Auction Art News: Three Female California Plein Air Artists

Auction Art News: Three Female California Plein Air Artists |

Hughes is pleased to announce that our February 1st Fine Art & Design Auction features three California plien air oil on canvases by female artists active in the early 1890s: Louise Everett Nimmo (1899-1959), Marie Boening Kendall (1885-1953) and Lucile Griffith Robinson (b. 1898, California).

Louise Everett Nimmo (1899-1959)

Louise Everett Nimmo was born Louise Everett, the daughter of Mary Everett, an artist who had been working in Des Moines, Iowa at the time of her daughter’s birth. After Nimmo graduated from Grinnell College, mother and daughter relocated to Los Angeles in 1919, where Nimmo continued her education and Everett continued to establish herself as an artist. In Los Angeles, Nimmo studied privately with Julia Bracken Wendt and at the Chouiard and Otis Art Institutes. During 1925-26, she further studied in Paris at Fountainbleau School of Arts and Académie Julian. Returning to Los Angeles, she was active in the local art scene. Nimmo’s work focused on impressionistic desert landscapes, though many of her works from the 1930s demonstrate a move to modernism.

Exhibited: Laguna Beach Art Association, 1923-1946 (prize); Pacific Southwest Expo, 1928 (prize); Golden Gate Exposition, 1939; Women Painters of the West; Joint Exhibition with her mother (Mary Everett) and Eleanor Colburn at the Los Angeles Museum; Beverly Hills Women's Club, 1933 (prize); California State Fair, 1936 (prize); California Art Club, Los Angeles, 1951; Pasadena Art Association, 1950 (prize).

Works Held: Opportunity School, Des Moines, Iowa; Beverly Hills Women's Club; St. Andrews Episcopal Church, Ojai, California; California Art Club, Los Angeles; Los Angeles City Hall.

Marie Boening Kendall (1885-1953)

Born in Mount Morris, New York, Kendall studied in New York City under William Merritt Chase. After graduating from Central Michigan University in 1903, Kendall and her sister soon moved to California, first settling in Redlands. In 1914, she attended the summer classes of William M. Chase in Carmel and studied with Jean Mannheim while at the Los Angeles College of Fine Arts. In 1921, she and her husband moved to Long Beach where they both taught. Primarily a landscape painter, Kendall made sketching trips to the southern California desert and to the Canadian Rockies. Her work appeared on covers of Literary Digest and Touring Topics.

Exhibited: San Francisco Art Association, 1917-18; Calif. Liberty Fair, 1918; Norse Club, Los Angeles, 1923 (solo); Long Beach AA, 1926 (prize); Holt Galleries (NYC), 1929 (solo); Mission Inn, Riverside, 1929 (solo); Friday Morning Club, Los Angeles, 1929 (solo); Century of Progress Expo, Chicago, 1933.

Works Held: Virginia Hotel, Long Beach CA; Polytechnic High School, Long Beach; Hollywood Riviera Club, Redondo CA; Seaside Hospital, Seaside CA; Beaumont Womens Club, Beaumont CA; Ebell Club, Los Angeles; Teachers College, Mt Pleasant, MI.

Lucile Griffith Robinson (b. 1898, California)

Lucile Griffith Robinson was born in California in 1898 and was a resident of San Diego during 1910 to 1930. Little is know about Robinson, though her most prominent work, House in a San Diego landscape, 1916, has auction records. We are pleased to offer this truly lovely California plein air along with a framed mini draft. This insight into the artist’s process makes this a very special piece of California history.

Source: Hughes, Edan Milton. Artists in California, 1786-1940. San Francisco: Hughes Publishing Company, 1989.

Source: Nancy Dustin Moure, "Publications in California Art No. 11, Index to California Art Exhibited at the Laguna Beach Art Association, 1918-1972; 2015 edition"