Victor Clyde Forsythe 1885 - 1962

Desert Life

Although he was born in Orange County, California, Clyde Forsythe had western desert roots. His parents ran a store in Tombstone, Arizona, right next to the OK Corral.

Clyde Forsythe was one of the first desert painters, along with his friends Jimmy Swinnerton, Maynard Dixon and Nicolai Fechin.

In 1904 Forsythe attended the Art Student League in New York. For some on-the-job experience, he worked for the New York Journal with Jimmy Swinnerton, a Hearst recruit from San Francisco.

After a brief stint at a St. Louis newspaper, he returned to Los Angeles, and worked for the "Examiner." After some success in Los Angeles, Forsythe was again recruited by William Randolf Hearst and he returned to New York.

AS the nation entered World War I, Clyde created many war posters. He met young artist named Norman Rockwell and became his studio-mate. Forsythe was a mentor for Rockwell, and introduced him to the Saturday Evening Post, and years later introduced Norman to his second wife, Mary Barstow, while Norman was visiting Clyde in his Alhambra, California home. Mary Barstow was a school teacher who was one of Clyde's neighbors in Champion Place (Artist's Alley) in Alhambra.

Young Victor grew up with Western lore, and had a fascination with exploring the canyons and mountains of the American deserts. As a boy in the 1890's, there was plenty of open space to roam about in Los Angeles, and his family would vacation in the California desert, great training for his desert painting days ahead. But before he joined the fraternity of desert painters, he had a successful cartoonist career in New York.

By 1920, Vic and his wife Cotta had it made in the New York newspaper world. They owned a yacht, socialized at golf tournaments, and lived high. Yet, at the apex of his success, the thirty-five year old gave it up to paint the desert. His friend Jimmy Swinnerton had already moved west for health reasons, and there was a growing fraternity of desert painters who had joined Swinnerton there, including Maynard Dixon, Ed Borein, Charles Russell, and Nicolai Fechin. He was a close friend and fan of famous humorist Will Rogers. When the Saturday Evening Post did a story of Will Roger's life, they picked Clyde Forsythe's painting of Will Rogers and his favorite horse, Soapsuds.

When Vic came to the desert, he not only painted, but roamed and explored. He sat at prospector's camp fires, listened to their tall tales. He lived in ghost towns amid "their crumbling walls and vanished glory." The desert for Forsythe was not just a visual experience, he became part of the desert.