Jean Stern Presents: Historic Artists of Laguna Beach 1890-1930
By MARRIE STONE
Can Laguna’s history as an art colony be traced back to a Los Angeles dental office in 1897? Ann Elizabeth St. Clair claimed this is where she first heard about the incomparable beauty of our town and urged her husband, Norman, to investigate. Norman St. Clair, one of the first artists to arrive in Laguna Beach in 1903, is credited with establishing the town as an art colony.
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Photo by Marrie Stone
Art historian and former museum director John Stern delivered a lecture at the Laguna Art Museum last Sunday (Jan. 19) entitled: “Historic Artists of Laguna Beach 1890-1930”
Ann Christoph recounted these events in the Laguna Beach Independent in 2007, based on a 1933 article in South Coast News. The story goes like this: One winter, armed with only a knapsack and easel, Norman St. Clair took a train from Pasadena to El Toro where he planned to board the stagecoach for Laguna. Given the cold conditions and seasonal stagecoach schedules, he missed it. Postmaster Nick Isch saw St. Clair standing there and offered him a ride to Laguna, which “consisted only of a handful of cottages, with a post office (which was also the general store)” and a “ramshackle wooden structure of a hotel.” The hotel was closed for the winter, but Isch invited St. Clair to stay there if he cleaned his own room. The next day “the artist marched out with a packet of sandwiches put up for him by his kind hostess, and was away all day, having the time of his life discovering the beauties of Laguna.”
The paintings St. Clair created during this excursion were exhibited in a San Francisco art show where they were “singled out for praise and reproduction. Through this, Laguna became known as a particularly sketchable spot…Very soon afterwards a whole troupe of artists was ensconced here.”
St. Clair’s paintings, and that well-attended San Francisco show, set the stage for a slew of plein air artists who arrived over the next decades. Among them were familiar names like William Wendt, Frank Cuprien, Anna Hills, Edgar Payne and Joseph Kleitsch. But also George Gardner Symons, William Swift Daniell, Roi Clarkson Colman, Karl Yens, William Griffith, George Brandriff and Donna Schuster.
Last Sunday (Jan. 19), the Laguna Art Museum (LAM) hosted a lecture as part of the Jean Stern Presents series. The hour-long talk introduced the audience to dozens of works from more than 20 of Laguna’s founding artists. It also included context for how Laguna became known as an arts colony. Through rich seascapes and lush landscape paintings, Stern showcased how Laguna’s rugged topography and year-round sunlight made it a haven for plein air artists who flocked here from around the globe.
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Courtesy of Laguna Art Museum
Frank Cuprien’s “The Golden Hour” (1923) illustrates Laguna’s warm light
Stern comes to the material well prepared. An art historian and retired museum director, he specializes in the paintings of the California Impressionist period. Stern met Joan Irvine Smith in the 1990s and worked with her to develop The Irvine Museum, whose collection was eventually donated to UCI in 2016. Now retired, Stern donates his own knowledge and insights to LAM and their guests.
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In the early 1900s, half of Laguna’s 300 permanent residents were artists. In 1918, Anna Hills, Edgar Payne and other artists founded the Laguna Beach Art Association, which eventually became the Laguna Art Museum, one of the first art museums in California.
The Art Gallery, as it was then called, held their first exhibition on July 27, 1918, with nearly 100 oil and watercolor paintings and several pieces of sculpture. Works by Payne and his wife, Mrs. Elsie Palmer Payne, Wendt, Cuprien, Colman and Hills, as well as Emily White, Conway Griffith, Abbey Williams Hill, Alice Fullerton and others – all of whom had permanent studios in town – were on display.
Back then, the Art Gallery was the center of village life. Within the first three weeks of their opening, nearly 2,000 names appeared in the guest book, representing almost every state in the union.
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Courtesy of Laguna Art Museum
Laguna Beach Art Association’s original Art Gallery as it stood in 1920
Painters settled here throughout the 20th century to capture our coastline’s natural beauty and take advantage of our unique light. Artists were not only key characters in Laguna’s narrative, they were the visual tellers of our shared story, recording life as it happened.
By 1923, the Laguna Beach Art Association had held an art sale to raise money for the purchase of land from Howard Heisler. Artists like Wendt and Hills contributed miniature paintings (4” x 5” pieces) and sold them to the public for $5 a piece. Patrons eagerly contributed and joined the association to support the arts community in town.
Heisler wanted $4,000 for the land that eventually became home to the museum but agreed to sell it to the association for $2,000. The artists continued raising funds to erect a new Art Gallery, which opened on February 16, 1929. That Art Gallery stood on the site where LAM sits today, eventually becoming the Laguna Beach Museum of Art in 1972 and, in 1986, enlarging their footprint and changing the name to the Laguna Art Museum. (Historic photos of these structures can be viewed here.)
Stern also shared insights about female artists like Elsie Palmer Payne, who was forced to paint in gouache so as not to compete with her famous husband, and Donna Schuster who, because of family money, had the luxury of remaining single and indulging her work free from marital constraints.
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Courtesy of Laguna Art Museum
Donna Schuster’s 1922 painting “O’er Waiting Harp Strings” will be included in LAM’s upcoming exhibition “Donna Schuster: An Independent Brush” opening on March 15 and curated by Jean Stern
Most of all, Stern’s presentation painted a vivid portrait of early Laguna Beach life with the empty beaches, uninterrupted hillsides and sprawling gardens. He described Laguna’s neighborhoods as “quiet and gentle,” and offered dozens of artworks to support the claim.
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Courtesy of Laguna Art Museum
William Wendt’s “Laguna Coast” (1930) shows Coast Road before it was paved
By 1911, Norman St. Clair had contracted tuberculosis. Laguna not only provided him with bucolic backdrops for his paintings, but it also offered idyllic weather and a soothing environment to recuperate. As Christoph reported in that 2007 article, St. Clair wrote a letter from Laguna to his sons, Aubrey and Bernard, in 1911:
“Although not very free of physical movement, I have been able to soar mentally far over the hills and rock-bound coast, wheresoever indeed my fancy would lead me. My surroundings are inspiring, of course, and I can think of no other place where I would rather go, or which would be more likely to awaken in me an ambition to get well.”
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Courtesy of Laguna Art Museum
Edgar Payne’s “Eternal Surge” (1921) shows the inspirational and healing power of Laguna’s beaches
Unfortunately, St. Clair would die less than a year later, at age 47, in his Pasadena home. But his legacy lives on, as do three of his paintings in LAM’s permanent collection.
What also survives is our town’s rich cultural arts tradition. From those early plein air painters to an expansive canvas of contemporary artists who work across every medium, our community has spent more than a century investing in Laguna’s vibrant arts culture. Though our hills and beaches may look a little different today, the rugged beauty that’s drawn people here for more than 150 years remains.
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Photo by Marrie Stone
Jean Stern spoke to a full audience at LAM
For more information about LAM, the permanent collection or event talks like Jean Stern’s, visit their website here.
An exhibition of Donna Schuster’s work will open at LAM on March 15. An Independent Brush marks Schuster’s first solo show. For more information on that installation, visit LAM’s website here.
