IRVINE, CA.- Variations of Place: Southern California Impressionism in the Early 20th Century, organized by guest curator Janet Blake, is on view through eptember 3, 2022. The exhibition comprises over 30 paintings representing more than 20 artists who settled in Laguna Beach, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Santa Barbara in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Drawn from both Langson IMCA holdings and private collections, Variations of Place features seascapes, landscapes, and figure paintings. Artists include Franz A. Bischoff, Colin Campbell Cooper, Anna Althea Hills, Guy Rose, William Wendt, and others responding to Southern California’s temperate climes and variety of natural features.

Langson IMCA’s interim museum location at 18881 Von Karman Avenue in Irvine is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm. Admission is free. Parking is validated for museum visitors.

Featured Work: Temple Crag
Edgar Payne was born in 1883 to a farm family in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. By the age of 23 he had moved to Chicago, IL and enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago. He quickly determined the formality of the school experience did not suit him and withdrew after two weeks. Before becoming an easel painter full-time, Payne made a living painting houses and stage sets, and worked as a commercial artist.

In 1909 Payne made his first sojourn to California where he painted the landscape in an impressionist style with a distinct approach to shape and form and a color palette informed by the West Coast light. For many years he traveled between Illinois and California before permanently relocating to the Golden State in 1917. That same year he made his inaugural excursion into the backcountry of the Sierra Nevada, a place he would return to again and again.

In “How to Get From Space to Place in a Very Short Stretch of Time,” philosopher Edward S. Casey writes, “There is no knowing or sensing a place except by being in that place, and to be in a place is to be in a position to perceive it. . . .Places gather experiences and histories, even languages and thoughts. Think only of what it means to go back to a place you know, finding it full of memories and expectations, old things and new things, the familiar and the strange and much more besides. What else is capable of this massively diversified holding action?” It was through Edgar Payne’s revisiting of places and practice of making many drawings, photographs, and oil sketches en plein air that he was able to observe, perceive, and endeavor to know the lands that he painted. While his preparatory images were direct observations, his large paintings, like Temple Crag pictured above, were finished in the studio (see footage of Payne working on the painting at 40:22 in the film). This required the artist to consider not only his recorded perceptions onsite, but to also call upon and gather his memories of place in the landscape of his imagination.

Langson IMCA is pleased to include Temple Crag in its collection. The painting is on view in Variations of Place: Southern California Impressionism in the Early 20th Century through September 3, 2022.