SELDEN CONNOR GILE (1877-1947) Glorious Hill (Arks on Belvedere Lagoon...
SELDEN CONNOR GILE (1877-1947)
Glorious Hill (Arks on Belvedere Lagoon from San Rafael Avenue)
titled 'Glorious Hill' (on the reverse prior to lining)
oil on canvas
30 1/2 x 36 1/4 in.
Painted circa 1926.
Footnotes
Provenance
Estate of the artist.
Elizabeth C. Hall, Belvedere, California, from the above.
Private collection, Belvedere, California.
Montgomery Gallery, San Francisco, California.
Private collection, Arizona.
Private collection, Northern California.
Exhibited
Oakland, Oakland Art Gallery, Fourth Annual Exhibition of the Society of Six, 1926.
Montgomery Gallery, San Francisco, California's Society of Six, no date, no. 35.
Literature
H.C. Dungan, Oakland Tribune, 'Artists and their Work,' April 4, 1926, p. 6-S, illustrated.
Montgomery Gallery, California's Society of Six, exhibition catalogue, San Francisco, no date, illustrated.
Selden Gile and the Society of Six crafted a unique vision of California with the help of each other and the influence of several radical art movements. Modeled in part on the Group of Seven in Canada, the Society of Six spent over a decade in close contact and much longer sporadically gathering. The gregarious Gile was the driving force behind the Society of Six. He set the aesthetic standards that espoused color and guided the group with the strength of his personality, physical energy, and warm hospitality. With his high-energy and a sturdy build, he had a capacity for long hiking trips and outdoor, plein-air painting that he pursued passionately. He shared his house with several aspiring artists (like August Gay) and held dinners in a raucous atmosphere. Liberally seasoned with garlic and well lubricated with alcohol, the group critiqued and inspired one another. The avant-garde put in sporadic arrivals on the West Coast and when it did, the Six drank it up like one of Gile's home-brews.
Stylistically, the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) was a transformative influence on the Six. For Gile, there is a palpable shift in style from the early teens through his mature pictures. In The Society of Six: California Colorists, Nancy Boas explains that this shift was in part a reaction to seeing the PPIE works: "After [the exhibition], the Six began applying loose, expressive brushstrokes of varying sizes, using the stroke as an element in its own right...Thus they abandoned the careful finish encouraged in academic work and attempted to reveal their own individuality and spontaneity in the paint surface itself. Combined with heavy impasto in some places and with unpainted areas of the canvas showing through in others, these brushstrokes create a purposeful sketchiness. Now sketchiness became a means of capturing a fleeting moment." 1 Building upon this shifted framework the 1923 exhibition of Contemporary French Art pushed the Society of Six to new heights of color and spontaneity. The fauves "wild beasts" were on view including Henri Matisse, Andre Derain and Maurice Vlaminck. The French critic Louis Vauxcelles applied the label to Matisse and Derain's works in a 1905 exhibition, and it grew to apply the artists themselves.
The evolution of the Six shifted importantly with the start of their shared exhibitions in 1923. In Clapp's 1923 manifesto for the Society of Six, he concludes in part: In other words, we are not trying to illustrate a thought or write a catalogue, but to produce a joy through the use of the eyes...we have felt, and desire that others may also feel. Clapp—the theorist of the group—would come in for some reproach from his rough-and-tumble friends, as recounted by Siegriest in a 1972 interview: What the hell you writing all this crap down for... Get to painting and quite friggin around. Despite their criticisms, Clapp was speaking truthfully about an underlying goal of the Six. The French influence did not go unnoticed by critics of the time, Josephine Bentham in the Oakland Post Enquirer in March of 1923 referred to the Six as the Latin Quarter Comrades of the East Bay. Terry St. John observed in his 1972 book Society of Six that the turning point for Gile (and Von Eichman) was 1926 when they shifted to a more broadly Fauvist-influenced painting style.2
To understand the radical nature of these paintings it is helpful to read H.C. Dungan's review of the show in April of 1926 of the Oakland Tribune where he cautions those who attend that "you should have brought along your amber-tinted glasses, but not having them you will have to get used to the color. There's plenty of it; rich, pure, and let us add, Glorious. Dungan's choice of the word glorious was a preview of the praise he would lavish on the present lot in his review. "'Glorious Hill' by Selden C. Gile one of the outstanding canvases at the Society of Six exhibition at the Oakland Art Gallery. It is a fine example of color harmony and must be seen in the original to be appreciated." 3
The contrasts in color and form from the water to the arks to the hills and sky above proved an irresistible subject to Gile. He revisited it in numerous paintings and in 1927 moved north to Tiburon and later to adjacent Belvedere Island. The foreground of Glorious Hills is composed with subdued colors; Gile uses realistic greens and browns albeit with choppy brushwork. The arks and pilings come in for an altogether different treatment. The fauve's love of pure color from the tube is evident in the vibrant reds, pure yellows and saturated blues. All this action in color and form in the arks is framed below by water with long gestural swirls in the white and green and as Dungan calls it "too blue" water. The arks are framed above by the orange and green hills stepping up to the sky with the occasional darker green daubs of trees and maroon shadows. The sky has more of the pure blue, particularly on the edges; however much of it is overlayed with glorious white and butter yellow clouds with some subtle pink hints. The scale of the work serves to emphasize the different skills Gile can bring to bear on one composition. Dungan notes "that's a good sized canvas, but it is much bigger in art than it is in square inches." 4
1 N. Boas, The Society of Six: California Colorists, San Francisco, 1988, pp. 80-81.
2 T. St. John, Society of Six: William Clapp, August Gay, Selden Gile, Maurice Logan, Louis Siegriest, Bernard Von Eichman, Oakland, 1972.
3 H.C. Dungan, Oakland Tribune, 'Artists and their Work,' April 4, 1926, pg. S6
4 ibid Dugan, p.S6.
Sale price
Estimate
Time, Location
Auction House
SELDEN CONNOR GILE (1877-1947)
Glorious Hill (Arks on Belvedere Lagoon from San Rafael Avenue)
titled 'Glorious Hill' (on the reverse prior to lining)
oil on canvas
30 1/2 x 36 1/4 in.
Painted circa 1926.
Footnotes
Provenance
Estate of the artist.
Elizabeth C. Hall, Belvedere, California, from the above.
Private collection, Belvedere, California.
Montgomery Gallery, San Francisco, California.
Private collection, Arizona.
Private collection, Northern California.
Exhibited
Oakland, Oakland Art Gallery, Fourth Annual Exhibition of the Society of Six, 1926.
Montgomery Gallery, San Francisco, California's Society of Six, no date, no. 35.
Literature
H.C. Dungan, Oakland Tribune, 'Artists and their Work,' April 4, 1926, p. 6-S, illustrated.
Montgomery Gallery, California's Society of Six, exhibition catalogue, San Francisco, no date, illustrated.
Selden Gile and the Society of Six crafted a unique vision of California with the help of each other and the influence of several radical art movements. Modeled in part on the Group of Seven in Canada, the Society of Six spent over a decade in close contact and much longer sporadically gathering. The gregarious Gile was the driving force behind the Society of Six. He set the aesthetic standards that espoused color and guided the group with the strength of his personality, physical energy, and warm hospitality. With his high-energy and a sturdy build, he had a capacity for long hiking trips and outdoor, plein-air painting that he pursued passionately. He shared his house with several aspiring artists (like August Gay) and held dinners in a raucous atmosphere. Liberally seasoned with garlic and well lubricated with alcohol, the group critiqued and inspired one another. The avant-garde put in sporadic arrivals on the West Coast and when it did, the Six drank it up like one of Gile's home-brews.
Stylistically, the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) was a transformative influence on the Six. For Gile, there is a palpable shift in style from the early teens through his mature pictures. In The Society of Six: California Colorists, Nancy Boas explains that this shift was in part a reaction to seeing the PPIE works: "After [the exhibition], the Six began applying loose, expressive brushstrokes of varying sizes, using the stroke as an element in its own right...Thus they abandoned the careful finish encouraged in academic work and attempted to reveal their own individuality and spontaneity in the paint surface itself. Combined with heavy impasto in some places and with unpainted areas of the canvas showing through in others, these brushstrokes create a purposeful sketchiness. Now sketchiness became a means of capturing a fleeting moment." 1 Building upon this shifted framework the 1923 exhibition of Contemporary French Art pushed the Society of Six to new heights of color and spontaneity. The fauves "wild beasts" were on view including Henri Matisse, Andre Derain and Maurice Vlaminck. The French critic Louis Vauxcelles applied the label to Matisse and Derain's works in a 1905 exhibition, and it grew to apply the artists themselves.
The evolution of the Six shifted importantly with the start of their shared exhibitions in 1923. In Clapp's 1923 manifesto for the Society of Six, he concludes in part: In other words, we are not trying to illustrate a thought or write a catalogue, but to produce a joy through the use of the eyes...we have felt, and desire that others may also feel. Clapp—the theorist of the group—would come in for some reproach from his rough-and-tumble friends, as recounted by Siegriest in a 1972 interview: What the hell you writing all this crap down for... Get to painting and quite friggin around. Despite their criticisms, Clapp was speaking truthfully about an underlying goal of the Six. The French influence did not go unnoticed by critics of the time, Josephine Bentham in the Oakland Post Enquirer in March of 1923 referred to the Six as the Latin Quarter Comrades of the East Bay. Terry St. John observed in his 1972 book Society of Six that the turning point for Gile (and Von Eichman) was 1926 when they shifted to a more broadly Fauvist-influenced painting style.2
To understand the radical nature of these paintings it is helpful to read H.C. Dungan's review of the show in April of 1926 of the Oakland Tribune where he cautions those who attend that "you should have brought along your amber-tinted glasses, but not having them you will have to get used to the color. There's plenty of it; rich, pure, and let us add, Glorious. Dungan's choice of the word glorious was a preview of the praise he would lavish on the present lot in his review. "'Glorious Hill' by Selden C. Gile one of the outstanding canvases at the Society of Six exhibition at the Oakland Art Gallery. It is a fine example of color harmony and must be seen in the original to be appreciated." 3
The contrasts in color and form from the water to the arks to the hills and sky above proved an irresistible subject to Gile. He revisited it in numerous paintings and in 1927 moved north to Tiburon and later to adjacent Belvedere Island. The foreground of Glorious Hills is composed with subdued colors; Gile uses realistic greens and browns albeit with choppy brushwork. The arks and pilings come in for an altogether different treatment. The fauve's love of pure color from the tube is evident in the vibrant reds, pure yellows and saturated blues. All this action in color and form in the arks is framed below by water with long gestural swirls in the white and green and as Dungan calls it "too blue" water. The arks are framed above by the orange and green hills stepping up to the sky with the occasional darker green daubs of trees and maroon shadows. The sky has more of the pure blue, particularly on the edges; however much of it is overlayed with glorious white and butter yellow clouds with some subtle pink hints. The scale of the work serves to emphasize the different skills Gile can bring to bear on one composition. Dungan notes "that's a good sized canvas, but it is much bigger in art than it is in square inches." 4
1 N. Boas, The Society of Six: California Colorists, San Francisco, 1988, pp. 80-81.
2 T. St. John, Society of Six: William Clapp, August Gay, Selden Gile, Maurice Logan, Louis Siegriest, Bernard Von Eichman, Oakland, 1972.
3 H.C. Dungan, Oakland Tribune, 'Artists and their Work,' April 4, 1926, pg. S6
4 ibid Dugan, p.S6.
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