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edgar

payne The Scenic Journey

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s went “the rolling stone, the floating cloud, the vagrant bee,” so Edgar Alwin Payne painted “as Homer sang, wandering from place to place where his fancy moved him.” 1 In the course of his painting expeditions, his journeys covered some 100,000 miles throughout the United States and Europe.2 He found magnificence in diverse settings, including the Southern and Central California coast, the Sierra Nevada, the Swiss Alps, the harbors and waterways of France and Italy, and the desert Southwest. In each locale, he sought vitality, bigness, nobility, and grandeur, which he turned into unified, carefully calculated compositions with brushwork that seemed to pulsate with life.3 Described as a “seeker” and an “adventurous wanderer,” the artist was more reserved than his travels or paintings would imply.4 He was modest and quiet, succinct and focused. Always striving to “mix brains with paint,” he chose his words carefully, just as he assiduously selected the compositional elements for his paintings.5 He had many friends and admirers who found his drive, determination, and talent compelling; they sought his advice, followed his lead in founding various arts organizations, and even traveled with him to the remotest wilderness. Those who knew him best, however, also noted that he appeared out of place in a crowd, in big cities especially, and seemed most at home in the highest reaches of the mountains or the enormity of the desert.6 Nothing in his dress or sensible haircut suggested an artist, yet

art was the most important thing in his life, and he worked hard and consistently at it (p. 22).7 Everything else, including his family, came second. On the day of his wedding, he asked his bride, Elsie Palmer, if they could change the time of the event because the “light was right” for painting.8 An artist herself, Palmer understood and consented (p. 23). Born March 1, 1883, near Cassville, in Barry County, Missouri, Payne grew up in the Ozark Mountains.9 His upbringing was certainly far removed from the mainstream of art; nevertheless, he entered the world during a period of great aesthetic upheaval, one that would eventually shape and color his own production. In 1878, the Society of American Artists officially separated from the National Academy of Design. The National Academy was conservative and encumbering, and the Society wanted an alternative, one that sanctioned more innovative approaches. The Society’s summation “that art legitimately concerns itself only with the felicitous arrangement of color and line; that its only proper aim is technical excellence and its only fit audience connoisseurs” was a blatant rejection of the more established style practiced by artists of the Hudson River school.10 A generational rift was forming, placing the “new men” and the “old men” at opposites.11 Among painting genres, landscape in particular experienced momentous change. The tight literalism and leaf-by-leaf detail that English critic John Ruskin endorsed was supplanted by freer paint handling,

Opposite: Capistrano Canyon (detail), n.d. Oil on canvas, 28 x 34 in. Private collection. Courtesy of The Irvine Museum

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Opposite: Solitude’s Enchantment, 1921. Oil on canvas, 43 x 43 in. Courtesy of Edenhurst Gallery Above: Along the Riviera, Menton, France, 1922. Oil on canvas, 29 x 29 in. Collection of James Taylor and Gary Conway 5

Breton Tuna Boats, Concarneau, France, c. 1924. Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 in. Private collection

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edgar payne The Scenic Journey

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ne of the most gifted of the historic California plein-air painters, Edgar Alwin Payne (1883–1947) utilized the animated brushwork, vibrant palette, and shimmering light of Impressionism, but his powerful imagery was unique among artists of his generation. While his contemporaries favored a quieter, more idyllic representation of the natural landscape, Payne was devoted to subjects of rugged beauty. Largely self-taught, he found inspiration and instruction in nature itself. His majestic, vital landscapes, informed by his reverence for the natural world, are imbued with an internal force and an active dynamism. An avid traveler, Payne was among the first painters to capture the vigor of the Sierra Nevada, and his travels through the Southwest resulted in equally magnificent depictions of the desert. In Europe he rendered the towering peaks of the Alps and the colorful harbors of France and Italy. His unending quest to convey the “unspeakably sublime” in his landscapes won him widespread acclaim—one prominent critic called him a “poet who sings in colors.” Released in conjunction with the traveling exhibition organized by the Pasadena Museum of California Art, Edgar Payne: The Scenic Journey presents more than 125 reproductions of Payne’s paintings, drawings, and decorative arts, as well as rarely seen photographs from the artist’s travels and selections from his personal collection of compositional studies. Essays by Peter H. Hassrick, Lisa N. Peters, Scott A. Shields, Jean Stern, and Patricia Trenton trace Payne’s development as he traveled the world, discovering magnificence in diverse settings ranging from the California coast, the Sierra Nevada, and the desert Southwest to the Swiss Alps and the harbors and waterways of Europe. A richly researched chronology by Shields presents the biographical influences that shaped Payne’s illustrious career.

272 pages, 10½ x 12 inches Smyth-sewn casebound, with jacket 120 full-color reproductions and over 50 black-and-white photographs and drawings Includes Chronology, Selected Bibliography, Exhibition Checklist, and Index $60.00 US ($65.00 Canada) ISBN 978-0-7649-6053-6 Catalog No. A203 Available January 2012 © 2012 Pasadena Museum of California Art cover: Sunset, Canyon de Chelly (detail), 1916. Oil on canvas, 28 x 34 in. Mark C. Pigott Collection below: Navajo Riders (detail), after 1929. Oil on canvas, 32 x 40 in. Collection of Charles D. Miller

About the authors Scott A. Shields, PhD, is the Associate Director and Chief Curator of the Crocker Art

Museum in Sacramento, California, and the author of numerous exhibition catalogues and books, including Edwin Deakin: California Painter of the Picturesque (Pomegranate) and Artists at Continent’s End: The Monterey Peninsula Art Colony, 1875–1907. Patricia Trenton, PhD, is the editor of the landmark catalogues Independent Spirits:

Women Painters of the American West, 1890–1945 and California Light, 1900–1930, and the author of many books, including Joseph Kleitsch: A Kaleidoscope of Color and The Rocky Mountains: A Vision for Artists in the Nineteenth Century.

Additional contributions by Lisa N. Peters, PhD, Director of Research and Publications at Spanierman Gallery, New York Peter H. Hassrick, Director Emeritus of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art at

the Denver Art Museum and of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming Jean Stern, Executive Director of The Irvine Museum Jenkins Shannon, Executive Director of the Pasadena Museum of California Art

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