California's historic painters had a marvelous visual story to tell. Since becoming a state in 1850, California was a new open land, filled with promise set in a vast and diverse landscape, from the Mojave desert to the Redwood forests, from its long and wild Pacific Coast to the heights of the soaring Sierras.

The first historic California painters painted a pristine California, decades before bridges, freeways, skyscrapers and urban sprawl. They used the predominant painting styles known to them in their time, particularly the style of the Hudson River School. After some California painters visited France, some adopted the style of the new French Barbizon School led by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

As California changed and grew, newer generations of California painters followed, painting in the styles of newer art movements, among them Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Pointillism, Fauvism and others.

Sacramento's Crocker Museum of Art has expanded their collection of historic California paintings. Some of these paintings are from the earliest of California's historic artists, some are from the decades which followed.

Bay Area philanthropist Wendy Willrich and her husband Mason have chosen the Crocker Art Museum as the eventual home for their collection of historic California Art. Some of these paintings are currently on display along with paintings drawn from the Crocker's own collection.

When Thomas Hill and William Keith first painted Yosemite Valley, no one had painted there before. They were the first to paint one of the most magnificent landscapes anywhere in the world.

Thomas Hill first came to Yosemite in 1865 accompanied by painter Virgil Williams and photographer Carleton Watkins. In the Spring of 1866, Hill exhibited his first Yosemite Valley painting in New York before leaving for France where he became influenced by the Barbizon School. After France, he was briefly a resident of Boston before returning to California in 1872. Although he headquartered himself in San Francisco, he visited and painted in Yosemite many times.

The exhibition placard next to Keith's Mount Lyell, Yosemite states, "Keith's paintings provided a transitional bridge in color and paint handling to quieter more intimate landscapes in the French Barbizon style by artists such as Edwin Deakin, Jules Tavernier, Julian Rix, and Thaddeus Welch. Raymond Dabb Yelland's focus on light aligns his work with a group of artists today known as Luminists who primarily worked on the East Coast."

William Keith immigrated to the United States from Scotland at the age of 12 with his mother and two sisters. They settled in New York where he worked as an apprentice wood engraver. He was hired to do illustrations for Harper's Magazine. In 1858 at the age of 20, he briefly worked for the London Daily News when he was offered an opportunity to sail to San Francisco. From his base in San Francisco, Keith worked as an engraver and had a commission from the Oregon Navigation and Railroad Company to paint scenes of the Northwest. William Keith then studied in Düsseldorff followed by a trip to Paris where he admired the old masters of Barbizon painting. When Keith returned to California, he painted the California landscape using what he had learned in Europe. He lived in Berkeley, commuting by ferry to his studio in San Francisco. He was a close friend of naturalist John Muir and railroad tycoon E.F. Harriman (yes, the same E.F. Harriman mentioned in the film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid).

Frederick Ferdinand Schafer was in his thirties when he emigrated to the United States in the early 1870's. He primarily hiked and painted in British Columbia and Alaska. He combined detail with naturalism that Düsseldorff painters preferred along with the looser brushwork favored by the Barbizon painters of France. The fallen trees in the foreground was a common compositional element in many of Schafer's works.

Already an accomplished artist, 18 year old Edwin Deakin immigrated with his family to the United States from Sheffield, England in 1856. In late 1869, he and his family moved to San Francisco. He was most drawn to paint the untamed wilderness of California. He consigned some of his paintings to local galleries and frequently exhibited with the San Francisco Art Association, but sold most of his paintings through public auctions. He was also a member of the Bohemian Club.

In 1875 he embarked on a three year long grand tour of Europe, painting primarily in England, France and Switzerland. He exhibited his work at the Paris Salon. When he returned to San Francisco in 1879, his European paintings received a great deal of attention.

In 1891, Deakin moved to Berkeley with his wife and two daughters. He purchased part of the Peralta Estate and built a mission-style home with a roomy studio. He soon began to hold an annual "open studio," inviting the public to view and purchase paintings. From his home, he often painted scenes in and around Berkeley. In the hills east of the newly established U.C. Berkeley, Strawberry Creek became Edwin Deakin's favorite subject.

Jules Tavernier was a talented French painter but left France in his early 30's never to return. In America, he was hired by Harper's Magazine to venture west on a year-long round-trip, sketching and painting as he went. He arrived in San Francisco the same month as his 30th birthday and chose not to return to the East. From his San Francisco base, he painted Northern California locales including Monterey, Marin and Sonoma County scenes.

Tavernier never let his business interests interfere with his pleasure. He made a lot of money, but spent much more. His students (and often his partying compatriots) included David Howard Hitchcock, Amèdèe Joulin, Charles Rolo Peters, Lorenzo P. Latimer and Manuel Valencia. Tavernier was popular in the Bohemian Club and often the center of lavish and excessive drinking parties.

Thaddeus Welch came to California from Oregon in 1866. He studied with Virgil Williams. In Europe, he studied at the Royal Academy in Munich for four years. Returning to California in 1881, he painted for a while in the Hudson River area of New York where he met his artist wife Ludmilla. In California, the couple made their home in the San Geronimo Valley of West Marin County, near the town of Nicasio. He was an active member of the Bohemian Club. He is best known for his pastoral scenes of Marin, often featuring roaming cattle, sometimes with Mount Tamalpais or Bolinas Bay in the scene. Due to health reasons, the couple moved south to Santa Barbara in 1905. He died in December of 1919.

Raymond Dabb Yelland was born in London and grew up in New Jersey. As a teenager, he served briefly in the Union Army at the end of the Civil War. He studied at the National Academy of Design in New York from 1868 to 1872. He came to Oakland to teach at Mills College. Originally Yelland considered himself a Hudson River School painter but adopted a luminist style. Golden Gate from Angel Island is an example of his luminist style. In the 1890's, he was influenced by Tonalism. He also taught at the California School of Design and the University of California, Berkeley. He died of pneumonia in July of 1900 at the age of 52.

Julian Rix came to California as a child from Peacham, Vermont. He was mostly self taught, but received informal criticisms from Jules Tavernier. The scene above was done shortly before Rix departed to establish his studio back east in New York City. While in California, Rix preferred quiet and intimate scenes rather than the grandiose locales of the Sierras or Yosemite Valley. He strived to catch the immediacy of the moment on site. Then, back in the studio he created finished works, muting his original impressions under the soft lighting conditions of San Francisco fog.

John Marshall Gamble is best remembered for his paintings of hillsides covered with Southern California wildflowers. His paintings of California poppies and blue lupines are represented in museums and fine art collections across the Country.

Gamble was born in New Jersey in 1863, moved to New Zealand with his family and then to San Francisco in 1883. He studied at the San Francisco School of Design with Virgil Williams and Emil Carlsen. He then went to Paris and studied at the Académie Colorossi and the Académie Julian. When he returned to San Francisco, he set up his studio and was a Northern California painter. He exhibited locally and was a member of the Bohemian Club.

When his studio was destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake, like many other San Francisco artists, he left the city. Gamble moved to the firmer ground of Santa Barbara. There, he established his reputation for painting California's wildflowers.

Elmer Wachtel came to Southern California from his home in Baltimore to live with his brother in San Gabriel. He worked as a ranch hand and furniture store clerk to earn money to study art. He served as a violinist for the Philharmonic Orchestra of Los Angeles. He then studied at the Art Students League in New York for two months and continued on to study at the Lambeth School of Art in London. In 1904, he met and married his wife, sculptor and painter Marion Kavanagh. The couple lived in the Arroyo Seco section of Los Angeles near Pasadena. Elmer and Marion were both well known for their plein-air impressionist paintings. Elmer Wachtel died while on a painting trip to Guadalajara, Mexico at the age of 65.

Maurice Braun was born in 1877 in Hungary and by the age of four, he along with his family were New York City immigrants. He studied at the National Academy of Design and with New York artist William Merritt Chase. He established himself as a portrait painter in New York. In 1919 at the age of 42, Maurice Braun left for California.

In California, he was associated with the Theosophists which he credits giving him a sharper mystical insight in nature and appreciating its light and color. He kept an east coast studio in Old Lyme, Connecticut but today is best known for his impressionist paintings of California's Southland. In San Diego, he founded and directed the San Diego Academy of Art.

Edgar Payne was known for landscapes, especially of the desert Southwest from Taos to the Grand Canyon. He was born in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and was mostly a self taught artist. He traveled all over the Midwest painting signs, portraits, murals and sets for theater productions. Eventually he arrived in Chicago where he tried for two weeks to study at the Art Institute of Chicago. He found formal art instruction too restrictive, preferring his own self teaching.

He first arrived in California in 1909 at age 26. After stays in Laguna Beach and San Francisco, he received a commission from the Santa Fe Railroad and traveled throughout the West allowing him to paint in Taos, the Grand Canyon and Canyon de Chelly. At one point, he received a commission to paint murals for the Congress Hotel in Chicago, requiring 11,000 square yards of muslin and a staff of artists. Two Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery artists, Peter Nielsen and a very young Conrad Buffwere among the artists who assisted Payne in that project.

In 1918, Edgar Payne and his wife, artist Elsie Payne, built their home and studios in Laguna Beach. Edgar helped found the Laguna Art Association with artist Anna Hills and he became the organization's first president. In his career, Payne traveled and exhibited widely. In May of 2012, our newsletter featured an amazing Edgar Payne exhibition ... Edgar Payne's The Scenic Journey at Sacramento's Crocker.

Along the way, Elsie and Edgar were divorced, but when Elsie learned of Edgar's cancer in 1946, she returned and remained with him until his death in April of 1947.

After the '06 quake, the Monterey Peninsula became a popular art colony. Impressionists included Guy Rose, E. Charlton Fortune and William Ritschel. Post impressionists included Seldon Conner Gile and William Clapp.

The son of a prominent California Senator and grape rancher, Guy Rose was born in 1867 in San Gabriel, California. In 1876 at the age of nine, he survived being accidentally shot in the face while on a hunting trip with this brothers. To aid in his recovery he began sketching and painting. Between 1885 and 1888, he studied at the California School of Design in San Francisco with Virgil Williams and Emil Carlsen. He then studied at the Académie Delécluse in Paris where he participated in the Paris Salons in 1890, '91, '94, 1900 and '09.

In the 1890's, Rose lived in New York doing illustrations for Harper's, Scribners and Century. In 1918 and 1919, Guy Rose was a summer resident in Carmel, exhibiting with the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club and at the Hotel Del Monte. In 1921, Guy Rose suffered a stroke which left him paralyzed. He died in Pasadena in 1925.

William Ritschel was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1864 and studied at the Royal Academy in Munich. He traveled throughout Europe before arriving in New York in 1895 at the age of 31. He first visited Carmel in 1911 at the age of 47 and was active in the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club and Carmel Art Association. In 1919, he began construction on his famous stone castle known as "Eagle's Nest," which still stands today. He died in his seaside home in 1949.

Ritschel loved the raw power and dynamic nature of the sea and tried to capture that liveliness in his paintings. He isn't given to subtle soft tones. Jessie Maude Wybro, a well known art critic and screen writer, described Ritschel's approach to painting saying, "His is the full crash of Wagnerian orchestration."

Seldon Conner Gile was the founder and leader of Oakland's Society of Six, a group of post-impressionist and Fauvist painters including William Clapp, Bernard von Eichman, August Gay, Maurice Logan, and Louis Siegriest. When a young person, Gile along with his older brother Frank was an energetic hiker and had a colorful imagination. The Great Depression was hard on Gile. The Society of Six grew apart and his associations with other artists declined. His art became less relevant with his last major exhibition taking place at the Paul Elder Gallery in May of 1930. A long series of odd jobs and mural projects were the extent of his art activities. Over time, he drank more and painted less. He died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1947 at the age of 60.

Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery celebrates early California painting. Since becoming a state in 1850, California has attracted many artists from Europe and the East Coast.

These artists came for the opportunity and promise of this new land. They were awed by the magnificent landscapes they found, and challenged to create paintings capturing its glory.

Ransome Holdredge came to California in the late 1850's. He worked as a draftsman at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. At the age of 33, with the help of friends, he was able to study in Paris in 1874 and travel in Europe. Prior to going to Paris, Holdredge painted in a Hudson River School style, but afterward, he adopted a French Barbizon style. When he returned to California, he quickly gained a reputation as a leading landscape painter, painting throughout the West. He was a member and may have been a founding member of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco. He was successful and gained some wealth, but ultimately his drinking lead to him squandering his money, and he died destitute in April of 1899 at the age of 63.

Carl Dahlgren and his artist brother Maurice came to America in 1872 from their native Denmark. Initially, the brothers lived in Salt Lake City, but soon moved to San Francisco. Both were exceptional painters. Carl often included a shaft of sunlight in many of this landscapes, gaining him a reputation as being "the sunshine painter." After the '06 quake, Carl went about San Francisco creating drawings, some of which were printed in newspapers locally and nationwide. In 1908, Dahlgren worked in Santa Rosa, painting botanical drawings for Luther Burbank and to paint Sonoma County's scenery.

In his late twenties, Carl Henrik Jonnevold left his native Norway and came to America. He first painted in the Northwest but in the late 1880's, he moved to San Francisco, establishing his studio near 16th and California Streets. Shortly after 1900, he studied in Paris and Munich, mostly through self study in Europe's museums and galleries. Although he lived to be nearly 100 years old, little is known of him past his 70th birthday. According to the Sullivan Goss Gallery in Santa Barbara, "With the Great Depression, Jonnevold’s lack of funds lead him to a dispute with his landlord. After this incident he moved out of San Francisco, and disappeared from the art community." Trotter Galleries of Carmel adds, "Although he nearly lived to be 100, nearly 30 years after his disappearance, Jonnevold was thought only to have created works up to his seventies. His works have gained renewed respect in recent years and are highly sought after by collectors."

Nels Hagerup painted stunning seascapes, with over 6,000 known paintings. He was born to an artistic Norwegian family which included famed Norwegian composer Edvard Hagerup Grieg. Hagerup is one of several painters who emigrated to California from Norway. Other Norwegians who came to paint in California included Carl Jonnevold, Chris Jorgensen and Paul Lauritz. Hagerup studied at the Royal Academy in Berlin and later in Copenhagen. When he came to America, he first settled in Portland, Oregon where he founded the Portland Art Association. He married an artist, another Norwegian immigrant, Marie Hageman from Bergen, Norway. They made their home at 1224 46th Avenue in San Francisco's Sunset District, three blocks from the Pacific. Nels supplemented his income working as a stevedore on San Francisco's docks. Not much is written or known of Nels Hagerup. Our gallery has been unable to find a photograph of him, but the search goes on.

Gordon Coutts A globe would be helpful to fully appreciating Coutts' fascinating world-wide art career. He was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and studied at the Glasgow School of Art. He continued his studies at the Royal Academy in London and the Académie Julian in Paris. While in Paris, Gordon Coutts met his future wife, Australian Alice Gray, a fellow art student who had previously spent time in California where she had studied briefly with Grace Carpenter in Ukiah. After California, Alice along with her parents then moved to Australia. She then left Melbourne go to Paris to study art.

After their Paris courtship and wedding, the newlywed couple left Paris and moved to Melbourne, living at first with Alice's parents. After a couple of years, the couple relocated to Sydney where Gordon taught at the Art Society of New South Wales. After some exhibiting at the Royal Academy in London, the couple next moved to San Francisco. They built their home in Piedmont in the Oakland Hills. Gordon was active in the San Francisco art scene and was a member of the Bohemian Club. The couple divorced in 1918. Seeking a change of scenery, Gordon next moved to North Africa where he painted exotic landscapes of the desert and portraits of the exotic people of Northern Africa. Upon his return to the Bay Area, Gordon contracted tuberculosis and, for his health, moved to Palm Springs where he built a Moroccan castle for himself, similar to one he had known in Tangiers. He named his castle "Dar Marroc," There, Coutts hosted friends and celebrities, including Rudolph Valentino, Errol Flynn and Sir Winston Churchill. He also hosted artists including the famous Russian painter Nicolai Fechin who fled the Revolution, and the American regionalist and painter of American Gothic, Grant Wood.

Frances Upson Young was born, raised and educated in Cleveland, Ohio where she attended the Cleveland School of Art before traveling to continue her studies in Alnwick and Oxford in England. In 1892, she married an attorney, Robert Young. The couple moved to Hollywood where Robert served as the first city attorney for the city of Hollywood, ten years before Hollywood was annexed by Los Angeles in 1903. Frances continued painting and was active in the Laguna Beach Art Association. She studied with California artists Paul Lauritz, Lorenzo Latimer, and Anna Hills. When Robert retired from practicing law, the couple moved to Laguna Beach.

Sam Hyde Harris arrived in Los Angeles in 1904 at the age of 15. He was tall, 6' 3", with a magnetic and colorful personality. He was very successful in business as a commercial artist, creating poster art and labels for a wide variety of businesses. Some of his most striking commercial work were posters for the Southern Pacific, Sante Fe and Union Pacific railroads which included track-side scenes of trains heading through the scenic West.

Beyond commercial art, he taught at the Chouinart Art Institute in Los Angeles. After a divorce from socialite Phoebe Mulholland, Sam married his second wife Marion. The couple bought Jack Wilkinson Smith's old studio and home on Champion Place in the LA suburb of Alhambra, south of Pasadena. The street became known as an art colony known as "Little Bohemia," "Greenwich Village" or the "Monmartre of the Southwest." His neighbors included Frank Tenny Johnson, Eli Harvey and Clyde Forsythe. During the winters, Norman Rockwell escaped snowy Massachusetts and resided on Artist's Alley, even marrying a school teacher residing there. Many of Sam's paintings showed the towering Southern California eucalyptus reaching skyward with the San Gabriel Mountains in the background. Today he is considered one of Southern California's "Eucalyptus School Painters." Sam's eucalyptus trees were stylized, easily identifiable with paint scraped away revealing a brownish undercoat to depict the trunks of the trees. Other "Eucalyptus School" painters included artists who painted many scenes with eucalyptus trees: Benjamin Brown, Paul Lauritz, Edgar Payne, Hanson Putuff and Maurice Braun.

As a boy, Paul Lauritz observed many artists working in the beauty of his native Norway community of Larvik, a seaside community about 100 miles southwest of Oslo. A visiting English artist took young Paul under his wing in return for the boy's family providing him with food and a place to stay. This early taste of art lead young Paul to seek further art instruction at the Larvik Art School before moving to Vancouver, Canada at the age of 16 in 1905. From this foothold in the new world, he soon made his way south to Portland, and after a brief trek in Alaska, he established himself in Los Angeles in 1919 at the age of 30.

In LA, Lauritz opened a studio, painting portraits and landscapes, but landscapes is what established his reputation. He traveled and painted extensively throughout California, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the deserts of California, Mexico, and Nevada. He taught at the Chouinard School of Art and the Otis Institute. He served as president of the California Art Club, and was a member of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Commission, the Laguna Beach Art Association, the Royal Society of Art in England, and the Salmagundi Club in New York.

He was for the most part a self taught artist who won numerous awards from museums and expositions throughout California. His work is exhibited at Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum, the Irvine Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oxnard, CA.

As a fine art painter, Joshua Meador exhibited widely in California, and spent much time painting the Northern California Coast, and often in Bodega Bay and Sonoma County in the early 1950's. He painted almost exclusively with palette knife and said, "I think of myself as an impressionist, but impressionism can be informed by modern art."

Born in Mississippi, young Joshua Meador had the courage to stand up to his father and tell him he did not want to accept his hard-earned appointment to the Naval Academy, but instead wanted to study art. With his father's help, they looked at art schools in the East and Chicago. In 1935 during the depths of the Great Depression, Meador graduated the Art Institute of Chicago. After a suggestion from a fellow artist, he submitted his portfolio to the up-and-coming animation film maker in Hollywood named Walt Disney. In short order, Meador became the Disney Studio's Director of Animation Effects, a post he held for nearly thirty years. According to his IMDB profile, Meador made major contributions for most of the Disney classic films, many of them now on the National Film Registry.

Robert Rishell's paintings are known for their striking contrast. He said this about light and dark in paintings, "You need dark to show light." He was instrumental in founding the Oakland Museum, and was active in the greater Bay Area's thriving art community his entire life.

His father was Clifford Rishell, Oakland's Mayor in the 1930's when the Bay Bridge was built. He studied at the California College of Arts in Oakland and with famed Bay Area painter Xavier Martinez. He was a member of the Bohemian Club, and according to his daughter, Robert always looked forward to the Bohemian Club camp-outs on the Russian River where his tent mates were ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and novelist Herman Wouk. He did a portrait for Edgar Bergen featuring Bergen and his young daughter Candice. He painted the official portrait of Governor Ronald Reagan which now hangs in the Capitol in Sacramento. Later in his career, he became associated with California's desert painters. He held several successful exhibitions at the Desert Southwest Art Gallery in Palm Desert and was close friends with desert painters Jimmy Swinnerton and John W. Hilton.

"Art @ the Source" is coming!
Two Weekends, Saturdays and Sundays
June 3-4, 10am-5pm & June 10-11, 10am-5pm
Linda Sorensen's OPEN STUDIO
LindaSorensenPaintings.com
at Graton's Atelier One
seven Art @ the Source Open Studios under one roof!
Preview receptions etc. to meet Linda:
Corrick's, downtown Santa Rosa, May 5, June 2
Graton Gallery, "partners & friends", May 20
Sebastopol Center for the Arts, May 20
Bodega Art Gallery, inland Bodega, May 21

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art

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Have us bring selected works to your home ... Call or email for a an appointment. (up to 200 miles from Bodega Bay).

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