Edgar Payne, (1883-1947)

The Sierra Divide 24 x 28in framed 31 x 34in

The Sierra Divide
signed and dated 'Edgar Payne 1921' (lower right)
oil on canvas
24 x 28in
framed 31 x 34in
Painted in 1921.

Provenance
Petersen Galleries, Beverly Hills, California.
Collection of James and Linda Ries, Beverly Hills, California.
Private collection, Laguna Beach, California.

Exhibited
Scottsdale, The Fleischer Museum, Selections from the Irvine Museum, March 1 - May 31, 1993.
Irvine, The Irvine Museum, Selections from the Irvine Museum, July 10 - September 11, 1993.
Oakland, The Oakland Museum, Selections from the Irvine Museum, November 13, 1993 - February 20, 1994.
Irvine, The Irvine Museum, California Impressionists: A presentation of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, organized by the Georgia Museum of Art and The Irvine Museum, six city traveling exhibition, July 1996 – January 1998.
Irvine, The Irvine Museum, Majestic California: Prominent Artists of the Early 1900's, September 9, 2006 – January 13, 2007.
Irvine, The Irvine Museum, All The Water That Will Ever Be, Is, Right Now, September 13, 2008 – January 17, 2009.
Irvine, The Irvine Museum, Selections from The Irvine Museum, October 6, 2009 – February 13, 2010.
Irvine, The Irvine Museum, California Impressionism: Selections from the Irvine Museum, September 28, 2013 – January 9, 2014.
Irvine, The Irvine Museum, California: This Golden Land of Promise, January 24 – May 21, 2015.
Irvine, The Irvine Museum, The Nature of Water, Our Most Precious Resource, January 30 – June 16, 2016.

Literature
E. Payne, Composition of Outdoor Painting, Los Angeles, 1941, p. 1, illustrated.
R. Westphal, Plein Air Painters of California: The Southland, Irvine, 1982, p. 160, illustrated.
J. Stern, Selections from the Irvine Museum, Irvine, 1992, p. 57, illustrated.
S. Landauer, California Impressionists, Irvine, 1996, p. 20, illustrated.
W.H. Gerdts, All Things Bright & Beautiful, Irvine, 1998, p. 25, illustrated.
J.I. Smith, California: This Golden Land of Promise, Irvine, 2001, pp. 271, 347 (detail), illustrated.
J. Stern, Masters of Light: Plein-Air Painting in California 1890-1930, Irvine, 2002, p. 34, illustrated.
J.I. Smith, A California Woman's Story, Irvine, 2006, p. 272, illustrated.
J. Stern, Selections from the Irvine Museum, Irvine, 2009, pp. 6, 179, illustrated.

In 1911, Edgar Payne first saw California at the age of 29 on a sketching trip. By the 1920's he had fallen in love with the solitude and grandeur of California's Eastern Sierra mountains. Californians were encouraged to get out into the open and enjoy nature and the great outdoors. For many, there was a strong feeling that industrialization and an increase in population growth was rapidly encroaching on nature and a worry that these pristine areas were threatened. Many of Payne's early compositions are devoid of people, as he purposely strove to portray the solitude of nature and the absence of man's presence.

Along with his friend and painting companion Conrad Buff, Payne would often travel by Model T on dusty roads up to the Owens Valley. From there he would travel by horse or mule to remote locations in the high country. As these visits increased through the years, Payne chose to climb further and further into the mountains in order to seek out the most spectacular vantage points he and his party could find. Unlike many artists that only painted field sketches, with more finished paintings to be completed in their studio later, Payne dragged canvases of all sizes to the very spots at which these paintings were spontaneously sketched out and completed.

While many of his fellow artists back in Los Angeles and Laguna Beach chose to paint closer to home, Payne was exhilarated by the mountains and the scenery he found. In his book California the Wonderful, Edwin Markham summarized the California that Edgar Payne sought to discover when he wrote, 'I have been picturing the softer paths of California, 'with roses all the way'. But if, like Ulysses, you weary of lotus-land, where it seems always afternoon, you have only to dart out to the shores or fly into the Sierras to find nature still wild and elemental.'

Edgar Payne's depictions of glacier-clad mountains and emerald blue lakes became the artist's trademark and thrust him into the international spotlight as he chose to exhibit these works in major American and European art centers. The masculinity of these scenes, and the almost otherworldly views that most would never witness themselves filled viewers with endless wonder. As a self-taught artist, Payne's broad and confident brushwork became synonymous with plein air painting in Southern California and secured the artist's place in the pantheon of American Impressionism.

Edgar Payne's work from 1921 to 1923 are considered by many to be his best. Here in The Sierra Divide his brushwork shows a tight and precise kaleidoscope of primary colors. His perspectives are sharp, accurate, crisp and inviting. The light shines bright and clear, as it would if the viewer were standing in the very stop on which the work was painted. The Sierra Divide captures the Sierras as the artist intended, with grandeur and a sense of awe that seems to take ones breath away.

Edgar Payne's name became so closely associated with views of the California Sierras that he was referred to as the "God of the Mountains" by Fred S. Hogue (1872-1941), chief editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times, in a review of the artist's work at Stendahl Galleries in 1927. The Sierra Divide is perhaps the artist's best-known work in this genre, having been reproduced in many contemporary and recent art publications.

Antony Anderson, the noted Los Angeles Times art critic of the day, is quoted in Edgar Payne's well-known book Composition of Outdoor Painting. In it he writes: 'Mere industry and technical talent, however persistent, do not paint pictures that live. To these attributes must be joined the image-making faculty, the power to see with the soul as well as the eye. Edgar Payne has been endowed with this gift to a marked degree. His stupendous mountain forms are not imitations of nature, they are interpretations, and they assume the vitality of pictures through the passion of a painter who also happens to be a poet. They are created, nothing less, from the elements of Art, - how few these elements are, and yet how dynamic, how infinitely varied in their outward manifestations!'