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 
