located on the north side of the Plaza. Joshua Meador was a California impressionist, and is famous as Walt Disney's Director of Animation Effects for nearly 30 years.

The second painting entitled Crashing Waves was done by Napoleon Primo Vallejo, General Vallejo's youngest son. Beyond Napoleon's artistic endeavors, he also dedicated his life to telling the history of his family, publishing articles in the San Francisco Chronicle during the 1920's.

Philadelphia , PA
The Philadelphia Museum of Art