The New Hope Art Colony: Walter E. Schofield, California

 

"Morning Light, Tujunga" (1934) by Walter Schofield

"During the first three decades of the twentieth century, Walter Schofield was regarded as one of America's leading landscape painters. Like Redfield, he was part of the art establishment, and he often served on exhibition juries and selection committees. Because of their establishment positions, Schofield and Redfield helped to shape the aesthetics of American landscape painting during the early twentieth century.

As a result of exhibiting with Gardner Symons at Stendahl Galleries in Los Angeles, Schofield spent much time during the thirties in California, Arizona and New Mexico. But the late twenties, the state of his marriage deteriorated, which resulted in the artist spending increasingly more time in the United States. He spent at least nine months annually in the United States, and no more than three months with his wife in Great Britain. He described his life in California in a letter to her: 

 'The winter has set in here - it comes on in the form of rain - very heavy and usually with the night - but the next day will be fine and sunny. The hills are now all green and very beautiful with the brightest colored grass you ever saw. In all the time I have been taking a class outside, the weather never has stopped me... On sketching days we are out from 9 a.m. until 4 or 5 p.m., making two sketches and three at times."

He began to produce a series of views of the American West. By this time his style of painting had become unfashionable, and because the artist had inherited a substantial amount of money from his parents, he no longer found the need to create the large, exhibition-oriented snow scenes for which he become noted. Generally his late works are sketchlike and are often not fully developed. In later years, his smaller paintings no longer served as studies for the major exhibition painting. It seems as if he was satisfied to rely on his past reputation."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Pennsylvania Impressionists" by Thomas Folk.)