|
|
Above: This watercolor of a moonlit Pino Alto is by California painter Ferdinand Burgdorff, summer 1911 |
Burgdorff studied at the Cleveland School of Art and in Paris with Rene Menard and Florence Este. In 1907 he headed west intending to become a desert landscape painter. When he died, he was the oldest working artist on the Monterey Peninsula, known for his pastel, oil, and watercolor images of coastal views and abandoned mining towns. Haig Patigian was a noted neoclassical artist whose works are found in many public venues in San Francisco and in numerous private collections throughout the country. Patigian began as a painter and later became well known as a sculptor. He created works for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, San Francisco City Hall, Golden Gate Park, and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, as well as a seated Abraham Lincoln facing the San Francisco Civic Center. |
 |
 |
 |
|
Left to right: |
Will Sparks, who did the etching of an adobe building, led an illustrious life. Sparks, a painter, etcher, and muralist, became one of California's premier artists, known for his mission and nocturnal adobe scenes. He attended the St. Louis School of Fine Arts and traveled to New York and Paris. At the Academies Julian and Colarossi, he studied with Gerome, Harpignies, and Bouguereau, and was also influenced by the Barbizon painters and Cezanne. He worked in Paris as an assistant to biologist Louis Pasteur, for whom he made anatomical drawings. In 1886, while exhibiting in the St. Louis World's Fair, he met Mark Twain, whose stories of California inspired him to head west. There is more research to undertake on the many musicians, writers, poets, thespians, and dignitaries who filled Molly's great-grandmother's scrapbook pages with their prose, scores, or signatures. |