TACOMA, WA.- Impressionism is one of the most beloved painting styles among museum-goers, and Northwesterners can get their fill at Tacoma Art Museum. The remarkable survey Coast to Cascades: C. C. McKim’s Impressionist Vision is the collaborative product of Margaret Bullock, Curator of Collections and Special Exhibitions at TAM, and Mark Humpal, an art scholar and gallerist from Portland, Oregon. McKim (1862-1939) was a notable and essential figure in Northwestern art history. Along with the exhibition, the curators co-authored a beautiful catalogue featuring color images of all of the works in the exhibition and furthering the scholarship of this important Northwest painter.

Coast to Cascades is the latest installment in the museum’s Northwest Perspective Series. It continues TAM’s tradition of highlighting the careers of significant Northwest artists and contributing original research on the region’s art history.

“Mark and I are excited to bring more attention to this very talented Northwest painter and to look further at impressionism in this region. We all know impressionist scenes from Europe and our East Coast, but McKim’s works bring the style to our beautiful Northwest landscape,” said Bullock.

Charles “C. C.” McKim’s early 20th century depictions of Oregon’s mountains, coastline, valleys and sloughs are filled with both lively and subtle hues. The 43 luminous paintings on view at TAM trace the development of his painting style. Through this survey, the curators track McKim’s evolving use of color, composition, and painting techniques that resulted in a range of interpretations of Portland and the surrounding region. The exhibition also explores McKim’s significant impact on the art scene in Oregon during the early 20th century and his key role in popularizing impressionism in the Northwest.

McKim crossed the continent from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon in 1910 just as his impressionist style began to evolve. His artworks immediately achieved popularity and were sought after. During the 1910s, he worked toward mastering color and varying the ways in which he applied paint. By the early 1920s, McKim had tightly honed his skills to create complex compositions. He used varied amounts of paint for emphasis. In the 1930s, he favored broad vistas with detailed foregrounds beyond which detail dissolved into a soft haze of muted light and cool colors. McKim’s evocative images of the Oregon landscape capture its unique beauty and character, and he played a key role in defining a particular regional “look” to Northwest impressionism.

“McKim’s sudden stature as Oregon’s leading impressionist landscape painter seems improbable given his background and formative experiences,” explained Humpal. “He was an artistic late-bloomer whose training did not include the great art institutions of Europe or America. He took Portland, Oregon by storm a mere seven years after first hanging out his shingle as a professional artist in Portland, Maine.”

McKim was also an important figure in the Oregon art scene, mentoring other artists and advocating for what was then a new style of painting. He co-founded several art organizations including the Society of Oregon Artists (1912) and the Portland Palette Club (1916). In the early 1920s he began writing about art topics for the Spectator, a weekly magazine.

Coast to Cascades visitors will also have the unique opportunity to learn about how art historians act as detectives, sleuthing clues to track shifts in an artist’s work over time. McKim rarely dated his works, but based on the few that do have dates, Bullock and Humpal are presenting a likely timeline for McKim’s undated works based on stylistic and technical changes.

Charles C. McKim was born in 1862 in South Bristol, Maine. Little is known about McKim’s early years and family life. He worked as a clerk and grocer in Portland, Maine before deciding to pursue a career as a professional artist.

His training included lessons from a local painter, Charles Lewis Fox (1854-1927), and membership in an outdoor sketching group called the Brushians where he was exposed to a variety of artistic styles. Only a handful of McKim’s early landscapes, painted in Maine in the late 1890s or early 1900s, are currently known. These paintings reflect the muted, earthy palette used by Fox.

His first impressionist works began to appear around 1909. They were painted in lighter, brighter colors applied in an overall pattern of short strokes and dabs. By 1911, McKim had begun to vary his painting techniques within a work to achieve different effects. These images combine passages of smooth, blended color with thickly painted detail laid on with both brush and palette knife.

McKim relocated to Portland, Oregon in late 1910. The first exhibition of his work there in 1911 established his reputation as an artist of note. He continued to pursue an active exhibition schedule through the 1910s and 1920s while playing a key part in the local art community. From 1929 to 1931, McKim traveled to parts of the Southwest and southern California. Back in Oregon, in 1934 he painted a series of works for the government’s Public Works of Art Project (PWAP). The later 1930s saw a decline in both his artistic production and his health. McKim died in 1939 at the age of 76.