Winter 2016

Winter 134 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com Joseph Duncan Gleason (1881–1959) Youthful Mariners (Laguna Beach), ca. 1930s Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches Van and Diane Simmons Collection Considering the fact that many thousands of people visited beaches in California prior to 1940, there are relatively few known paintings depicting people on the beach before then. When artists did choose figurative seaside subject matter, people were usually painted quite small and without enough detail to be identified. An exception was California representational artist Joseph Duncan Gleason, a gifted figure painter who produced works with clearly identifiable people at the beach. In the 1930s, Gleason sketched and painted works inspired by the California coast culture. By the mid-twentieth century he had also become well known for his yachting scenes and historical maritime subject matter featuring famous ships that sailed off the coast of California. He lived in Los Angeles, next to Griffith Park, but spent a great deal of time in Laguna Beach, where his mother-in-law, Lillian Ferguson, had a seaside home and an art studio. An avid sailor, he spent time at Newport Beach and San Pedro. He and his wife Dorothy had two daughters, Eleanor and Lillian. When they were youngsters, Gleason often depicted his daughters and their friends playing along the seashore. Youthful Mariners was reproduced as a color print by a Swiss publishing company and distributed in Europe and America. Seven oil paintings by him are featured in the exhibition, along with a book he wrote and illustrated titled The Islands and Ports of California.