Plein Air Painters of California, The North
210 pages, over 200 illustrations, hardcover, NEW – $125.00
Ruth Westphal
Completing the work begun by Plein Air Painters of California. The Southland, which focused on the “plein air,” or out-door , painters working in Southern California from the 1890s through the 1930s, this volume presents their contemporaries working to the north.
Actually, most of these painters, whose styles reflect a range from Romantic Realist and California Decorative to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist, traveled and painted throughout the length and breadth of California and elsewhere. But, while the first book concentrated on those who maintained residences and studios in Los Angeles south to San Diego, this book is concerned with those who had homes and studios from Santa Barbara north.
And, indeed, the preponderance of work reflects Northern California subject matter and an atmosphere and light clearly distinct from that of the south. Covering painters very much identified with the Bay Area and the Monterey Peninsula-masters such as Arthur Mathews, E. Charlton Fortune and Armin Hansen, it also deals with Californians and adoptive Californians who spent most of their careers elsewhere such as Joseph Raphael, Emil Carlsen and Colin Campbell Cooper.
The Contributors to this volume are a select group, including art historians, lecturers in the state university system, and various past and present directors and curators of the Oakland Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the San Diego Museum of Art. Including the many consultants who also contributed to the contents, in no way could a more knowledgeable, expert group in this art be assembled.
This, then, is a unique and comprehensive reference source, valuable for the neophyte as well as the sophisticated collector, curator or art historian.