The Two-Fisted Impressionism of Edgar Payne

"Rugged Slopes and Tamarack" by Edgar Payne

Edgar Alwyn Payne

From the High Sierras to Laguna Beach

by Jeffrey Morseburg

Edgar Payne  (1882-1947) was a California Plein-air Painter who worked in a highly masculine, two-fisted style that is instantly recognizable.  He was a prolific artist who is best known for “signature works” of the high mountain lakes of California’s Sierra Nevada, with their cool, sparkling pools kept in shadow by the glaciered peaks. He was almost as well known for his scenes of the California Southland, European fishing boats and paintings of the Navajos in the red-rocked canons of Arizona and New Mexico which are all highly prized by collectors.

"Breton Tuna Boats" by Edgar Payne

Edgar Alwyn Payne was born in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and he struck out on his own at the age of fourteen.  He was always artistically talented and he worked as an itinerant house painter, sign painter and set painter for traveling theatrical productions.  While Payne is generally regarded as self-taught, he actually had some formal education during his travels at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Dallas, Texas.  He made his first trip to California in 1909, painting in Laguna Beach and visiting in San Francisco where he met Elsie Palmer, an artist who became his wife in Chicago in 1912.  In 1917 the Paynes left the Midwest for good, traveling west to Glendale, California where Edgar worked on a vast mural for the Congressional Hotel.  In 1918 the Paynes settled in Laguna where they established a studio and Edgar Payne became the founder and first President of the Laguna Art Association, which is now the Laguna Museum of Art.  Payne began painting extensively in the Sierras and within a short time he was indelibly associated with this chain of dramatic peaks, the backbone of California.  While Payne became a pillar of Laguna’s artistic community, he never stopped traveling, spending some winters in and around New York City and then traveling in Europe for two years. The Great Depression were hard years for artists and even in the twilight of his career, Payne was forced to teach to pay the bills. In an attempt to pass his hard-won knowledge on to younger generations of painters, the aging wrote The Composition of Outdoor Painting, which was published in 1941.    Copyright 2001-2011, Jeffrey Morseburg, not to be reproduced without author’s specific written permission. 

"Sentinels of the Coast" by Edgar Payne