California Impressionist Painter
Alson Skinner Clark, a noted painter of vivid California landscapes, was born in Chicago. At the exceptionally young age of fourteen, he moved to New York where he enrolled at the Art Students League. Stifled by the highly disciplined course of study, he abandoned the League with a group of fellow students under the leadership of William Merritt Chase, who subsequently founded the Chase School of Art. As a student at the school, Clark was greatly influenced by Chase's masterful sense of composition, brushwork and color, and he incorporated it into his own distinctive style. At Chase's suggestion, Clark traveled to Paris in 1899, where he studied at the Académie Julian, and briefly under James A. McNeill Whistler, the well-known American expatriate painter. In the spring of 1901, Clark's conservative, dark picture The Violinist was accepted at the Paris Salon, bringing him his first official commendation.
With this recognition in hand, Alson Skinner Clark returned to the United States in 1902, establishing his studio in Watertown, New York. Here he began to paint winter scenes of the surrounding countryside, a theme which he would come back to later in his career. His return to the United States was marked, in 1902, by a highly successful exhibition at the Anderson Gallery in Chicago, where nearly all of his forty-six European works on display were sold within a two-week period. Another important Chicago show followed in 1905, this time composed mostly of Chicago cityscapes. Clark's The Coffee House won the Cahn Prize at the Art Institute and entered its permanent collection the same year. Among the many visitors to the show was Chase, who paid his former pupil the ultimate compliment of purchasing The Bridgebuilders for his own collection.
Alson Skinner Clark - Street Scene Panama
Oil on panel, 7 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches
Pursuing his interest in winter scenes, Clark traveled to Quebec in the fall of 1906. Equipped with snowshoes and a charcoal burner built into a palette to keep his paintings from freezing, he ventured outdoors to capture the magical effects of northern light. Other trips in search of exotic painting sites followed. In 1909 Clark journeyed to Spain; in 1912, Prague; and in 1913, Dalmatia and Panama, where he executed The Digging of the Panama Canal, which was exhibited at the 1914 Paris Salon.
After World War I, in which Clark served as one of the first aerial photographers, he went to California to recover from a hearing disability incurred during the war. At first reluctant to resume his painting career, he found the desert, coast and mountains of the varied southern California landscape too fascinating to resist. Forsaking his earlier style of small, intimate and at times somber compositions, he began working on large plein-air landscapes in a looser, brighter mode, which eventually expanded into murals. These full-scale wall decorations were so successful that the artist received commissions for them until the end of his life.
Alson Skinner Clark, Early Morning, Palm Springs
Oil on canvas, 36 x 32 inches
Alson Skinner Clark's first California exhibition, held in 1921 at the Stendahl Galleries in Los Angeles, established his reputation as a first-rate Southern California Impressionist and brought him a following large enough to insure his financial success. In 1922, Clark joined with Guy Rose, a colleague from his days in Paris, to found the Stickney Art School in Pasadena. Except for three trips to Mexico and a trip to Europe in 1936, the artist remained in Southern California until his death in 1949.
Alson Clark's work is represented in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, as well as various other public and private collections.
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