Oakland Museum of California
Oakland, CA
510-238-2200 or toll free at 888-625-6873
http://www.museumca.org
A Legacy of Early California
Paintings: The Shumate Collection
Paintings from the 19th century art collection
of Dr. C. Albert Shumate are featured in the exhibition A Legacy of Early
California Paintings: The Shumate Collection, on view at the Oakland
Museum of California from May 26 to Aug. 5, 2001. Shumate, a medical doctor
by profession whose passion was history, was one of the earliest collectors
of California art. The 51 paintings in the exhibition, by more than 40 prominent
artists, provide a pictorial record of much of California's history and
artistic life in the years between 1816 and 1916. (left: Frank Marryat,
Fremont Hotel, San Francisco, CA, c. 1850, watercolor and gouache
on paper, 10 x 14 inches)
The
Shumate Collection represents a veritable Who's Who of 19th and early 20th
century California painters. Few of these paintings have been seen in other
exhibitions or publications. The paintings, primarily oils but also watercolor
and gouache, are on long-term loan to the museum from the heirs of the Shumate
collection, Drs. Thomas and Jane McLaughlin. (left: Herman Hertzog,
Yosemite Brush Fires, n.d., oil on board, 15 x 21 inches)
Harvey Jones, senior curator of art at the Oakland Museum
of California and curator of the exhibition, said, "We are very fortunate
to have the use of this important private collection, which has been seen
by very few people. It will augment and complement our own historical survey
in the Gallery of California Art."
The
earliest paintings in the collection were produced by artists who accompanied
the exploratory expeditions that visited the Pacific Coast during the early
19th century. The earliest work in the exhibition, Habitants de la Callfornie,
1816, is a watercolor depicting three native Californians as illustrated
by Louis Choris for the Russian-sponsored Kotzebue expedition. (left:
Louis Choris, Habitants de la Callfornie, 1816, watercolor, pen on
paper)
The establishment of the European tradition of easel painting
in California began in the 1850s during the Gold Rush era, in San Francisco,
Sacramento and around various mining sites in northern California. In addition
to documenting the Gold Rush, artists painted the 
California wilderness and images of native Californians,
early railroading, marine subjects and such popular San Francisco attractions
as Fort Point, Cliff House and Chinatown. The exhibition includes Gold Rush
paintings by Thomas A. Ayres, Frank Marryat, Henry Walton and Frederic A.
Butman, among others. The most celebrated artist of the Gold Rush, Charles
Christian Nahl, is represented by William H. Walton's copy of his long-lost
painting, A Miner Prospecting. (right: Charles Rollo Peters,
Italian Fisherman's Wharf, 1885, oil on canvas, 22.5 x 36.5 inches)
"Romantic
realism," the principal stylistic movement among California landscape
painters of the second half of the 19th century, is represented by such
artists as Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, William Keith, Juan Buckingham
Wandesforde, Ransome Gillet Holdredge , William Lewis Marple, Carl von Perbandt
and Virgil Macey Williams. These California painters transformed the precisely
detailed, idealized landscapes of the Hudson River school into a looser,
more realistic style. (left: Albert Bierstadt, Mt. Shasta, California,
n.d., oil on canvas, 14 x 18.25 inches)
During the last decade of the 19th century, California
landscape painting moved toward an evocation of mood or sentiment in the
depiction of typical, yet often unidentified sites. Artists of this era
represented in the exhibition include William Keith, Jules Tavernier, Edward
Rufus Hill, Grace Carpenter Hudson, Charles Rollo Peters and William (Will)
Sparks.
The exhibition also includes the work of two prominent
Bay Area watercolorists who were influenced by European Impressionism: Lorenzo
Palmer Latimer and Percy Gray.
The
most recent image, Maynard Dixon's Man With the Hoe, dated 1916,
refers to Edwin Markham's popular 1899 poem of the same name. The poem,
written in Oakland when Markham was a teacher there, was itself inspired
by a famous work by the French painter Millet. (left: Maynard Dixon,
The Man With the Hoe, 1916, ink wash and gouache on paper, 19 x 15
inches)
The greater portion of California painting was based in
the San Francisco Bay Area during the 19th century as a result of the establishment
of numerous artist's studios and the formation of the San Francisco Art
Association. By the 1880s San Francisco enjoyed a reputation as the premier
American art center west of the eastern seaboard. Some of California's most
respected painters from the 1890s and later were trained at the San Francisco
Art Association's School of Design, now the San Francisco Art Institute.
These painters -- as well as the school's directors Norton Bush and Virgil
Macey Williams
and instructors Juan B. Wandesforde and Thomas Hill -- are represented in
the exhibition.
Few early works survive from Southern California, probably
because few artists settled there until after 1885, when the Santa Fe Railway
opened an all-weather route via the Southwest between Chicago and Los Angeles.
Dr.
C. Albert Shumate (1904-1998) has been called the dean of San Francisco
historians. He was a native of San Francisco who devoted himself to researching,
writing, and collecting books and art about the history of California. He
began collecting California art in the 1930s, one of the first people to
do so. In the 1960s he donated several paintings to the Oakland Museum,
when the museum was just getting started. A prolific writer, he published
13. books on colorful figures and events in California history as well as
numerous shorter works. (left: Virgil Williams, Settler's Cabin,
1884, oil on board, 10.5 x 14.5 inches)
He
served as a trustee and/or president of numerous California historical organizations,
including the California Historical Society, Conference of California Historical
Societies, San Francisco Westerners Corral, California Pioneer Society,
Fort Point and Presidio Museum Association, San Francisco Hook & Ladder
Society, San Francisco chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, California
Genealogical Association, California Heritage Council, San Francisco Beautiful,
E Clampus Vitus and San Francisco Westerners. He also served as President
of the San Francisco Dermatological Society, Vice President of the San Francisco
Art Commission and chair of several library organizations. (left:
Alexander Edouart, Indian Encampment, n.d., oil on canvas, 15 x 24
inches)
Our readers may also enjoy stories on the Laguna
Art Colony, the San
Francisco Art Association, lists of individual Early
Southern California plein air painters, the Early
Northern California plein air painters and the Society
of Six. Study over 100 top-ranked California
artists courtesy of AskArt.com. Enjoy pictures of Hudson
River School paintings via the Desmond-Fish
Library, and details including biographies, auction records, museum
holdings, top dealers, book and magazine references on over 70 Hudson River
School artists
courtesy of AskArt.com.
Read more in Resource Library
Magazine about the Oakland Museum
of California
Please click on thumbnail images bordered by a red line
to see enlargements.
For further biographical information on selected artists
cited above please see America's Distinguished
Artists, a national registry of historic artists.
Links to sources of information outside of our web site
are provided only as referrals for your further consideration. Please use
due diligence in judging the quality of information contained in these and
all other web sites. Information from linked sources may be inaccurate or
out of date. TFAO neither recommends or endorses these referenced organizations.
Although TFAO includes links to other web sites, it takes no responsibility
for the content or information contained on those other sites, nor exerts
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section in Online Resources for Collectors and Students of Art History.
This page was originally published in Resource
Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for
more information. rev. 5/23/11
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reserved.
Paintings from the 19th century art collection
of Dr. C. Albert Shumate are featured in the exhibition A Legacy of Early
California Paintings: The Shumate Collection, on view at the Oakland
Museum of California from May 26 to Aug. 5, 2001. Shumate, a medical doctor
by profession whose passion was history, was one of the earliest collectors
of California art. The 51 paintings in the exhibition, by more than 40 prominent
artists, provide a pictorial record of much of California's history and
artistic life in the years between 1816 and 1916. (left: Frank Marryat,
Fremont Hotel, San Francisco, CA, c. 1850, watercolor and gouache
on paper, 10 x 14 inches)
