Tag: california impressionists

Edgar Payne

Armand Cabrera

Edgar Alwin Payne

By
Armand Cabrera

Edgar Payne was born in Missouri in 1883. His parents were farmers. Edgar’s early life was spent helping out on the family farm. At the age of twenty he left home and spent a few years doing odd jobs to survive. In 1905 he moved to Houston with two of his sisters and earned his living house painting. His interest in art led him to open a scene painting studio in Dallas. By 1907 he had moved to Chicago briefly taking classes at the art institute. He continued to make his living from scene painting and began selling his paintings at the palette and chisel club.
Edgar Payne’s first trip to California was in 1909. It was here he met his future wife Elsie Palmer. They married in 1912

By 1912 Edgar was receiving much more attention for his easel work and he had a show of 65 paintings at the palette and Chisel club in May of 1913. All of the paintings were sold.
The Payne’s moved to Laguna Beach California in 1917. It was from Laguna Beach that Payne began his many painting trips to the Sierras and the Southwest. In 1922 he traveled to Europe for two years with his family. Edgar painted many pictures of fishing life and mountain scenes while overseas.
It was Payne’s practice to make many sketches on location and make larger finished pictures back in his studio from those smaller works. It was because of this his paintings tend to have a repetitive look compositionally. This is especially true of his Sierra scenes.

His book on painting ‘Composition of Outdoor Painting’ is still in print today because of its no nonsense approach to the craft of painting.
Edgar Payne died in 1947 after a long fight with cancer.

Bibliography

The Composition of Outdoor Painting
Payne Studios
Edgar Payne

The Payne’s, Edgar and Elsie
Payne Studios
Rena Neumann Coen

Edgar Payne 1882-1947
Goldfield Galleries Exhibition Catalog
Nancy Moure

Quote

Learning the art of painting is not an easy task. It takes a great deal of intelligence, keen analysis, study and practice. ~ Edgar Payne

Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel

Armand Cabrera

Marion Kavanagh Wachtel


By
Armand Cabrera

Marion Kavanagh was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1876. Her mother was an artist who encouraged Marion to pursue an artistic career. Marion studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then with William Merritt Chase in New York. Chase was a proponent of outdoor painting and instilled in his students the importance of working from life. Marion returned to the Art Institute in Chicago to teach for several years before heading out west to study for a short time with William Keith in San Francisco.


When Marion decided to travel to Southern California in 1903, Keith advised Marion to look up Elmer Wachtel, a landscape painter whom Keith admired. When Marion arrived in Los Angeles she took Keith’s advice. Wachtel and Marion were married in Chicago in 1904. Once she was married, Marion began signing her paintings “Marion Kavanagh Wachtel”. She held solo shows of her work and also exhibited with her husband. Her watercolors were popular and she regularly exhibited in group shows on the east and west coasts. To avoid competing with her husband, Marion chose to paint only in watercolor until Elmer’s death.

Marion’s watercolors have a unique pastel color sense and atmospheric quality, separating her from most of the other painters of that time. Her diverse oeuvre includes portraits, California Coastal scenes, the Sierras and Sonoran desert. She was a founding member of the California Watercolor Society and was active in the Pasadena Society of Artists and the Academy of Western Painters as well as the New York Watercolor Club.

After Elmer Wachtel’s death in 1929, Marion took a hiatus from painting for a few years. When she picked up a brush again in 1931, it was in oils. Her oils show the same mastery her watercolors demonstrate with atmosphere and color. Marion died in Pasadena in 1954.

Bibliography
All Things Bright and Beautiful California Impressionist paintings from the Irvine Museum.
Irvine Museum

Plein Air Painters of California the SouthlandRuth Westphal

Maurice Braun

Armand Cabrera

Maurice Braun


By
Armand Cabrera

 

 

Maurice Braun was born in Nagy Bittse, Hungary, October, 1877, to Ferdinand and Charlotte Braun. His family moved to New York City when Maurice was four years old. At fourteen he was apprenticed to a jeweler, but Maurice eventually convinced his parents to let him pursue art instead.

In 1897 he began studying at the National Academy of Fine Arts with Francis Jones, George Maynard, and Edgar Ward. Maurice focused on Portrait and still Life painting. He then went on to study with William Merritt Chase. By 1909 Maurice had established himself as a Portrait artist in New York. Although successful he began to find portraiture too confining artistically. In 1910 Maurice decided to head to California settling in San Diego.


In San Diego Maurice opened the Fine Art Academy where he offered classes in drawing, design, painting and outdoor sketching. Maurice continued to exhibit back east where he received favorable reviews for his California Scenes. In 1915 and 1916 he won gold medals at both World Fairs. Maurice also held one man shows in California and New York

In California Maurice became interested in Theosophical Society. A deeply philosophical man, landscape painting for Maurice was about much more than an image being created. He sought a deeper universal connection and expression. The Society affected his ideas on his life, his painting and ultimately his style.
In 1919 Maurice married Hazel Boyer. The 1920’s proved to be a successful time for the artist. He traveled throughout the United States painting everywhere he went and continued to have one man shows of his work on both coasts and in the Midwest.
The depression saw little change in the artist’s routine although sales dropped. To augment his loss of income he taught art at local San Diego Schools and in his studio. Maurice Braun died in 1941 from a heart attack.

Bibliography

 

Second Nature
Four Early San Diego Landscape PaintersMartin E. Petersen
San Diego Museum of Art 1991

American Impressionism
William H. Gerdts
Abbeville Press 1984

Quote
Let us remember that method style, subject and all the rest are merely the clothing in which the thing itself Art is enclosed.~Maurice Braun

*Albert Thomas DeRome

Armand Cabrera

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by
Armand Cabrera
Albert Thomas DeRome was born in 1885 near San Luis Obispo, California. He studied art for two years at the Mark Hopkins Institute in San Francisco under Arthur Matthews. Following his schooling, DeRome worked as a cartoonist for the San Jose Mercury News and also as a commercial artist. He eventually worked as a sales manager for George Hass and Sons. This allowed DeRome to travel and paint throughout California, Nevada and Arizona. During this time, his painting partners included many prominent artists including William Keith, Percy Gray, Will Sparks and Gunner Widforss.

In 1931, DeRome suffered a serious head-on auto accident. An insurance settlement stipulated that he could no longer work as a professional artist. He moved to Pacific Grove, California, where his recovery took many years. DeRome continued to paint and exhibit as an amateur and would frequently trade his paintings for goods and services or give them away to family and friends. DeRome was equally adept at watercolor and oils, working in both mediums throughout his career.DeRome preferred to work in a small format. Most of his paintings were no larger than 18” x 24”. He is known for his beautiful pastel color harmonies and strong design. Many of his paintings were of the San Francisco Bay Area and coastal scenes along the dunes of Monterey Bay, including Carmel and Pacific Grove. He had a tradition of writing the date, time of day and other details about the painting on the back of his canvases. He even went as far as to include comments by observers, friends and other artists.

DeRome won many awards for his work, despite the restrictions placed on him by his insurance settlement. Among others, his awards included 6, First Place prizes at the Monterey County Fair between 1939 and 1947. Albert Thomas DeRome died in Carmel on July 31, 1859 at the age of 74. Tragically, many of his paintings were destroyed in the 1991Oakland Hills Firestorm.


Bibliography


Albert Thomas DeRome 1885 1959Walter A. Nelson-Reese
WIM Publishers 1988

Guy Rose

Armand Cabrera

Guy Rose

By
Armand Cabrera

Guy Rose was born in San Gabriel, California on March 3, 1867, the seventh of eleven children. He was the son of J. L. Rose, a former senator and large Southern California landholder and rancher. When Guy was a young boy, he was shot in the jaw in a hunting accident. While he was recuperating, he developed an affinity for drawing. Guy Rose moved to San Francisco after high school. In San Francisco, Rose began his formal art training at the School of Design under Virgil Williams and Emil Carlson. In 1888, he studied in Paris at the Academie Julian under Jean-Joseph Benjamin Constant, Jules Lefebvre and Jean Paul Laurens. In 1894, Rose received an honorable mention at the Paris Salon—the first California painter to do so.


In 1989, Rose took time from his studio salon paintings to travel in the countryside and paint outdoors, making trips north of Paris to Crecy-en-brie and Giverny. It was in Giverny that Rose came into contact with Monet and the circle of artists that had grown around the famous French painter. The trip was to have a lasting effect on Rose’s style. The artist slowly embraced Impressionism with its looser brushwork and brighter color.

Returning to New York City in the mid-1890s, Rose taught at the Pratt Institute and created illustrations for such magazines as Harper’s, Scribner and Century. Rose had suffered with periods of sickness for years and was diagnosed with lead poisoning. His symptoms included swollen hands, loss of vision, debilitating abdominal pain and paralysis. The effects limited his ability to paint—sometimes for years.
In 1899, Rose traveled back to France and bought a cottage in Giverny. His disease in remission, Rose resumed his painting and produced many fine canvases in the Impressionist style.

In 1912, Rose returned to New York. Two years later, he made his final move to Pasadena. He taught art, and then later served as Director of the Stickney School of Art. He painted scenes of the Sierras and Laguna Beach, having successful one man shows in Los Angeles and Pasadena. Beginning in 1918, Rose took painting trips to Carmel. In 1921, he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed. Rose died on Nov. 17, 1925, at the early age of 58.


Bibliography
Guy Rose American ImpressionistWill South, William H. Gerdts, Jean Stern
The Oakland and Irvine Museums

Plein Air Painters of the Southland
Ruth Lilly Westphal
Westphal Publishing

American Impressionism
William H. Gerdts
Abbeville