Their Georgean-style mansion surrounded by French and Italian gardens was cause for collecting art. They focused on late 19th and early 20th century Impressionist and Post Impressionist paintings. Hugo and Margeret Oates Dixon both died in 1974, but through their foundation, their philanthropy continues. Today their home and their art is the Dixon Gallery and Gardens.

Claude Monet 1840-1926, Port of Dieppe, Evening, 1882 (top of the article) ... the star of this exhibition. It was was done by Monet when he was 42 years old while on a trip to Le Havre on the Coast of Normandy. The painting's dazzling oranges, pinks, blues and purples are striking from across the room, a dance of color and light, shadow and reflection. Monet wrote a letter to Alice Hoshede in Paris that he was pleased "to have found here superb sunlight."

At the time of this painting, Monet was a widower. Three years earlier in 1879, his first wife Camille died after a lengthy illness. Claude and Camille Monet lived with the Hoshedes in Paris, where Alice cared for the ailing Camille. Nearly ten years later, Alice's husband Ernest had died in 1891. Claude asked Alice to marry him in 1882.

Claude Monet 1840-1926, Village Street, 1870 ... Monet painted Village Street when he was 30 years old while he and his first wife Camille Doncieux were visiting Normandy. This painting shows Monet's tendency to forego what he considered unessential detail in favor of emphasizing his broad, generalizing impression of the scene. The late afternoon sun casts deep shadows on the main street through Trouville, with the English Channel off in the background. The house to the right is not far from the Hotel des Roches Noires which Monet painted the following summer.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot 1796-1875, The Paver of the Chailly Road, Fontainebleau c1830-35 ... In the early 1830's, Corot and a number of other artists gathered often in the village of Barbizon in the Fontainebleau forest just outside Paris. The innovation of paint being able to be stored in lead tubes allowed artists to get out of their studios and paint outdoors. Here, Corot paints a paver as he lays stones opening up the Fontainebleau Forest for Parisians. Corot uses rapid brushwork, a technique painters developed to capture the quickly changing light while painting outdoors. Monet had great respect for Corot, later stating, "Compared to Corot, we are all nothing, nothing."

Edgar Degas 1834-1917, Ballet Scene, circa 1870's, reworked 1890's ... Degas loved painting scenes of the French Ballet. This scene is dramatized as the dancer completes a demi-plie while in dramatic or eerie shadow. The painting is a blur of color and very short on detail with great movement and mystery. The face of the dancer is half in shadow and the oval shaped area of orange appears to be the back of the head of an audience member.

Victor-Edouard Stanislas Lepine 1835-1892, The Island of Grand Jatte in Summer, c1877-1882 ... Stanislas Lepine was 42 when he created The Island of Grand Jatte in Summer. As a young artist, he, like Claude Monet, studied with Eugene Boudin and Camille Corot. He embraced the value of painting outdoors, directly from nature. Parisians, eager to escape the city, enjoyed visiting the Island of Grand Jatte, a great place to picnic on the island's banks of the Seine. In a scene near this one in 1886, Post-Impressionist Georges Seurat would create his well known pointillist masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

Jean-Francois Raffaelli 1850-1924, The Place D'Italie after the Rain, 1877 ... Raffaelli created this painting 25 years after Napoleon appointed Georges Haussmann to modernize Paris. As a result of Haussmann's efforts, Paris became less segregated and the social order of Paris began changing. Impressionists wanted to capture what they saw as radical social change, an era of hope and modernity that they wanted to embrace. The convergence of paved boulevards seems to be an echo of the endless sky, while the views down two of these boulevards show interesting perspective.

John Singer Sargent 1856-1925, Ramon Subercaseaux in a Gondola, 1880 ... American artist John Singer Sargent was only 24. At this young age, he had already become a successful painter doing commissioned portraits for wealthy clients. He was friends with another young Parisian artist, Ramon Subercaseaux, who was also a Chilean diplomat stationed in Paris. In 1880, Sargent and Subercaseaux toured through Europe, painting as they went. Here, Sargent paints Subercaseaux seated in a Venetian gondoloa while Subercaseaux appears to be drawing Sargent as he painted.

Gustave Courbet 1819-1877, Lac Leman, 1877 ... Switzerland's Lake Geneva was previously known as Lac Leman, and it still is called Lac Leman in the French language. Impressionist Gustave Courbet had participated in the destruction of the Vendome Column during the Paris Commune of 1871. He was exiled to Switzerland in 1873 where he remained until his death in 1877 at the age of 58. He found solace in painting scenes of Lake Geneva. Here he focused on the rocky shore against a wide expanse of sky filled with puffy clouds. The contrast of the small sailboats in the distance gives a feel of the scene's immensity..

Alfred Sisley 1839-1899, The Loing at Saint-Mammes, c1880 ... Afred Sisley was born and raised in Paris to English parents. After having seen the work of English landscape painters John Constable and J.M.W. Turner, he decided to study art. In short order, he met fellow young artists Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Sisley never wavered from an impressionist style, but he struggled to find buyers. Early in his career, his work showed delicate brushwork, but this painting shows rapid brushstrokes capturing the energy of barge traffic where the Loing River meets the Seine.

Edmond Georges Grandjean 1844-1908, A Coach Stop on the Place De Passy, 1882 ... A Coach Stop on the Place De Passy was shown at the Paris Salon of 1882. This painting's placement in this exhibition is in stark contrast to the Impressionists. Initially, the Paris art market was not kind to the Impressionists. This is why they established their own exhibition after having been rejected by the Paris Salon. Edmond Grandjean was a contemporary of Monet, Renoir, Sisley and the other impressionists, but he held true to more acceptable ideas of painting. He believed an artist should, with meticulous observation, paint what he saw in front of him with an almost photographic realism.

Georges Seurat 1859-1891, The Picnic, c1885 ... As a result of impressionism and its study of light, artists soon began investigating the scientific nature of light. Georges Seurat is credited for devising techniques of chromoluminarism and pointillism. Chromoluminarism is using the arrangement of color so that the eye reconstructs or interprets the color as shape. Pointillism uses dots of pure color positioned near other colors to create a third color.

Seurat painted this scene of three figures seated on the grass of La Grande Jatte in the Seine.

This painting may have well been an oil sketch used by Seurat as he was prepariing to paint A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. If it was a preliminary sketch, the three seated children were not among the figures Seurat used in his final masterpiece.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1841-1919, The Picture Book, c1892 ... Renoir was 51 years old when he painted The Picture Book. He had become successful in part doing portraits of other people's children. As he became more successful, he used his own children as models, This rosy cheeked girl appears to be lost in her own sense of wonder, free from the responsibilities of the adult world. Renoir seems to have been captured by her wonder as he painted her. His fluid brushwork sacrifices detail while drawing attention to the girl's warmness and wonder.

Henri Stanislas Rouart 1833-1913, Woman Playing the Guitar, c1885-90 ... Rouart was a lifelong friend of Edgar Degas. During the siege of Paris, part of the Franco-Prussian War, Degas was a volunteer serving under Lieutenant Henri Rouart. After the war, Rouart worked as an industrial engineer, pioneering new systems of refrigeration and made his fortune.

He had always been interested in art, and painted some on his own. He was also a patron and personal friend of the Impressionists. He was inspired mostly by Degas, but his painting shows the influence of other impressionists. He contibuted his paintings to seven of the eight Impressionist exhibitions. The model in Woman Playing the Guitar is unknown, but it was done in Rouart's house, with some of his collected paintings appearing in the background.

Berthe Morisot 1841-1895, Peasant Girl among Tulips, 1890 ... Like Henri Rouart, Berthe Morisot participated in seven of the eight Impressionist exhibitions, Berthe Morisot painted Peasant Girl Among the Tulips in 1890, when she was 49. Morisot and her ailing husband Eugene Manet (younger brother of Edouard Manet) eased their family's financial anxiety by moving out of Paris. They rented a house in the village of Mezy-sur-Seine, northwest of Paris. While there, Morisot cared for her husband and painted some. She used her daugher, her niece and a neighborhood girlfriend as models. Gabrielle Dufour was the friend and is the model for Peasant Girl Among the Tulips. Although Gabrielle had a local reputation as a wild girl, Morisot saw in her a beauty and fragility, similar to the tulips surrounding her.

Henry Ossawa Tanner 1859-1937, View of the Seine, Looking toward Notre Dame, 1896 ... African American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner was the son of a former slave and a preacher. He always strived to relate a sense of spirituality in all his paintings. After achieving success in Philadelphia and New York, Tanner settled in Paris, freeing him of the racisim in America. He studied at the Academie Julian and exhibited at the Paris Salon for twenty-one years, 1894 through 1914. His nocturne, View of the Seine, Looking toward Notre Dame shows the placid waters of the Seine with a gleaming Notre Dame in the background. The composition shows the influence of another expatriate American, James McNeill Whistler, whose former Paris studio was now occupied by Tanner. Whistler had since relocated to London.

Henri Matisse 1869-1954, Le Palais, Belle Ile, c1896-97 ... In 1895, Matisse was 25 years old and had never seen the ocean. He and his friend Emile Wery visited the Belle-Ile-en-Mer off the coast of Brittany. The following year, Matisse returned for a three month long stay. Le Palais, Belle Ile was one of the most colorful paintings Matisse he had done to this point, and shows his anticipation of Fauvism. His work appears to be changing before our eyes. With the flattened view of the harbor, the citadel on the hill appears flattened while the foreground is awash in innovative color. Soon, he would become known as the most daring colorist of the early twentieth century.

Maximilien Luce 1858-1941, The Church of Gisors, View of the Ramparts, 1898 ... Maximilien Luce was eighteen years younger than Claude Monet. He was born into a working class family in the Montparnasse district, a section of the city populated by more than its share of artists. He identified himself with the Neo-Impressionists lead by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Like his friend Camille Pissarro, Luce held somewhat radical left political beliefs and was active in the anarchist movements in Paris in the 1880's, even serving some time in prison in 1894. His oeuvre is mixed, showing paintings of hard-pressed urban laborers in some while painting benign and complacent views of Gothic churches in others. In The Church of Gisors, View of the Ramparts, Luce creates a lively pointillist look at the centuries old building, giving it a glowing colorfulness in the golden light of sunset.

Gaston La Touche 1854-1913, The Joyous Festival, c1906 ... This painting is important in this exhibition because it draws attention to the gulf between the established art market in Paris and the Impressionists. While La Touche looked back to the old ways, the Impressionists embraced modernity. In Paris of the 1890's and 1900's, there was a Rococo Revival in Paris. La Touche was all too happy to produce paintings for this market. Although La Touche was a gifted painter and good friends with many of the Impressionists, his art was going in a completely different direction.

Overall, this was a fun exhibition, covering work by a variety of Impressionist and Post Impressionist painters of a marvelously creative and inventive period in the history of painting. It is worthy of your time and effort to plan an excursion to Sacramento to see it. It is at the Crocker Museum in Sacramento through January 30, 2022. The Museum is open Wednesdays through Sundays, 10 to 5. Admission is $15 for adults, $10 for seniors. Masks are required.

On her reconnecting visit with her father, she met Barbara and found John in his studio painting with his neighbor and friend, James Cagney. What a surprise! Finding Caty Cagney's famous dad painting with her father seemed beyond coincidence. Katy soon learned Cagney visited Hilton often, enjoying painting sessions in John's studio and enjoying John's olympic sized thermal-spring-heated pool. From that time on, "Uncle Jimmy" was a lifelong friend.

Kathi once told Uncle Jimmy that her feelings had been hurt by a critic who said her paintings were too much like her dad's. Cagney comforted her, and with his arm around Kathi's shoulder he told her, "Don't you worry about that Kati, you just paint what's in your heart." Kathi loved her Uncle Jimmy and later said, "That is the best advice I ever received."

What draws people to Kathi's paintings is their brightness. "Luminosity" is the adjective many use to describe her work. And for those who knew Kathi, her smile, her twinkling eyes, and her generous spirit, "luminosity" is the adjective often used to describe her.

Since 2007, Linda and I enjoyed a 14-year-long association with Kathi. I will miss those calls to inform her we sold one of her paintings. She was always so appreciative and supportive of our gallery.

I also enjoyed calling Kathi to ask her questions about other California Desert painters. She was a most helpful, willing primary eye-witness to a special time in the California Desert.

In 2012, I flew down to Twentynine Palms for Kathi Hilton's one-woman show at the Twentynine Palms Art Gallery. I had arranged to meet Ann Japenga there, a freelance journalist living in Palm Springs who writes about the history of Palm Springs and the surrounding desert with keen instrests in California Desert painters. Ann wanted to meet Kathi and view her paintings.

Over dinner with Kathi and Ann at the Twentynine Palms Inn, Kathi told story after story while enjoyed a prime rib dinner (a local specialty she remembered from the old days). Afterward, the three of us piled into Ann Japenga's Subaru for an after-dark adventure. With Kathi and Ann in front and me in the back, we discovered the Mojave Desert doesn't have street lights. It seemed to us to be the darkest of moonless nights.

Our goal was to seek out John W. Hilton's old house. The dark dusty desert roads with illegible street signs, if they existed at all, made the task nearly impossible. With persistence, we found the home. Ann tells the story far better than I can. Here's Ann's article of the search in the dark desert.

On my own journey through life, I'm coming to appreciate just how briefly the lights of others shine in our lives. Its best to bask in their rays all you can. Thank you for your life Kathi, your optimisim, your art, your spirit, your character and your eye-twinkling luminosity.

Beginning November 19 and running through February 27, Casa Romantica will host Sam Hyde Harris, Seeing the Unusual. The exhibition is curated by Maurine St. Gaudens and Joseph Morsman.

Sam Hyde Harris was both successful in commercial art and fine art painting. He is most remembered for his commercial work promoting the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroads.

But Sam was a fine art painter too. In this exhibition are paintings of the early days of Chavez Ravine when it was home to several small but thriving Hispanic communities. But in the 1950's these communities were destroyed to make way for improvements, most notably the construction of Dodger Stadium. After their move to LA, the Dodgers played their first seasons in the LA Coliseum, and they were looking for a more spacious and permanent home.

Sam Hyde Harris had many associations with other artists and the Hollywood / LA social scene of the 1920's and 30's. One such artist was Orpha Klinker. To the right is a painting by Orpha of Chavez Ravine which may well have been done on a joint painting excursion with Sam Hyde Harris, or may have been done on a recommendation by Sam.

In his fine art painting, Sam was known for his majestic depictions of towering eucalyptus trees, laying down the color first with wide brushstrokes and then scraping away paint to expose the trunks to impressive effect.

Later in Sam's career, at the behest of his friend, California Desert Painting legend Jimmy Swinnerton, Sam painted scenes near Palm Springs and the surrounding California Desert.

Casa Romanica is located about 30 miles south of the Irvine Museum and about 17 miles north of Mission San Juan Capistrano. It is located in a residential area somewhat distant from I-5, so it is best to use Google Maps to select your route.