Frederick Mulhaupt

Known for his skillful depictions of the landscape and seascapes of Cape Ann, Massachusetts, Frederick Mulhaupt (1871-1838) was very much a part of that region's art community in the early part of the 20th century.  His paintings, especially the working harbor scenes, captured the essence of the area, which was already a favorite spot of famous painters such as Winslow Homer and Fitz Hugh Lane.

Art Books of Interest

Cyrus Afsary

Cyrus Afsary studied art under the strict discipline of the Russian Realist style of painting, graduating with two degrees. He has won numerous awards, including the Best of Show at the C M Russell Show of Original Western Art and the Exceptional Merit Award from the National Arts Club at the 1986 Pastel Society of America show. 

He has also received gold and silver medals from the National Academy of Western Art and was the first recipient of the coveted Lougheed Memorial Award. Cyrus won the Painting Award for “ Mystical Transformation” at the Buffalo Bill Art Show in 2006 and also shared in the choice award. In 2007 he was awarded the Best of Show at the Eiteljorg Museum and in 2009 at the Charles Russell Museum he received the staff choice award, for “Entrance to Shrine” and in 2010 the Williams Award for Collectors’ Reserve at the Gilcrease Museum, Oklahoma.

Afsary is an artist /member of the Cowboy Hall of Fame. He participates annually in the Prix de West invitational, and the Masters of the American West Exhibition at the Autry Museum in California, the Eitejorg Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana, and also The Buffalo Bill show in Cody, Wyoming. He was featured in the 2002 Gilcrease Museum Rendezvous in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is also a member of the Northwest Rendezvous Group.

Afsary and his work appear in numerous publications, including American Artist, Art of The West, South West Art, Western Art Collector, Who’s Who in American Art. "The Consummate Artist” by John Geraghty, published in the Western Art Collector Magazine in 2009 certainly presents the passion Afsary has for his painting.

Alfred R. Mitchell

Alfred R. Mitchell

Alfred R. Mitchell

Alfred R. Mitchell

Alfred R. Mitchell (1888-1972) 

Early San Diego Plein Air Painter

Many outstanding and celebrated artists called the San Diego area home during the heyday of California impressionism. Among them, Maurice Braun, Alfred Mitchell, Charles Fries, Charles Reiffel, Edith White, George Spangenberg, Leonard Lester, Ernest Pohl, and Leon Bonnet.

Alfred Mitchell's stature as one of our country's finest plein air artists has grown over time. His San Diego mentor was Maurice Braun and it was under Braun's tutelage that Mitchell decided to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to further his studies. His teachers included Garber, Hale and Breckenridge and while in Pennsylvania, he developed a lasting relationship with Edward Redfield, one of America's greatest landscape artists.  He was in love with painting and his work conveys this.  He attended classes variously from 1916-1920 and painted in the New Hope area well into the 1920s. His work not only reflects these teachers' brilliance, but also their discipline.

His remarkable palette of rich colors have stood up against the ravages of time and weather (most Mitchell paintings are in excellent condition). This can be attributed to his fastidious special preparation of linseed oil and paint which he would boil, store in clear jars and allow to be bleached by the sun. When compared with the paint of many other American artists one can see the difference. Mitchell's paint is richer and more sensuous. He sought bright colors to capture the local landscape. In a letter to his brother he states, "If you are interested in capturing the sunlight, you will find brilliant colors and strong contrasts a big help. It is simple enough to make quiet colors by toning them down, but you can't make them brilliant unless you have brilliant colors on your palette."  Much of his early work exhibits this "brilliance" of color, though he was capable of conveying varying degrees of tonality. Redfield's influence can be seen in his glowing creations of brilliant snow covered landscapes and Garber in his atmospheric paintings of fog and overcast days.

He painted the scenes of San Diego en plein air and thus his paintings give us a glimpse of southern California as it really was. Mitchell would paint 8" x 10" and 16" x 20" masonite boards on location (the 8 x 10s being a 16 x 20 panel cut into fourths). Many of his larger paintings (almost invariably on canvas) were produced in his studio, though he would on occasion paint a larger canvas outdoors.

Mitchell's career encompassed different styles and periods of style development. His paintings run from realism to impressionism with many of his works taking on a more regionalist flavor especially from the late 1940s into the 1950s. He would apply these different approaches to what he felt would best convey his feelings of the scene and thus his painting style cannot be attributed accurately to specific time periods.

Mitchell taught privately for many years, influencing a whole generation of San Diego artists with his traditional values of composition and draftsmanship.

Dwight W. Tryon

Dwight W. Tryon

Dwight W. Tryon

Dwight W. Tryon

Dwight W. Tryon

Dwight W. Tryon

Dwight W. Tryon

Dwight W. Tryon

Dwight W. Tryon

Dwight William Tryon and Charles Lang Freer met in 1889. The two quickly developed not only a friendship but also a mutual regard for the other's artistic taste and aesthetic philosophy. Early in their acquaintance, Freer asked for Tryon's advice in decorating his new Detroit home, and the artist helped create a harmonious setting for art and living. At the same time, Tryon admired Freer and his collecting taste, stating that his patron was "better than any painter" in his discriminating eye for beauty. Freer eventually collected more than seventy examples of Tryon's work, stating that they bring "much joy to those  that posess them."

Having spent his early years in Hartford, Connecticut, Tryon traveled to Europe in 1876 to study art; he received formal training in Paris. There he was influenced by the Barbizon School, especially the work of Charles Francois Daubigny. During his visits to Venice, London, and Dordrecht, Tryon developed an affinity for the sea and countryside, which became enduring subjects in his mature work.

Tryon returned to the United States in 1881 and established a studio in New York City and a summer home in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Although he occasionally made studies for paintings during his New England sojourns, he spent the majority of his time outdoors, fishing and sailing. The sea, the woods, and the changing seasons became Tryon's favorite motifs, which he recollected and depicted in countless idealized variations during winter months in New York.

Tryon's interest in the landscape reflects his personal love of nature. But his mastery of color and interest in the aesthetic, rather than objective, qualities of a scene link him to other Tonalist artists, such as George Inness and Thomas Wilmer Dewing. Tryon said he desired to "penetrate the surface" and create images of an "ideal county," one that filtered external reality through the artist's subjective vision.