Description
All Things Bright and Beautiful – California Paintings from the Irvine Museum
Author: William H. Gerdts, Jean Stern, Harvey L. Jones, David Dearinger
Publisher: Irvine Museum
Publication Date: 1994
It may be debatable whether the California Impressionists form a “school” of art, but it is hard to argue with the premise that there is something distinctive about California’s landscape that elicited a unified response in the work of the plein air painters of the early 20th century. The best California plein air painters, drawn together from all over the country and the world by the state’s stunning light and topography, found different ways of mingling French Impressionist strategies with other influences, such as the academic realism most of them had been trained in, and Post-Impressionism, yet they shared a similar conservative, spiritual outlook.