In mid-nineteenth century California, San Francisco was the center of American social and intellectual presence.  The port of San Francisco was the debarkation point for miners, merchants, bankers, and immigrants, all seeking to benefit from the gold fields, and it was the embarkation point for the tremendous quantity of gold that was generated from the mines.

In the 1860s and 1870s, at the time that Impressionism flowered in France, California was yet a distant, isolated region, hazardous and time-consuming to reach.  The initial transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific, was completed in 1869 with its western terminus at San Francisco.  Prior to the completion of the Union Pacific, the only approaches to California were overland by horse and wagon, a perilous and often hostile journey, or by ship from Panama or around South America.  The pre-canal Panama route necessitated docking on the Atlantic side, crossing the isthmus to the Pacific side and boarding a ship to continue to California.

San Francisco grew from the ensuing trades and businesses that accompanied the effects of the Gold Rush and soon developed an artistic community.  The direction and quality of artistic and cultural matters tend to be determined by the patrons who support those activities.  Art patronage in mid-nineteenth century San Francisco demanded works that mirrored European cannons, especially current French modes.  The dominant style in France, and indeed in upper class America, was a derivative of the French Beaux Arts or “Salon” style.  Paintings of this type were frequently large, pretentious historical and figural compositions, well suited for the grandiose homes of the San Francisco elite.

With the growth of population of the early 1880s, Los Angeles began to attract professional artists.  By the late 1880s, several artists were already permanent residents.  Among the most prominent were John Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941) and his wife Elizabeth Putnam Borglum (1848-1922), Elmer Wachtel (1864-1929) and John Bond Francisco (1863-1931).

John Gutzon Borglum trained in Los Angeles and San Francisco and painted large narrative works in the Barbizon style depicting California in the accepted Western conventions of the day.  One such series of his paintings dealt with stage coaches.  Borglum would later turn to sculpture and be best known for the monumental presidential portraits carved on Mount Rushmore.

His wife, Elizabeth Borglum, first came to Los Angeles in 1881.  She was known as Elizabeth Jaynes Putnam, or Mrs. J. W. Putnam before she married Borglum in 1889.  She likewise worked in the Tonalist-Barbizon esthetic.  She had studied art in San Francisco, with William Keith in 1885, and J. Foxcraft Cole (1837-1892) in 1887, both of whom were well entrenched in the Tonalist-Barbizon style.  She and Gutzon sketched throughout southern California, painting landscape and pastoral scenes.

Elmer Wachtel was at first very much a Tonalist, showing moody and poetic landscapes in dark tones.  As he progressed he accepted much of the Impressionist esthetic and significantly brightened his palette.  Many of his mature works show a more decorative and lyrical style, very reminiscent of Arthur Mathews (1860-1945), the San Francisco landscape and figure painter who influenced a generation of northern California painters, although Wachtel did not include figures in his compositions.

J. Bond Francisco arrived in Los Angeles in 1887.  Munich trained, he produced landscapes and Western genre subjects in a Barbizon palette that likewise brightened with time with elements from Impressionism..

The 1890s saw the first encroachment of Impressionism in California.  In keeping with the techniques of Impressionism, California’s plein-air painters preferred to sketch and paint directly out of doors.  Shunning the artificial light of the studio, the new arrivals determined that the best way to paint a landscape was to be in the landscape.  Moreover, the intent of capturing the delicate and fleeting effect of California’s light necessitated swiftness.  As such, the technique of direct and quick application of paint became indispensable and thus a characteristic of this style.

English-born William Lees Judson (1842-1928) came to Los Angeles in 1893 in search of a healthful climate.  Judson lived in the Arroyo Seco, a wooded valley that runs between Los Angeles and Pasadena that was home to the area’s artists and intellectuals.  He taught at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and began to paint landscapes in the Impressionist style.  In 1896, he joined the faculty of the University of Southern California and in 1901, founded and was the first dean of its School of Fine Arts.  An originator of the Craftsman movement in Southern California, he also worked in stained glass and other arts and crafts.

Benjamin C. Brown (1865-1942) came to Los Angeles to visit and sketch as early as 1886, and settled as a permanent resident in 1896.  After finding few patrons for his portraits, Brown turned to painting landscapes in a daring, vigorously Impressionistic style.  An outspoken proponent of his art, Brown pursued a long and active career as one of California’s boldest Impressionists.