California Impressionism
[1] The California Impressionists generally painted in a bright, chromatic palette with loose, painterly brushwork that showed influence from French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
In the 1890s, European ideas and painting techniques finally made their way to the west coast of the United States.
But... these artists were inspired by the clarity and force of the distinctive light of Southern California and by the region's endlessly intriguing motives of hill and meadow, desert and mountain, river and ocean".
[6] Most of the Plein Air painters came from the East, the Midwest and Europe, and only a few of the early artists such as Guy Rose were actually born and raised in California.
Northern California Tonalist landscapes can be recognized by their simplified compositions and a limited palette that gave the paintings close color harmonies.
Some of the other major Northern California Tonalists were Arthur and Lucia Mathews, who led the Bay Area Arts and Crafts Movement,[11] the moonlight painter Charles Rollo Peters (1862–1928), the flamboyant Xavier Martinez (1869–1943), and the painter and muralist Giuseppe Cadenasso (1858–1918).
Joseph Raphael, a student of Arthur Mathews who lived for many years in Europe while maintaining ties to San Francisco, assayed methods of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and may have been "the finest and most original of the state's Impressionists.
"[12] E. Charlton Fortune helped to develop the Carmel area art colony, bringing William Merritt Chase there to teach.
Los Angeles developed more slowly than San Francisco, where the California Gold Rush caused the rapid expansion of its wealth and art scene, so there were few artists and even fewer collectors in the years before the turn of the 20th century.
For William H. Gerdts, Braun was "not only the finest Impressionist of the San Diego area, but arguably the most brilliant landscape artist of his generation working in California.
The economy hastened the decline of plein-air painting, and modernism began to supplant the artists of the Southland art organizations.
Under the direction of Jean Stern, expert on California Impressionism, The Peterson Galleries in Beverly Hills hosted retrospective exhibitions for Franz Bischoff and other artists of the Plein-Air school with small color catalogs, signaling that the early painters of Los Angeles were worthy of both scholarly and commercial attention.
Moure also curated a retrospective exhibition for the Laguna Beach Museum with illustrations of works by dozens of painters who had been active there.
A posthumous 2021 exhibit at Casa Romantica highlighted Sam Hyde Harris' career as a commercial artist.
In addition to the popular shows on Catalina Island, the philanthropist and art collector Joan Irvine Smith sponsored en plein air shows that were organized by the California Art Club at Mission San Juan Capistrano.
