Note
Edgar Alwin Payne
(b. 1883, Washburn, Missouri – d. 1947, Hollywood, CA)
VEILED GRANDEUR--SIERRAS
Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches
Private collection
Edgar Payne was born in 1883 in Washburn, Missouri. Payne moved to California in 1909, where he spent a good portion of his time in Laguna Beach. In 1918, Payne moved to Laguna where he founded and became the first president of the Laguna Beach Art Association. During his stay in Laguna, he periodically took trips to the Sierra Nevadas and became well-known among the locals. One of the lakes, Lake Payne, was named in memory of the artist.
Payne's first painting of the subject, which was shown at a California Art Club exhibit in 1919, is credited as inspiring many of his fellow artists to follow suit. In the early 1920's traveling to the "California Alps," which Payne ended up doing almost every summer, necessitated driving a primitive automobile across an almost uninhabited desert on rudimentary roads with little to no signage. Once in the mountains, he had to hike, and supplies were carries in by pack train. He would often remain for a week at a time, living in a tent and spending his days sketching.
Payne preferred painting California's Alps over Europe's Alps, because they were untrammeled by humans, and the scenery was raw and new. Critics felt his works were truly American in the they captured the bigness and grandeur of the West.
Payne rarely dated his works, but the Sierra pictures can be roughly placed through his brushwork, which grew from a more delicate, mincing technique in the early works to a few sweeps of a large brush in he later period, as Payne probably bowed to the modern ideas of Post-Impressionism.