Artful Players

by Gerdts, William H.

• ISBN13: 9781890449018
• ISBN10: 1890449016
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-05-01
• Publisher: Balcony Pr

Summary

With a handful of wealthy Gold Rush barons as indulgent patrons, an active community of artists appeared in nineteenth-century San Francisco almost overnight. A subculture of artistic brilliance and social experimentation was the result--in essence, a decades-long revelry that finally ended with the 1906 earthquake. Witness Jules Tavernier, hungry and in debt, accepting a stuffed peacock and two old dueling pistols in payment for a Yosemite landscape; Mark Twain as reluctant art critic; Oscar Wilde outdrinking his hosts at the Bohemian Club, declaring he had never before seen "so many well-dressed, well-fed, business-like looking Bohemians." Prolific production of some of America's greatest paintings developed into a distinctly California style. Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith were among the many artists who documented Yosemite Valley and the state's other natural wonders. Grace Hudson's paintings are still considered some of the finest records of Native American culture.

Table of Contents

Foreward	7	(2)
William H. Gerdts
Preface	9	(4)
The Trouble with Bierstadt	13	(8)
A Growing Appreciation	21	(13)
Realism Revisited	34	(13)
Pursuing la Vie Boheme	47	(20)
Driving the Last Spike	67	(14)
Buckeyes and Potboilers	81	(10)
Insurrection	91	(16)
Direct to Nature	107	(16)
Artistic Anatomy	123	(12)
The New Woman	135	(16)
The House on the Hill	151	(12)
An American School of Painting	163	(14)
Fin de Siecle	177	(12)
Acknowledgements	189	(2)
Artists' Biographies	191	(26)
List of Illustrations	217	(6)
Notes	223	(18)
Bibliography	241	(8)
Index	249