Born in Cleveland, OH on Feb. 23, 1899. In 1917 Myers became a pupil of Duveneck and Weis at the Cincinnati Art Academy followed by training at the PAFA and in France at the School of Fine Arts at Fontainebleau.

 

While on summer vacation in 1926, he first visited the Monterey Peninsula where he painted scenes of the Pacific. He was a member of the faculty at the Cincinnati Art Academy for 23 years and active in Taos, NM before making his final move to Pacific Grove, CA in 1940. There he built a studio-home on Crest Avenue. Early in his career he painted landscapes and portraits; after moving to California, his subject, except on rare occasions, was the ocean á la Frederick Waugh. He was a vital force in the Monterey Peninsula art world for 16 years, teaching and serving on art juries. He died in San Francisco on March 7, 1956. Posthumously, he was given the City and County of San Francisco Award.

 

Member: Cincinnati Art Club; MacDowell Society; Carmel AA (pres. 1953); SWA.

 

Exhibited: Cincinnati Museum, 1917-40; PAFA, 1920 (1st prize); Ohio State Fair, 1923 (1st prize); Maxwell Gallery (SF), 1937; De Young Museum, 1945, 1958 (memorial); Calif. State Fair, 1952 (1st prize); Lodi Art Annual, 1952 (1st prize); Oakland Art Gallery, 1953 (silver medal); Carmel Museum, 1968-72; Cincinnati Museum, 1988 (retrospective).

 

In: Cincinnati Women’s Club; Cincinnati Children’s Hospital; University of Cincinnati; Hughes High School (Cincinnati); San Jose State College; New Mexico Museum (Santa Fe); NMAA; Oakland Museum; Irvine (CA) Museum; Monterey Court House; Monterey Peninsula Museum.

 

Source:
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Interview with the artist or his/her family; Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs (Bénézit, E); American Art Annual 1929-33; Who’s Who in American Art 1936-56; Monterey: The Artist’s View, 1925-1945; Art of California, March 1991; Artists of the American West (Samuels).

Born in Bomen, Austria, Franz Bischoff became known as "King of the Rose Painters," one of the most respected ceramic decorators of his time. He was also a leading Southern California plein-air landscape painter of the early 20th century who left a rich legacy of expressive works. His subjects included floral still lifes, harbor scenes in San Pedro, the Arroyo near his home, coastals and Zion National Park.

He had early training at a craft school and in 1882 went to Vienna for study in painting and porcelain decoration. He was twenty-one when he arrived in New York City in 1885 and took a job as a painter in a ceramic factory. Following that, he worked as a ceramic decorator in a variety of places including Pittsburgh; Fostoria, Ohio; and Dearborn, Michigan. In New York and Detroit, he founded the Bischoff School of Ceramic Art and developed the formula for many of his own colored glazes. His ceramics were exhibited at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and at the 1904 Exposition in St. Louis.

In 1900, he first visited California and in 1906 settled in Los Angeles. In 1908, he built his studio home with gallery, ceramic workshop, and painting studio, along the Arroyo Seco in South Pasadena.  Although he taught classes, produced ceramics and ceramic materials and continued to paint flowers, Bischoff devoted most of his time to the painting of landscapes and scenes of everyday life–from fields and farms to fishing wharves and the desert near Palm Springs. He traveled to Europe in 1912, remaining almost a year and visiting Naples, Capri, Rome, Munich, Paris and London. He studied the Old Masters and the French Impressionists and sketched and painted in oil and watercolor.

In the 1920’s he traveled to the Sierras and the coast of Northern California and, in 1928, the year before he died, he made a trip to Utah, painting boldly colorful scenes of Zion National Park. His style ranged from impressionists through post-impressionistic, and later it even showed the influence of Expressionism.

Member: California Art Club; Laguna Beach Art Association

 

Exhibited: Detroit Museum, 1890, 1915; World’s Columbian Expo (Chicago), 1893; Universal Expo (Paris), 1900; Louisiana Purchase Expo (St Louis), 1904; Calif. Art Club, 1911, 1924 (prize); LACMA, 1913; Friday Morning Club (LA), 1914; Panama-Calif. Int’l Expo (San Diego), 1915 (bronze and silver medals); Laguna Beach AA, 1918; Stendahl Gallery (LA), 1922; Biltmore Salon (LA), 1924; Painters of the West, 1924; Ebell Salon (LA), 1926; Ainslie Gallery (LA), 1926; Pasadena Art Inst., 1928.

 

In: Irvine (CA) Museum; LACMA; Orange Co. (CA) Museum; Gardena (CA) High School; Oakland Museum; Terra Museum (Evanston, IL).

 

Source: Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"

    Born in Nagy Bittse, Hungary on Oct. 1, 1877. Braun immigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1881 and settled in New York City. He began drawing at age three and in his early teens was apprenticed to a jeweler. In 1897 he began a five year study period at the National Academy of Design followed by one year with William 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, he 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 objects d’art. An ardent follower of Theosophy, their teachings of the unity of nature and man is evident in his work. Braun died in San Diego on Nov. 7, 1941.

Member: San Diego Theosophical Society; Laguna Beach AA; San Diego FA Ass’n; Calif. Art Club; Academy of Western Painters; San Diego Art Guild (cofounder, 1915); San Diego Contemporary Artists (cofounder, 1929); Salmagundi Club (NY).

Exhibited: NAD, 1900 (prize), 1911-15; Carnegie Inst., 1911-15; Daniell Gallery (LA), 1911; Kanst Gallery (LA), 1914-19; PPIE, 1915; Panama-Calif. Expo (San Diego), 1915-16 (gold medals); Babcock Gallery (NYC), 1918; LACMA, 1918, 1920 (solos); Ten Painters Club (LA), 1919; Painters of the West (LA), 1924; San Diego FA Gallery, 1928 (solo); GGIE, 1939; De Young Museum, 1954 (retrospective).

In: San Diego Museum; LACMA; Bloomington (IL) AA; Orange County (CA) Museum; Houston Museum; Riverside and San Bernardino Municipal Collections; Phoenix Municipal Collection; Women’s Athletic Club (LA); Irvine (CA) Museum; Theosophy Center (Pasadena); Commercial Club (LA).

Source: Edan Hughes, “Artists in California, 1786-1940”

"Every move I have made and everything that I have done, has always been to go back to the sea and to the men who gave it romance. I love them all." Armin C. Hansen

 

Armin Hansen’s seascapes, coastal scenes, and depictions of the fishing industry of the Monterey Peninsula brought him to the pinnacle of fame in American art.

 

Born in San Francisco, CA on Oct. 23, 1886. Hansen received his first art instruction from his father, Herman, the famous painter of the old West and frontier life. The younger Hansen later studied at the Mark Hopkins Institute under Arthur Mathews during 1903-06 followed by two years in Stuttgart, Germany at the Royal Academy under Carlos Grethe.

 

After visiting the art centers of Paris, Munich, Holland, and Belgium, he signed-on as deckhand to a Norwegian steam trawler, the first of many boats which he would crew during the next four years. Returning to San Francisco in 1912, he taught at UC Berkeley and the CSFA. Settling in Monterey in 1913, he taught private classes and was instrumental in forming the Carmel Art Institute. Hansen had a studio-home at 716 Pacific until building a home next door to artist Julian Greenwell on El Dorado Street. He lived there until his death on April 23, 1957.

 

Member: ANA (1926), NA (1948); Carmel AA (pres. 1934-37, 1948); Salmagundi Club; Société Royale des Beaux Arts (Brussels).

 

Exhibited: Int’l Expo (Brussels), 1910 (1st prize); Calif. PM, 1910 (gold medal); Helgesen Gallery (SF), 1913, 1916 (solos); PAFA, 1914; PPIE, 1915 (silver medal); SFAA, 1915-25 (silver and gold medals; Oakland Art Gallery, 1917 (solo); Print Rooms (SF), 1920 (solo); NAD, 1920 (prize), 1925 (prize); LACMA, 1923 (prize); Painters of the West (LA), 1924-25 (gold medal); Smithsonian Inst., 1928 (solo); Calif. WC Society, 1930; De Young Museum, 1932 (solo); Grafton Gallery (SF), 1934; Penthouse Gallery (SF), 1934 (solo); Paris, 1938 (gold medal); GGIE, 1939; Chicago Society of Etchers, 1947 (1st prize); CPLH, 1957 (solo); Oakland Museum, 1959 (solo), 1981; Monterey Peninsula Museum, 1986, 1993 (solos).

 

In: SFMA; De Young Museum; Monterey Peninsula Museum; San Diego Museum; LACMA; Oakland Museum; Library of Congress; Newark Museum; NY Public Library; Cleveland Museum; Harrison Library (Carmel); NAD.

 

Source:
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"

MMA-1993, Essay-Anthony R. White;
Art in California (R. L. Bernier, 1916); Plein Air Painters (Ruth Westphal); American Art Annual 1919-33; Who’s Who in California 1928; Who’s Who in American Art 1936-56; Who’s Who on the Pacific Coast 1946; California Art Research, 20 volumes; History & Ideals of American Art (Neuhaus); SF Examiner, 4-25-1957 & NY Times, 4-26-1957 (obits).

A painter of California history and western landscapes, Manuel Valencia was born in Marin County, California in 1856 on the Rancho San Jose, the Valencia hacienda.  The family received many land grants in the San Francisco area because of their ties to settlement history.  He was a descendant of General Gabriel Valencia, the first governor of the state of Sonora, Mexico under Spanish rule.  He was named for his grandfather, who arrived in California in 1774 and became administrator of the Presidio in San Francisco.

Valencia studied with artists including Jules Tavernier in the San Francisco area, where he lived his entire life, and attended what is now Santa Clara University.  He also spent some time in Mexico where he was a member of the Esquela de Bellas Artes de Mexico.
Early in his career, he was a commercial artist who designed calling cards.  After the 1906 earthquake and fire, Valencia and his family moved to San Jose, but he commuted to his studio in San Francisco.  There he was art editor of the "San Francisco Chronicle" newspaper under art patron M.H. de Young, for whom the museum in San Francisco is named.  War Cry, the Salvation Army newspaper, also hired Valencia as its first illustrator.

During the time he did illustration work in San Francisco, he kept studios in Monterey and Santa Cruz, did landscapes in Tonalist styles including moonlit scenes that were similar to those of Charles Rollo Peters and  indicated he had an awareness of the poetic aesthetic of James McNeill Whistler.

Around 1912, he began exhibiting in San Francisco galleries such as S & J Gumps and in New York at Macbeth Gallery and exclusive restaurants such as Delmonico’s.  President William McKinley, who purchased one of his Yosemite paintings, was amongst his growing list of collectors.  He also did desert scenes of Arizona and New Mexico landscapes.  He remained in San Francisco until the early 1930s and then moved to Sacramento where he died on July 6, 1935.  His family scattered his ashes on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County.

In addition to the California capitol, Valencia’s work can be seen in the Huntington Art Gallery, San Marino, California; the San Jose Historical Museum; and the Orange County Museum.

Sources:
The Poetic Vision: American Tonalism/Lowrey; Three Hundred Years of American Art/Zellman;

Artists in California, 1786-1940/Hughes

Arthur Mathews was born in Markesan, Wisconsin, and moved to Oakland, California at age six.  During his teen-age years, he attended Oakland High School, and worked in his father’s architectural office.  He later enrolled at the San Francisco School of Design where he studied with Virgil Williams.  He also worked as a design-illustrator for lithographers, Britton & Rey.

He studied four years in Paris at the Academie Julian and then became Director of the School of Design in San Francisco, a position he held until the 1906 earthquake and fire. He and his wife Lucia then opened a furniture shop on California Street where they hand-crafted items and rekindled the artistic spirit in San Francisco following the earthquake.

A central figure with his wife Lucia in turn-of-the-century, post earthquake San Francisco, Arthur Mathews devoted himself to reconstruction of the fine arts in the Bay Area.  He had diverse talents that embraced architecture, mural painting, furniture making, printing, and urban design, and his style became known as California Decorative.  His murals and paintings came to exemplify the Art Nouveau style.  He was also a proponent of the American Renaissance style, based on classical disciplines and subject matter of the Italian Renaissance.

In his allegorical paintings, Mathews often included female figures in classical dress and used a Tonalist approach with flat patterns and intense color.  Described as "fairy tales for grownups," (Boas), these paintings answered society’s need for a sense of refinement and elegance. He was credited with bringing Californians into their first contact with the design and colors of Paul Gaughin and with the Tonalist aesthetic of James Whistler, which he admired in France where he studied from 1885 to 1889.  He later was accused of shutting out the influences of Impressionism.

His forceful, dominant personality aroused resentment, and progressive artists rebelled against him because he eschewed the encroaching modernist styles.  However, he remained the leading force in the rebuilding of San Francisco.  His idea that art should inspire higher meaning and a sense of order in society reached its height in the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

Source:
Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940

Born in San Francisco, CA on April 10, 1862 into a wealthy pioneer family. Peters was a highly productive artist, and became one of the foremost American exponents of the nocturne. Peters studied locally at the School of Design under Virgil Williams and Chris Jorgensen and privately with Jules Tavernier.

 

In 1886 he went to Paris where he was a student of Gérome and Cormon at Ecole des Beaux Arts and of Boulanger and Lefebvre at Académie Julian. While in Paris he exhibited at the Paris Salon and was greatly influenced by Alexander Harrison and James McNeil Whistler (who once remarked that Peters was the only artist other than himself who could paint nocturnes).

 

By the late 1880s, while still in his twenties, he was exhibiting widely both in the States and abroad, and was winning acclaim and praise along with many silver and bronze medals. After marrying Kathleen Murphy in 1891, Peters left for Europe for several years, returning to Monterey in 1900.  Upon his return to California, he settled in Monterey where he built a 30-acre estate called "Peters Gate." His home was a haven for other artists and he entertained lavishly until the money ran out. Following tragic losses of both his wife and small daughter, Peters remarried in 1909. The Monterey house was sold and the family went to Europe for two years.

 

The remainder of Peters’ life was spent in San Francisco with sporadic trips to Europe. He died in his native city on March 1, 1928. Eugen Neuhaus wrote, "He loved to paint the crumbling façades and tiled roofs of some moonlit Spanish adobe, and in developing the inherent textural and color qualities, he achieved a very unique and personal style. His color schemes are the rich analogues of the blue and purple of night with the complementary nuances of a small bit of orange light peeping through a half-shut window."

 

Exhibited: Mechanics’ Inst. (SF), 1885, 1890; Munich, 1888; Paris Salon, 1889; SFAA, 1891-1923; Union League Club (NYC), 1899; Pan Am Expo (Buffalo), 1901 (bronze medal); Lotus Club, 1904 (prize); Louisiana Purchase Expo (St Louis), 1904 (silver medal); Salmagundi Club, 1904 (medal); Cincinnati and Boston, 1904 (medals); Gould Gallery (LA), 1907; Del Monte Gallery, 1907-20; Alaska-Yukon Expo (Seattle), 1909; Steckel Gallery (LA), 1912, 1926; Bohemian Club, 1913, 1923; Golden Gate Park Museum, 1915; Stendahl Gallery (LA), 1926; CHS (San Marino), 1966; Colton Hall (Monterey), 1968 (solo); Oakland Museum, 1972.

 

In: CHS; De Young Museum; Bohemian Club; Oakland Museum; Monterey Peninsula Museum.

 

Source:
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"; MPMA/The Peters’ Heritage

The San Francisco born Mary DeNeale Morgan’s grandparents arrived in Monterey from Scotland during California’s gold rush era, and, as her family roots were deep in California, so too were DeNeale Morgan’s in Carmel.

 

After studies at the California School of Design with such classmates as Xavier Martinez and Evelyn McCormick, Morgan first visited Carmel briefly in 1903. She later returned and in 1910 purchased what had been Carmel’s first art studio – home of the recently deceased artist Sydney Yard. It was a painting by DeNeale Morgan which was the first to sell at the opening exhibition of the Hotel Del Monte Art Gallery in 1907. This was the first commercial gallery on the West Coast devoted exclusively to the exhibition and sale of works by California artists. Later, at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition, Morgan was awarded a silver medal, and by 1928, Scribner’s selected her as one of the nation’s foremost female artists. Referred to as the ‘Dean of Women Painters’, Morgan played a formative role in the early years of Carmel-by-the-Sea,

Her lasting affection for the windswept trees, flowered dunes, and rocky shores of the Carmel-Monterey coast have been clearly revealed in her work throughout her career.

Born in 1859 in San Francisco, Theodore Wores was to become one of the earliest California born artists to achieve international respect. Receiving art lessons by age 12, he was one of the first students enrolled in the newly formed San Francisco Art Association’s School of Design in 1874. Later in life, after the 1906 earthquake, he was elected Dean of the re-organized San Francisco Art Institute (formerly the California School of Design) following the directorship of Arthur Mathews.

 

Though Wores’ early training was in the academic style reflecting his training at the Royal Academy in Munich, he later turned towards a personal approach which combined detailed representational brushwork with the palette of impressionism. Wores remained an artist of traditional values, and later in life, as was his colleague Percy Gray, he was a conservative in a modernist era. He was an active and vocal member of the Society for Sanity in Art. Upon moving permanently to Saratoga from San Francisco in 1929, he expressed his need to "breathe the wholesome mountain air unpolluted by poisonous germs of diseased art."

 

In the early teens of the twentieth century Wores became captivated by the beauty of the wildflowers and sand dunes from Monterey to San Francisco. Just as his contemporaries, John Gamble, Percy Gray, and Granville Redmond, much of Wores’ acclaim from this period was derived from this subject matter. "Sand Dunes With Blue Lupine and Wildflowers", painted in 1916, is a significant and sizeable canvas representing the best of Wores’ abilities as a California coastal impressionist.

"Thomas Arnold McGlynn was born March 29, 1878, in San Francisco. After attending public schools there, he graduated from the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art. His class received their diplomas months after the 1906 fire had leveled most of the old school building itself.

For Twenty-seven years Thomas McGlynn was an educator of note, connected with the San Francisco public school system and the University of California at Berkeley. He also taught classes at the Hebrew orphanage in San Francisco.

McGlynn was one of the craftsman group gathered around his friend and former teacher, Arthur F. Mathews. For eleven years at the Furniture Shop, as Chief Assistant to Mathews, Thomas McGlynn was responsible for design of much of the art nouveau furniture and decorations used in Bay Area custom homes and in public buildings such as banks, theaters, auditoriums.

An early hobby of McGlynn and his wife influenced their later life. Soon after both graduated from the Mark Hopkins Institute, they became active in helping the Boys’ Club, an organization something like Boy Scouts. The McGlynns, as leaders, often accompanied summer camping trips up the Carmel Valley, almost wild country at that time. Thomas was captivated by the quality of the air on the Monterey Peninsula, a certain kind of rarefaction which seems to heighten the tones of colors. He began making frequent sketching trips to the area, and in 1938 purchased a home in Pebble Beach for the family’s vacations. In 1945 they moved there permanently, the artist adding a studio of his own design. He retired from his teaching activities and devoted the remainder of his life to painting. Thomas A. McGlynn died on June 21, 1966.

Thomas McGlynn had been an early member of the Carmel Art Association, and it elected him to its Presidency twice, as well as asking him to serve on the Board and making him a lifetime member. He was active for many years in other organizations: the Santa Cruz Art Association, the American Artists’ Professional League, the Society of Western Artists, the Society for Sanity in Art. His paintings often won prizes and honorable mentions at exhibitions given by these groups, and also at the Monterey County and California State Fairs.

Paintings by Thomas A. McGlynn are among the most lyrical of the school of California Luminists. Almost completely a landscapist, the artist was able to convey in his pictures the poetry, the sense of majesty and tranquility which he sensed in nature. Never photographic, his works nevertheless express the spirit of the California coastside, from Mendocino to Santa Barbara".

Note: (Betty Hoag McGlynn, California art historian and late daughter-in-law of the artist)

– Betty Hoag McGlynn

November, 1976