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BiographyMaurice Braun (1877-1941). Painter. Maurice Braun was born in Nagy Bittse, Hungary on Oct. 1, 1877. Braun immigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1881 and settled in NYC. He began drawing at age three and in his early teens was apprenticed to a jeweler. In 1897 Maurice Braun began a five year study period at the NAD followed by one year with Wm M. Chase. He was an established portrait and figure painter in New York before moving to San Diego in 1910. After opening a studio on Point Loma, Maurice Braun founded the San Diego Academy of Art in 1912 and served as its director for many years. Braun remained in San Diego except for the years 1922-24 when he maintained a studio in Silvermine, CT. His Impressionist paintings of the Southwest desert, southern California hills, and High Sierra brought him great national acclaim. At the end of his career he specialized in still lifes of flowers and oriental objets d'art. An ardent follower of Theosophy, their teachings of the unity of nature and man is evident in his work. Maurice Braun died in San Diego on Nov. 7, 1941. Source: Edan Hughes:
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Biography
Landscape painter. Born in Norway on June 1, 1856. Jonnevold came to the U.S. in the 1880s and is known to have painted in the Northwest before moving to California in 1887. Settling in San Francisco, he maintained a studio at 1617 California Street. He was a self-taught painter except for brief study in the galleries of Paris in 1908. While in France, he was influenced by the Barbizon painters and their dark palette. Returning to California, he continued to paint the beauty of northern California in the Barbizon style. Often working in late afternoon when shadow prevails, he produced hundreds of attractive tree and meadow scenes which he exhibited in local galleries. By the time of the stock market crash in 1929, Jonnevold was poverty stricken and living alone at his small studio at 560 Kearny Street. In that year he was sentenced to two months in jail for aiming a gun at his landlord. Jonnevold disappeared from San Francisco about 1930. A letter at the Oakland Museum gives his date of death as June 9, 1955 but no location. His works have gained renewed respect in recent years and are highly sought after by collectors. Exhibitions: Calif. State Fair, 1899-1902 (awards); Mechanics' Inst. (SF), 1897; SFAA, 1908-12; Alaska-Yukon Expo (Seattle), 1909 (bronze medal); Kanst Gallery (LA), 1915. In: Oakland Museum; CHS; De Young Museum. Source: Edan Hughes,
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Selden Connor Gile was an important member of the early northern California school of art, he was a founding member of the artist group that called themselves the Society of Six. He was born in Stow, Maine on March 20, 1877, and after attending business college in Maine, Gile moved to California in 1901. He was a payroll master in Lincoln and in Oakland after 1905 for Gladding McBean Company. His art studies were under Perham Nahl, Frank Van Sloun, Spencer Macky, William H. Clapp, and at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Prior to 1914, he painted in the manner of classical California landscape painters such as William Keith. After that time he assumed the palette and style of Impressionism-Fauvism, but remained an "individualist" in his mode of expressing the California scene. During the 1920s, he became the dominant figure in a group of painters known as the Society of Six. The Six were active in the San Francisco Bay area and exhibited regularly at the Oakland Art Gallery. In 1927 Gile moved across the Golden Gate to Tiburon and, shortly thereafter, to a houseboat in Belvedere. He died in San Rafael, California on June 8, 1947.