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Jean Stern | |
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| Born | March 28, 1946 |
| Occupation | Executive Director, The Irvine Museum (1992 - Present) |
Jean Stern (born March 28, 1946), Director Emeritus of The Irvine Museum is an art historian and retired museum director who specializes in paintings of the California Impressionist period (1890-1930). [1]
Jean Stern was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1946, and came to the United States in 1955. He began working in the art business from a young age, growing up as the second son of Frederic Stern, an art dealer who specialized in 19th century French painting. Stern's older brother, Louis Stern, is President of Louis Stern Fine Arts in West Hollywood, specializing in Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Modern Art. In 2007, Louis Stern was presented with France's highest decoration, the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 2007. [2] His younger brother, George Stern, is President of George Stern Fine Arts also in West Hollywood and specializes in historic and contemporary California Impressionist paintings. [3] [4]
Stern earned a master's degree in Art History from San Diego State University in 1972 and pursued post-graduate studies in American paintings at the University of California, Los Angeles, under E. Maurice Bloch. He briefly taught art history at San Diego Mesa College before being hired by Petersen Galleries in Beverly Hills. Stern worked at Petersen Galleries on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills from 1978 to 1991. [5] As newly appointed executive director, he took the gallery into the nascent field of late 19th-early 20th century California paintings, becoming the first art gallery in the U.S. to develop a national clientele for this style. He is credited with coining the term "California Impressionism" first used in his introductory essay to Plein Air Painters of California: The Southland, published in 1982 by Ruth Lilly Westphal. This was the first book on Southern California painting to gain national distribution.
While at Petersen Galleries, Stern mounted retrospective exhibitions for at-the-time relatively unknown or forgotten masters such as Franz A. Bischoff (1980), Sam Hyde Harris (1980), Alson S. Clark (1983), Christian von Schneidau (1986) and Elsie Palmer Payne (1990), wife of Edgar A. Payne. The exhibitions were accompanied by fully illustrated catalogues with essays by pioneers in the field such as Ruth Westphal, Janet Blake, and Evelyn Payne Hatcher, daughter of Edgar and Elsie Payne. In 1981, Stern curated an exhibition entitled Western Masters, displaying works by Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, William R. Leigh, and Henry Farny.
In the 1980s, Stern served as advisor to the Morton H. Fleisher-F.F.C.A. collection in Scottsdale and was consultant on the founding of the Fleischer Museum which opened in 1990. It was the first museum in the U.S. dedicated to California Impressionist art.
Petersen Galleries was owned by publisher and Petersen Automotive Museum founders Robert E. Petersen and Margie Petersen. Stern served as Curator from 1978 to late 1979 and as Executive Director until Robert Petersen sold his company and closed the gallery in 1991. [6] [7] [8]
When Petersen Galleries closed in 1991, Stern opened his own gallery, Jean Stern Fine Paintings, in Encino, California. There, he met Joan Irvine Smith, heiress to the Irvine Ranch fortune. Smith had recently started collecting California Impressionist paintings and a few months later she hired him to establish, develop and direct The Irvine Museum, in Irvine, California, in 1992. [9]
The Irvine Museum opened in January, 1993 and was first located on the twelfth floor of a seventeen-story office building. Drawing from Smith's extensive collection of California Impressionist paintings, as well as from a number of specialist collectors, Stern mounted three on-site exhibitions per year. Additionally, he initiated an ongoing series of traveling exhibitions, visiting over seventy venues throughout the U.S., including New York, Chicago, Charleston, Memphis, Tulsa, Scottsdale, Oakland, Sacramento, and many others. Each traveling exhibition was accompanied by a fully illustrated book. [10] [11] [12]
In 2002, the Irvine Museum organized "Masters of Light," the first and to date only exhibition of California Impressionism to tour Europe, with venues in Paris, Krakow and Madrid.
In December 2016, The Irvine Museum Collection was gifted to University of California, Irvine (UCI). It is now known as The Irvine Museum Collection at the University of California, Irvine. The museum is the initial component of a planned university museum that will specialize in all periods of California art. [13] [14] [15]
Jean Stern serves on the Board of Directors of the California Art Club, the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association and is on the advisory board of the California Heritage Museum. [16]
In 2017, Jean Stern received the designation of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, awarded by the French Ministry of Culture. He received the award in recognition of his lifelong work in the visual arts. He has also received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association, the Plein Air Painters of America, and from Plein-Air Magazine at the Third Annual Plein Air Convention in 2014. In 2011, he and his wife Linda Weingarten Stern were honored with the Samuel Gendel Community Service Award, presented by the American Jewish Committee of Orange County. [17] [18]
American Impressionism was a style of painting related to European Impressionism and practiced by American artists in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. American Impressionism is a style of painting characterized by loose brushwork and vivid colors. The style often depicted landscapes mixed with scenes of upper-class domestic life.
Alson Skinner Clark was an American Impressionist painter best remembered for his landscapes. He was also a photographer, plein aire painter, art educator and muralist.
William Wendt was a German-born American landscape painter. He was called the "Dean of Southern California landscape painters."
Joseph Kleitsch was a Hungarian-American portrait and plein air painter who holds a high place in the early California School of Impressionism.
Maurice Braun (1877–1941) was an American artist who became known for his Impressionist landscapes of southern California. He was born in Hungary on October 1, 1877; however, by the age of four, young Maurice and the Braun family had migrated to United States, and settled in New York City. His professional studies took him to the National Academy of Design, where he studied the French tradition under Francis C. Jones,George W. Maynard and Edgar M. Ward.
Franz Albert Bischoff was an American artist known primarily for his China painting, floral paintings and California landscapes. He was born in Steinschönau, Austria. He immigrated to the United States as a teenager where he became a naturalized citizen. While in Europe, his early training was focused upon applied design, watercolor and ceramic decorations.
Joseph Raphael (1869–1950) was an American Impressionist painter who spent most of his career as an expatriate but maintained close ties with the artistic community of San Francisco, California.
Arthur Hill Gilbert was an American Impressionist painter, notable as one of the practitioners of the California-style. Today, he is remembered for his large, colorful canvasas depicting meadows and groves of trees along the state's famed 17 Mile Drive. Gilbert was part of the group of American impressionist artists who lived and painted in the artists' colony scene in California at Carmel and Laguna Beach during the 1920s and 1930s.
Theodore Nikolai Lukits was a Romanian American portrait and landscape painter. His initial fame came from his portraits of glamorous actresses of the silent film era, but since his death, his Asian-inspired works, figures drawn from Hispanic California and pastel landscapes have received greater attention.
Colin Campbell Cooper, Jr. was an American Impressionist painter, perhaps most renowned for his architectural paintings, especially of skyscrapers in New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago. An avid traveler, he was also known for his paintings of European and Asian landmarks, as well as natural landscapes, portraits, florals, and interiors. In addition to being a painter, he was also a teacher and writer. His first wife, Emma Lampert Cooper, was also a highly regarded painter.
Peter Seitz Adams is an American artist. His body of work focuses on landscapes and seascapes created en plein air in oil or pastel as well as enigmatic figure and still-life paintings. He is noted for his colorful, high-key palette and broad brushwork. Adams has held numerous solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums, including throughout California, the Western United States, and on the East Coast in Philadelphia, Vermont, and New York. Adams is the longest serving President of the California Art Club and has served on its board of directors in Pasadena, California from 1993 to 2018. He is also a writer on subjects relating to historic artists for the California Art Club Newsletter, as well as for a number of the organization's exhibition catalogs.
The terms California Impressionism and California Plein-Air Painting describe the large movement of 20th century California artists who worked out of doors, directly from nature in California, United States. Their work became popular in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California in the first three decades after the turn of the 20th century. Considered to be a regional variation on American Impressionism, the painters of the California Plein-Air School are also described as California Impressionists; the terms are used interchangeably.
Christian von Schneidau (1893–1976) was a well known California portrait painter who was recognized for his paintings of Hollywood stars and the Los Angeles elite. During the Roaring Twenties he painted Mary Pickford and other figures from the film industry as well as a number of outdoor figures done in the classic American Impressionist manner. Von Schneideau was born in Ljungby, Kalmar County, Sweden 1893, with the name Bror Christian Valdemar Von Schneidau, but went by the shortened Christian von Schneidau. In addition to his portraiture, von Schneidau was also a landscape painter and a private teacher who passed on the French principles of instruction, which he learned at the Art Institute of Chicago to his students. Von Schneidau was also the founder of the Scandinavian-American Art Society in 1938 and served as its president for many years. He was also an active member of the California Art Club.
Decorative Impressionism is an art historical term that is credited to the art writer Christian Brinton, who first used it in 1911. Brinton titled an article on the American expatriate painter Frederick Carl Frieseke, one of the members of the famous Giverny Colony of American Impressionists, "The Decorative Impressionist."
Anna Althea Hills was an American plein air painter who specialized in impressionist landscapes of the Southern California coast.
Karl Dempwolf is a contemporary California Plein-Air Painter who is known for his California Landscapes. He is a Signature Member of the California Art Club, and serves in its Advisory Board of Directors.
William A. Karges Fine Art is an art gallery at Dolores St. and 6th Ave in Carmel, California, United States.
Thomas Lorraine Hunt was a Canadian-American landscape painter of the 1920s and 30s, known especially for his dramatic use of color. His paintings are considered a transition from impressionism to modernism. His primary subjects were boats and harbors in which the colors and shapes on the canvas took precedence over the exactness of the objects. Hunt was active among the Southern California group of Impressionist plein air painters and a founding member of the Laguna Art Museum.
Clarence Keiser Hinkle was an American painter and art educator. His art studio was in Laguna Beach, California and later in Santa Barbara, California.
Samuel Hyde Harris was an American painter known for impressionist paintings of California in the 20th century as well as a successful career as a commercial artist. He was a member of the California Art Club.
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