AFA 20th Anniversary

Antiques & Fine Art 125 2020 G ranville Redmond’s paintings range from the quiet melancholy of Tonalism to the symphonic colors of Impressionism (Fig. 1). By the early years of the twentieth century, he was already considered one of California’s top artists. In 1904, Elford Eddy, critic for the Los Angeles Herald , noted, “Granville Redmond . . . is a man at once singularly gifted and afflicted. He is a man who can speak not a word, can hear not a sound, and for all that with a few daubs of paint on a white canvas can tell you his story.”  1 Though Redmond’s story was primarily that of a brilliant landscape painter, it also came to include an enduring friendship with Charlie Chaplin and an acting career in Hollywood silent films. Born in Philadelphia in 1871, Redmond had been deaf and mute since childhood, a result of contracting scarlet fever at two-and-a-half. Shortly thereafter, his parents moved to San Jose, California, and in 1879 enrolled him as a boarding student at what was then called the California Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb, and the Blind in Berkeley (Fig. 2; now the California School for the Deaf in Fremont). There, Redmond became committed to art under the tutelage of painter/photographer Theophilus Hope d’Estrella and sculptor Douglas Tilden. In 1890, Redmond enrolled as a full-time student at the California School of Design in San Francisco. He studied with a range of previous page Fig. 1: Granville Redmond (1871–1935), Sand Dunes, n.d. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches. Private collection. this page, top to bottom Fig. 2: California Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb, and the Blind, Berkeley, ca. 1890. California School for the Deaf, Fremont. Photographer unknown. Fig. 3: Granville Redmond in His Studio, Paris, 1895. Portrait file of The Bancroft Library, Redmond, Granville-POR 2, Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Gift of Mrs. Hubert Wykoft, 7/3/61. Photographer unknown. Fig. 4: Granville Redmond (1871–1935), Carmel Coast (Carmel Sand Dunes and Cypress), ca. 1917. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches. Collection of Paula and Terry Trotter.