Linda Sorensen has long been intrigued by patterns and flow in both clouds and landscape.

On recent trips to Arizona, she was fascinated by quickly moving blue shadows as the sun and clouds moved across the sky, projecting magic on the ancient red sculptured canyon walls.

Jimmy Swinnerton gained fame as a cartoonist for William Randolph Hearst. Hearst picked Jimmy and his classmate Maynard Dixon out of a San Francisco art school and put them to work. Jimmy became a pioneer of the newspaper comic strip. Then, in 1903, a life-threatening bout with tuberculosis caused Jimmy to leave New York for a sparsley populated place in the Mojave Desert called Palm Springs.

Jimmy revived and thrived in the desert and lived to be 99 years old. Today, he's known as a founding father of the California Desert School. He was a popular member of San Francisco's Bohemian Club.

In the February 2014 edition of "Casemate," a French magazine dedicated to French Comic art, artist Dominique Bertail wrote his thoughts on our gallery's Swinnerton painting "Smoke Tree Wash."Read more in our April 2014 issue.

Other non-painting visitors hosted by Hilton at his humble desert lodgings in Thermal were Howard Hughes and General George Patton.

Hilton found success in the 1950's and moved to Twentynine Palms. There he often painted with his good friend and neighbor James Cagney. During golf visits to Palm Springs, he painted with another friend, President Eisenhower. Ike had a Hilton painting hanging on the Oval Office wall.

Walt Disney artist Joshua Meador is the star of our gallery and we are proud to represent his family's collection. Although Joshua Meador is best known for his paintings of the Pacific and scenes of Pacific Coast harbors and towns, he also painted

Desert Cathedral, Monument Valley
oil on board, 20 x 24
Dedrick Stuber 1878-1954

The Corcoran Gallery of Art was founded in 1869 "for the perpetual establishment and encouragement of the Fine Arts." It was a private art museum, supported by an endowment by William Wilson Corcoran, the founder of Riggs Bank.

Its first location was directly behind the White House in the building which today houses the Renwick Gallery. By 1897, the museum had outgrown its initial building and moved to its present location, a grand Beaux-Arts design by Ernest Flagg. In recent years, the museum's ever expanding collection again needed more room to breathe. A proposal for an addition was offered, doubling the museum size with architecture by Frank Gehry. Unfortunately, funding problems ended that dream.

Their impressive collection will now move to the National Gallery, a gift to all of us. In an agreement a year ago, the National Gallery has agreed to house and exhibit large parts of the collection while assisting in finding D.C. area homes for other pieces.

To date, the National Gallery has taken in 6,500 works.

The challenging task is monumental, one large museum acquiring another, and will involve many paintings being stored for a while. The National Gallery has a long standing policy of not deacquisitioning paintings. So, when the museum chooses to take in a painting, it is a forever decision. None of the works will be sold. Those not accepted into the National Gallery's collection will be donated to neighboring institutions.

Charles lived with Eugene while in Paris to study law, and "Uncle Eugene" served as his informal guardian. In 1829, Charles joined the dipolomatic service and was posted in Valparaiso, Chile. He took his portrait along with him to Chile and treasured it. On his way back to Paris in 1834, young Charles caught yellow fever and died in Vera Cruz, Mexico. His portrait has remained in American collections ever since.

As for Eugene Delacroix, he went on to become the leader of the French Romantic School. His paintings are praised for having an effect on art after his death in 1863. His expressive brushstrokes and optical effects of color helped shape the painting of the impressionists. His paintings done in North Africa were most exotic and were inspirational to artists of the Symbolist Movement.

When looking at the family tree of French painting, it is important to place Eugene Delacroix in his proper historical context. He was born in 1798, about a decade after the French Revolution. When he was 42 and already a thriving and successful painter, Claude Monet was born. He died in 1863, a time when the

impressionists were just gettting a foothold in Paris and long before their first exhibition. When Delacroix was born, President Washington was in the midst of his second term as President, and the year he died, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.

In Delacroix's day, French painting was dominated by the Academie des Beaux-Arts. Their stiff standards strove to protect the status quo and excluded newer styles, methods and techniuqes. To get an idea of this rigidity, in the year of Delacroix's death, 1863, the Salon rejected Eduarde Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass.

A product of his times, he often painted classical themes, but branched out, doing illustrations for William Shakespeare plays and doing historical pieces, even of the new world.

Delacroix's most famous painting was Liberty Leading the People (1830), especially loved among the French. The image is of Parisians taking up arms under their colors representing liberty, equality and fraternity. The dead soldiers in are a poignant counterpoint to the female figure symbolizing liberty.

The boy holding the gun is thought to be the inspiration of the character Gavroche in Victor Hugo's 1862 novel, Les Miserables. Delacroix is consequently held in high esteem by his countrymen, and, before the Euro, his image was once used on the 100 Franc note.

Gallery News

From the Walt Disney short film "4 Artists Paint 1 Tree," first broadcast in 1958 featured four Disney artists, (left to right) Joshua Meador, Marc Davis, Eyvind Earle and Walt Peregoy.

In Memorium, Disney Artist Walt Peregoy 1925-2015 Walt Peregoy passed away at his home in Encino on Friday, January 16. Walt was born in Alameda and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Berkeley. When his family moved to LA in 1937, he continued his studies at the Chouinard Art Institute. At age 17 (1942), he went to work at Disney Studios as a "tweener," an animator who would fill in a scene "between" two completed cells. After three years in the Coast Guard during the war, Walt continued his art studies in Mexico and in Paris. In 1951, he returned to Disney where his emerging style was increasingly appreciated. He meshed well with Eyvind Earle, and the pair was nominated for their animation work on Disney's short film Paul Bunyan. In 1958 he joined his colleagues Joshua Meador, Eyvind Earle and Marc Davis for a short entitled "4 Artists Paint 1 Tree." The film was introduced and narrated by Walt Disney and featured the four artists demonstrating their individual painting techniques. Apart from his professional work in animation, he was also an artist. He had one man shows at the Stockton Museum, CA; The University of Santa Clara, CA; Galerie de Tour, San Francisco, CA; Rutherford Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles, CA; Landau Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Dickie Hall Gallery, Laguna, CA; Jack Carr Gallery, Pasadena, CA. He has also participated in group shows at the National Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

"4 Artists Paint 1 Tree" 1958 Disney Film featuring Joshua Meador, Marc Davis, Eyvind Earle and Walt Peregoy.

3rd Annual Hitchcock Film Fest Sat, March 21 & the social highlight of the year (BB residents even dress up!) BB's Oscar Worthy Party Fri, March 20 @ the Yacht Club!

Chicago, IL
Art Institute of Chicago
Permanent collection:
the Impressionists