2026 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction132 / 136 • View Catalog •
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VERSO
Label, Edenhurst Gallery, Palm Desert, California
Label, Grand Central Galleries, New York, New York
California art historian Ruth Westphal offered the following portrait of William Wendt and his enduring influence on California art: “Described variously and expansively as ‘an institution,’ ‘Los Angeles’ national artist,’ and ‘dean of Southern California artists,’ William Wendt, a naturalized citizen of the United States, earned a singularly preeminent position among American, and particularly Californian, artists of the early twentieth century.
“Born in Germany, he emigrated to the United States in 1880, at fifteen, and went to live with an uncle in Chicago. With little formal training – some evening classes at the Chicago Art Institute – he worked his way into a position as a staff artist in a commercial art shop. Painting formula pictures and display scenery for a living, and outdoor easel landscapes for the love of it, he developed a competence and style which, by 1893, won him the Second Yerkes prize of two hundred dollars at the Chicago Society of Artists Exhibition. It was enough money, he decided, to launch a full-time career as an easel painter.… Seeking new inspiration, he began to travel, journeying to California – first in 1894 and then again in 1896 with his good friend George Gardner Symons.… In 1898, they went to England and studied the art in major galleries and painted for several months along the coast in Cornwall. When they returned, Wendt held a highly successful exhibition of his English and California landscapes in conjunction with the Annual Exhibition of American Oil Painting and Sculpture at the Chicago Art Institute.
“In 1906, he made a commitment to settle in California. He purchased from Elmer and Marion Wachtel their studio-home on Sichel Street, and to this cozy cottage he planned to bring his bride, Julia Bracken. She was a sculptor who had trained at the Chicago Art Institute and was working on sculpture commissions in the Chicago area, where he returned for their wedding. He was forty-one and she was thirty-five.
“In Los Angeles, they both industriously pursued successful careers. While she worked in the studio, he often took to the countryside, particularly seeking remote, untraveled natural settings, loving especially the rolling hills, spreading trees and carpets of grass and flowers to be found in California in the early spring. There, this deeply religious artist found his inspiration. In a letter he wrote, ‘Here the heart of man becomes impressionable. Here, away from conflicting creeds and sects, away from the soul-destroying hurly-burly of life, it feels that the world is beautiful; that man is his brother; that God is good.’ This transcendent state of mind, usually evoked in the midst of some lovely natural setting, was fundamental to Wendt’s work.
“He produced a sincerity, tranquility, strength and sense of well-being in his paintings that had and continues to have enormous appeal. For three decades he showed successfully in major galleries in California – Stendahl’s and the Los Angeles Museum, among others, and he continued to show and sell in Chicago and eastern cities – Boston and New York. He won innumerable awards and in 1912 was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design.
“Through the twenties, he painted prolifically, living in solitude in Laguna Beach while Julia lived and worked in Los Angeles. He would go into the back country for weeks at a time, returning only for the mail and supplies. Often he had painting companions: Symons, Puthuff, Payne and Borg, among others.
“The catalog of the California Pacific International Exposition in 1935 stated: ‘The sincerity and power of his work brought him a host of disciples in paint, and his was the most marked influence upon local art up to the advent of the current generation.… He is the dean of Southern California artists.’”
PROVENANCE
Stendahl Art Galleries, Los Angeles, California
Laguna Beach Museum of Art, Laguna Beach, California
Joseph Brotherton, Los Angeles, California
Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, New York
Edenhurst Gallery, Palm Desert, California
Private collection, Wyoming
LITERATURE
Ruth Westphal, Plein Air Painters of California: The Southland, Westphal Publishing, 1982, p. 172, illustrated
John Alan Walker, Documents on the Life and Art of William Wendt: California’s Painter Laureate of the Paysage moralisé, J. A. Walker, 1992, p. 140, listed
Will South, In Nature’s Temple: The Life and Art of William Wendt, The Irvine Museum and the Laguna Art Museum, 2008, p. 214, illustrated
