John C. Traynor

'A Song for Connemara', large transitional contemporary landscape painting

2018

Vibrant coastal landscape of Pescadero, California by San Francisco artist Weston Rose (American, 20th century). Presented in a wooden frame. Signed "Weston Rose" lower right. Image,...

Autumn Trees, Mid Century Fall Landscape with Orange & Earthtones Lovely late 1960's vintage landscape oil painting of an autumnal scene by Cal...

Sweeping mid-century landscape of a lake and snow-capped mountains by Lillian Josephine Heath (American, 1864-1961). A gigantic, snow-covered mountain dominates the upper portion of the composition, rising above the rest of the landscape. In the shadow of the mountain is a valley lake, filled with snowmelt, with several smaller mountains in between. Signed "Lillian Heath" lower left. Displayed in a giltwood frame. Image, 20.5"H x 28"L. Lillian Heath was one of the Jolly Daubers at the turn of the 19th-century and as a young student, married the senior artist and instructor, Frank Heath in Santa Cruz, California. Artists Frank and Lillian [Heath] by Margaret Koch [transcribed from Santa Cruz Public Library website]….Frank L. Heath courted Lillian Dake Storey during painting trips around Santa Cruz County back in the 1890s. Those were the years when Lillian was riding a saddle horse daily from Santa Cruz to the Powdermill where she taught school. Today [1974] the Powdermill is Paradise Park. Frank's actual proposal of marriage was delivered at Rocky Falls, a beautiful scenic place on Carbonero Creek. There he had constructed a painting platform with a perfect view of the rushing waters, and it was there that he asked Lillian in that formal day and age, to be his bride. Frank was nearly 40 years old at the time, and Lillian was about 32. She had always been interested in art and had talent to a large degree. She took a year's leave of absence from teaching school to travel alone to New York where she visited relatives and stayed to study china painting and the painting of miniatures which is an art in itself. ‘When I returned from New York I enrolled in the art classes of a Santa Cruz artist who was making a name for himself,’ she once said with a smile. The artist was Frank L. Heath, and that was the start of their romance, she told me in 1959. She accepted Frank's proposal at Rocky Falls. At the Heath home on Third Street, Beach Hill, Frank added a wing with a large studio workroom downstairs and several bedrooms upstairs. That was his wedding gift to his bride. ‘The Studio’ had a fireplace and big bay windows that looked out over the town of Santa Cruz and back to the mountains they both loved and painted many times. Lillian painted a set of tiles for the fireplace; they showed darting swallows in the clouds above a stream where song birds perched on tulles and water lilies floated. In 1897 Lillian and Frank were married in the First Methodist Church and they moved into the home on Beach Hill, a house she continued to live in for 64 years. Frank's father, Lucien Heath, was the first Secretary of State of Oregon. He came to Santa Cruz from Oregon in 1866 with his wife, Jane, and sons, Frank and Henry. A daughter, Lina, had died in Michigan where the Heaths lived before crossing the plains to Oregon in 1852. [?] In Santa Cruz Lucien Heath opened one of the early hardware stores on Pacific Avenue in partnership with John Byrne...

Beautiful early 20th century plein air-style landscape by Margaret Wherry Ziegler (American, 1909-1989), c.1930. Trees, rocks, and meadow grass and flowers bask under a blue sky in this sunny summer landscape scene. Signed and dated 1930 on verso stretcher bar. Presented in a vintage wood frame. Image size: 14.25"H x 12.25"W Ziegler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1909 At a young age she traveled with her parents to the Philippines, Japan, India, Italy, Greece, and Europe. She studied art at the Cincinnati Art Academy, Minneapolis Art Institute, the University of the Philippines, and the California College of Arts and Crafts. While in Japan she studied Japanese brush painting...

A classic mid-century California mountain scene of Payne Lake near Mammoth Mountain in the Sierra Nevadas, by Clare Shipton Mayhew (Mrs. J.O. Harvey)....

Juliet M. White was born in Philadelphia in 1880. She studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, which became the largest art school for women in the United States. Its ...

SHEPHERD’S PASS Series: “In [this] series I wanted to move into expressing more of a post-impressionist mode by deconstructing with lyricism, while not fracturing in hard edges; so a...

About the artist: As an American artist, Wright’s travels have taken him to paint and/or teach throughout the United States and visiting over a dozen National Park sites in addition...

About the artist: As an American artist, Wright’s travels have taken him to paint and/or teach throughout the United States and visiting over a dozen National Park sites in addition...

About the artist: As an American artist, Wright’s travels have taken him to paint and/or teach throughout the United States and visiting over a dozen National Park sites in addition...