Note
Granville Redmond
(b. 1871, Philadelphia – d.1935, Los Angeles)
POND WITH OAKS
1909, Oil on canvas, 22 x 36 inches
Jonathan Club collection
Deaf from the age of three from scarlet fever, Redmond and his family moved to San Jose, California in 1879 so he could attend the California School for the Deaf in Berkeley. While there, his teacher, who was a painter and photographer, encouraged Redmond’s artistic abilities. Redmond pursued further art study at the San Francisco School of Design and won a scholarship to Paris at Academie Julian. One of his paintings was accepted in the Paris Salon.
After a period of residence in various locations throughout California, Redmond returned to Los Angeles in 1917, where he sought work as a pantomime in silent films. Befriended by Charlie Chaplin, Redmond was provided a painting studio on the movie lot and had several minor roles in Chaplin films such as "City Lights" and "A Dog’s Life." In between his work as an actor, Redmond devoted his time to painting. He often painted and sketched in Laguna Beach, and in 1918 he was a charter member of the Laguna Beach Art Association. Redmond continued to paint landscapes until his death in 1935.
Redmond was described as moody, and he is reported to have once said that he preferred painting quiet scenes over his more sought-after poppy pictures. This thinly painted work is stylistically close to Tonalism, a movement in America at the turn of the 20th century, in which artists bathed their landscapes with overall color tones inspired by sunlight, moonlight, fog, and rain. In this painting the marshy landscape seems compressed under a lowering sky, and the muted colors convey that quiet time in the late afternoon before night descends.