AFA 20th Anniversary

20th Anniversary 126 www.afamag.com |  www.incollect.com instructors, including Arthur Mathews, who quickly recognized him as one of the institution’s most promising pupils. In 1893, Redmond found inspiration in a new instructor, Ernest Peixotto, who had recently returned from Paris and who encouraged Redmond’s own desire to study abroad. Redmond left for Paris that November to attend the Académie Julian (Fig. 3). He remained in France for four years, returning to his parents’ home, now in Los Angeles, in 1898. Redmond lived for extended periods in the Los Angeles region and in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also spent time in Monterey County (Fig. 4). Inspired by the beauty of California’s topography, he made sketching trips up and down the coast to find subject matter. He favored Tonalist scenes illuminated with the light of dusk or the moon, quiet depictions that have often been interpreted as exemplifying his deafness, an assumption that Redmond himself cultivated by saying that he wished to paint pictures of “solitude and silence” (Fig. 5). 2 It was his more colorful landscapes with poppies, however, that proved easiest to sell. He was a victim of his own success. “Alas,” he said of his darker views, “people will not buy them. They all seem to want poppies” (Fig. 6). 3 For the first half of his professional career, Redmond earned his living and supported his wife and three children almost entirely by the sales of his paintings. But with picture buyers diminishing in a sluggish economy and America’s entry into World War I, Redmond’s thoughts turned to acting. He had been good at pantomime in his youth and had recently performed in a Bohemian Club play. He’d also had bit parts in two movies made in the San Francisco Bay Area. These projects inspired Redmond to try his luck in Hollywood, and at the end of summer 1917, he traveled to Los Angeles to pursue acting. There are varying accounts of how Redmond came to meet Chaplin (Fig. 7). Alice T. Terry, a noted writer and president of the California Association of the Deaf, reported that Chaplin learned of Redmond’s acting skills and asked him to come to Hollywood, assuring the artist that it was not necessary to speak Fig. 5: Granville Redmond (1871–1935), Nocturne, n.d. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches. James Irvine Swinden Family Collection.