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, oil paintings and mosaics of landscapes and scenes of everyday life, such as mountain and coastal scenery, pastoral 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 relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

(particularly California Impressionism), Cubism, 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: *Classical Realism *Literary realism, a move ...

Notable artists

Notable California scene artists included Emil Kosa Jr.,

Roger Edward Kuntz Roger Edward Kuntz (January 4, 1926 – August 22, 1975) was a highly accomplished Southern California landscape painter and a member of the Claremont Group of painters - professors and graduates of Pomona College, Scripps College, and the ...

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 bu ...

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

, Phil Dike,

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 wor ...

, Phil Paradise, Elsie Palmer Payne, George Post, Elsie Lower Pomeroy, Barse Miller, 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. A 2014 exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of Art included many of the best-known California scene painters.

History

Notable artists

See also

References

Further reading