A major exhibition of works by Granville Redmond
By Kristin Hoerth
Granville Redmond, Sand Dunes, oil, 30 x 40, private collection.
This story was featured in the August 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art August 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
A STUNNING exhibition of works by one of the top California Impressionists is on view now through September 20 at the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, CA. Granville Redmond: The Eloquent Palette is the largest show of Redmond’s works ever assembled, with 85 paintings included. The show was organized by the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and curated by Crocker associate director and chief curator Scott A. Shields.
Redmond is a fascinating character in the history of California art. Born in Philadelphia in 1871, he contracted scarlet fever when he was a toddler, leaving him permanently deaf and mute. Soon his family moved to Northern California, where he attended the California School for the Deaf. The school had a great focus on art instruction, with well-regarded teachers who had studied in Paris. Later Redmond, whose family was poor, received funds from the School for the Deaf to attend the California School of Design (now the San Francisco Art Institute). There he often communicated with his teachers by writing back and forth on a notepad.
In 1893, at the age of 22, Redmond set out for Paris to study at the Académie Julian. Again his way was paid with funds from the School for the Deaf—$600 per year for two years. While there he had a painting accepted into the Paris Salon, the highest honor an artist could attain at that time. When his funds ran out, Redmond pleaded for additional loans, but was ultimately unsuccessful and forced to return home to California.
Redmond settled in Los Angeles and began painting the landscape around him. His works at this time were tonalist in style, with muted colors and close values. After a decade he moved to the more rural Northern California, painting his bucolic surroundings and beginning to incorporate the brighter colors of Impressionism.
In 1917, Redmond returned to the Los Angeles area. He had earlier learned pantomime and thought he might try acting as a way to earn additional income. By chance, while out painting one day, he met silent-film star Charlie Chaplin. The two men became great friends, and Chaplin gave Redmond small roles in his films.
In fact, it’s Chaplin’s words that perhaps best sum up the enduring appeal of Redmond’s paintings: “There’s such a wonderful joyousness about them all. Look at the gladness in that sky, the riot of color in those flowers. Sometimes I think that the silence in which he lives has developed in him some sense, some great capacity for happiness in which we others are lacking.”
This story was featured in the August 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art August 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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