This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Commentary on the Panama-Pacific Exposition held San Francisco, 1915.

Six plein-air painters in Oakland, California, joined together in 1917 to form an association that lasted nearly fifteen years. The Society of Six—Selden Connor Gile, Maurice Logan, William H. Clapp, August F. Gay, Bernard von Eichman, and Louis Siegriest—created a color-centered modernist idiom that shocked establishment tastes but remains the most advanced painting of its era in Northern California. Nancy Boas's well-informed and sumptuously illustrated chronicle recognizes the importance of these six painters in the history of American Post-Impressionism. The Six found themselves in the position of an avant garde not because they set out to reject conventionality, but because they aspired to create their own indigenous modernism. While the artists were considered outsiders in their time, their work is now recognized as part of the vital and enduring lineage of American art. Depression hardship ended the Six's ascendancy, but their painterliness, use of color, and deep alliance with the land and the light became a beacon for postwar Northern California modern painters such as Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. Combining biography and critical analysis, Nancy Boas offers a fitting tribute to the lives and exhilarating painting of the Society of Six.