Samuel Bolton Colburn Watercolor of California Ranch, Dated 1981, Framed

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Samuel Bolton Colburn (1909 - 1993)
20x27 Watercolor of California Ranch
framed to 25"x32"
with artist's identification verso, "Sam Colburn … Read more Samuel Bolton Colburn (1909 - 1993)
20x27 Watercolor of California Ranch
framed to 25"x32"
with artist's identification verso, "Sam Colburn / Halt?? Ranch"
signed and dated 1981 lower right

Please note: will ship with glass removed (to protect artwork).

Samuel Bolton Colburn (1909 Denver, Colorado – 1993, Pacific Grove, California) was an experimental artist, evolving a modernist approach to landscape and genre scenes during the Depression era. In the 1930s California became known nationally for its Regionalist painters like Colburn, who depicted urban and rural views of native life. These artists’ preferred medium was watercolor and they worked quickly outdoors on location developing a painting style that was spontaneous, gestural and raw.[1]

While most American Regionalists worked in a realistic manner, Colburn liked to experiment with the lessons of modernism. Like the East Coast modernist John Marin, who was a major influence on the artist, Colburn continually searched for a direct freedom of expression. The San Francisco critic Alfred Frankenstein credited Colburn with a sense of drama and "as fine an eye for the subtleties of watercolor as this country has produced since Marin’s heyday"”[2]

Colburn grew up in Glendale and Long Beach and studied geology at the University of Southern California. After graduating in 1932 he spent a year in Europe traveling and studying art. Upon his return to Los Angeles, he studied with Don Graham at Chouinard Art Institute. In 1937 he moved to Carmel, where he became a member of the Carmel Art Association three years later[3]

The Monterey Peninsula provided the perfect cultural climate for the development of Colburn's art. At the time, the prominent artists Armin Hansen, William Ritschel, Paul Whitman, August Gay, and Louis Siegriest were present in the area and provided valuable friendship and advice; the writer John Steinbeck, poet Robinson Jeffers and photographers Edward Weston and Ansel Adams were also close friends. See less