The years around the turn of the century were a dynamic time in American art. Different and seemingly contradictory movements were evolving, and the dominant style that emerged during this period was Impressionism. Based in part on the broken brushwork and high-keyed palette of Claude Monet, it was a form especially suited to the dramatic landscape and shimmering light of California . . . This book celebrates forty Impressionist painters who worked in California from 1900 through the beginning of the Great Depression . . . it includes widely recognized California artists such as Maurice Braun and Guy Rose, less well known artists such as Mary DeNeale Morgan and Donna Schuster, and eastern painters who worked briefly in the region, such as Childe Hassam and William Merritt Chase . . . The contributors' essays examine the socioeconomic forces that shaped this art movement, as well as the ways in which the art reflected California's self-cultivated image as a healthful, sun-splashed arcadia.

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.

A first-of-its-kind celebration of the California Art Club, a society whose members have for one hundred years captured California’s staggeringly beautiful landscapes in resplendent plein air paintings. At the dawn of the twentieth century, California became home to artists from all over America and Europe who aspired to depict the state’s awe-inspiring natural landscapes on canvas. In 1909, these artists founded the California Art Club, which stands today as one of the most esteemed painting societies in the United States. The club has achieved distinction for its commitment to plein air painting, an Impressionistic style in which painters work outdoors in order to capture the ephemeral moment when the natural lighting of a landscape elevates an already beautiful scene into something sublime. Celebrating a century of unique artwork, this volume presents impeccable images of the art club’s masterworks, including unforgettable paintings of California’s stunning and varied beauty—desert vistas, plunging coastlines, verdant vineyards, charming towns, and snow-topped mountains.