by David T. Leary, Ph.D.

Copyright Pending

Adapted for the Summer 2007 CAC Newsletter

THREE CREATORS OF ARTISTS’ ALLEY
At the twentieth century’s start, Southern California was dotted with colonies of one sort or another. Although settlements devoted to social or spiritual causes have drawn considerable attention, those inspired by the arts, particularly the graphic arts, were certainly to be found. So perhaps it is no great surprise that an artists’ colony flourished in Alhambra during the 1920’s and 1930’s; moreover, that its story lives on, turning up in old-timers’ reminiscences and newspaper feature pieces.

Still, Alhambra hardly seems a likely place. It was a quiet, middle-class community, roughly seven miles east of Los Angeles, with a population which grew from nine thousand in 1920 to thirty-nine thousand in 1940. It had a temperate climate and a good view of the San Gabriel Mountains to the north, yet there was nothing uniquely picturesque or highly cultural about it.
Nor was the colony itself especially prepossessing at first glance. Situated principally along a cul-de-sac—Champion Place on the map, “Artists’ Alley” in popular lore—it did overlook an arroyo and enjoy the shade of lofty eucalyptus trees. But there were just three or four studios altogether, with barely a half-dozen working occupants, if that, on any given occasion.

All this invites questions: for instance, why Alhambra? And scrutinizing the colony’s three pioneers in terms of what they had in common, especially the impulse to create, suggests answers. Obviously, the approach speaks to the matter of creativity—not only to the phenomenon itself, but also to its necessary adjuncts, domain and field. A widely held belief is that creators work in one domain or another, and that their accomplishment is judged by a field which knows the particular domain. Furthermore, the approach suggests how or why art colonies get a start at all. Despite their prevalence both in the United States and abroad, the literature about them, though valuable, tends to be more individually descriptive than collectively analytic. Then, too, the approach demonstrates that Southern California really did have a presentable cultural life during the twentieth century’s opening decades, despite the skeptics. One only needs to remember the population’s size was nowhere near today’s and building an urban infrastructure took priority.

Who were the three artists, however—the pioneering creators?

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Victor Clyde Forsythe (1885-1962) was the earliest arrival. He was born in Orange, California, but inasmuch as his family had been in Tombstone, Arizona at the time of the notorious gunfight at the OK Corral, he really had roots in the Old West. Young Forsythe grew up in central Los Angeles and attended Harvard Military School, where he showed a flair for cartooning. He had instruction at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and was briefly an artist on William Randolph Hearst’s Los Angeles Examiner.

In 1904, having already left school, he headed to New York for study at the Art Students League and the next year got a steady job on Hearst’s New York Evening Journal. Marriage to Cotta Owen followed, as did increasing celebrity and income. In 1910 the popular cartoonist George Herriman joined the Journal, a fact which may have precipitated Forsythe’s departure. Whatever the case, he landed on his feet, moving to the New York Evening World, with which he was associated for over two decades.

Forsythe did illustrations for such magazines as Collier’s and Redbook. During World War I, he painted patriotic posters: “And They Thought We Couldn’t Fight,” for the Fifth Liberty Loan Drive, won considerable attention. Yet comic strips were his strong point. “Joe Jinks,” started in 1918, may have been the best known, but “Way Out West,” begun in 1933, was perhaps closer to his heart because of its geographic content.

In 1920, dropping illustration but retaining the comics, Forsythe returned permanently to California and began easel painting in earnest. By 1922 he was living in Alhambra, first on S. Wilson Ave. (now Atlantic Blvd.), then, two years later, on N. Almansor St. The Almansor St. property was close to what became “Artists’ Alley.” Nevertheless, about 1935 he moved some two miles northeast, into adjacent San Marino, living first on St. Alban’s Rd., then on Ramiro Rd. And for the summertime, he kept a studio at Big Bear Lake, in the San Bernardino Mountains not too far east of Los Angeles.

Giving up commercial art entirely in 1938, he continued at the easel. The dry spaces of the Southwest had been his great subject, and when he died in 1962, he was regarded as one of the notable “Desert Painters.”

Frank Tenney Johnson (1874-1939) was the second arrival. He was born near Council Bluffs, Iowa, literally in sight of Westerning wayfarers. The family moved to the area of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Johnson attended school, though with scant interest. Then, just in his mid-teens, he began frequenting Milwaukee’s Layton Art Gallery and soon left school and home for a career in art.

Combining native talent, local instruction, and jobs in commercial art, he slowly made his way. He was in New York for a time in 1895, studying at the Art Students League. The next year, he married Vinnie Reeve Francis. He and Vinnie moved to New York in 1902, where he attended the New York School of Art and won increasingly profitable illustration assignments.
Perhaps prompted by his Council Bluffs memories, Johnson took greater and greater interest in the West. He made his first trip there in 1904, significantly to Colorado and the Navajo Country. More and more he became a “Western” illustrator. It was about this time, also, that his celebrated nocturnes emerged.

There were trips as far as California in 1912, 1918, and 1921. Then, in 1922, without giving up their New York base, the couple leased a residence in Alhambra, on S. Fourth St., keeping it until 1926, when they moved into their own home on Champion Pl. A third geographic dimension was added in 1932, when they established themselves at Rimrock Ranch, just west of Cody, Wyoming. For the next several years, they spent summers there, while keeping places in New York and California.

Tragedy struck, however. Johnson contracted meningitis, and he died at the very start of 1939. Along with Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell, he had been one of an artistic triumvirate celebrating the Old West. Now, all three men were gone.

Jack Wilkinson Smith (1873-1949) was the third on the scene. He was born in New Jersey, but the family moved to Michigan about 1886 and Smith, by this time an aspiring artist, dropped out of school, worked his way to Chicago, got into commercial art, and also attended the Chicago Art Institute. Still in commercial art, he found his way to Lexington, Kentucky, where a one-man show of his work drew cartoonist Winsor McCay’s attention. Through McCay, Smith got a place on the Cincinnati Enquirer. He studied at the Cincinnati Academy of Art, and in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, reportedly was in Cuba doing combat sketches. Later that year, he married Emma B. Troup, whom he had met in Lexington.

Smith began painting the West before he actually saw the West and, indeed, managed to sell some pieces. Encouraged, he and his wife moved to Los Angeles about 1906 where, except for a time in Oregon, they spent well over a decade. Then, in 1926 they settled in Alhambra, buying the property immediately south of Frank Tenney Johnson’s new home. It was there, on “Artists’ Alley,” that they dwelt till Jack’s death.

Even so, the couple traveled tirelessly through the Far West, visiting scenic locales which became easel painting subjects. The travel was not always carefree, as Smith once pointed out to his sister. On a sketching jaunt below Mt. Whitney, about eight miles from Lone Pine, the battery of the Smiths’ car failed. It was a good hike to anywhere, but fortunately a local mechanic, out to show a visiting girlfriend the nearby snow, happened along. Jack and Emma ended up coasting back to town.

There were rewards, nonetheless. At his death in early 1949, Smith was widely praised as one of California’s leading landscape painters. It would take a few additional years before he was identified as a “California Impressionist.”

So much for biographic basics. Now, what about the kind of work the three turned out? In terms of creativity, the domain they occupied?

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All three got started in commercial art—cartooning, illustrating, advertising—whereby they satisfied the expectations of editors or writers, say, but not necessarily their own nor those of the academy. Research does show that working to fit the expectations of others, the heart of what they were doing, stifles creativity. In any case they all began “serious” painting, with moves to the West Coast, to Alhambra, distinctly part of this. Each undertook a transition, albeit not an abrupt nor irreversible one.

Clyde Forsythe had roamed the Southland deserts in his youth, and they still lured him, as did the prospect of making them his subject. “I wanted to paint seriously,” he said in the context of his move, “so I just started in, and I’ve been at it ever since.” He was doing what he wanted to do, which he sensed is what everyone does best. He stayed with the comics until 1938, nonetheless, “so as to eat regularly.”

Although Frank Tenney Johnson was probably beginning to distance himself from commercial work by 1912, the meaningful separation did not come till 1922. This was the year he and his wife first settled in Alhambra, in effect satisfying his boyhood longing to “join the westward march of civilization.” Still, he turned out commercial art as late as 1932.

It was much the same with Jack Wilkinson Smith. “Whatever I see that interests me I want to paint,” he said. On the West Coast he found the freedom to do just that. In addition he was satisfying a craving both for wilderness and for work outdoors. He kept his hand in commercial lithography, however, so as not to compromise the easel painting.

All three took the West as subject, and this made sense: the West had fascinated Americans from America’s start. Philosophers, for instance, conceived it as civilization’s inevitable destination. Statesmen viewed its occupation as evidence of national fulfillment. Social thinkers looked on its endless acres as a safety valve. And all the while, ordinary folk just settled there.

Meantime, the West inspired cultural endeavor. Artists George Catlin and Alfred Jacob Miller, for example, saw and documented it. Mark Twain turned his Nevada and California experiences into writing that won the world’s heart. By contrast, and much to Twain’s disgust, James Fenimore Cooper’s frontier fiction drew international acclaim pretty much on the strength of vivid imagining. And here is a point.

The West—or rather the Frontier West—somehow assumed a life of its own in America’s mind. That life was mythic in many ways, tending to neglect the variety of folk who really occupied the frontier or the hard conditions they often faced. But Forsythe and Johnson and Smith grew up with the phenomenon, drew from it, and helped sustain it. If Forsythe’s prospectors and burros have a mournful quality, they have a comic one as well. There is some violence in Johnson’s pieces, but it is exception as against rule and, where present, perpetuates myth more than reality. (Indeed, he seems to have known that the Old West, the one of his boyhood fascination, had seen its day. ) And Smith’s landscapes are really pristine, though in truth, as late as his time, the West was still far less touched than it is now.

Finally, all three were representative in style rather than abstract. From the Renaissance, artists and been expected to render the world as the world was seen: anything else violated the canon. By the late nineteenth century, however, at least in some European circles, seeing came to be regarded as less physically precise and universally consistent as had long been presumed.

Meanwhile, though, the United States was experiencing a Golden Age of Illustration. Roughly from the Civil War to World War I, there was a boom in publishing. Ever more Americans found instruction and pleasure in books, magazines, and newspapers—copiously illustrated. American illustration has many parents, but Howard Pyle (1853-1911) is often given primacy of place. Representative in style, insistent on accuracy of detail, he trained numerous students, many of whom went on to train others. Altogether, he influenced an era.

Even if they had not started in Pyle’s world, Forsythe and Johnson and Smith might still have been representative in style. They were Westerners now, and they were satisfying insatiable national curiosity about the West: they were fulfilling a certain instructional or informational capacity. They could be selective about what they depicted, but whatever it was had to be recognizable. Otherwise, their credibility would have suffered.

So once they had really left commercial art behind and found a new footing, they remained pretty constant: none of the group radically reinvented himself. However, saying their approaches at the outset were their approaches at the end is not to detract. There are, after all, degrees of creativity, and each man had had a transition, if not a “breakthrough,” to his credit.

Moreover, when they embarked for California—certainly when they reached Alhambra—Forsythe and Smith were in their thirties, Johnson in his forties. Statistically, their life expectancy at birth had been less than fifty years, so by the standards of the day, they were no longer young. On the other hand, the literature argues that the thirties and forties are the ages of greatest artistic creativity. Furthermore, all three men were artistically productive beyond those decades. One might well ask, therefore, what sparked and sustained them? What were the wellsprings of their creative accomplishment?

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Forsythe’s father was a merchant, but he recognized his son’s talent and quite possibly paid for instruction both at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and at the New York Art Students League. Johnson’s grandmother and father were amateur artists, and the father’s sketches had an inspirational effect on the son. Smith’s father contributed to the decorating of the New York State Capitol at Albany.

Finding confirmation, then, is research indicating that a child’s family may both spark and nurture creativity. Although a youngster can drive off entirely on his own, it appears obvious that a pre-existing family interest can both fuel the engine and turn the ignition switch.

All three of the artists were high school drop-outs, but they did attend established art schools where they had celebrated teachers. Frank V. DuMond was one of Forsythe’s instructors at New York’s Art Students League. John H. Twachtman, William Merritt Chase, and Robert Henri were Johnson mentors, all in New York, the first at the New York School of Art, the others at the Art Students League. Frank Duveneck taught Smith at the Cincinnati Academy of Art, and Winsor McKay proved helpful in Lexington, Kentucky.

Dropping out of high school should not signal over much: during the years of interest, less than 10 percent of the U.S. population got high school diplomas. To boot, the research shows that formal, traditional classrooms do not appear to enhance creativity. Notable examples of the phenomenon are Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, and Igor Stravinsky.

Of greater consequence was the art school attendance. It undoubtedly increased their technical competence in the domain—competence which surely proved vital to their creative accomplishment. And it provided mentoring—doubtless another vital component of their accomplishment.

All three of the artists married, and all three did so in their twenties. In this respect they were rather typical: most of the population married in those days, and the Census of 1900 indicated the median age of marriage was about 26 for men. What makes them atypical, though, is the fact that none had children: that same census indicates the national average household size was 4.76 people; two-person households constituted just 15 percent of the total.

All three seem to have had happy marriages. The Forsythes and the Smiths celebrated golden wedding anniversaries; the Johnsons surely would have, too, had Frank not died unexpectedly. Smith, nevertheless, did miss family—a fact he made clear to his sister. “While you have had many things happen in the past years to cause you grief and trouble,” he wrote, “you have one priceless boon. You are surrounded by your family which is a great comfort in times of stress. That is something that will be denied Emma and myself.”

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The literature about the influence of adult family life on creativity is not extensive. One study, however, argues a negative relation between numbers of children and creative performance, suggesting the fewer the domestic distractions, the more abundant the art. The suggestion might well apply here. Better established in the literature is the importance of emotional support when creators are making breakthroughs. Forsythe, Johnson, and Smith were making important transitions, if not breakthroughs, when they came west: they were all putting their careers at some risk. To believe they would have done so absent their wives’ backing is quite difficult.

Another thing. When the Forsythes settled in Alhambra, Cotta Forsythe’s parents were there already. And though Forsythe had a hand in the Johnsons’ move, the fact is that Vinnie Johnson’s parents, sister, and brother-in-law all came about the same time as Frank and Vinnie did. The Smiths’ arrival, by contrast, seems simply to have been at Johnson’s aegis. Even so, the role of the two wives’ families looks truly influential.

Each of the three artists—Forsythe, Johnson, Smith—prompted the arrival of other artists. Forsythe and Norman Rockwell had shared Frederic Remington’s former studio in New Rochelle, NewYork. When Rockwell’s first marriage ended in divorce in 1930, Forsythe introduced him to Mary Barstow, whom Rockwell married later in 1930. More to the point, the Barstows lived on Champion Pl., and over the next few years the Rockwells visited there. Johnson had known Eli Harvey, a sculptor of animals, in New York. Johnson sparked Harvey’s interest in Champion Pl., and Harvey built a home and studio there. He was elderly by this point, and how much new sculpture he undertook is problematic. Never mind, his was one of the studios Rockwell used. Smith had a part in all this, too, in a poignant way. After he died in 1949, Sam Hyde Harris, another commercial artist turning to the easel, bought the property. Harris, however, only used it for work: he lived on N. Hidalgo Ave., a few blocks west.

Meanwhile, the three pioneers were interacting socially. In 1925, for example, before the colony was entirely in place, the Johnsons reached Los Angeles harbor after a voyage from New York. On hand to meet them were the Forsythes and Smiths. Then, too, Vinnie Johnson had begun giving “studio parties” about 1913; she maintained the custom in Alhambra, where the Forsythes and Smiths were among the guests.

More significantly, the pioneers worked side by side in the field. Smith and Forsythe were reported to be sketching jointly in the Palm Springs area in 1927. The Johnsons and Forsythes seem to have taken more than one trip together. But what is really interesting is a photo in the Johnson Collection, showing all three encamped with their wives in the Sierras.

As has been said, the artists were making transitions, if not breakthroughs. Familial support would have been important, but so would the encouragement of actively working, unthreatening colleagues. Johnson put it well when he said that “each work of art is an experiment, and the knowledge gained by each individual in his effort at expression, is ofttimes of greater value to one’s fellow artists than that gleaned from books.” The three surely must have been exchanging opinions and sharing views in collegial fashion at this point.

Finally, they reached beyond themselves and their friends, offering their efforts to the public, submitting to the evaluation of professional critics and collectors and peers. They sought to impress the field. With what result?

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Neither the domain in which Forsythe, Johnson, and Smith did their work nor the field they sought to impress when they showed that work were of a piece. At least two disputes affected both. One concerned nationalism.

During the first years of America’s independence, some thinkers argued that America’s culture was not sufficiently assertive, that it took too many cues from Europe. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman were among this group. Early on, at least when it came to graphic art, the nationalists may have been overly anxious. As the century closed, however, European art did become widely popular. Nevertheless, vigorous counterpoints emerged, exemplified by Robert Henri and then by Thomas Hart Benton.

Graphic art in and of the West and California had had a documentary strain from its start, with regional inspiration lingering well into the twentieth century. In any case Johnson, Smith, and Forsythe left scant doubt about where they stood. Johnson unabashedly held his specialty to be “paintings of Western Life.” And one of his mentors, notably, had been Robert Henri. Smith asked, “Why go elsewhere? Where are mountains nobler than the Sierras? Where are seas bluer than off the California coast? Where are forests to compare with our own?” Indeed, he said, “Whatever I have seen elsewhere I have found in California, and more glorious. It is all here.” And Forsythe declared, “The Golden State is so different in climate and geography from other portions of the country that she exercises an influence over her painters which they cannot escape.”
Just as clearly the three artists took a stand in a second dispute affecting both domain and field. This was significantly about tradition.

Toward the nineteenth century’s end, thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic began questioning virtually all the old rules. Involved was not just graphic art, but also literature, music, architecture—even the social and physical sciences. What provoked the phenomenon, indeed just what it was, essentially, has yet to be agreed. But modernism yielded various new forms of expression, which some people found exciting and others considered nonsensical. In graphic art it often entailed less representation and more emphasis on the artist’s psyche.

Modernism turned up in the West and California during the early 1900’s. Several of the Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico artists were incorporating one or another of its modes at least by 1920. A Modern Art Society was organized in Los Angeles in 1916, but individual modernists had appeared there even earlier. Needless to say, they found both friends and foes.
Among the skeptics were Forsythe, Johnson, and Smith. “The fault, as I see it,” Forsythe said, “is not in any of the modern movements, which are life-giving, but in the army of insincere apes who litter the walls with imitative, abusive nightmares, as a short cut to easy money.” Asked for his thoughts about modernism, Johnson said, “In my opinion, sincerity is the keynote of all great art. Lack of it, and ignorance are bound to crop out and attract attention but [sic] are not desirable. However there are many fine things done in this modern style.” And Smith declared, “I have no quarrel with the very few able painters who with a background of sound fundamental training are experimenting with abstract problems. But I do protest strenuously against the great majority of that group who with no background and with very little art training are foisting their half-baked efforts, the results of half-digested ideas, on the public under the name of art, with the help of some Museums and public galleries and a few so-called art patrons.”

The three artists’ regional subject matter and traditional styles, combined, encouraged participation in a successful and rather unique venture. As early as 1923, Jack Wilkinson Smith had a key role in the start of the Painters of the West and the Biltmore Salon (or Gallery). The Painters of the West was a group of 20 artists (Forsythe, Johnson, and Smith among them) who concentrated on representational depictions of the Western scene. The Salon, located in the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, was its marketing arm. Although the two entities changed over time, Smith remained a central figure, not only as one of the Salon’s contributing artists, but also as its principal executive officer. The undertaking enhanced the Southland’s cultural life. Significantly, as well, it gave the artists a place where their work might be viewed by professional critics, collectors, and peers.

When it came to professional critics, there seemed to be approval, yet reluctance to forget the three artists’ backgrounds in illustration. With Clyde Forsythe this was particularly so. Arthur Millier, one of Southern California’s most important critics, reviewed a Forsythe exhibit at the Biltmore Salon, for the most part desert scenes. “In these,” said Millier, “the light and color are both convincingly true and harmonious. Many of these will wear exceedingly well, for into them the artist puts his considerable knowledge of the desert.” But just the next year, commenting on another Forsythe show, Millier remarked, “The large portraits or story-telling pieces, would be better as reproduced illustrations than as framed paintings.”

The same was true even of Frank Tenney Johnson, whose canvases had gained popularity both locally and nationally. Said Fred Hogue, “Frank Tenney Johnson has won with his brush a place in the front rank of contemporary artists. His best is equal to the best in any company.” And Everett Carroll Maxwell declared, “This artist stands alone in his ability to depict an incident in the life of the old West, or the West of today, without losing sight of mood—the mystery of haunting night, or the stinging heat of desert noonday.” But then Maxwell went on, “It is this mystery that saves Johnson’s pictures from being illustrations and makes them fundamentally works of art.”

Jack Wilkinson Smith experienced like treatment. Writing about an exhibit at the Biltmore Salon, Arthur Millier said that “Smith makes a convincing demonstration of his essential poetry and his ideals of craftsmanship.” Nevertheless, Millier soon observed, “When Smith introduces figures into his pictures they tend to become illustrations at the expense of art.” Four years later Fred Hogue was not so equivocal. “Jack Wilkinson Smith is the premier painter of California sunlight,” he said. “He may violate the classic canons of art, but the canvases he creates may cause future critics to revise the accepted canons.” Aesthetic values have changed and do change; Hogue was thoughtful and humble enough to recognize the fact.

Critics aside, some collectors must have liked what the three did. Vinnie Johnson kept a record of Frank’s sales, and in 1933, the year the Great Depression was at its worst, his paintings grossed over $12,000, of which a substantial percent came from the Biltmore Salon. Not bad when one considers how the dollar has inflated in the last seven decades. Regrettably, though, we do not have any such records for Smith or Forsythe, nor do we have the books of the Biltmore Salon—at least immediately. The best we can do is simply infer their paintings did sell.

In fact, however, while major Southland collectors did not disdain local art, they favored the East Coast or, more likely, Europe. There were exceptions, true enough. Henry E. Huntington acquired a score of Pasadena painter Carl Moon’s depictions of Native Americans. Aline Barnsdall was interested in the California Art Club, headquartered in Los Angeles, and bought works by local artists such as Emil Kosa, Millard Sheets, and Stanton Macdonald-Wright. But again these were exceptions. So thinking Forsythe, Johnson, or Smith had really significant patrons—locally anyway—seems questionable.

Erstwhile illustrators they may have been, but Johnson, Smith, and Forsythe were all three honored by their peers in various ways. The American National Academy of Design awarded Johnson associate status in 1929 and full membership in 1937. Few other Californians had been so recognized, and Johnson was enormously pleased. The California Art Club elected Smith its president in 1920 and 1921. He rightly claimed a role in establishing it “as a strong civic cultural influence in Southern California.” It chose Johnson president four times—1935 through 1938—and he thought that during his tenure there should be featured “amongst other things of interest to Artists, such activities as would tend to increase their knowledge of materials, methods, and means of producing the best expression possible in the different lines followed.” In 1939 a painting by each of the three men was among those shown at the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco. There were certainly other oils, yet they not only dated from California’s start to the exposition’s opening, but also reflected both “conservative” and “modern” styles. Good company, for sure.

Keeping the field’s approval in mind, but returning to creativity itself for a moment, one finds debate about the effect of reward—at least extrinsic reward. Those who hold it in small regard seem to suggest it implies control, which, earlier, has been shown to be inhibiting. But should extrinsic reward, as from critics or collectors or peers, truly be no more than a by-product, it would seem to fall into the realm of positive reinforcement.

That noted, what have we altogether?

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Artists’ Alley has actually remained something of a colony over the years. Nonetheless, it really enjoyed its heyday during the 1920’s and 1930’s, and even then it never drew residents from domains other than the graphic or plastic arts. In this respect it was at odds with certain more celebrated colonies—Taos and Santa Fe in New Mexico, for example, or Monterey and Carmel in California—where a greater number of domains were represented.

Still and all, the story of its beginnings is useful. Therein, first off, one finds not just a few ingredients of creativity’s necessary adjuncts, domain and field, but more importantly some makings of creativity itself. Most notably as to the latter, Artists’ Alley was a place where creators could exchange ideas in a supportive environment. When all is said and done, this may have been what really gave it purpose and significance.

In addition, however, one may undertake a bit of extrapolation. Forsythe and Johnson probably had family in mind when they chose Alhambra; after that, friend prompted friend. Has it been so different with numerous colonies? The personal element, in short, has existed elsewhere.

Finally, concentrating on both domain and field, one may argue Southern California was scarcely a cultural wasteland during the early 1900’s. It had professional critics who were knowledgeable and articulate. It had active collectors who, admittedly, preferred the East Coast or Europe but, in this, followed the tastes of the day as much as anything. It had graphic artists of distinctive merit_never mind creators in other realms. Although hardly as extensive or sophisticated as Paris or New York, say, given its population and priorities, the Southland had nothing to be ashamed of.

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Acknowledgements

The author David T. Leary is a southern California native. He completed his undergraduate work at Stanford University and received a doctorate from the University of Southern California. Dr. Leary taught at Pasadena City College for many years with a special interest in California history. For his research on “Three Creators of Artists’ Alley” and requisite permission to quote, Dr. Leary especially wishes to acknowledge: The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley for their papers on Jack Wilkinson Smith; The McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center for their papers on Frank Tenney Johnson; and The Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art for items pertaining to Clyde Forsythe (there is no single repository on Forsythe).

Endnotes

On the first sorts of colonies, see Robert V. Hine, California’s Utopian Colonies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), esp. chap. 9. On the second, see Nancy Dustin Wall Moure, California Art, 450 Years of Painting and Other Media (Glendale, Calif.: Dustin, 1998), esp. chap. 15.

Eve Madigan, Artistic Ramblings_Then and Now, A Thumb-Nail Sketch of Alhambra Artists (n.p., n.d.), is a useful booklet. A recent newspaper article is Cecilia Rasmussen, “Southland Sojourns Left Their Mark,” Los Angeles Times, 3 Jun. 2001, pt. B, p. 4.

U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census: 1920, Population, 4 vols. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1921-23), vol. 1, table 51, p. 183; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census: 1940, Population, 4 vols. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1942-43), vol. 1, table 7, p. 129.

There is a growing body of work on creativity. The model here derives from Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, Creativity, Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 27-28, as well as from Howard Gardner, Creating Minds, An Anatomy of Creativity Seen through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 37-40. A caveat is that the model’s elements may overlap: creators, for example, may judge other creators’ work and thus become members of the field.

See for example Michael Jacobs, The Good and Simple Life, Artist Colonies in Europe and America (Oxford: Phaidon, 1985), or Steve Shipp, American Art Colonies, 1850-1930, A Historical Guide to America’s Original Art Colonies and Their Artists (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1996).

Paul J. Karlstrom, “Modernism in Southern California, 1920-1956, Reflections on the Art and the Times,” in Paul J. Karlstrom and Susan Ehrlich, Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists, 1920-1956, exhibit catalog (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1990), 13-19; Sarah Vure, Circles of Influence, Impressionism to Modernism in Southern California Art, 1910/1930, exhibit catalog (Newport Beach, Calif.: Orange County Museum of Art, 2000), 26-28.

On population see U.S. Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census: 1900, Population, 2 pts. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1901-02), pt. 1, table 5, p. 76. Los Angeles City had just over a hundred thousand residents at the century’s start. On infrastructure see Winifred Haines Higgins, Art Collecting in the Los Angeles Area, 1910-1960, doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1963 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1982), 6. Higgins is less positive about early Los Angeles culture than Karlstrom or Vure (n. 6 above). See for example her remarks on 6 and 100.

Forsythe’s papers do not seem to have survived. But about 1954, on his “Clyde Forsythe” letterhead, he typed a two-page biographic sketch (in Los Angeles Examiner Collection, clippings morgue, ff. “Forsythe,” Regional History Collection, University of Southern California, Los Angeles). He also prepared brief biographic sketches for his friend John Hilton (quoted in Hilton, “He Paints the Ghost Towns,” Desert Magazine, Apr. 1942, 15-16) and the Los Angeles Westerners (Clyde Forsythe, “Contributors,” Los Angeles Westerners, Brand Book, 7 [1957], 288-89). Two accounts by people who knew him are helpful: Ed Ainsworth, “Clyde Forsythe, The Man Who Dipped His Brushes in the Sky,” in Painters of the Desert (Palm Desert, Calif.: Desert Magazine, 1960), 22-28; Edith James Harvey, “Clyde Forsythe, Alhambra Artist,” Alhambra Post-Advocate, 26 Sep. 1930, pt. 2, p. 6. On the family in Los Angeles, see Los Angeles City Directory, 1895-1910, s.vv. “William B. Forsyth” or “William B. Forsythe.” The directory is hereafter cited as LACD.

Ainsworth, “Forsythe,” 24-25; Forsythe, “Forsythe,” [1-2]; Forsythe, “Contributors,” 288-89. For Herriman’s vita see Judith O’Sullivan, The Great America Comic Strip, One Hundred Years of Cartoon Art (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), 169-70.

On the posters see Labert St. Clair, The Story of the Liberty Loans (Washington, D.C.: James William Bryan, 1919), esp. 161. For the comics see Ed Ainsworth, The Cowboy in Art (Cleveland: World, 1968), 128-30.

Ainsworth, “Forsythe,” 25; Forsythe, “Forsythe,” [2]; Hilton, “Paints,” 16.

Alhambra City Directory, 1922-35, s.v. “Victor C. Forsythe.” The directory was apparently not published in 1921. It is hereafter cited as ACD.

San Marino City Directory, 1936-62, s.v. “Victor C. Forsythe.”

“Desert Artist Marks 26th Year in Studio,” Los Angeles Times, 11 Sep. 1946, pt. 2, p. 1.

Forsythe, “Contributors,” 288.

Johnson’s papers are MS 12, McCracken Research Library, Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyo. They are hereafter cited as FTJ Collection. The standard biography is Harold McCracken, The Frank Tenney Johnson Book, A Master Painter of the Old West (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974). A useful account by one who knew him is Edith James Harvey, “Dreams of Youth on Ranges,” Alhambra Post-Advocate, 17 Nov. 1930, 11.

McCracken, Book, 27-34.

Grand Central Art Galleries, New York City, “F. Tenney Johnson, A.N.A., Painter of Western Life,” n.d., in Ferdinand Perret Collection, microfilm reel 3858, frame 412, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The Archives are hereafter cited as AAA/SI. See also Arthur Millier, “Frank Tenney Johnson, A.N.A.,” Los Angeles Times, 16 Nov. 1930, pt. 3, p. 19.

McCracken, Book, esp. 34, 50, 97-98.

Ibid, esp. 107, 114, 126, 130, 155. See also ACD, 1926-39, s.v. “F. Tenney Johnson.”

Frank Tenney Johnson, “Frank Tenney Johnson, A.N.A., 1936,” in Perret Collection, microfilm reel 3858, frame 359, AAA/SI; Melissa J. Webster, Frank Tenney Johnson, The Rimrock Years (Cody, Wyo.: Buffalo Bill Historical Center, 1986), 27.

McCracken, Book, 190-94.

Smith’s papers are BANC MSS 85/31c, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. The collection is hereafter cited as JWS Papers. An account by one who knew him is especially helpful: Edith James Harvey, “Scenic Splendor on Golden Coast Inspired Local Artist,” Alhambra Post-Advocate, 1 Nov. 1930, 3. F.C. Schindler, “Tell Life History of Jack Wilkinson Smith,” Los Angeles Evening Herald, 24 May 1924, pt. B, p. 10 is helpful, too. The Cuba item turns up in several obituaries (e.g., New York Times, 9 Jan. 1949, 72). While it may have happened, the Cincinnati Enquirer seems to have neither sketches signed by him for the period, nor immediate information about any employment.

Arthur Millier, “Jack Wilkinson Smith,” Los Angeles Times, 5 Oct. 1930, pt. 3, pp. 22, 24. See also LACD, 1908, 1911-26, s.vv. “Jack Smith” or “Jack W. Smith.”

Madigan, Ramblings, [6]; McCracken, Book, 159. See also ACD, 1926-49, s.vv. “J. Wilkinson Smith” or “Jack W. Smith.”
A.M. [Arthur Millier?], “The Editor’s Own Page,” Touring Topics, Jun. 1928, 9.

Jack Wilkinson Smith to Alice Smith Burrows, letter, 28 Nov. 1947, in JWS Papers, Bancroft Library.

Teresa M. Amabile, The Social Psychology of Creativity (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1983), 6, 74, 91, 136.

Ainsworth, “Forsythe,” 25; Harvey, “Forsythe.”

Forsythe, “Contributors,” 288.

McCracken, Book, 130.

Grand Central, “Johnson.”

See Literary Digest, 9 Jul. 1932, cover.

Harvey, “Scenic Splendor.”

Millier, “Smith,” 22; Lee Shippey, “Lee Side o’L.A.,” Los Angeles Times, 21 Nov. 1929, pt. 2, p. 4.

Alma May Cook, “Smith at Best in Art Exhibition at Biltmore,” Los Angeles Evening Express, 4 Nov. 1929, 8.

Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt, The Myth of the West, trans. by Herbert H. Rowen (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), esp. chaps. 6 and 10; Richard W. Van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire (Oxford: Blackwell, 1960), esp. chaps. 4 and 5.

Although review of it has little place here, theorizing about the West continued after the U.S. reached the Pacific Coast (Schulte Nordholt, Myth, esp. chap. 11; Van Alstyne, Empire, esp. chaps. 6 and 8).

Samuel L. Clemens (“Mark Twain”), “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses,” in How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (New York: Harper, 1897), 93-116; Martin Ridge, “The American West: From Frontier to Region,” New Mexico Historical Review, 64 (1989), 125-41; Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land, The American West in Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950), esp. chap. 22; Elliott West, “A Longer, Grimmer, but More Interesting Story,” in Patricia Nelson Limerick et al. (eds.), Trails, Toward a New Western History (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 103-11.
William H. Goetzmann and William N. Goetzmann, The West of the Imagination (New York: Norton, 1986), 318-23.

Fred Hogue, “Nocturne Paintings Depict Frontier Days,” Los Angeles Times, 1 Nov. 1936, pt. 3, p. 4.

E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art (London: Phaidon, 1994), chap. 27.

James J. Best, American Popular Illustration, A Reference Guide (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1984), 7-8; Jo Ann Early Levin, The Golden Age of Illustration: Popular Art in American Magazines, 1850-1925, doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1980 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1983), chap. 1; Susan E. Meyer, America’s Great Illustrators (New York: Galahad, 1978), 8-37.

Best, Illustration, 84-99; Goetzmann and Goetzmann, West, 315-18; Meyer, Illustrators, 40-63.

Goetzmann and Goetzmann, West, ix-xiii; E.H. Gombrich, The Image and the Eye, Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), 137-61.

Amabile, Creativity, 32.

Gardner, Creating, 399-400.

U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, 2 pts. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1975), pt. 1, ser. B107-15, p. 55.

Amabile, Creativity, 85. See also Gardner, Creating, 27, 376.

Ainsworth, “Forsythe,” 24; McCracken, Book, 13, 20; Millier, “Smith,” 22.

Amabile, Creativity, 168, 195.

Edan M. Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940, s.v. “Victor Clyde Forsythe”; McCracken, Book, 30-31, 33; Schindler, “Smith.” Just for the record, it should be noted that Harvard Military School granted Forsythe a diploma in 1925 (“Diploma Is Awarded to Local Artist,” Alhambra Post-Advocate, 13 Jun. 1925, 1).

Census Bureau, Historical Statistics, pt. 1, ser. H598-601, p. 379.

Amabile, Creativity, 7; Gardner, Creating, 141, 191.

Amabile, Creativity, 70; Gardner, Creating, 32.

Amabile, Creativity, 146-49.

Census Bureau, Historical Statistics, pt. 1, ser. A158-59, p. 19.

Ibid., ser. A288-319, p. 41; ser. A335-49, p. 42.

Jack Wilkinson Smith to Alice Smith Burrows, letter, 16 Sep. 1947, in JWS Papers, Bancroft Library.

Amabile, Creativity, 169.

Gardner, Creating, 384-86.

The Thomas R. Owens lived in central Los Angeles for many years; they moved to Alhambra about 1912 (LACD, 1893-12). The Owens and Forsythes were sharing the same residence on S. Wilson Ave. (now Atlantic Blvd.) in 1922 (ACD, 1922).
ACD, 1922-26, s.v., “John W. Francis”; ACD, 1922-23, s.v. “James W. Ash.” The family’s shared residence was on S. Fourth St.

Madigan, Ramblings, [6].

Laura Claridge, Norman Rockwell, A Life (New York: Random House, 2001), esp. 130, 219, 222-25, 265, 296.

Eli Harvey, The Autobiography of Eli Harvey, Quaker Sculptor from Ohio, ed. Dorothy Z. Bicker et al., 2nd ed.

(Wilmington, Oh.: Clinton County Historical Society, 1969), esp. 88-89. See also Norman Rockwell’s “Foreword.”

Mary Sue Westland, “‘Artists’ Alley’ Becoming Memory,” Alhambra Post-Advocate, 28 Sep. 1968, pt. A, p. 14.

“Famous Painter Has Novel Trip,” Alhambra Post-Advocate, 12 Jun. 1925, 1.

McCracken, Book, 103, 157.

“Southland Calendar,” California Southland, Mar. 1927, 5.

McCracken, Book, 140.

“Smiths, Forsyths [sic] Johnsons—Camping in High Sierras,” n.d., in FTJ Collection, ser. 5A, box 6, no. 72-589, McCracken Research Library.

Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity, 65-68; Vera John-Steiner, Creative Collaboration (New York: Oxford, 2000), esp. chap. 3.

Frank Tenney Johnson, “Broadcast KFAC Sept. 1935,” 1, in FTJ Collection, ser. 2, box 1, ff. 1, McCracken Research Library.

Daniel Boorstein, The Americans, vol. 3, The Democratic Experience (New York: Random House, 1973), esp. 502-12; James T. Flexner, That Wilder Image, The Painting of America’s Native School from Thomas Cole to Winslow Homer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962), xi-xiii.

Moure, California Art, 228-36; Susanne Sentell Shepherd, American Scene Paining: The Rise of Regionalism, master’s thesis, Stephen F. Austin State University, Tex., 1979 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1983), 39-48.

Johnson, “Johnson.”

Fred Hogue, “Jack Smith,” Los Angeles Times, 12 Aug. 1928, pt. 2, p. 4.

Clyde Forsythe, “The Art of California,” Arrowhead Magazine, Nov. 1923, 9.

Norman F. Cantor, Twentieth-Century Culture, Modernism to Deconstruction (New York: Peter Lang, 1988), esp. chap. 2.

Antony Anderson, “Of Art and Artists,” Los Angeles Times, 24 Dec. 1916, pt. 3, p. 13; Moure, California Art, 225-28; Sharyn Rohlfsen Udall, Modernist Painting in New Mexico, 1913-1935 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 1-16.

Alma May Cook, “‘Nightmare Paintings’ Are Assailed by Clyde Forsythe,” Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, 8 Aug. 1939, pt. B, p. 1.

Frank Tenney Johnson, “Broadcast over KFCA [KFAC] November 30, 1934,” 4, in FTJ Collection, ser. 2, box 2, ff. 2, McCracken Research Library.

[Jack Wilkinson Smith], “Introduction by Alma May Cook,” [Smith’s remarks at the opening of a show at the Biltmore Salon], n.d., in JWS Papers, Bancroft Library.

Jack Wilkinson Smith to Edward Chiapella, letter, 8 Jan. 1948, in Perret Collection, microfilm reel 3863, frames 1436-37, AAA/SI; Harvey, “Scenic Splendor.”

“Combine Western Painters at Biltmore,” For Art’s Sake, 1 Jun. 1924, 1;Everett Carroll Maxwell, “Salon of Painters of the West,” Overland Monthly, Nov. 1931, 15 and 29.

American Art Annual, 21 (1924) through 30 (1933) lists the officers of both entities. Smith related well to the business community (Millier, “Smith,” 24). His association with businessmen, he said, had improved his painting (F.C. Schindler, “Famous Artist Tells Student of Value of Ideas in Painting” (Los Angeles Evening Herald, 17 May 1924, pt. B, p. 11).
See, for example, Arthur Millier, “Of Art and Artists,” Los Angeles Times, 25 May 1924, pt. 3, p. 13. Still, in the 1920’s Los Angeles could claim over thirty galleries (Nancy Dustin Wall Moure, Los Angeles Painters of the Nineteen-Twenties, exhibit catalog [Claremont, Calif.: Pomona College Gallery, 1972], n.p.).

A.M. [Arthur Millier], “Forsythe Exhibits,” Los Angeles Times, 16 Mar. 1941, pt. 3, p. 7; A.M., “Clyde Forsythe,” Los Angeles Times, 17 May 1942, pt. 3, p. 5.

Fred Hogue, “In Navajo Land,” Los Angeles Times, 24 Mar. 1928, pt. 2, p. 4; Everett Carroll Maxwell, “When Romance Rides, The Art of F. Tenney Johnson, A.N.A.,” Overland Monthly, Dec. 1931, 28.

Arthur Millier, “Southland Landscapist Pursues Poetic Quality,” Los Angeles Times, 31 Jan. 1932, pt. 3, p. 10; Fred Hogue, “Smith Termed Premier Painter of Our Light,” Los Angeles Times, 4 Oct. 1936, pt. 3, p. 4.

[Vinnie F. Johnson], “Art Sales Ledger, 1928-36 Inclusive,” in FTJ Collection, ser. 3, box 1, ff. 118, p. 132, McCracken Research Library.

For example see checklists in Higgins, Art Collecting, 56-69, 112-16, 127-28.

The Huntington Art Collections: A Handbook (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1986), 154-55.

Higgins, Art Collecting, 139-40, 154-61.

McCracken, Book, 173, 190.

“Presidents” in Who’s Who in the California Art Club, Inc. ([Los Angeles: California Art Club, 1984]), n.p.; Smith to Chiapella, frames 1435-37.

“Presidents,” California Art Club; Johnson, “Broadcast KFAC Sept. 1935,” 1.

California Commission, Golden Gate International Exposition, Illustrated Catalogue, Art Exhibition by California Artists, 1939 (San Francisco, [1939]), esp. 35, 36, 37.

Amabile, Creativity, esp. 119-21; Csikszentmihaly, Creativity, 334-35.

Arrell M. Gibson, The Santa Fe and Taos Colonies, Age of the Muses, 1900-1942 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983) attends to the first pair; Franklin D. Walker, The Seacoast of Bohemia, new and enl. ed. (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Peregrine Smith, 1973) examines the other two.

More on the friendship factor is in McCracken, Book, 157-58.

Robert Henri, for example, was influential in drawing artists to Santa Fe (Gibson, Santa Fe and Taos, 34). Poet George Sterling was a particular advocate of the colony at Carmel (Walker, Seacoast, esp. 13, 36).