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biography
A landscape and marine artist, George Symons was one of America's more noted plein-air painters who combined styles of impressionism and realism. His works are cited for their energy and simplicity, and he often did panoramic views. He was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1861, with the name of George Gardner Simon, but he changed his last name to Symons when he returned from study in England because of concern about anti-semitism. Not much is known about his early life. He first studied at the Chicago Art Institute where he became a close, life-long friend of William Wendt. They painted together in California and then in Cornwall, England in 1898. He also studied in Paris, and Munich and London, and joining a colony of artists at St. Ives, adopted the plein-air techniques of Julius Olsson, Adrian Stokes, and Rudolph Hellwag. He worked in Chicago as a commercial artist, and about 1903 returned to California with Wendt and built a studio in Laguna Beach and became active in western art societies including the California Art Club. He returned often, but maintained his primary studio in Brooklyn, New York, and also did a lot of painting in Colerain, Massachusetts. Among the collections where his work can be found is the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences; the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Fleischer Museum in Scottsdale, Arizona. Associations he was a member of include the National Academy of Design, the National Arts Club, the Institute of Arts and Letters, the Lotos, Century, and Salmagundi Clubs. He was also a member of the Royal Society of British Artists and the Union Internationale des Beaux Arts et des Lettres. He painted entirely out-of-doors, frequently working in Arizona, doing desert landscape and the Grand Canyon views, but he is best known for his New England snow scenes, especially of the Berkshire Mountains. He died in Hillside, New Jersey in 1930.
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biography
Born in New York City in 1836, Ransome Holdredge came to California via the Isthmus of Panama in 1858 and worked as a draftsman at the Mare Island Naval Yard. His paintings of the 1860s and early 1870s were signed "Holdridge" and were done in the realistic style of the Hudson River School. During this period he maintained a studio in San Francisco's Donahoe-Kelly Bank Bldg and exhibited locally. In 1874 he and Hiram Bloomer held a joint sale of their paintings to finance European studies. He left in that year and spent about two years studying in France. His obituary states that he was a field artist for Scribner's publications and was with Major Reno's troops at the time of the Custer massacre in 1876. After his studies in France, he returned to San Francisco with a distinctly different style. Paintings done after that time show the influence of the Barbizon School and were signed "Holdredge." His works were in great demand during his lifetime, received rave reviews by the local press, and were often considered superior to those done by William Keith. Holdredge traveled extensively throughout the Northwest, Southwest, the Rockies and western Canada, often living for long periods of time among the various Indian tribes. Due to his malnutrition and alcoholism, his paintings done during the latter part of his life were not of good quality. Like his friend Jules Tavernier, he made considerable money as an artist but did not manage his money well. He died penniless at the Alameda County (CA) Infirmary in April 1899 and was buried at public expense. ASSOCIATIONS San Francisco Art Association (cofounder) Bohemian Club EXHIBITIONS California State Fair, 1881-83 Mechanics' Institute (SF), 1868, 1880, 1886 COLLECTIONS Bohemian Club Oakland Museum Society of California Pioneers Orange County Museum California Historical Society Nevada Museum (Reno) Bancroft Library (UC Berkeley) Crocker Museum (Sacramento) Oregon Historical Society Source: Edan Hughes,
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Biography
Émile Baes was born in Brussels in either 1879 or 1889. He studied with J. Stallaert at l’Académie des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles. He completed his education with Bonnet and Cabanel in Paris. Baes worked as a painter, illustrator, and writer. He was known for his diverse subject matter including historical paintings, portraits, nudes and landscapes. Most noteworthy among his subject matter are femme fatale figures including Salomé, Messaline, and Cleopatra. The writings of Flaubert and the style and composition of Symbolism influenced the development of his work. Baes’ work exemplifies the Orientaliste compositional elements found in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Parisian work. In 1903 and 1904 he exhibited at the Salon de Bruxelles. Between 1928 and 1933 Baes exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris. He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1929 to 1938 and the Salon des Tuileries between 1933 and 1939. Baes wrote Les dieux sadiques, Princesesse d’ Amour. Baes died in Paris in 1954.
Biography
Painter, etcher, and muralist, Will Sparks became one of California's premier artists, known for his mission and nocturnal adobe scenes. He was highly prolific, completing about three-thousand oil paintings. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and showed art talent as a youngster, selling his first painting when he was age twelve. He became a doctor, but his love of art prevailed. He attended the St. Louis School of Fine Arts and then went to New York and then Paris to the Academies Julian and Colarossi where he studied with Gerome, Harpignies, and Bouguereau. In Paris he earned money as an assistant to biologist Louis Pasteur for whom he made anatomical drawings. He was also much influenced by the Barbizon painters and Cezanne. He returned to St. Louis and in 1886 exhibited in the St. Louis Expo where he met Mark Twain whose stories of California inspired him to head West. He stayed briefly in Cincinnati and Denver and then California, where he did newspaper illustrations in Stockton and Fresno. In 1891, he settled in San Francisco, establishing a studio at 163 Sutter Street. He combined illustration work and writing for the San Francisco Evening Call with easel painting including all of the California missions. He was a member of the Bohemian Club, a free-spirited, fun loving group that lived "hand-to-mouth" for their art. He also painted in Arizona, and a painting Tucson was done in 1894. In 1904, he joined the faculty of the University of California, doing anatomy drawings for medical classes, and in 1907, he was a founder of the Del Monte Art Gallery. He died in San Francisco on March 30, 1937. His paintings are in the collections of the Huntington Library in San Marino and the Crocker Museum in Sacramento. Source: Edan Hughes,
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Lacaze was a painter who was heavily influenced by Cubism and Post-Cubism, particularly by fellow Bordeaux painters such as André L’Hote. He was born in Angoulême, Charente and studied at the Lycée Montaigne in Bordeaux and it was there, under an inspirational art master, that his desire to be an artist was initiated. He enrolled at L’École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux and studied under André Edouard Marty. At first, his style was decidedly Cubist, showing the influence of Picasso through the aforementioned L’Hote. However he softened the linear effect somewhat as his career developed and this is particularly apparent in his paintings of nudes. He staged his first solo exhibition in Paris in Rue Visconti quite soon after leaving art school. He also exhibited through his career at other locations in Paris, his home city of Bordeaux, Sainte Maxine, Angoulême and Périgueux but he seems not to have had a particularly commercial attitude to his work apparently sometimes not even turning up to the opening nights. Lacaze was appointed Professor of Fine Art at Collège de Puyguillen and also joined the artistic group Maison des Artistes. Exhibitions: Paris, Galerie Visconiti; Périgueux, N.T.P.; Angoulême, Galerie Tison d’Argence; Bordeaux, Galerie du Loup; Sainte Maxine, Galerie L’Oleil Fauve. The Musée des Beaux Arts de Bordeaux also exhibited his work.
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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
Thomas Corwin Lindsay, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, was a well-known painter of landscapes, animal subjects and occasional portraits. He studied in Dusseldorf, Germany, in the 1860s, but lived and worked most of his life in his native city where he opened a studio in 1856 or 1857. He taught several pupils from his studio, and was a founding member of the Cincinnati Art Club, which became the Men's Art Club. Most of his landscapes were painted in Pennsylvania, up-state New York, the White Mountains of New Hampshire or other Eastern states. He exhibited at the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition, from 1870-83; Pogue's, in 1875; and the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, in 1896. His work is in the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum. Jim Lawrence, a relative of the artist, provides the following: According to the U.S. Census for 1900, Thomas Corwin Lindsay was born on July 1838 in Ohio and not 1839 as so often is recorded. In 1900, he was living in Cincinnati with his wife and son and working as an artist. His parents Thomas Lindsay and Elizabeth Lawrence were both born in Pennsylvania, his father in Cumberland County and his mother in Philadelphia.
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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