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Archives March/April/May 2010
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This Newsletter contains information on California art and artists prior to c. 1950. Occasionally included are notices on pre-1950 California architecture, photography, and decorative arts. All material comes from announcements and magazines that cross Nancy Moure's desk. Please put her on your mailing list -- nancymoure@earthlink.net. HCC EVENTS The Historical Collections Council is an organization for collectors, dealers, and scholars interested in learning more about historic California art through visits to private collections, museum shows, and lectures. Details on membership and events can be found at www.historicalcollectionscouncil.org. February 27, 2010. One-day trip to Pasadena. This will include a pre-opening view of the exhibit Millard Sheets: the Early Years at the Pasadena Museum of California Art with a tour led by Jean Stern. Lunch will be at the Raymond Restaurant. The restaurant’s cottage is the only remnant of the once gigantic and famous Raymond Hotel where turn-of-the-twentieth century tourists from the East Coast and Midwest spent the winters. After lunch the group will view the outstanding collection of Nancy and Les Waite who own some of the finest works by the most important early California Impressionists. Also of interest is the Wait’s home built by Roland Coate of Johnson, Kaufmann and Coate in 1929. For those interested in the architectural firm, on March 28, 2010 Pasadena Heritage is sponsoring a one-day tour of five of their homes titled “The California Style: Johnson, Kaufmann & Coate.” Tickets can be obtained from www.pasadenaheritage.org. Upon arrival back at the Irvine Museum the group will be given a special tour of the Museum’s current exhibit Selections from the Irvine Museum. EDITORIAL WILLIAM MIESSE On January 16 an exhibition of artworks depicting Mount Shasta opened at Turtle Bay Exploration Park in Turtle Bay/Redding, California. The show includes fine Shasta works by Thomas Hill, William Keith, Gilbert Munger, Frederick Butman, Henry Joseph Breuer, Thaddeus Welch, Carlos Hittell, and many others. This exhibition is the culmination of twenty-five years’ work by William Miesse who quite frankly admits he had no particular interest in art prior to 1986 when he acquired his first image of Mount Shasta. Like many pioneers he modestly claims he came upon the subject by accident and documented it because no one else seemed to recognize that this important legacy existed. Both Miesse’s parents were well-traveled, both were amateur pianists, and he grew up in New Jersey. After graduating from prep school, he moved to Santa Barbara to attend UCSB. But the sixties were the flower child generation and after three years he dropped out. For the next decade he tasted various ideas: meditation in Spain, New York, and Berkeley and herbal study in Santa Cruz, among others. He looks back on his period of meditation as one of the most interesting things he has ever done. He also obtained a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies at Evergreen College in Olympia Washington with a specialty in natural history and pre-med science. Much later he received his M. A. in Environmental Education from Humboldt State University. About 1979 his life found focus when he traveled to Mt. Shasta to visit friends he met in Santa Cruz. As a person who liked to ski, hike, and study nature, he believed it would be a perfect place to live. He bought an abandoned house, fixed it up, and settled in. Over the years between his year at Evergreen College and today, Miesse has purchased and renovated more than five homes, most of which he has sold at a profit. He is currently about to move into a home he designed from scratch. Like many new residents he was curious to learn about his community. Describing himself as an omnivorous reader, he studied Shasta’s natural history, its human history, its animals and its geology. The subjects appealed to his already established interest in science. An intellectual, his interest in books led to his becoming a part-time dealer in rare books and eventually to compiling a major annotated bibliography of the history and science of Mount Shasta. Miesse’s accumulated knowledge paid off in 1989 when the Forest Service issued its final environmental impact statement on a proposed ski resort on the mountain. Planned to be the largest on the West Coast with three interconnected villages it would have destroyed much of the purity of the mountain. Shasta, never having had the status of a national park, with no archaeology, and never having been the site of famous historical events, had little evidence of a documented history to defend it. Miesse’s paper “Significance of Mt. Shasta as a Visual Resource in 19th and Early 20th Century California” was used by opposition lawyers to demonstrate the mountain did have significance. While it didn’t directly halt the ski resort, the Forest Service had to re-write its environmental statement, and eventually the ski area permit was revoked due to the endless environmental conflicts the project engendered. One day in 1986, when browsing an antique store in Mt. Shasta City, Miesse came across a nineteenth century painting of the mountain. He had never purchased art before, never had any particular interest in it, never took any art history classes in school, but after he carried the artwork home it began to have a magical effect on him. He felt transported into another level of feeling. Since it was a nineteenth century piece he wondered if, by any chance, it might be the very first picture of Shasta ever painted. Looking in Edan Hughes first edition of Artists in California he discovered that his 1890s painting was predated by many, many others. After a year or so of research he ascertained that the honor of making the first image of Mount Shasta belonged to Alfred Agate, the official artist of the U. S. Government’s Wilkes Expedition, who painted a watercolor of it in 1841. Miesse soon developed a list of about 150 artists who had visited and sketched at Mount Shasta and realized there was probably more than 1000 artworks of the mountain floating around somewhere. Thus began a ten-year odyssey of looking in antique stores, thrift stores, book stores and junk shops for images of Mt. Shasta. Between Redding in California and Medford in Oregon he estimates there are some 40 shops that he visited on a regular basis. Miesse purchased the artworks he could afford. He faced no competition in these “early” years. Locals had no great interest. Painting hunts took him as far south as Los Angeles/Pasadena where, c. 1986 or 1987 he purchased a large William Keith of Shasta from Poulsen Galleries. He worked closely with dealers in San Francisco and, once a year when he traveled to New York to visit his mother - his father passed away in 1985 – he browsed galleries there. Ironically artists who painted Shasta did not live in its environs but traveled to the mountain, about 275 miles north of San Francisco, to sketch and returned to their homes in either the Bay Area or America’s East Coast to work up their finished pieces. Miesse discovered he had a natural eye for aesthetics. All told he acquired more than 100 pieces. Collecting led him to conservators and framers and eventually to learning how to conserve and frame paintings himself. Since his residence at the time was not luxurious, he stored most of his paintings in his garage, which had no climate control. After seven years of collecting he began to think it might be more responsible to find a good home for them. Turtle Bay Exploration Park considered his proposal for two years before finally purchasing twenty-five. The items ranged from prints, such as the double-page lithograph from the satirical San Francisco publication Wasp that shows a train stuck in the snow on the flanks of Mt. Shasta and the mountain looking down at it and laughing, to large sized oils. The collection, acquired in 1995, forms the core of the Park’s current fine art holdings. Since that time Miesse has continued his search for interesting Mount Shasta artworks. Miesse put together a parallel collection consisting of 20-25 early maps of the area. These revealed a fascinating fact about the mountain. It was dubbed Mt. Simpson and then Mt. Jackson -- the Cascades are termed the Presidential Range, as for example Mt. Jefferson and Mt. Adams -- before the name Shasta stuck. Miesse’s interest in Mt. Shasta brought him into contact with others of a like mind. Dennis Freeman, Librarian at the College of the Siskiyous formed the college’s Mt. Shasta collection of books, now numbering 3-4,000 and housed in the library’s special local history room. With Freeman Miesse collaborated on an exhibit of Mt. Shasta maps titled Tale of Two Mountains, held at College of the Siskiyous, February and March 1992 In 1993 the College funded Miesse with a one-year grant to prepare an annotated bibliography/finding guide for the 3000 books in Freeman’s Mount Shasta collection. This is now on line at www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/bib/index.htm. Miesse also wrote the overview of the history section, contributed to the literature section, and scanned his collection of slides for the project. Miesse’s The Significance of Mount Shasta as a Visual Resource in 19th and early 20th Century California is also on line as part of the Mount Shasta Collection at www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/art/. Click on “Paintings and Drawings” to view images not only of the landscape but of the area’s animals and plants. Much of the material in The Significance of Mount Shasta… has now been published as a hard cover book titled Sudden and Solitary: Mount Shasta and Its Artistic Legacy, 1841-2008. It all happened when Robyn G. Peterson, senior director of exhibitions and programs at the Turtle Bay Museum, read the manuscript and thought it would form the basis for a book/exhibition. Once funding was garnered, the tome was co-published in May 2008 by Turtle Bay Exploration Park and Heyday Books in Berkeley, a non-profit publisher who has published several books on historic California art. See www.heydaybooks.com. Peterson contributed thematic essays while Miesse supplied biographies and a chronological outline. The book is 288 pp with all color plates. Funding for the accompanying exhibition was finally acquired in May 2009 when the Hearst Foundation donated seed money. The exhibition titled, The Art of Mt. Shasta, will be on view at Turtle Bay from January 16 to May 2, 2010. It consists of more than 60 artworks from items on paper to oils. Even Northern California residents who can see the actual Mt. Shasta out their windows enjoy learning the many ways artists interpreted the mountain over time, and they can “see” it from perspectives other than I-5 on the mountain’s west side. One jewel of the exhibit is the first view of the mountain ever made, the 1841 sketch by Agate which has been lent by the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D. C. Located just around the corner from the entrance, people often overlook it because it is small and on paper. The other star is the 6 x 10 foot view of Shasta by William Keith that normally hangs in the private Jonathan Club in downtown Los Angeles. Hung so that the viewer’s eye hits the middle of the image, it contains such detail it makes the viewer feel he is actually standing in the landscape. Miesse and co-curator Robyn Peterson, PhD, wrote the extended labels, which include interesting anecdotes about each of the artworks. With all his knowledge of Mt. Shasta, Miesse is in constant demand as a lecturer. He spoke at the symposium on California art held at the University of the Pacific at Stockton some years ago. In conjunction with the current exhibit at Turtle Bay he will present three talks:
I asked Bill where he intends to go from here and whether he is suffering a vacuum as do so many people who complete large projects. He says “No” to feeling at a loss and believes he has put an end to his work on Shasta area art. But he has also re-identified with another project -- a lexicon of English connective phrases which will be published as a reference thesaurus for thinkers and writers. If it is adieu, Bill, then you have our sincerest thanks for all your hard work. Your book graces many of our libraries and, hopefully, Southern Californians will consider the exhibit worthy of the long trip. Taken in conjunction with other Northern California resources, such as the art museums in Stockton and Sacramento, the Boggs Collection at Shasta State Historic Park, the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa and the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah, not to overlook the exhibit of Edward Curtis and Thomas Houseworth photographs of Native Americans at Turtle Bay, there is a lot to see. ANNOUNCEMENTS MANY THANKS to HCC member Katherine Norris, owner of Katherine Norris Fine Art, 2535 West Coast Highway, Newport Beach. www.katherinenorris.com. Not only does she have an excellent gallery that includes historic California artists, but it is SHE who set up and maintains the HCC website www.historicalcollectionscouncil.org. In just two and a half months (November 1, 2009 to January 13, 2010) the HCC’s website has been accessed by 1621 people from the U. S. and about 700 from other countries. Wow! Thanks, Katherine. Finally, after years of renovation, the Oakland Museum of California is going to reopen its Gallery of California Art. May 1, 2010 is the date. Added are two spaces of approximately 4500 square feet for changing exhibitions and large-scale contemporary art. A Resource Center will engage viewers in multiple perspectives of viewing and experiencing art. A Project Space enables frequent rotations of works from the Museum’s collection. Lighting and wall systems have been upgraded to make the galleries brighter and more flexible. The artwork will be installed thematically. Specific galleries will showcase strengths of the collection such as work by artist Richard Diebenkorn and photographer Dorothea Lang, nineteenth century landscapes, Gold Rush era photography, Arts & Crafts furniture, turn-of-the-twentieth-century photography and painting, as well as contemporary art. The three-year-old Claremont Museum of Art is facing a financial crisis and is raising money through the sale of 15 limited edition castings of the TORSO by Harrison McIntosh. $5000 to Claremont Museum Members and $6,000 to non-members. Clay comes from Laguna Clay in the City of Industry, and the wooden bases are being manufactured by the Sam Maloof Woodworking Studio. The Claremont Museum, devoted to showing the work of area artists, is a valuable resource in the Inland Empire. To learn more about how you can acquire this lovely work by a major California ceramist and help the museum at the same time, see www.claremontmuseum.org/give.html. Laguna Art Museum’s Historical Art Council hosted a day trip to Tustin Hills and Villa Park on Saturday, February 27, 2010. Departing the Laguna Beach High School at 9:00 a.m., it spent the morning viewing the art collection of Yvonne Boseker. Yvonne and her late husband, Dr. Edward Boseker, began collecting California art in 1969 focusing first on pieces from Northern California. By the mid 1980s they began to add Southern California art. Artists in their collection include William Wendt, Granville Redmond, Edgar Payne, John Gamble, Joseph Kleitsch and Anna Hills. Following lunch at Moreno’s Restaurant, housed in a historic Quaker church in Orange, the forty lucky tour members visited the home of Dr. Kelly Tucker. Tucker’s collection has also morphed. He began with historic California Impressionists, including works by William Wendt, Maurice Braun, Colin Campbell Cooper and Edgar Payne. But more recently he has been acquiring mid-century Modernists including Roland Petersen, Roger Kuntz and Helen Lundeberg. On Sunday, October 18, 2009, Collectors’ Circle members of the California Art Club made a one-day trip to view historic California art at the Rolling Hills home of collectors Don and Mary Lou Crocker. The Crockers, who began collecting in 1958, currently have more than 40 museum-quality paintings by such artists as Edgar Payne, Marion Wachtel, George Brandriff, Percy Gray, Armin Hansen and William Ritschel. James Mason Hutchings, best known as the publisher of Hutchings’ Illustrated California Magazine (1856-61), was surrounded by female artists most of his life. He immigrated to California from England in 1848 and struck it rich in the Gold Rush. Losing it in a bank failure, he turned to hotel keeping and publishing. Hutchings led the second tourist party into Yosemite in 1855 and from that date vigorously promoted its and California’s visual beauty through several illustrated publications. In San Francisco his soon-to-be mother-in-law was the daughter of painter Cephas Thompson. After marrying her daughter Elvira Sproat, the couple moved to Yosemite where Hutchings ran the Hutchings’ Hotel and Elvira produced many watercolors of the valley. Unfortunately, all but a few that are now in the collection of the Yosemite Museum were burned in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. After the couple’s divorce in 1875 Hutchings married Augusta Ladd Sweetland (in 1877 or 1880) but their one year in an idyllic cabin at the foot of Yosemite Falls ended with Augusta’s premature death in 1881. Augusta painted landscapes and marines in oil and watercolor. One is in the collection of the Yosemite Museum. (See Shirley Sargent, Pioneers in Petticoats: Yosemite’s Early Women 1856-1900, Los Angeles: Transanglo Books, 1966, Chapt. 5 “Hutchings Harem”.) There is a short biography of John Hardwicke Lewis, late nineteenth century Southern California landscape painter, in Annals of Early Sierra Madre, compiled by Edith Blumer Bowen, Sierra Madre Historical Society, 1950, p. 187. On Thursday, November 12, 2009, Collectors’ Circle members of the California Art Club had dinner at and toured the collection of historic California art at the Jonathan Club, Los Angeles. In addition to works by William Keith, George Brandriff, Edgar Payne and many others, the Club’s Art Foundation owns over 300 works by colorist and figure painter Theodore Lukits. The San Diego Visual Artists Guild. The Guild traces its roots back to the San Diego Art Association, formed in 1904. It has in preparation a comprehensive history, now filling over 300 pages, including illustrations, and it has plans to create biographies of individual historic artists. All this will be posted on its website www.sdvag.net/History. Best to keep checking the site as the entries develop. Spencer Jon Helfen December Fine Arts Newsletter contains a short article on the PWAP (Public Works of Art Project) the first of several government art projects of the 1930s. Edward Bruce, a lawyer, businessman and painter, who was active in California from 1929 to 1934 and headed the national PWAP, claimed the project employed 3600 artists and purchased 16,000 works in various media. This first project, which was really a relief project, actually generated the most aesthetically superior artworks of all the other projects, except possibly, TRAP, the Treasury project that resulted in many murals in post offices around the nation. Helfen offers for sale artworks by several of the artists involved in the PWAP. See his website at www.HelfenFineArts.com. The mining town of Bodie, California, located northeast of Mono Lake, near the Nevada border, formed the background for an artistic competition between two amateur women painters, wives of the joint owners of City Market on the town’s Main Street. In the 1880s Bodie was at its height as a mining town, boasting possibly 8,000 residents and was wild with killings and had many saloons and a sizeable red light district. Charlie Donnelly and Eli Johl were unmarried when they purchased City Market on Main Street. Eli butchered the meat while Charlie managed the counter in a white apron. Soon Charlie married Annie Pagdin, an English woman painter, and she filled their home with her grand landscapes of California scenery. She also painted on China. Their home became a social center for the rough mining town. Eli, on the other hand, met and married Lottie, a Bodie prostitute. Lottie had been born in Iowa in 1855 and married, had a child, and divorced before she came west to Bodie to make her living. Annie Pagdin Donnelly, who had pretensions to society in spite of her heavy, possibly low-class, English accent, first tried to get her husband to break business ties with his partner and then proceeded to socially blackball Lottie. Lottie, described as an attractive, loveable girl with a smile always on her face, took up painting in an attempt to best Annie. She never got into Bodie society and ultimately died after taking a carelessly filled prescription that was, in actuality, poison. When Bodie went bust, the partners split up. Annie and Charles Donnelly planned to move to Burlingame where they intended to construct a grand home with a picture gallery in it for Annie’s paintings. Eli remained in Bodie for years and then suddenly decided to leave, selling his home complete with Lottie’s paintings. The home is currently part of the Bodie ghost town State Park. Reproductions of both Annie’s and Lottie’s paintings appear in Ella M. Cain’s, The Story of Bodie, San Francisco: Fearon Publishers, 1956. Annex Galleries in Santa Rosa is one of the biggest dealers in California prints and has a history of publishing important documentary information on items they have for sale. Originally they issued hard cover catalogues. More recently their “exhibitions” are documented on line and can be found at www.annexgalleries.com:3000/exhibitions. Check it out. You’ll learn a lot and see some great prints!!! December 2009 the Oceanside Museum, under the directorship of Skip Pahl, celebrated the completion of its Capital Campaign to raise six million dollars to expand the building from Irving Gill’s historic structure of 5,000 square feet with a new and spectacular three-level “Central Pavilion” that brings the total to 21,000 square feet. The new addition houses not only gallery space and a kitchen for catering special events, but an auditorium (for films, lectures and musical performances), a board room and office space. In the basement is a design studio, carpentry shop, and storage. What’s more exciting is the Museum is actually debt free thanks to individual contributions between July 1, 2004 and December 15, 2009 that were matched by the Howard Charitable Foundation. Congratulations Oceanside Museum !!!! and keep up the good work of displaying art by California artists. The Museum’s most recent show in our interest area was Bram Dijkstra’s exhibit Masterpieces of San Diego Painting (2008). CaliforniaWatercolor.com announces the availability of fine art prints of watercolors by Glen Knowles. Born 1952, Knowles is beyond the time period of HCC members’ interest, but his works have the flavor of California Style watercolors. Also he has been active in the historic California art community in his other guises: as a collector of historic California paintings and as curator of several exhibitions of historic California art. Fine art prints by artist Kenneth Potter (b. 1926) in Bakersfield are also available. Potter studied at the San Francisco Academy of Art, in Paris and in Florence. Growing up in Northern California during the Depression, he began drawing regularly at an early age. After service in World War II, he studied art on the G. I. Bill and other places but soon settled in San Francisco where he painted transparent watercolors of Bay Area scenes. He has also painted murals, worked as a commercial artists, designed sets for theater plays, and made fine prints. Since the 1960s he has led painting workshops around the world. His works are colorful and upbeat. The American Art Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art visited two important private collections of California art in Laguna Beach on Saturday, January 30, 2010. The morning was spent at Jan and Mark Hilbert’s home and stunning collection of California Style watercolors and pottery/ceramics and the afternoon at Maggie Russell’s beautiful oceanfront home and collection of California art. Palm Desert, California, is dedicating the entire month of April 2010 to Desertscapes, a celebration of art in the Coachella Valley. Exhibits, lectures, painting demonstrations, paint-outs in the field, and tours will be on the slate. Valley-wide in scope, the events will be staged in various cities and at various venues including the Palm Springs Art Museum, the Living Desert (that has a collection of historic California landscape paintings donated by Stephen B. Chase), the Walter Marks Art Center at College of the Desert, the Palm Desert Historical Society as well as the Coachella Water Color Society and the Palm Springs Desert Art Center, the Edenhurst Galleries, and the University of California Riverside campus at Palm Desert. For a detailed schedule, please view www.palmdesertart.org or contact Deborah Schwartz, Public Art Coordinator at dschwartz@cityofpalmdesert.org or 760-837-1664. April 24, 2010 the Historical Society of Palm Desert will sponsor a bus tour of collector’s homes. There are many important private art collections in the Coachella Valley and this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. For details telephone 760-346-6588. The Sonoma County Museum in Santa Rosa has a significant collection of early California art. In the nineteenth century Sonoma County was a frequent destination not only for San Francisco artists but for artists who visited California from the East Coast. Particularly popular were the redwood groves along the Russian River. Writing of an exhibit at the Museum in 2008, Press Democrat columnist Gaye LeBaron wrote, “Many of the early California works … come from the collection of an Oakland real estate broker named Ivan Hart. Hart grew up in Sonoma County on the Walker and Barnes hop ranches south of Healdsburg. After graduating with distinction from Healdsburg High School in 1921, Hart went off to UC Berkeley, where he met a fraternity brother named Burl Howell, who would remain his friend for life. Hart and his wife, Elvira, made their home in Piedmont, but, in the 1980s, when it came time to find a home for their valuable early California paintings, they turned again to Sonoma County, where Hart’s friend Howell was a patron of the new Sonoma County Museum. The Hart gift became the centerpiece of the museum’s art collection. The names of the artists are well known to students of early California painting. The current show has several Thomas Hill works …as well as works by William Hahn, Frederick Schafer and Ransom Gillet Holdredge. In addition to the Hart gifts, there are works … by William Keith and the redwood scenes of Lorenzo Latimer… Latimer taught in both Santa Rosa and Healdsburg until 1910. The exhibit also contains four Sonoma landscapes by Sidney Tilden Dakin, who taught at Ursuline College, the forerunner of present-day Ursuline High School.” Yes, we all know Solvang, the Danish community in the Santa Ynez Valley north of Santa Barbara. What your editor did not know is that since 2004 it has had a significant museum, the Elverhoj. www.elverhoj.org. The name comes from a famous Danish tale (also known as The Kings Dream) that was originally a play written for the wedding of Frederick Carl Christian and Vilhelmine Marie in 1828. It tells the story of the mortal woman who played queen to the elf king. The Museum is housed in the very large home constructed in 1949 by sculptor Viggo Brandt-Erichsen. Brandt-Erichsen was born in Denmark, studied in Paris in the early 1920s, and settled in Jaffrey, New Hampshire in 1926. There he met and married Martha Mott, also an artist. In 1946 they headed west with their three children and fell in love with Solvang. In 1949 Viggo began building a home for them in the style of the 18th century farmhouses of Jutland, Denmark. It took him three years, without blueprints, using only a scale model and sketches. The home is full of Viggo’s work: the patterned floor, the fireplace with relief panels showing Adam and Eve, the beautifully carved front door that depicts an elf spirit. Unfortunately, in 1955, just three years after the house was completed, Viggo died. His widow Martha lived in the house, painting and giving art classes until her death in the 1980s. According to Martha’s wishes, in 1988 the home was dedicated as a museum of Danish heritage and culture and of Solvang history. It now contains thousands of Danish items donated by the Brandt-Erichsen heirs and holds special exhibits of area artists. Two of its past exhibits cover the themes and interest area of HCC members: the show of California Pottery: A Taste of Color (held May 13 – July 17, 2005) and The World of Edward Borein (March 30 – May 27, 2007). For details on both, view the Elverhoj website. (roughly taken from an article by Joanie Perciballi for the Santa Ynez Valley Guest in 2004) William A. Karges Fine Art has issued a fold-over brochure that reproduces 16 artworks currently in its inventory. William Bouguereau’s Girl Study is reproduced on the address page and inside are reproduced in color artworks by Edgar Payne, Herman Herzog, Gilbert Munger, Marion Wachtel, Armin Hansen and Maynard Dixon, among others. The California Arts Council of the Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, spent Sunday, January 31, 2010 touring the E. Gene Crain Art Collection. Crain has amassed possibly the most significant collection of California Regionalist art, now numbering almost 2000 works. He began collecting in the early 1960s when he met artist Rex Brandt who, in turn, introduced him to other artists of the California Watercolor School. Ultimately he acquired works by Phil Dike, Millard Sheets, Tom Craig, John Haley, Joan Irving, Dong Kingman and many more. Jeffrey Gundlach, a collector of museum-quality paintings by historic California artists, was the focus of an article by Aaron Pressman and Jennifer Ablan issued by Reuters on January 19, 2010. (found on news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100119). Titled “Special Report: Divorce American Style for French Bank, Bond Star” the article primarily concerns Gundlach’s departure from Trust Company of the West, located in Los Angeles, and the starting up of his own bond trading firm. However, for our interest Beverly Hills resident Gundlach, who has a natural artistic eye, owns major paintings by Guy Rose, William Wendt, Jack Wilkinson Smith, Gunnar Widforss, and others as well as some mid-century American and European modernists. The Michael White Adobe, a 164-year-old structure, is one of only thirty-nine nineteenth-century adobes remaining in Los Angeles County. The San Marino Unified School District, on whose property the adobe stands, wants to demolish it and replace it with an asphalt area. The home was originally constructed about 1845 and served as home to Michael White, an English sailor who arrived in California in 1829. While California was under Mexican rule, White adopted the name Miguel Blanco and became a Mexican citizen in order to marry and own land. In 1928 the San Marino School District purchased the land on which the adobe sat for a future school. Up to c. 1998 the San Marino Historical Society used the adobe as its headquarters, but that year they had to vacate because of campus construction. Since then the adobe has sat vacant. The Los Angeles Conservancy is currently working to preserve this structure which was documented in the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1935 and is designated as a San Marino landmark. The School District has tried various legal ways to get rid of it, first trying to sell it on the open market in November 2008 for $1 to anyone willing to relocate it, and then claiming they need the space to expand their swimming pool and finally that they need to raze the adobe to avoid potential liability. If anyone thinks they can help, please contact the Los Angeles Conservancy. Also under threat is the Southwest Museum, LA’s first museum, which is now linked to the Autry Museum in Griffith Park. There has been an ongoing battle between the Conservancy and the Autry to save the structure and, after being closed for four years for much-needed repairs and upgrades, including waterproofing and retrofitting, the site is expected to re-open in 2010 housing a satellite campus for Los Angeles Community College. The Autry is looking at long-term cultural uses for the site including exhibitions, public programs and other educational uses. CHANGING EXHIBITIONS Permanent displays of historic (pre-1945) California paintings can be found at many California institutions, which are listed on www:CaliforniaArt.com in the “Galleries” section (scroll down to Museums). Several institutions have already put their permanent collections (including California works) on-line. (See earlier Newsletters for exhibits that might still be on view.) Through March 7, 2010. California Calling: Works from Santa Barbara Collections, 1948-2008, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, has been extended to March 7. This show includes some artists of interest to us, mostly mid-century abstractionists, including: Karl Benjamin, Dorr Bothwell, Frederick Hammersley, Ynez Johnston, Rico Lebrun, Helen Lundeberg, John McLaughlin, and Howard Warshaw. Through August 29, 1910 (opened July 11, 2009). Everything Under the Sun: Photographs by Imogene Cunningham, Seattle Art Museum. Bay area photographer. Through October 24, 2010. Land & Sea: Paintings and Photographs of Monterey and Beyond, Monterey Museum of Art. Paintings, photographs, watercolors and etchings of Monterey’s natural and urban scene. January 1 – December 31, 2010. Classic California: Recently Conserved Paintings from the Permanent Collection, Bowers Museum, Santa Ana. Works conserved by the Bowers’ California Arts Council. Artists include Frank Coburn, Paul Dougherty, Charles Fries, William S. Jewett, Carl Jonnevold, Joseph Kleitsch, Edgar Payne, Hanson Puthuff, William Ritschel, Guy Rose, Gardner Symons, Elmer Wachtel, Marion K. Wachtel and William Wendt. January 6 – May 17, 2010. May I have this Dance, Charles M. Schulz Museum, Santa Rosa. Cartoonist Charles Schulz used dance to show his characters’ unbridled joy, and almost all of the Peanuts characters have kicked up their heels at some time. Features seventy original Peanuts strips with a dancing theme. January 7 – March 28, 2010. Lockwood de Forest, N. A. (1850-1932), Sullivan Goss Fine Arts, Santa Barbara. Early Santa Barbara artist. January 9 – February 27, 2010. A Century of American Color Block Prints, Annex Galleries, Santa Rosa. California had many significant block print artists including Frances Gearhart whose works were shown recently at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. For details see www.annexgalleries.com:3000/exhibitions. January 15 – April 16, 2010. Paintings of the Parks, Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery, Bodega Bay, Ca. The website reproduces about 50 artworks in color and demonstrates this show is not just about Yosemite and Grand Canyon, although some images depict them. There is a view of Crater Lake by Richard DeTreville, depictions of Monument Valley by Jade Fon, Ralph Love, Dedrick Stuber, and others, as well as views of Mt. Tamalpais and Canyon de Chelly, of Death Valley and Pt. Lobos, of the Golden Gate, and of various desert parks. January 16 – March 26, 2010. Leonard Edmondson, Etchings 1949-1970 and Tamarind Lithography Workshop, 1960-1971, Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles. Edmondson, a teacher at Cal State LA and Otis Art Institute was a significant figure in the color etching movement that began in the 1940s. Tamarind, located in Los Angeles, was one of the first and most important of the print workshops that came into being in the 1960s. January 16 – May 2, 2010. The Art of Mt. Shasta, Turtle Bay Exploration Park, Turtle Bay, Ca. Shasta, a towering volcanic cone, dominates the forests that surround it in Northern California. As a landmark, it was depicted in 1841 by an artist accompanying one of the earliest government explorations of the area, and the subject remained popular with San Francisco landscapists of the nineteenth century who traveled the almost 300 miles to view and sketch it. For years William Miesse has been researching the subject, offering his discoveries first on a website and more recently in book form. (See writeup on Miesse, above.) January 20 – 24, 2010. FADA: Los Angeles Art Show 2010. 15th Annual. Los Angeles Convention Center. Over 100 international and domestic galleries display over 10,000 works of art from all genres and periods. The opening night gala benefited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and other groups. January 20 – March 14, 2010. In Focus: Photography from the Mills College Art Museum Collection, Mills College, Oakland. Approximately 30 artists from the permanent collection including early Californians Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, John Gutmann, Tina Modotti, Roi Partridge, Man Ray, Carrie Mae Weems, Edward Weston, and Minor White. January 23 – April 18, 2010. The More the Merrier: Posters from the Ten Best Picture Nominees, 1936-1943, Grand Lobby of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills. Art for all 80 of the picture nominees from the collection of Mike Kaplan and the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. January 30 – August 29, 2010. Pasadena Patron: The Life & Legacy of Eva Scott Fenyes, Pasadena Museum of History. At the turn of the twentieth century Fenyes was both a watercolorist in her own right and a patron of Pasadena artists including Benjamin Brown. Since the donation of the Fenyes house and contents to the Pasadena Historical Society, it has served as a time capsule. The exhibit will be an in-depth look at the Fenyes family, Eva as an art patron and watercolorist, European travel as an influence at the turn of the twentieth century, and Pasadena social life and customs. January 30, 2010 – January 23, 2011. Two exhibitions of photography, Seeing Beauty and In Light, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, contain work by California based photographers including Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston and Minor White. February 5 – April 11, 2010. Beginning Our Collection: Selections from 1950-1957, Long Beach Museum of Art. The exhibition includes 37 works in a variety of media. These paintings, ceramics and photographs were some of the first works added to the fledgling Museum’s collection. Included is a work by Pasadena artist Frode Dann. February 5 – April 18, 2010. Track Record: Notable Works from 1948-1961, Long Beach Museum of Art. Art work donated by artists who exhibited at the Museum, often the artist’s first museum solo exhibition. This show includes work by abstractionists Karl Benjamin and Oscar Fischinger. February 6 – May 8, 2010. Ansel Adams at Work: The Fiat Lux Commission, UCR/California Museum of Photography, Riverside. Fiat Lux means “Let there be light” and is the motto of the University of California. In 1963 Adams was offered $75,000 to create a photographic book that could be published on the occasion of the University’s centennial in 1968. Part of the commission was the delivery of a set of around 600 prints to the Bancroft Library at UC, Berkeley. This is the first time some of these works will have been exhibited. February 12-14, 2010. Palm Springs Modernism Show and Sale, Palm Springs Convention Center, 277 N. Avenida Caballeros. The desert city is home to some important mid-century Modern architecture and art. For details see www.palmspringsmodernism.com. February 14 – May 30, 2010. Millard Sheets: The Early Years (1926-1944), Pasadena Museum of California Art. Curated by Gordon McClelland. The show is divided into four sections: 1) oil paintings of the 1920s and 1930s, 2) key watercolors of the 1930s, 3) watercolors that show Sheets’ changing style from 1926-1944, and 4) 1930s era watercolors by Sheets’ students Milford Zornes, Lee Blair, James Patrick and Tom Craig. A major book accompanies the exhibit. February 14 – May 30, 2010. Celebrating the Founders: Organizers of the Santa Paula Art Show, Santa Paula Art Museum. February 17 – June 13, 2010. Take a Hike, Snoopy, Charles Schulz Museum, Santa Rosa. Schultz introduced Snoopy in his role as the Beagle Scout on May 13, 1974 and soon the character had risen from “tenderpaw” to “Beagle Scout.” The exhibit shows how Snoopy changed over the 25 years of his portrayal. February 20 – May 23, 2010. Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner, Palm Springs Art Museum. Mid-century modern architect of Southern California whose best known work is the circular house up on a tall pedestal known as the Chemosphere (1960). 115 original drawings and sketches, ten models, documentary film. February 24 – June 5, 2010. El Camino de Oro: Journey Through Early California, The Irvine Museum, Irvine, California. March 31 – June 6, 2010, Milford Zornes, Wildling Museum, Los Olivos. Curated by Alissa Anderson, this exhibit of over twenty paintings will demonstrate how Zornes, who began painting watercolors during the Great Depression, helped bring national attention to California’s watercolor school. April 6 – May 25, 2010. Sister Corita, The Joyous Revolutionary, Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. 1950s Los Angeles artist. April 7 – 22, 2010. An exhibit of early desert landscapes on loan from private collections, Walter Marks Center for the Arts at College of the Desert, 43-500 Monterey Ave., Palm Desert. April 17 – September 12, 2010. Colors of the West: The Paintings of Birger Sandzen, Palm Springs Art Museum. The Swedish-born artist, who spent most of his career in Kansas, included California in his western travels and as the subject of his paintings. His works are marked by expressive brushwork and bright colors. May 20 – August 15, 2010. California Impressionism: Selections from the Irvine Museum, Haggin Museum, Stockton. Traveling show described in earlier Newsletters. May 29, 2010 – January 3, 2011. Photographing the American West: Selections from the Permanent Collection, Palm Springs Art Museum. California subjects are included. June 10 – August 22, 2010. Masterworks of Western Art: the Best of the West in Bakersfield, Bakersfield Museum of Art. BOOKSThe following antiquarian book dealers have substantial holdings of out-of-print books on California art: Arcana on the Santa Monica Mall (310-458-1499), Ken Starosciak in San Francisco (415-346-0650), and Muz Art and Books, Sacramento (no telephone; searchable on www.abebooks.com). If you know a title, it can be searched on www.abebooks.com or www.bibliofind.com to get comparative prices from dealers across the nation. Searching a book on www.oclc.org -- registration is free -- will bring up local libraries that have the book. Among dealers in new books on California art are the antiquarian dealers cited above, the bookstores of museums that specialize in California art (see list of museums above under ‘Exhibitions’) as well as John Moran Auctioneer in Pasadena, Kerwin Galleries in Burlingame, George Stern Fine Arts in LA, Sullivan-Goss in Santa Barbara, and DeRu’s Fine Arts in Bellflower and Laguna Beach. Geoffrey K. Fleming, Lemuel Maynard Wiles: A Record of his Works, 1864-1904, Manchester: Hudson Hills Press, 2010. 150 pp. 30 illus. East Coast landscapist Wiles traveled to California in 1873-74 via Panama and spent time painting in Yosemite and Southern California. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County owns many oil sketches he made in the Southland, and the Laguna Art Museum owns a landscape of the Inland Empire. Daniel Zimmer and David J. Hornung, Reynold Brown: A Life in Pictures, St. Louis: Illustrated Press, 2009. 224 pp. Los Angeles artist William Reynold Brown (1917-1991) attended Alhambra High School and refined his drawing under Lester Bonar. From 1936-37 he drew the comic strip Tailspin Tommy written by Hollywood’s Hal Foster. When Brown met Norman Rockwell (through Rockwell’s sister who was a teacher at Alhambra High School) Rockwell advised the youth to leave cartooning if he wanted to be an illustrator. Brown soon won a scholarship to Otis Art Institute. During World War II he utilized his talents as an illustrator at North American Aviation and it was there he met his wife, also an artist, Mary Louise Tejeda. In the post-World War II period Brown produced ads and illustrations for national magazines and also taught at Art Center College of Design. At the latter place he connected with the motion picture world and began making film posters. In 1976 he suffered a stroke that paralyzed his left side. It ended his commercial work but with the help of his wife he continued to paint landscapes until his death. (from Wikipedia.org) Gerry Souter, Diego Rivera, Bournemouth: Parkstone Press Ltd., 2007. 256 pp. 166 col. Illus. Mexican muralist active in San Francisco. Anna Indych-Lopez, Muralism Without Walls: Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros in the United States, 1927-1940, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. 264 pp. 104 illus. All three men were active in California. David G. De Long, ed., Sunnylands: Art and Architecture of the Annenberg Estate in Rancho Mirage, California, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. 200 pp. 143 illus. Judith E. McConkie, With Anxious Care: The Restoration of the Utah State Capitol, Salt Lake City: Utah State Capitol Preservation Board, 2007. 128 pp. 121 illus. This may contain information on John W. Clawson, Los Angeles artist, and other California artists who worked on the Capitol. Susan M. Anderson, et al, Collecting California: Selections from Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, Ca.: Laguna Art Museum, 2009. 142 pp. Many color illus. Profiles several collectors who have donated significant works to the Museum over the years and reproduces selected works from their donations. Behold the Day: The Color Block Prints of Frances Gearhart, Pasadena Museum of California Art, 2009. Gearharts, Let’s Play, Pasadena Museum of California Art, 2009. This previously unpublished children’s book that Gearhart co-authored with her two sisters, contains many woodblock illustrations. Gordon McClelland, Millard Sheets: The Early Years (1926-1944), Pasadena Museum of California Art, 2010. Catalogue for the exhibit of the same name. California Landscape Painting: The Stephen B. Chase Collection, Palm Desert: The Living Desert, 2009? 12 pp. Color laser print from computer? Reproduces in color 22 of the 49 paintings by twenty-three artists donated to Living Desert by desert decorator Stephen B. Chase who passed away about ten years ago. They are hung in the Stephen B. Chase Administration Building, constructed with monies also donated by Chase. Hardie Gramatky, Little Toot, The Restored Classic, www.CaliforniaWatercolor.com, 200? 90 pages. 50 color illus. 10 black and white. Little Toot, a tugboat that prefers to play rather than work and who is not respected by his friends, is put to the test when an ocean liner gets in trouble. Re-publication of the 1939 edition. The illustrations are re-created from Gramatky’s original paintings. For many other books written and illustrated by Gramatky, see www.LittleToot.org and click on “Books.” Your Drawing is a Measure of Your Mind: Sketches by Millard Sheets from 1929 to 1982, www.CaliforiaWatercolor.com, 1983 101 pages. Softcover. Eva Slater, Panamint Shoshone Basketry: An American Art Form, Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2009? The Panamint, or the Kosa, numbered only two or three hundred and lived in California’s Death Valley. Largely overlooked, this study brings to life the group’s excellent baskets and is illustrated with photos taken over the past 150 years. Rick Bennett and Susan Calla, eds. with an essay by David Rains Wallace, A Rare Botanical Legacy: The Contributions of Ruby and Arthur Van Deventer in Northwestern California, Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2009. Drawings of Del Norte County plants in pen and ink and watercolor by Arthur Van Deventer. 128 illustrations of over 120 specimens made between 1936 and 1976. Photography: Mason Klein, Alias Man Ray, New York: Jewish Museum, 2009. (in association with Yale University Press) 288 pp. 246 illus. Dada/Surrealist photographer active in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Jim Heimann, ed., Los Angeles: Portrait of a City, Cologne: Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH, 2009. Photographs 1900 – present. Mid-century: Kristine McKenna, The Ferus Gallery: A Place to Begin, Gottingen: Steidl Verlag, 2009. 320 pp. 284 illus. Important Los Angeles modernist commercial art gallery active 1957-66. MAGAZINE ARTICLESGloria Rexford Martin and Michael Redmon, “Santa Barbara School of the Arts, 1920-1938,” American Art Review, v. XXII, no. 1, January-February 2010, pp. 66-73. Gordon McClelland, “Millard Sheets: The Early Years,” American Art Review, v. XXII, no. 1, January-February 2010, pp. 120-25. “Millard Sheets: The Early Years (1926-1944),” Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery Newsletter (on line), February 2010. Alan Petersen, “Gunnar Widforss: Visions of Light,” Fine Art Connoisseur, January/February 2010. Watercolor landscapes of Grand Canyon and spots in California, including Yosemite. “Kilauea’s Halemaumau Crater – Home of the Volcano School,” Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery Newsletter, February 2010, www.bodegabayheritagegallery.com/BBH_Gallery_Monthly.htm. Several turn-of-the-twentieth-century San Francisco artists were active in Hawaii’s early landscape movement including Jules Tavernier, Harry Cassie Best and, from Southern California, John Hilton. Diana L. Loomis, “A Celebration of Nature: The Life and Work of Frances H. Gearhart,” California Art Club Newsletter, Fall 2009, pp. 1-6. Article on the color woodblock artist whose works were shown recently at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. Christopher Hann, “Mayme Clayton’s Dream: A Treasure Trove of African American Artifacts is Set to go on Display in Culver City,” Westways, January/February 2010, pp. 37-40. Heralds the opening of the Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum in the former courthouse in Culver City. It will contain her collection of more than three million items relating to African American life. The Quarterly (published in Pasadena). See website www.thequarterly.com/pastissues.html. Fall 2003, v. 17, no. 3
Winter 2003, v. 17, no. 4
Spring 2004, v. 18, no. 1
Winter 2004, v. 18, no. 4
Summer 2005, v. 19, no. 2
Winter 2005, v. 19, no. 4
Summer 2006, v. 20, no. 2
Fall 2006, v. 20, no. 3
Winter 2006, v. 20, no. 4
Summer 2007, v. 21, no. 2
Winter 2009, v. 17, no. 4
VIDEOS, MOVIES February 13, 2010, 2 p.m. Brush with Life: The Art of Being Edward Biberman, will be shown at McEvoy Auditorium, Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D. C. A conversation with filmmaker, Jeff Kaufman, follows the screening. LECTURES, SYMPOSIA, January 16, 2010. Walkthrough of the exhibition Behold the Day: The Color Block Prints of Frances Gearhart, Pasadena Museum of California Art. January 24, 2010, 1:30 p.m. Janet Blake, William Wendt, Bowers Museum Auditorium, Santa Ana. January 30, 2010, 1-3 p.m. Jean Stern, Selections from The Irvine Museum, 2009, Irvine Museum, Irvine, Ca. This lecture is limited to members and friends of the California Art Club; reservations can be obtained by paying $10 and calling 626-583-9009. February 4, 2010, 7 p.m. Bill Miesse, The Navy at Mount Shasta in 1841, Turtle Bay Exploration Park, Turtle Bay, Ca. February 6, 20 and March 6, 20, 2010. Gallery tours of The Art of Mt. Shasta, Turtle Bay Exploration Park, Turtle Bay, Ca. February 11, 2010, 7 p.m. Bill Miesse, San Francisco Art Renaissance (1840-1880), Turtle Bay Exploration Park, Turtle Bay, Ca. February 15, 2010, 5-7 p.m. Special reception and tour of the Millard Sheets exhibition, Pasadena Museum of California Art. On hand to talk about Sheets will be members of his family, Gordon McClelland (curator of the exhibition), and PMCA exhibition manager Shirlae Cheng-Lifshin. February 18, 2010, 7 p.m. Bill Miesse, Life and Art of California Native Peoples, Turtle Bay Exploration Park, Turtle Bay, Ca. February 28, 2010. Gordon McClelland, exhibition walk-through of Millard Sheets: The Early Years (1926-1944), Pasadena Museum of California Art. March 21, 2010, 12 noon. John Moran, auctioneer, will speak on Ins and Outs of Art Collecting, before the Bowers California Arts Council annual members’ luncheon, Bowers Museum, Santa Ana. The luncheon will include a live auction and raffle drawing. March 21, 2010, 3 p.m. Janet Blake will speak on Millard Sheets in conjunction with the exhibit at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. April 6, 2010, 6 p.m. Jean Stern, Early California Painters, University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert Graduate Campus, 75-080 Frank Sinatra Drive, Palm Desert. Reservations at 760-837-1664. April 20, 2010, 6 p.m. Katherine Hough, Changing Perceptions of the Western Landscape, University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert Graduate Campus, 75-080 Frank Sinatra Drive, Palm Desert. Reservations at 760-837-1664. Focuses on desert art’s thematic and visual relationships. From the dramatic, historic style of the nineteenth century to contemporary photography, artists are in a continual quest to depict the desert in new ways. April 29, 2010, 2-3 p.m. Christine Giles, Sunlight and Shadow: Desert and Western Landscape Painting, Palm Springs Art Museum. Tour of the Museum’s permanent collection of desert landscape paintings as well as the exhibition “Colors of the West: The Paintings of Birger Sandzen.” AUCTIONS For the websites of the many ‘bricks and mortar’ auction galleries dealing with American paintings, see Publications in California Art, No. 9, newsletter for November 1999. For the most up-to-date auction prices, see www.askart.com and www.ArtPrice.com. Auction Galleries that hold special sales of historic California art include Bonhams/Butterfields, which can be viewed at www.bonhams.com; Christies at www.christies.com, John Moran at www.johnmoran.com; and Clark’s Fine Art & Auctioneers in Sherman Oaks at www.estateauctionservice.com. February 16, 2010. John Moran, California & American Paintings Auction, Pasadena, Ca. 190 quality works of art. Top pieces by Jean Mannheim, Granville Redmond, Christian Siemer, Gunnar Widforss and Jake Lee. See www.johnmoran.com. March 16, 2010. Matthew’s Galleries, Lake Oswego, Oregon, Northwest, California, American & European Paintings. Includes works by Sydney Laurence and Marie B. Kendall. www.matthewsgalleries.com.
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