Six plein-air painters in Oakland, California, joined together in 1917 to form an
association that lasted nearly fifteen years. The Society of Six Selden Connor
Gile, Maurice Logan, William H. Clapp, August F. Gay, Bernard von Eichman, and Louis
Siegriestcreated a color-centered modernist idiom that shocked establishment tastes
but remains the most advanced painting of its era in Northern California.
California Impressionism
by William H. Gerdts, Will South – Hardcover, 284 pages, Published by Abbeville
Press, Inc., 1998
Lavishly illustrated, meticulously researched, and gracefully written, this definitive
study of California's distinctive style of impressionism surveys the movement's
sources abroad, its most influential artists, and the critical responses to the
style. 248 illustrations, 201 in color.
Artists in California, 1786-1940, researched and written by Edan Milton Hughes,
is now in its third and final edition. Updated, enhanced, and more comprehensive
than ever before, the two-volume, 1250 page hardbound set includes detailed biographies
of nearly 20,000 early California artists, many of which are represented no where
else.
Listings in Hughes Artists in California typically include a succinct, well-written
overview of the major events in the artist s life. Listings also include the artist
s medium, and field of art, subject matter and general themes, and employment, as
well as demographic information such as location and date of birth and demise, exhibitions,
associations and memberships. Source documents are noted.
Unlike many other biographical references, Artists in California is readable and
entertaining. For example, randomly opening the book to page 398, one finds a number
of Freemans including Howard Benton Freeman from Hayward who was a professional
bike racing star. He later went on to New York and created the comic strip Doc Lee.
There is also Canadian Lillie Littlejohn Freeman who with her husband created the
Freeman Art Company in Eureka, moving from San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.
She died in 1923 when her car was struck by a train.
The scope of Artists in California is broad as it encompasses artists from around
the world who at one time resided in California. Such inclusiveness helps make Artists
in California a valuable resource in any reference library.
Facing Eden: 100 Years of Landscape Art in the Bay Area by Steven A.
Nash (Editor), Bill Berkson, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Corporate Author)
– Paperback: 250 pages Publisher: University of California Press (June 1, 1995)
The San Francisco Bay Area boasts one of the richest and most continuous traditions
of landscape art in the entire country. Looking back over the past one hundred years,
the contributors to this in-depth survey consider the diverse range of artists who
have been influenced by the region's compelling union of water and land, peaks and
valleys, and fog and sunlight. Paintings, sculpture, graphic arts, photography,
landscape architecture, earthworks, conceptual art, and designs in city planning
and architecture are all represented. The diversity reflects not just the glories
of nature but also an exploration of what constitutes "landscape" in its
broadest, most complete sense. Among the more than two hundred works of art are
those by well-known artists and designers such as Bernard Maybeck, Diego Rivera,
Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, Richard Diebenkorn, Joan Brown, Lawrence Halprin, and
Christo. Lesser-known artists are here as well, resulting in an exceptional array
of approaches to the natural environment. The essays also explore key themes in
the Bay Area's landscape art tradition, including the ethnic perspectives that have
played an essential role in the region's art. The inexhaustible ability of the land
to stimulate different personal meanings is made clear in this volume, and the effect
yields a deeper understanding of how art can shape our lives in ways both spiritual
and practical, how the landscape without constantly merges with the landscape within.
Published in association with The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Paintings
of California by Arnold Skolnick (Contributor), Ilene Susan Fort –
Paperback, 128 pages Reprint edition (October 1997) Univ California Press
Full-color reproductions of landscape paintings by Albert Bierstadt, George Innes,
Childe Hassam, George Bellows, David Hockney, and other notable artists—accompanied
by prose and poetry—capture the diverse landscapes of California. 100 full-color
illustrations.
This book is a biography of the life of the artist John Asaro with over 100 full
color reprductions of his watercolors and oils. This covers over 30 years of his
life and work (1960-1992). The reproductions include landscapes, dancers, beach
scenes, nudes, women and children.
Romance
of the Bells: The California Missions in Art
by Jean Stern (Author), Gerald J. Miller (Author), Pamela Hallan-Gibson (Author),
Norman Neuerburg (Author) – Paperback Publisher: The Irvine Museum (1995)
Few regions rival the magnificence of California's Monterey Peninsula. This beauty,
together with a mild climate, rich history, and simplicity of lifestyle, encouraged
the development of one of the nation's foremost art colonies. From 1875 to the first
years of the twentieth century, artists were drawn to the towns of Monterey, Pacific
Grove, and then Carmel. Artists at Continent's End is the first in-depth examination
of the importance of the Monterey Peninsula, which during this period came to epitomize
California art. Beautifully illustrated with a wealth of images, including many
never before published, this book tells the fascinating story of eight principal
protagonists--Jules Tavernier, William Keith, Charles Rollo Peters, Arthur Mathews,
Evelyn McCormick, Francis McComas, Gottardo Piazzoni, and photographer Arnold Genthe--and
a host of secondary players who together established an enduring artistic legacy.
Most previous accounts claim that the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire were
the reason that artists began to gather on the Monterey Peninsula. Shields challenges
this view by demonstrating that the colony began much earlier--and in Monterey,
not Carmel, as often asserted. In an absorbing narrative that combines art and social
history, Shields describes how, beginning with Jules Tavernier's arrival in 1875,
art produced on the peninsula broke from its East and West Coast antecedents to
become increasingly subjective, meditative, and simple. He maintains that, by the
turn of the century, the majority of the artists in the region had arrived at a
tonal style featuring moody atmospheric effects. Some went one step farther, producing
canvases reductive in color and form; others practiced a more colorful impressionism.
Created to accompany a major traveling exhibition of works of the Monterey Peninsula
Art Colony, Artists at Continent's End places the movement in its art-historical
context, comparing its achievement with other approaches including the Barbizon
style, art nouveau, arts-and-crafts, and impressionism.
Copub: Crocker Art Museum
The years around the turn of the century were a dynamic time in American art. Different
and seemingly contradictory movements were evolving, and the dominant style that
emerged during this period was Impressionism. Based in part on the broken brushwork
and high-keyed palette of Claude Monet, it was a form especially suited to the dramatic
landscape and shimmering light of California. American Impressionism grew in popularity
as artists from across the nation migrated to the Golden State. There they created
a remarkable style, often referred to as California plein-air painting, combining
several aspects of American and European art and capturing the brilliant mix of
color and light that defined California. This book celebrates forty Impressionist
painters who worked in California from 1900 through the beginning of the Great Depression.
A joint effort of The Irvine Museum and the Georgia Museum of Art, it includes widely
recognized California artists such as Maurice Braun and Guy Rose, less well known
artists such as Mary DeNeale Morgan and Donna Schuster, and eastern painters who
worked briefly in the region, such as Childe Hassam and William Merritt Chase. The
contributors' essays examine the socioeconomic forces that shaped this art movement,
as well as the ways in which the art reflected California's self- cultivated image
as a healthful, sun-splashed arcadia. Beautifully illustrated, with 72 full-color
plates, California Impressionists recreates the vibrant splendor of a unique period
in American art.
Mounted as the first exhibition of California Impressionist paintings, the Irvine
Museum exhibit drew record crowds in Paris and throughout Europe. This book contains
some of the very best work of 58 California artists, some of whom studied in France
including Alson Clark, Alfred Mitchell, Guy Rose, William Ritschel and many others.
200 pages, 110 color illustrations.
560 pps., 475+ color illus; 50+ black and whites; bibliography. A history of the
styles of California Art from the time of the first explorers to the present day.
This book presents biographical information on 37 artists who painted plein air
scenes of Southern California, mostly in the Impressionist style, between 1890 and
1940. The artists are grouped according to which art colony or city they are primarily
associated with (Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, and San Diego) and there are essays
about the art communities in each. In each artist’s section there is a photograph
or painted portrait of the artist and a quick reference to training, studio locations,
residences in California, memberships, awards and public collections. The biographies
are very well written and provide satisfyingly detailed character sketches of each
artist as well as stylistic analysis. Additionally, there are two articles by experts
Nancy Moure and Jean Stern that introduce the basic concepts behind these artists’
work and help the reader to look at them from two different perspectives. Moure
discusses the meaning of the terms “Impressionism” and “Post-Impressionism”
and whether they can be applied to the California plein air painters, and Stern
discusses the origins of Impressionism in France and its importation to America
and Southern California. This is one of the earlier, but still best-written and
most useful of all the many books now available on this subject. The convenient
organization of the material and generous reproductions of typical works by each
artist will be appreciated equally by, as the jacket says, the “neophyte as
well as the sophisticated collector, curator or art historian.”
This is the companion to Plein Air Painters of California: the Southland,
with the same format and covering artists active during the same time period (the
1890’s through the 1930’s) as the first book, but dealing with those who
lived primarily in Northern California, as far down as Santa Barbara. Also as in
the first book, the style of art included here is predominantly Impressionist, though
the Japonisme-influenced Tonalism of Gottardo Piazzoni and the Post-Impressionism
of the Society of Six represent the broader range of styles that the painters from
San Francisco and its environs worked in. With a history of well-established art
schools, artists’ associations, and museums, these artists had a much firmer
foundation of regional tradition to build upon (or react against) than did their
counterparts in Los Angeles, which was still struggling to establish itself as a
cultural center. However, as Ruth Westphal points out in her introduction, one of
the things that all of these 27 artists had in common with each other and with their
fellow artists in the South was that though their work was eclipsed at the beginning
of World War II by the rise of non-representational art such as Cubism and Abstract
Expressionism, it is modern in that it shows bold experimentation with color and
it “embodied (each) painter’s emotional, intuitive response to his or
her world.” Among those included are Emil Carlsen, Colin Campbell Cooper, E.
Charlton Fortune, John Gamble, Armin Hansen, Arthur and Lucia Mathews, Jules Pages,
and Joseph Raphael.
In the first essay in the book Raymond L. Wilson traces the continuum of changing
artistic taste in Northern California from epic landscapes to Tonalism and Impressionism
as influenced by the French Impressionists, Japonisme, and the Barbizon school.
This is followed by brief introductions to the founding of the San Francisco Art
Association, Santa Cruz Art League, Carmel Art Association, and the Santa Barbara
Community Arts Association, and an article by Paul Chadbourne Mills on the California
art collection at the Oakland Museum. The sections devoted to individual artists
are just as thorough and insightful as in the first book, with entries contributed
by Janet B. Dominik, Harvey L. Jones, Betty Hoag McGlynn, Jeffrey Stewart, Martin
E. Petersen, and Jean Stern. The Society of Six is discussed as a group in an essay
by Terry St. John.
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The
Society of Six: California Colorists 
– Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: University of California Press; 1
edition (March 30, 1997)
California Impressionism 
Palette
of light: California paintings from the Irvine Museum
by Irvine Museum – Unknown Binding: 64 pages Publisher: The Museum (1995)
All Things Bright & Beautiful, California Impressionist Paintings from The Irvine
Museum
Artists
in California, 1786-1940
Impressions
of California: Early Currents in Art, 1850-1930
by Jean Stern, Susan Anderson, Bolton T. Colburn – Hardcover: 200 pages Publisher:
Irvine Museum (December 1996) 
Facing Eden: 100 Years of Landscape Art in the Bay Area
Paintings
of California
ASARO:
A New Romanticism
Romance
of the Bells: The California Missions in Art
by Jean Stern (Author), Gerald J. Miller (Author), Pamela Hallan-Gibson (Author),
Norman Neuerburg (Author) – Paperback Publisher: The Irvine Museum (1995)
Guy
Rose: American Impressionist
American
Impressionism: A California Collage
Masterworks
of California Impressionism
American
Impressionism California School Fleischer Museum 
Artists
at Continent's End: The Monterey Peninsula Art Colony, 1875-1907
In
and Out of California: Travels of American Impressionists
by Deborah Epstein Solon, Will South – Paperback: 151 pages Publisher: Laguna
Art Museum (February 2002) 
California Impressionists
Masters
of Light: Plein-Air Painting in California 1890-1930
California Art: 450 Years of Painting & Other Media
Plein
Air Painters of California, the Southland 
Plein
Air Painters of California the North 
