California Scene Painting, also known as Southern California Regionalism, is a form of American regionalist art depicting landscapes, places, and people of California. It flourished from the 1920s to the 1960s.

History

Early 20th century California artists interested in everyday images and themes from the state's 19th century history provided the foundation for the emergence of the regional genre of California Scene Painting. The term was attributed to Los Angeles art critic

Arthur Millier Arthur Millier (1893 – March 30, 1975) was a British-born American painter, etcher, printmaker, and art critic. He was the art critic for the ''Los Angeles Times'' from 1926 to 1958. His work is in the permanent collections of many museums in th ...

, and it referred to

watercolors Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting method"Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to the S ...

oil paintings Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or copper for several centuries. ...

and

mosaics A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...

of landscapes and scenes of everyday life, such as mountain and coastal scenery,

pastoral The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target au ...

agricultural valleys, and dynamic cities and highways. Varying in style and subject, California Scene Painting was influenced by a range of precursor styles, notably

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

(particularly

California Impressionism The terms California Impressionism and California Plein-Air Painting describe the large art movement of 20th century artists who worked out of doors (''en plein air''), directly from nature in California, United States. Their work became popular i ...

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

, and

Realism Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to: In the arts *Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts Arts movements related to realism include: *American Realism *Classical Realism *Liter ...

. California artists impacted the American Scene movement by contributing paintings that reflect their state's unique subject matter and made advances in watercolor technique. The majority of California Scene paintings were done in watercolor. In the late 1920s some California painters, who studied at the

Chouinard Art Institute The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 by Nelbert Chouinard, Nelbert Murphy Chouinard (1879–1969) in the Westlake, Los Angeles, Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. In 1961, Walt Disney, Walt and ...

, began working in what would be known as the ''California Style'' distinguished by large size paper, strong vibrant colors, vigorous bold and broad brushwork. At the time most artists working in watercolor used it as a sketching medium or to color pencil drawings. California Scene artists used watercolor as a painting medium, painted

wet-on-wet Wet-on-wet, or ''alla prima'' (Italian, meaning ''at first attempt''), direct painting or au premier coup, is a painting technique in which layers of wet paint are applied to previously administered layers of wet paint. Used mostly in oil pain ...

and in larger formats. Watercolor allowed for opportunistic and spontaneous painting of scenes done on location reflecting California life.

Subject matter

Figurative California Scene paintings documented the life of the average American and their hard work, both manual labor and domestic housework. Landscape paintings showed California's scenic beauty, its beaches, deserts, mountains and rolling farmlands. Landscapes focusing on farms and farmers were a testament to hard work and resilience. In the 1930s California was primarily agricultural and farms were considered the backbone of the American economy. Artists painted subjects of California coastal life, scenes around San Francisco Bay, Monterey's fishing industry and cliffs along the southern coastline. Yacht harbors, fishing boats, beach life, stevedores and San Diego Navy men were included. Cityscapes of Los Angeles showed street scenes, panoramic views, tenements and buildings. San Francisco painters depicted views of the peninsula with the bridges and Alcatraz, scenes along the docks and houses on hillsides. California Scene paintings portray everyday life tracing California's physical, social and cultural evolution from the Great Depression and World War II to the post-War era of accelerated development.

Notable artists

Notable California Scene painters included

Emil Kosa Jr. Emil Kosa Jr. (November 28, 1903 – November 4, 1968) was an American artist of Czech origin. He was the art director of 20th Century Studios, 20th Century Pictures' special effects department for more than three decades, winning an Academy Awa ...

, Roger Edward Kuntz,

Millard Sheets Millard Owen Sheets (June 24, 1907 – March 31, 1989) was an American artist, teacher, and architectural designer. He was one of the earliest of the California Scene Painting artists and helped define the art movement. Many of his large-scale b ...

Milford Zornes James Milford Zornes (January 25, 1908 – February 24, 2008) was an American Watercolor painting, watercolor artist and teacher known as part of the California Scene Painting movement. Biography Milford Zornes was born in rural western Okla ...

Phil Dike Phil Dike (1906-1990) was an American painter and art teacher. He painted watercolors, and he taught at Scripps College and the Claremont Graduate University. His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National ...

Rex Brandt Rexford Elson Brandt (August 12, 1914 – March 21, 2000) was an American artist and educator. Much of his oeuvre consists of paintings inspired by the life and geography of the West Coast of the United States, particularly California. Brandt worke ...

, Phil Paradise, Elsie Palmer Payne, George Post,

Elsie Lower Pomeroy Elsie Lower Pomeroy (1882–1971) was an artist most closely associated with the American Scene Painting movement and specifically California Regionalism or California Scene Painting. She was also one of a small group of botanical illustrators ...

Barse Miller Barse Miller (January 24, 1904 – January 21, 1973) was an American watercolorist, muralist, illustrator, and art educator. He was a professor of art at Queens College for 26 years. His work is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Los Angele ...

, Paul Sample, Dong Kingman, Anders Aldrin, and Charles Payzant. One group — including Sheets, Dike, Brandt, Miller, Zornes, and Kosa, Jr. — worked in large-scale watercolors.

History

Subject matter

Notable artists

See also

References

Further reading