The Irvine Museum

Irvine, CA

(949) 476-2565

Spacious Skies

California Impressionist Cloud Studies and Seascapes

September 24 - January 16, 1999

The magnificent sky, brilliant light, and vibrant seas enticed a good number of artists to migrate to California during the late 19th century. Many of these artists, interested in the transitory effects of nature, chose to paint the passing clouds, rippling waves, and lifting fog. Spacious Skies focuses on these cloud studies and seascapes.

Along with paintings of cloud-filled skies, the museum will portray the natural cycle of California's water. We will follow water from the rains of winter to the snow pack of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the streams and rivers that drain into valleys, and the lakes and beaches that are the ultimate destination of the water, before it returns to the sky as evaporation.

Alson Skinner Clark (1876-1949), Paul Grimm (1892-1974), Granville Redmond (1871-1935), Arthur Rider (1886-1976), Guy Rose (1867-1925), George Gardner Symons (1862-1930), William Wendt(1865 1946), and Karl Julius H. Yens (1868-1945) are just a few of the California artists whose works will be exhibited during Spacious Skies.

Above images from top to bottom and left to right: Paul Grimm, Cumulus Clouds, oil on canvas, 28 x 36 inches, collection of The Irvine Museum; Franz Bischoff, The Arroyo Seco, Pasadena, oil on canvas, 24 x 40 inches, collection of The Irvine Museum; John Frost, Desert Evening, oil on canvas, 26 x 30 inches, collection of Joan Irvine Smith Fine Arts. All photos courtesy of Irvine Museum.

Resource Library editor's note:

For biographical information on artists referenced in this article please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists

Click on images bordered in red to enlarge them.

This article was originally published in 1998.

Rev. 8/27/09

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