BENJAMIN BROWN (1865-1942)
13. The Road to the Sea
Oil on canvas
Signed lower right
30 x 42 inches
40 x 52 framed
Provenance:
Private Collection, New York
Road to the Sea is an important, major work by Benjamin Brown. Brown was one of the earliest artists to paint the pristine California coast. Ruth Westphal,in her book The Southland, credits Brown as being The Golden State’s first resident Impressionist painter. Brown first discovered the beauty of California in 1885, while visiting the west. He fell in love with the vibrant landscape.
Studying at the St. Louis School of Fine Art, Brown earned a reputation as a still-life painter. After a year study at the Academie Julian, Paris, he arrived in California in 1896. It was about 1900 when one canvas of glorious fields of poppies received recognition and his career of painting the California landscape flourished.
Road to the Sea is a large canvas of the California coast. It has much the same feeling as The Jeweled Shore, illustrated on page 47 of The Southland book. Both paintings are painted in an Impressionist style, using the juxtaposition of color glowing with the brilliant light found out west. In these paintings Brown uses a heavier impasto characteristic of his landscape paintings, a technique not often used by his peers. Road to the Sea is signed with the word California proudly printed below his signature.
His influence in the art society was felt throughout Southern California and he became a pioneer in the development of an art community for Los Angeles. Benjamin Brown is remembered as having a profound influence on the work of Elmer Wachtel and other emerging artists of the time.
Works held:
British Museum; Boise Library, Idaho; California State Library, Sacramento;
Cleveland Museum of Art; The Fleischer Collection, Arizona; The Irvine Museum;
Kellogg Library, Emporia, Kansas; Laguna Art Museum; Los Angeles County Museum
of Art; The Oakland Museum; Pasadena Library; Southwest Museum; Library of
Congress, Washington D.C.
The Redfern Gallery
1540 South Coast Highway, Laguna Beach, CA 92651 T: (949) 497-3356 F: (949) 497-1324 mail@redferngallery.com
at the Montage Resort and Spa
30801 South Coast Highway, Laguna Beach, CA 92651 T: (949) 715-6193