A delightful remnant of the past has been rescued from oblivion by the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, with the help of the Farrington Historical Foundation, and is presently being featured in a special exhibit at the museum, called "Theodore Wores: Under the California Sun."
Twenty-three lovely Impressionist landscapes by pioneering California painter Thomas Wores, including scenes from the Santa Clara Valley, the San Francisco coast, and the dramatic valley of Yosemite, were discovered in storage at the museum by its Deputy Director, Preston Metcalf.
These paintings date from 1912, when San Francisco was still surrounded by sand dunes covered in blue lupine, from the 1920s when Saratoga was synonymous with orchards, from the 1930s when Yosemite was still a rare sight. Metcalf, who grew up in Santa Clara in the 1960s when some of these scenes still looked much the same, recognized the historic and nostalgic significance of these works now that so much has been paved over and polluted, so he determined to secure funding to have them restored and exhibited. From the Triton, the show will move to other venues around the state.
1910-1920
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| The Sand Dunes of San Francisco, Ca, 1912 |
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| Blue Lupines of the Sand Dunes of San Francisco, c. 1912 |
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| Entrance to Golden Gate, c. 1914 |
1920s
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| Tree Blossoms, 1920 |
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| Peach Orchard, Saratoga, California, c. 1925 |
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| Road with a Blossoming Orchard, 1925 |
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| A Garden in Saratoga, California, 1927 |
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| My Studio Garden in Saratoga, Ca, 1926 |
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| My Summer House, Saratoga, Ca, 1928 |
1930s
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| Yosemite Valley, California, 1931 |
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| Yosemite Valley, California, 1931 |
From the point of view of art history, Theodore Wores is significant because he was one of the earliest California-born artists to achieve international fame in his own time. Wores was born in San Francisco—to parents who had fled the war between Austria and Hungary—and at the age of 16, he became one of the first students at the San Francisco School of Design, the first art academy on the West Coast. The following year he moved to Munich, where he studied for six years. After several years of building his career in different locations, Wores settled in San Francisco. Now a well-established painter, he became a Dean at the San Francisco Institute of Art, which was the current name of the academy where he first studied art.
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The Iris Flowers of Hori Kiri, Tokio, c. 1893
Crocker Museum / Jan's photo, 2010 |
Wores' best work depicted "exotic" scenes—in Chinatown, Japan, Hawaii, Samoa—in a style that was heavily influenced by his academic training.
The landscapes in this exhibit, done in a softer, brushier style, are minor works, but they have a special appeal for folks in the Bay Area, and the longer you look at them the more you appreciate their high quality.
In 1924, when Wores was in his mid-sixties, he acquired a second home and studio in Saratoga, and painted many Impressionist depictions of the orchards surrounding it. The paintings in this show were donated by his widow, Carolyn Bauer Wores.
