mine. Vandenberg Air Force
Base offered us an informative guide, Major Rob Lindsay, to accompany us
to the remote and incredibly beautiful sand dunes near Purisima Point and
to the Sudden Ranch. Ranchos: The Oak Group Paints the Santa Barbara Countryside
mine. Vandenberg Air Force
Base offered us an informative guide, Major Rob Lindsay, to accompany us
to the remote and incredibly beautiful sand dunes near Purisima Point and
to the Sudden Ranch.
Riding in Jim Poett's truck
we found the secret places of the San Julian Ranch. Carson Scheller welcomed
us to paint the De la Guerra Adobe on his Rancho Los Alamos de Santa Elena,
and eat under the magnificent grape arbor. Maggie Woolley and family flew
us to Santa Rosa Island for days of exploration and painting. 
On Jack Ricard's Spanish Ranch
we read the ranch history he'd sent us and found the impressive remains
of the old circular corrals made of juniper in the 1870s. In most instances
over the years the ranches had been divided, yet they still retain the original
early California feeling of life - a picnic on the porch of an old adobe,
the cattle grazing the same hillsides; the wind, fog, and light on the land.
It has been a wonderfully fulfilling experience to take
these talented artists to ranch after ranch and watch the magic of their
paintings come to life on canvas. I hope we've captured for the reader a
visual journey through Santa Barbara County's land grant ranches - their
beauty, history, and romance.
From top to bottom: Michael Drury, Jalama Hills - Spring Evening, 34 x 62 inches, oil on panel, collection of Charles and Jan Clouse; Hank Pitcher, Wild Mustard, Haskell's Beach, 12 x 36 inches, oil on canvas, collection of Dellie Woodring; Joellyn Duesberry, Chamberlin Ranch - Santa Ynez Ranch Lands, 36 x 48 inches, oil on linen, collection of Laura Susman Armor; Phoebe Brunner, San Marcos Ranch, 24 x 62 inches, oil on canvas, private collection; Patty Look Lewis, Patty and Molly's Room,Tajiglias, 13 x 10 inches, pastel, collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Harrigan; Donald Archer, Masini Adobe, 12 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches, watercolor, collection of the artist.
Text and images courtesy of Ellen Easton and are excerpted from her book titled Ranchos, published by The Easton Gallery, Montecito, California. Please click on thumbnail images to enlarge them.
Editor's note: RL readers may enjoy this video:
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Resource Library features these essays concerning Southern California art:
The American Scene: Regionalist Painters of California 1930-1960: Selections from the Michael Johnson Collection by Susan M. Anderson
Dream and Perspective: American Scene Painting in Southern California by Susan M. Anderson
Modern Spirit: The Group of Eight & Los Angeles Art of the 1920s by Susan M. Anderson
A Seed of Modernism: The Art Students League of Los Angeles, 1906-53 by Julia Armstrong-Totten, Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, and Will South
The Arts in Santa Barbara by Janet Blake Dominik
Ranchos: The Oak Group Paints the Santa Barbara Countryside by Ellen Easton
Speculative Terrain - Recent Views of the Southern California Landscape from San Diego to Santa Barbara by Gordon L. Fuglie
Sampler Tour of Art Tiles from Catalina Island by John Hazeltine
Mission San Juan Capistrano: An Artistic Legacy by Gerald J. Miller
Loners, Mavericks & Dreamers: Art in Los Angeles Before 1900 by Nancy Moure
Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and the Eucalyptus School in Southern California by Nancy Moure
San Diego Beginnings by Martin E. Petersen
Keeping the Faith: Painting in Santa Catalina 1935-1985 by Roy C. Rose
The Art Student League of Los Angeles: A Brief History by Will South
Artists in Santa Catalina Island Before 1945 by Jean Stern
The Development of Southern California Impressionism by Jean Stern
The Legacy of the Art Students League: Defining This Unique Art Center in Pre-War Los Angeles by Julia Armstrong-Totten
The Development of an Art Community in the Los Angeles Area by Ruth Westphal
A Bit of Paris in Heart Mountain by Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick
A Seed of Modernism: The Art Students League of Los Angeles, 1906-53 by Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick and Julia Armstrong-Totten
The Historic Landscapes of Malibu by Michael Zakian
and these articles:
California Impressionists at Laguna
is a 2000 exhibit at the Florence Griswold Museum
organized by Florence Griswold Museum curator Jack Becker,
the exhibition consists of twenty-six paintings by over a dozen California
artists and selected works by members of the Lyme Art Colony, providing
opportunity to compare and contrast the styles and subjects of the Lyme
and Laguna Impressionists. The exhibition examines how the colonies contributed
to the very identity of their regions; in the case of Laguna as a new Eden
of perpetual sunshine, and for Lyme as a place rooted in traditional New
England values. (left: William Wendt (1865-1946), South Coast
Highway, Laguna Beach, 1918, oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches, Mr. and
Mrs. Thomas B. Stiles II)
Circles of Influence: Impressionism to Modernism in Southern California Art 1910-1930 is a 2000 exhibit at the Orange County Museum of Art which thematically explores Southern California's early twentieth-century artistic development -- from the expanding influences of East Coast artists, to the building of local art organizations striving for independent expression, and finally the early stirrings of avant-garde Modernism. Presenting over seventy paintings, drawn from public and private collections, the exhibition will focus attention on the progressive artists of Los Angeles and their response to national and international art movements.
Clarence Hinkle: Modern Spirit and the Group of Eight is a 2012 exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum which features over one hundred paintings dating from the early 1900s through the 1950s, and includes many paintings that were in the original exhibitions of the Group of Eight, especially their 1927 show at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art.
The Fieldstone Collection: Impressionism in Southern California, a 1999 exhibit at the the William D. Cannon Art Gallery, includes approximately 40 works, created between the late 1800s and early 1900s, depict the natural landscapes of the region in the "plein air" style of the French Impressionists.
The Final Eden: Early
Images of the Santa Barbara Region 
is a 2002 Wildling Art Museum exhibit of paintings, watercolors
and prints depicting the Central Coast of California between 1836 and 1960
and celebrating "its rural pristine and fertile nature," selected
by guest curator, Frank Goss. It is his thesis that the paradise that once
was California, a land of boundless resources and unlimited opportunities,
has shrunk through urbanization and exploitation, and the Central Coast,
not yet paved over, is "the Final Eden." (left: John Hall
Esq. (1808 - ?), "Santa Barbara-Upper California," 1836, hand-colored
lithograph.. Lent by Eric Hvolboi
First Generation: Art in Claremont, 1907-1957 is a 2008 exhibit at the Claremont Museum of Art, which traces the art history of Claremont and the region in the first 50 years after the city's incorporation in 1907.
On a clear day a century ago, one could see the peak of Mt. Baldy from virtually every corner of the Los Angeles basin, from ocean to desert. The original inhabitants of this area, the Tongva/Gabrielino Indians, called the mountain "Yoát," or snow. Its siren song has drawn generations of settlers to its shadow. Since the late 19th century, prominent artists have been among those attracted to the foothills of Mt. Baldy and its neighboring peaks-and the city of Claremont, in particular.The exhibit traces the art history of the region, from the work of such artists as Hannah Tempest Jenkins, Emil Kosa, Jr., and William Manker to that of Millard Sheets and his circle in the 1930s. Sheets's influence as artist and teacher extended as well to bringing artists such as Henry Lee McFee, Phil Dike, and Jean Ames to Scripps College, thereby enhancing the existing art community and assuring its lasting influence.
Greetings from Laguna Beach: Our Town in the Early 1900s is a 2000 Laguna Art Museum exhibit which illustrates Laguna's early history through 20 landscapes painted by some of the town's earliest artist residents as well as historical photos and a room-sized installation of a typical period cottage. The paintings include works by Franz A. Bischoff, Conway Griffith , Clarence Kaiser Hinkle, Joseph Kleitsch Millard Sheets, William Wendt, and Karl Yens.
L.A. RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy is a 2012 exhibit at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. The figurative artists, who dominated the postwar Los Angeles art scene until the late 1950s, have largely been written out of today's art history. This exhibition, part of the Getty Foundations initiative "Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980," traces the distinctive aesthetic of figurative expressionism from the end of World War II, bringing together over 120 works by forty-one artists in a variety of media -- painting, sculpture, photography, and performance
The Legacy of the California Art Club in San Diego chronicles the history of art in San Diego, California from the turn of the 20th century through the beginning of the present century.
Painted Light: California Impressionist Paintings from the Gardena High School Los Angeles Unified School District Collection, hosted by CSU Dominguez Hills in 1999, features works by Franz A. Bischoff, Jessie Arms Botke (1883-1971), Maurice Braun (1877-1941), Benjamin Chambers Brown, Alson Skinner Clark, Leland S. Curtis, Maynard Dixon, Victor Clyde Forsythe, John (Jack) Frost, Joe Duncan Gleason, Armin Carl Hansen, Sam Hyde Harris, Clarence Kaiser Hinkle, Frank Tenney Johnson, Emil Jean Kosa, Jr., Jean Mannheim, Peter Nielsen, Edgar Alwin Payne, Hanson Duvall Puthuff, John Hubbard Rich, Carl Clemens Moritz Rungius, Walter Elmer Schofield, Clyde Eugene Scott, Jack Wilkinson Smith, James Guifford Swinnerton, Marion Kavanagh Wachtel, William Wendt (1865-1946) and Orrin Augustine White.
Painted Light: California Impressionist Paintings: The Gardena High School/Los Angeles Unified School District Collection toured to The Irvbine Museum in 1999.
Representing LA, Pictorial Currents in Contemporary Southern California Art, featured at the Frye Museum in 2000, is the first group exhibition to explore the rich and varied representational painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture produced by Southern California artists from 1990 to 2000, and fills a gap in West Coast and Southern California art history by surveying and interpreting about 80 works by 70 artists working in representational or realist styles and approaches.
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