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Biography
A painter of realistic landscapes reflecting a vanishing wilderness in America, Robert Wood (not to be confused with Robert E Wood) is reportedly one of the most mass-produced artists in the United States. His painting became so popular he was unable to meet all of the demands, and many of his works were reproduced in lithographs and mass distributed as prints, place mats, and wall murals by companies including Sears, Roebuck. He was born in Sandgate, Kent on the south coast of England near Dover, the son of W.L. Wood, a famous home and church painter who recognized and supported his son's talent. In fact, he forced his son to paint by keeping him inside to paint rather than playing with his friends. At age 12, Wood entered the South Kensington School of Art. As a youth, he came to the United States in 1910, having served in the Royal Army, and he never returned to England. He traveled extensively all over the United States, especially in the West, often in freight cars, and also painted in Mexico and Canada. His itinerant existence took him to Illinois where he worked as a farmhand, to Pensacola, Florida where he married, briefly in Ohion, Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. In 1912, he was in Los Angeles, and In the late 1920s and early 1930s, in San Antonio, Texas, where he lived and in 1928 exhibited in the "Texas Wildflower Competition." From San Antonio, he gained a national reputation for his strong colored, dramatic paintings. Some of that prestige has been credited to his asssociation with Jose Arpa, prominent Texas artist. Wood also gave art lessons, and one of his students was Porfirio Salinas. During this period, Wood sometimes signed his paintings G. Day or Trebor, which is Robert spelled backwards. In 1941 he went to California and painted numerous desert and mountain landscapes and coastal scenes. He lived in Carmel for seven years, and then moved to Woodstock, New York, but he soon returned to California, settling first in Laguna Beach, then San Diego, and finally in the High Sierras, where he and his wife built a home and studio near Bishop and lived until his death in 1979.
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biography
Arthur William BEST 1859 - 1935 Arthur William Best was born in Mount Pleasant, Canada on July 17, 1859. He and his brother Harry attended public school in Mount Pleasant and were members of a small band. Arthur played the cornet; Harry, the violin. When the band broke up in Oregon, the brothers learned to paint before moving to San Francisco in 1895. Arthur and his wife Alice established the Best Art School at 1625 California Street and a residence at 309 Broderick. He was a staff artist for the San Francisco Examiner (1904-06). Arthur was commissioned by Southern Pacific Railroad to paint pictures of the Southwest and Mexico for travel and tourist publicity in 1905. Many of his oils and watercolors were destroyed by the earthquake and fire of 1906. His landscapes include depictions of the Arizona desert, Grand Canyon and the Sierra Nevada. He died in Oakland on January 26, 1935. Member: San Francisco Art Ass'n; Berkeley League of Fine Arts; Bohemian Club. Exhibited: Oregon State Fair, 1891 (first prize); Mark Hopkins Art Institute, 1898, 1904; San Francisco Art Ass'n, 1904-16; San Francisco Artists Society, 1905; Berkeley Art Ass'n, 1908; California State Fairs (awards); Alaska-Yukon Expo (Seattle), 1909 (bronze medal); Del Monte Art Gallery, 1910, 1912; Sorosis Club, 1913. Works held: Oakland Museum; Phoenix Museum; University of Oregon; Charles M. Russell Gallery (Great Falls, MT); Santa Fe Railroad.
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Biography
Born in San Francisco to a family of artists, Cuneo studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute with Arthur Mathews, before attending the Academie Colarossi in Paris from 1911-1913. Upon his return to California, Cuneo’s works were well received at the Panama Pacific International Exhibition in 1915, and was involved in every major art exhibition in the San Francisco area from 1916-1939. Also during these years Cuneo was the subject of numerous one-man shows, including those in Rome, Los Angeles, London, and Paris. Called “the Painter of San Francisco,” at the inaugural exhibition of the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1935, Cuneo had the most number of paintings displayed by any early California artist. In that same exhibition, his painting California Hills won the Museum’s Purchase Prize award. A pure impressionist early in his career, Cuneo’s style constantly evolved throughout his life, as he was always seeking and assimilating new methods of representation.
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biography
Known for poetic landscapes, often sunset, illuminated by atmospheric light, Julian Walbridge Rix was early in his career an active painter in California and then on the East Coast. He was born in Peacham, Vermont on December 30, 1850 and moved with his family to San Francisco in 1853. Because of his mother's death, he went back to Peacham four years later to live with his grandmother and graduating from Peacham Academy in 1868. He returned to San Francisco where he was apprenticed to a trading firm and later worked in a paint store painting signs and doing decorative work. Primarily self-taught, he was briefly a pupil of Virgil Williams at the School of Design. He became close friends with Amédée Joullin and Jules Tavernier, and when the latter established an art colony in Monterey in 1876, Rix was one of the "Bohemians" who followed him there. His studio in Monterey was in the French Hotel, but in 1879 he returned to San Francisco and shared a studio with Tavernier at 729 Montgomery Street. The art market in San Francisco during this period was not a healthy one which prompted Rix to move to Paterson, New Jersey in 1880 and subsequently establish a studio in New York City. This milieu was what he seemed to need to find artistic success. His work was exhibited at the National Academy of Design during the 1880s. He studied art briefly in Europe during 1889 and upon his return, he found that his watercolor and oil paintings were in great demand in the East. He maintained an active interest and participation in the San Francisco art scene and in 1883 sent back 200 paintings for a successful solo show. In 1888 his illustrations appeared in "Picturesque California." Rix returned to California for several months in 1901 and painted the valleys and mountains near Monterey and Santa Barbara. A handsome man with a New England accent and blond sideburns, he never married and was called the Adonis of the profession. Following a kidney operation, Rix died in New York City on November 24, 1903 and was buried in the cemetery plot of a patron-friend in Paterson, New Jersey. Source: "Artists in California, 1786 to 1940" by Edan Milton Hughes
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Artist Biography,
Landscape painter. Born on Aug. 26, 1865 in Stockton, CA when it was still a small frontier town. Mersfelder began drawing at an early age and in his teens moved to San Francisco where he studied for three years at the School of Design under Virgil Williams. While studying at that school, he often visited the nearby studio of William Keith who offered criticism. Mersfelder then moved to NYC where he had a studio for a few years. During his stay there, he exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society of American Artists. He also enjoyed the hospitality and criticism of George Inness and A. H. Wyant. He later exhibited in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, and Baltimore. He won a bronze medal at the Louisiana Purchase Expo (St Louis) of 1904 and was awarded the Klio Assn prize at the annual exhibition held at the AIC where 18 of his canvases were accepted by the jury. He had a studio in Portland, OR in 1889 before returning to San Francisco in 1891. He was active in the local art scene when not out on painting forays in northern California. The year 1915 was spent in San Diego. Mersfelder lived his final years in Berkeley, CA and died there on Oct. 23, 1937. Although he made no known European trips, his works bear evidence of strong influence by the French Barbizons. Many of his landscapes of the rugged, old oaks of California compare favorably with those painted by William Keith during his late period. Exh: Calif. State Fair, 1882; Mark Hopkins Inst., 1897; Gumps (SF), 1900. In: St Francis Hotel (mural, Mt Tamalpais); Oakland Museum; CHS. CSL; BC; Ber; AAA 1907; DR.
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Biography
Born in 1936 in Yugoslavia, Stupar chose France as his permanent home in 1964 after completing his studies at the Beaux-Arts of Belgrade. Today we find that the art of Marko Stupar is totally integrated into the School of Paris. Although his work continues to be very personal, the graphic nature of his Slavic background is now uniquely combined with the subtlety found in Bonnard.Stupar has participated in juried exhibitions since 1966 when he won the Silver Medal at the Center of Diffusion of the Cote-d’Azur. He regularly participates in the Salon d’Automne, the Salon National des Beaux-Arts, the Salon des Artistes Français, and the Salon Comparaison. Among his other honors, Stupar has won both the Silver and Gold medals of the prestigious Salon des Artistes Français. One-man exhibitions of Stupar’s work have been held in cities all over the world including Paris, Geneva, Lyon, Osaka, Dusseldorf, Strasbourg, Zagreb, Annecy, Havre, New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Houston.
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Two Grey Hills rugs are woven of natural, undyed, handspun wool in whites, blacks, & browns. Weavers produce subtle shades of these basic hues by carding together various colored wools. Because of the considerable time and effort required to prepare the wool for this style, weavings using these yarns may cost twice as much as those made from commercial yarns. Like other styles with borders, many Two Grey Hills rugs have a spirit line or spirit trail-- a single line of light colored weft near the top of the design, running through the border to the edge of the rug. This spirit line is meant to release the weaver's creative energies from the rug back to the Universe so that a weaver's spirit will not be trapped within the completed rug.
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Biography
A native of New York and the son of an engraver, James David Smillie earned his early reputation for his etching skills but later for watercolor landscapes. He began etching at age 8, learning from his father, James Smillie (1807-1885). At age 14, he did a set of plates illustrating John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost. He had a job as a bank note engraver, and then he and his father had a business, collaborating as engravers with a specialty of bank-notes. They also did the engravings for the 1857 Mexican Boundary Survey Report. James David Smillie helped organize the New York Etching Club, and he was the U.S. representative to supply examples of American etchers' work to the Painters-Etchers Society of London. Although he continued working with etching, drypoint, aquatint and lithography, in 1865, he began doing landscape painting and was especially interested in mountain scenery. Smillie traveled in California in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in Colorado in the Rocky Mountains, and in the eastern United States in the Catskills and Adirondacks. From these trips he did illustrations that were published in 1872 in the magazine Picturesque America. In 1881, Smillie got married, and the couple had two sons. By 1884, he was in France, and spent much time there doing prints of landscapes, figures, portraits and cityscapes. Between 1888 and 1896, he produced a set of drypoint floral still-life prints. James David Smillie founded the American Watercolor Society and served as president and treasurer. He also taught classes at the National Academy of Design in 1868 and from 1894 to 1903.
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Biography
The paintings of Jessie Arms Botke are a unique and wonder-filled world all their own. Most often, they are pictures of birds, a large variety including white peacocks, blue peacocks, cockatoos, ducks, swans, geese, pheasants, and toucans, among others. The birds are shown in natural settings accompanied by carefully painted flora, with studiously observed renditions of leaves and flowers. Far from being mere pictures of birds and plants, her paintings are richly adorned with an abundance of minutely rendered detail: every petal, every leaf and every feather becomes an important element of the whole pictorial scheme.1 Painter, illustrator, printmaker and muralist, Jesse Arms was born in Chicago, IL on May 27, 1883. She began her studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, and continued with J. C. Johansen and Charles Woodbury. In 1911 she obtained employment with Herter Looms in NYC and assisted Herter with the mural in the St Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Upon returning to Chicago in 1915, she married Cornelis Botke. The Botkes moved to Carmel CA in 1919. After an extended trip to Europe, in 1927 they settled on a ranch in Santa Paula, CA where she remained until her death on Oct. 2, 1971. She made a career of bold, decorative paintings of birds both in oil and watercolor, and often used gold leaf in her paintings. From about 1917 her work won many awards both in Chicago and Southern California. Member: Calif. Art Club; Calif. WC Society; Nat'l Ass'n of Women Artists; Carmen AA; Chicago Society of Etchers. Exhibited: AIC NAD; PAFA; LACMA; CPLH; Springville (Utah) High School, 1928; GGIE, 1939; Paris Salon. Awards: Cahn prize, AIC, 1918, Shaffer prize, 1926, Carpenter prize, Chicago Society for Sanity in Art, 1938. Works held: Art Institute of Chicago; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Municipal Gallery, Chicago; Mills College, Oakland; San Diego Museum. Murals: I Magnin Co. of Los Angeles; Woodrow Wilson High School in Oxnard, CA; Noyes Hall at the Univ. of Chicago; Kellogg Factory, Battle Creek, MI Literature AAA 1929, 1933; Ben; Fld; YAMP; AAW; WWA; SCA; WAA; Sam; WWAA 1936-66; So. Calif, Artists, 1890-1940; Women of the West.21 American Impressionism California School, Fleischer Museum (cat.)2 Hughes, Edan Milton, Artists in California 1786-1940, Hughes Publishing Company
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Biography
Sioma Lifshitz arrived in Shanghai on a freighter from Vladivostock in 1922. The 20 years old energetic Russian jew had no money but lot’s of dreams and soon started to work in a photography studio under the name of Sam Sanzetti. It took him 5 years to open in own studio in 1927, becoming one of the most famous photographer in Shanghai. The studio was first located on 73 Nanking Road (today 73 Nanjing Dong Lu), near the Bund and just behind the Palace hotel (today Swatch Art Peace Hotel). Construction on the Cathay Hotel (today Peace Hotel) was on-going at that time very and the opening in 1929 certainly also helped his business. The central position in the business center allowed him to become the photographer of the rich and famous in Shanghai, surely meeting with other successful business people of the time. His office later moved to 39 Peking Road (today Beijing Dong Lu) as reported in 1938 Shanghai Dollar Directory. Some of his photographs clearly remind of the calendar ads from the Carl Crowe company located very close on 81 JinKe lu and both men hanging around in similar circles probably worked with each other at some point. Sam Sanzetti left Shanghai in 1957 to immigrate to Israel leaving a Chinese wife and a stepdaughter behind and remade his life in his new country. He had fun memories of Shanghai as explained in an interview with an Israeli Newspaper years later. However he was never able to come back to Shanghai before his death in 1986.
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