Although E. Charlton Fortune (1885-1969) lived to the age of 84, her productive career as a California impressionist was brief. She ceased painting secular pictures at the age of 43, the pinnacle of her success when she was receiving critical acclaim for her work.

For reasons known best only to Effie, she chose to dedicate herself thereafter to religious art, creating art for use in Roman Catholic churches. In 1955, she received the papal award for her achievements in liturgical art, the Pro Ecclesia et Pontiface.

Her brief secular career as a California scene painter ended when she was only 43 years old.

The reason she signed her paintings with her first initial E. has often been explained because it was wise in Effie's day for a woman to disguise her gender in the male dominated art world. But the real reason she used her initial is she hated her first name, "Euphemia,"

Born with a cleft palate, she chose not to marry fearing she would pass on the gene. Effie steered clear of cameras too. Few photos of her exist. She never painted a self portrait, and she is not known to have sat for one either.

But between 1914 and 1928, she was very active in the art scene in both San Francisco and Monterey/Carmel.

The Pier, 1914 ... This painting was awarded a silver medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. It had been assumed lost, burned at a fire at St. Margaret's Convent in Edinburgh.


Summer, 1914 ... Art critic Anna Cora Winchell of the San Francisco Chronicle described this painting as a "poem in greens." Summer was exhibited in Gallery 117 at San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915.

Effie was born in Sausilito to a wealthy family. Her father, William Ranken Fortune, developed a lung disease, prompting the family's move to Los Angeles in 1890. After his death in 1894, a visiting Aunt took Effie back home with her to Scotland, enrolling her in St. Margaret's Convent in Edinburgh. Effie graduated St. Margaret's in 1904 and went on to study art in London at the St. John's Wood School of Art.

In 1905, Effie was now a grown young woman of 20. She returned to California, continuing her studies at the Mark Hopkins School of Art, then lead by Arthur Matthews. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 destroyed the Fortunes' San Francisco home, containing most of Effie's accumulated early paintings.

The Mark Hopkins School of Art was also destroyed, causing Effie to continue her art education elsewhere.

She went to New York, studying with Frank Vincent Dumond, where she learned the importance of expressing her own individuality and the importance of light effects. In time, she was elected women's vice president of the Art Students League and was making contributing illustrations to Harpers Magazine.

In 1910, she traveled to Scotland, England and France. In Edinburgh, she painted three panels of the Life of Christ for her Alma Mater, St. Margaret's Convent. The Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh gave Effie her first solo exhibition in 1911 where she exhibited 27 paintings.

Summer Morning, St. Ives, 1923 ... This painting's complex composition filled with activity, boats coming into shore, fisherman hauling their craft, bystanders, all underneath a blizzard of seagulls, filling the sky with an abstract blur.

Effie is doing two things in this painting. Like a good impressionist, she captures the fleeting light. But another school of painters, Italian Futurists, were concerned with capturing motion. With regards to Summer Morning, St Ives, a critic at the time put it this way.

"Impressionism beating Futurism at its own game." Effie submitted the painting to the Societe des Artistes Francais Salon in 1924 where it was awarded a silver medal. The certificate was in the name of "Monsieur Fortune Charlton."

In preparing for Summer Morning, Effie painted a number of smaller paintings, including Mackeral Season (above) and Scavengers (below.)

Scavengers, St. Ives, 1922
Collection of Marie and Murray Demo

After her European trip, she returned to San Francisco where she became an illustrator for Sunset Magazine. During the next ten years, Effie and her mother spent their summers in Monterey where Effie painted local coastal scenes and studied with other resident and visiting artist friends such as Armin Hansen, William Ritschel and William Merritt Chase.

Effie was active in the Carmel art scene, teaching private lessons and organizing outdoor painting workshops. She was given solo art shows at San Francisco's Schussler Galleries in 1914 and the Helgesen Galleries in 1918. She exhibited works at both the Panama Pacific International Exposition and the Panama-California Exposition, receiving silver medals at both events.

Summer Night, 1920 features the yet to be completed D. L. James House located in Carmel Highlands, just a few miles south of Carmel. The house's rustic appearance is meant to blend with the rock outcropping on which it sits. Fortune captures this scene in the glow of moonlight, with long skirted women in the foreground evoking an earlier era.

In 1921, Effie and her mother moved to England, settling in the small coastal town of St. Ives, Cornwall, where they lived in 1922 and 1923. From there, they visited Scotland and St. Tropez in France. In 1922, she was elected a member of the Society of Scottish Artists and in 1924, one of her paintings of St. Ives Harbor received a Silver Medal at the Paris Salon.

In 1927, she returned to Monterey and joined the newly formed Carmel Art Association.

One year later, she dedicated her life to liturgical art for Roman Catholic Churches. She ceased participating in secular painting.

Picking Apples (Above the Town), c1920 ... The woman with auburn hair is thought to be Effie's best friend, Ethel McAllister.

To Effie, the apple trees' connection with the Biblical account of the tree of knowledge is unmistakable. But like Mary Cassat's treatment of the same subject, Effie pictures these apple-picking women in a positive light, reaching out for knowledge.

Feeding Chickens, 1918 ... Realists, Barbizon painters and Impressionists all created scenes of farm workers. Effie revisits this theme in Feeding Chickens. This composition is striking with the vertical picket fence setting a rhythm across the canvas balanced by the slant of shadows.

The Senora's Garden, c1916-17 ... This is the home of Maria Ignacia Bonifacio, also known as the Sherman Rose Adobe. Bonifacio died a few months before Effie did this painting, part of a tribute.

El Rancho Del Carmelo (The Hatton Ranch), 1920 ... This dairy farm with its sun drenched white buildings and glowing haystacks is a pleasure to behold. It was exhibited at the Carmel Club of Arts and Crafts in the summer of 1920. Voted Best in Show, viewers appreciated its local subject and its "virile" uncompromising approach.

Effie and her mother lived in St. Tropez for nearly three years. She found the place alive with color and movement.

The sun drenched harbor alive with flapping sails and dark contrasting shadows challenged Effie. She expressed painting of shadows here "like playing low notes of a cello."

St. Tropez, 1926 ... Effie, for the most part, steered clear of familiar "post-card subjects," but in St. Tropez, she gives a sweeping vista of the town and its Italian Baroque bell tower.

This Exhibition by the Crocker Museum focuses on Effie's paintings done in San Francisco and Carmel , St. Ives and Scotland and St. Tropez in France. The exhibition also includes some of her liturgical art, but compared to the color and style of her secular work, they appear quite subdued.

On a gray day in early January, Linda and I visited the Seattle Art Museum for their outstanding special exhibition of Andrew Wyeth paintings which we reported on in our January and February issues.

While there, we took time to view their 19th and early 20th century French and American paintings. There were several that were of special interest to art lovers of the Pacific Northwest.

Cleveland Rockwell (1837-1907) became a landscape artist only after having worked for the U.S. Coast Survey, mapping harbors and river systems on both the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts. When he began this job, he received a salary of $15 per month, plus room and board. During the Civil War, he was a Captain in the Union Army's Corps of Topographical Engineers. In 1868/69, he was sent to Oregon to map the Columbia River.

Smoky Sunrise, Astoria Harbor, 1882 shows a silhouette of vessels against a golden foggy sunrise, a salute to the region's emerging commerce.

Albert Bierstadt, 1830-1902, visited the Pacific Northwest in 1970. At the time, most Americans could not have found Puget Sound on a map. Truth be told, Bierstadt never made it to Puget Sound. He was traveling with a journalist, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, and after viewing the Columbia River turned around in Washington before arriving at Puget Sound.

Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast, 1870, was done in studio with Bierstadt working from oil sketches done on along the Columbia and native artifacts such as baskets and cedar mats he used as models. In this work, he imagines a dramatic Pacific storm that he had experienced crossing the Columbia bar.

Like Albert Bierstadt, Sanford Robinson Gifford, 1823-1880, was a Hudson River School Painter, known for an emphasis of light and soft atmospheric effects. But unlike Bierstadt, Gifford had actually been to Puget Sound.

In 1874 he set out for Alaska and Oregon. After returning from the North, he traveled the length of Puget Sound and was mightily impressed by Mount Rainier as well as the other peaks of the Cascades. He completed Mount Rainier, Bay of Tacoma-Puget Sound in 1875 in his New York studio from oil sketches.

Percy Gray, 1869-1952, was trained in California, studying with Emil Carlsen in San Francisco and later with William Merritt Chase in New York. He worked as an assistant to a stockbroker, but his artistic talents landed him a job as illustrator for the San Francisco Call. He then went to New York to study at the Art Students League. In 1906, he came to San Francisco to cover the earthquake and there he remained.

Although Percy Gray is known more for his watercolors, Mount

Rainier, 1926, is a striking oil on canvas. He painted it from a lush meadow, aptly named Viewpoint Paradise.

Although best known in history for its eruption in 79 A.D., Mt. Vesuvius has been quite active since 1631, and was in 1770 when Pierre-Jacques Antoine Volaire (1729-1799) painted Eruption of Mount Vesuvius with the Ponte delle Maddalena in the Distance.

The only eye witness account of the 79 A.D. eruption come from two letters written by Pliny the Younger (a Roman lawyer, author and magistrate in ancient Rome) according to the Roman historian Tacitus.

Louis Philippe Crepin (1772-1851) is best known for his marine themed paintings. Shipwreck Off the Coast of Alaska, 1806, recalls the tragedy of a 1786 French expedition to Alaska sponsored by King Louis XVI and led by Count Jean-Francois de La Perouse. They reached an uncharted bay and explored it for two weeks. Prior to departure, the Captain sent three boats to chart the depth near the treacherous entrance to the bay. Caught up in swift tidal currents, two boats capsized. Twenty-one men were lost including two French noblemen, brothers from the La Borde Family.

Jules Dupre (1811-1899) was of the Barbizon school, painting the French countryside en plein air.

Dupre is known for tragic and dramatic scenes, as opposed to Camille Corot who was known for his lyricism and Theodore Rouseau for the poetry of nature. In Farmyard, 1840-50, Dupre suggests that farmers eking out a living on the land sullied the natural beauty just beyond the gate.

Known mostly for his watercolor landscapes of Provence, Paul Camille Guigou (1834-1871) had a visceral feel for open expanses of farmland. In Wheat Field, 1860, he shows an appreciation for the toil and sweat of workers in the hot sun. His style was influenced by the Barbizon School and the paintings of Gustave Courbet. He died at age 37 of a stroke. Not sought after during his lifetime, his works are highly valued at auction today.

Henri-Joseph Harpignies, (1819 - 1916) was a student of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and although 45 years younger, accompanied Corot to Italy. He achieved success at the Salon of 1861. Although best known for his command of watercolor, here he uses thin washes and fluid brushwork in Fishing in a Pond, 1866, an oil on canvas.

Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894). The subject of Woman Seated on a Red-Flowered Sofa, 1882, is unknown. Given her conservative dress, she may be a family friend or even Caillebotte's housekeeper. Caillebotte was an impressionist best known for his sparse

compositions of modern French city life. His Paris Street; Rainy Day is a prized piece featured in the Art Institute of Chicago. Caillebotte died young at age 45.

Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin (1841-1927) did not achieve fame as his fellow impressionists and post impressionists, but his work was highly respected by his fellow painters, especially Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne. Guillaumin came into some money in 1891 when he won the French lottery. Before that, he worked for the railroad and enjoyed painting scenes of working class people and sweeping views of the countryside. Essence of Spring, Chevreuse Valley, 1885, features block shapes of saturated color, punctuated by blooming cherry trees.

Claude Monet (1840-1926) was drawn to the Normandy Coast. He loved the visual drama of the site, creating over 70 canvases. He

painted Fishing Boats at Etretat, 1885,when he was 45 years old. He gives a sense of the town's origins as a fishing village. Here, there are no hints of the town's tourist trade.

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) painted Lucie Leon at the Piano in 1892. At the time, Lucie was a young and promising prodigy. Later, she became a prize winning pianist with a public career, rare for women in the early 20th century. Here, Lucie is not smiling. According to Lucie's daughter Julie, her mother "would have preferred to play croquet rather than pose at the piano.

Like many Parisian artists, Victoria Dubourt Fantin-Latour (1840-1926) spent time in the Louvre copying paintings. Trained as a portrait painter, she gained a reputation for her floral still lifes. The crispness of Narcissus, late 19th century, suggests the influence of Japanese woodblock prints as well as photography.

Lucien Pissarro (1863-1944) was the son of Camille Pissarro. Lucien visited London as a child and moved there permanently in the 1890's. He was trained by his father, but influenced by the post impressionists, most notably Georges Seurat.

Lucien not only was an accomplished painter but helped introduce new emerging French styles of painting to the English Art Scene. In The Thames at Lambeth, 1914, Pisarro gives us a sense of the diffuse English sunlight. He painted London scenes, but preferred painting in the English countryside.

Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) is a post-impressionist known for his domestic interiors.

As a student, Edouard was interested in 17th and 18th century Dutch and French painters. 1n 1889, he along with Paul Serusier, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard and others started an avant-garde group called "Les Nabis" (the Prophets). They hoped to make flat shapes the basis of composition, calling attention to the interactions between expressive contours and arresting colors. With bright oranges, yellows and reds, Dining Room, Rue de Naples, Paris, 1935 is a fine example of Vuillard's work, and gives testimony to his appreciation for the comforts of a prosperous life.

American painter Raphaelle Pealle (1774-1825) is known for his still lifes. His father, Charles Willson Pealle, ran a museum where young Raphaelle worked, including working with taxidermy. Among Rafaelle's brothers were Rembrandt, Titian, and Rubens, all of whom Charles trained in painting.

As a young artist, Raphaelle got married. His vigorous start faltered when he fell ill to the effects of arsenic and mercury poisoning, resulting from his taxidermy work. After being hospitalized, he suffered debilitating attacks the rest of his life. He was unable to walk without crutches, and sought to curb his pain with alcohol.

At a time when most artists considered still life to be the work of amateurs, he became America's premier still life painter. In Still Life with Strawberries and Ostrich Egg Cup, 1814, he presents a rare subject with superb dance of reflected light in gold hues, greens and reds.

The defining event in Francis A. Silva's (1835-1886) life was his service in the Union Army during the Civil War. The war made him want to celebrate commonplace peacetime activity.

In Off Eastern Point Light, Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1874, a

sloop glides through calm waters in a safe harbor.

Frederick Edwin Church (1826-1900) was central among the Hudson River School painters. Following the lead laid down by Hudson River School founders Thomas Cole and Asher Durand, his paintings focused on American pastoral settings, especially in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Church's work is noted for its luminosity. A Country Home, 1854, is representative of Church's desire to instill a sense of hopefulness to be found on the American frontier. After 1850, he worked in his New York City studio from oil sketches made on site.

William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) opened his New York studio in 1878. He was a member of the Tilers, a group of artist friends including Winslow Homer, Arthur Quarterly and the sculptor Augustus Saint Gaudens. In 1883 when he painted May I Come In, he would have been 34 years old. The woman in this striking large pastel of the interior of his New York studio is unnamed, but it bears a resemblance to his portrait of Mrs. Chase in Pink, a portrait of his wife done three years earlier. Chase considered his pastel paintings to be equal in quality to his oils. He was so fond of pastel, he was the founder of the Society of Painters in pastel.

Mary Cassatt (1845-1926) was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, but spent much of her adult life in Paris. There, she was befriended by Edgar Degas and

later exhibited among the Impressionists. She focused on the social and private lives of women, often picturing their bonds with their small children. Alexander J. Cassatt, 1888, was Mary's older brother. Successful in business, he later became the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1899. Mary painted this when she was 43 years old during her brother's visit to Paris. Alexander's wife wrote home, "Mary has painted a very good portrait of Aleck for which he has been posing every morning for two hours for two weeks."

Frank Weston Benson (1862-1951) was a Massachusetts painter known for his realistic portraits. He trained at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and later at Academie Julian in Paris. In Paris, he was deeply impressed by the works of Johannes Vermeer and Diego Velazquez. Regarding his American impressionistic style, he was especially influenced by the work of Claude Monet.

He did not experiment with forms of cubism expressionism or fauvism. He remained within the bounds of impressionism. Portrait of Elisabeth, 1901, is of his daughter, outdoors at play.

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was considered the leading portrait painter of his time on both sides of the Atlantic. He lived most of his life in Europe but was active in America to the extent of having painted the portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903.

Leon Delafosse, 1995-98, was a friend of Sargent, and Sargent admired Delafosse's achievements as a composer and pianist. Sargent sent this painting

to his patron and friend Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston as a way to promote his friend's planned trip to America. In a note to Isabella Stewart Gardner, he wrote "Of course Delafosse is a decadent especially in the matter of his neck ties, but he is a very intelligent little Frenchman, and a composer and excellent pianist, who is probably going over to America in a year's time, so I sent his portrait over as a forerunner. I am sure you will enjoy his playing and his French finesse."

Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor and fine arts educator. The Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia commissioned

Eakins to do a portrait of Dr. William Smith Forbes, the school's famed anatomist who advocated for the use of dissection in the study of anatomy and surgery. The paper beneath Dr. Forbe's left hand is a copy of "The Anatomy Act," legislation which allowed for the use of unclaimed bodies in medical education.

Childe Hassam (1859-1935) along with John Henry Twachtman and Mary Cassatt, were proponents of impressionism in America.

His middle eastern sounding name and his dark complexion caused people to assume his background was from the Middle East, an assumption Hassam enjoyed stoking. His first name is pronounced "Child." He claimed he was descended from a family named Horsham which was shortened to Hassam at the time of the family's entry into the U.S. He was born in Boston. At age 23, he traveled extensively through the UK and western Europe studying the old masters. He later returned to France, studying at the Academie Julian.

Hassam's Spring on West 78th Street, 1905, is testament to Hassam's love of New York. In a New York Herald Tribune interview in 1925, Hassam stated, "I never had any desire to remain permanently on the other side of the Atlantic. America represented to me the highest opportunity. When I came back I came to New York, though I always considered Boston my home. To me, New York is the most wonderful and most beautiful city in the world. All life is in it ... No street, no section of Paris or any other city I have seen is equal to New York."

Jackson Pollock 1912-1956 is a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. In spite of his reclusive habits and his alcoholism, he enjoyed considerable fame during his brief lifetime. He died at age 44 in a single-car accident of his own making while he was driving drunk.

Pollock's notoriety grew after his death. His career was aided by his wife, artist Lee Krasner, and by his patron, Peggy Guggenheim. He studied with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League, but after seeking Benton's approval, he left the relationship disappointed.

Pollock's "drip period" was brief, 1947 to 1950, but the new technique rocketed Pollock to fame. He later returned to painting figurative elements as his alcohol abuse deepened. It is difficult to say what his Sea Change, 1947, is about, but can be enlightened by his own words. In 1950 Pollock said, "Modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age we're living in. All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing their immediate aims ... The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within."

Many in Bodega Bay and beyond are mourning the passing of artist, great friend and neighbor, Wanda McManus. Wanda was a well known watercolor artist, actively painting and teaching in Bodega Bay and in her second home, Kona-Kailua, Hawaii. Wanda constantly made lots of community happen, tirelessly enlisting friends and neighbors to assist in the Art Tent at Bodega Bay's annual Fisherman's Festival and countless other social events and endeavors. Her engaging smile, cheerfulness and spirit live on with all those her extraordinary life has touched.

With sadness, we report the passing of our friend Warren Davis. Warren's knowledge of old California art and his sage advice about the art market and trends was especially helpful to us in our early gallery days. In 1995, he purchased the Petaluma's American Trust Bank Building, transforming it into an antiques emporium, where beyond browsing, Warren entertained visitors with his stories, wit and sense of humor.

Special Congratulations to Bodega Bay watercolor painter Jean Warren, chosen a finalist in the National Watercolor Society & The Art of Watercolour Magazine's 2017 competition. Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery featured Jean's paintings for several years, which were most popular among visitors. Look for news of the NWS competition on Jean's website, JeanWarren.com.

Linda Sorensen's paintings currently showing at:

Bodega Landmark Gallery Collection,
located inland in the town of Bodega, west end of town a half block from the Casino, and just across from the General Store and the Bodega Volunteer Fire Department.

Corrick's "Art Trails Gallery,"
located in downtown Santa Rosa on 4th Street, just steps from Santa Rosa's newly reopened town Square.

Linda Sorensen presently rents an artist's cabin/studio, located in Monte Rio, overlooking Dutch Bill Creek among redwoods -- near the Russian River.

She reports plenty of company from the mallards and mergansers on the Creek. This was the location for her Art Trails Open Studio 2017.

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art