Lot 36
Granville Redmond(1871-1935)Cypress Trees and Poppies 16 x 20in framed 23 x 27in
20 April 2021, 13:00 PDT
Los AngelesUS$80,000 - US$120,000
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Granville Redmond (1871-1935)
Cypress Trees and Poppies
signed 'Granville Redmond -' (lower left)
oil on canvas
16 x 20in
framed 23 x 27in
signed 'Granville Redmond -' (lower left)
oil on canvas
16 x 20in
framed 23 x 27in
Footnotes
Provenance
Steven Stern Fine Arts, Beverly Hills, California.
George Stern Fine Arts, West Hollywood, California.
Private collection, Pasadena, California.
Granville Redmond is justifiably famous for his classic depictions of the California landscape. His spectacular paintings of wildflowers, such as the present cypress trees and poppies landscape, are historically among the most desirable works by any historic plein-air painter in California.
Struck deaf by scarlet fever at age three, Redmond attended the California School for the Deaf in Berkeley, California in his late twenties, where he first began his formal artistic training. Following graduation, he was awarded a scholarship to study at the California School of Design, the school founded by the San Francisco Art Association. His teachers there included the Tonalist painters Arthur Mathews and Amédée Joullin.
In 1893, Redmond first traveled to France to study at the Académie Julian and over the next four years he studied in Paris, on the Brittany coast and in Moret near Fontainebleau. In 1898, Redmond returned to California and settled in Los Angeles which was the start of his career in the Southland. He continued to exhibit in San Francisco but soon embraced the Southern California landscape, conceding that its 'scenery excels that of France.' By 1905, Redmond was receiving considerable recognition as a leading landscape painter and bold colorist throughout the state.
Redmond was best regarded then, as he is today, for his verdant wildflower landscapes, and the present work is a lovely example of his talents as the leader in painting elegant compositions that show off California's native wildflowers. The sunlit and dappled California landscape suited Redmond's technique well, where his meticulous brushwork could be utilized in every object and color within his paintings. In the present painting, Redmond draws on the contours and colors of the California landscape and creates an romantic landscape with pointillist dabs of flowers, shadowed oaks and cool blue mountains. The foreground is dappled with swaths of orange and yellow poppies interspersed with purple-blue lupine. A stand of trees dominates the left middle ground extending to the top of the painting's edge, while a further stand of trees on the right side guides the viewer's eye toward the distant, slightly hazy, mountains. Contemporary art critic Antony Anderson of the Los Angeles Times, wrote in 1907 about Redmond's work: "The love of pictured landscape is a later-day development...The present appreciation is undoubtedly due, in great part, to the tremendous stress and strain of twentieth century life to the need of relaxation out of doors...We seek to treasure mementos of our joy in mother nature and these mementos we call landscape pictures." Charlie Chaplin, close friend of the artist, also took particular note of the pleasure inherent in Redmond's work: "There's such a wonderful joyousness about them all. Look at the gladness in the sky, the riot of color in those flowers". It is through his mastery of color and the power of his expression in works like the present landscape, that Redmond brings viewers of his paintings into his magical construct of the California landscape.
