Dalzell Hatfield Art

Dalzell Hatfield was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1893. Hatfield grew up and was educated in his native city and in St Louis, but as an artist he remained self-taught. His fascination with art began at an early age. When he was 13, Hatfield earned his allowance by taking books back to Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in his hometown. On his way, he would browse through the art gallery and was captivated with what he saw. A few years later, he helped galleries organize traveling art exhibits for artists such as Winslow Homer and George Bellows. During his travels, he stopped in Los Angeles and realized that the rapidly expanding city would serve as the best place to sell art outside of New York.

At the age of 18, he became an apprentice in a Chicago art firm and in 1919, established his own art business there. Hatfield initially opened up a small gallery in Chicago; however, the emerging gallerist was forced to put everything on hold when he provided service to the navy during World War I. During the early 1920s, he lectured, sold art and exhibited across the U.S. He went into business with Earl L. Stendahl in 1925, joining together as the short-lived Stendahl-Hatfield Galleries located in the Ambassador Hotel. Later that year, he opened his gallery in Los Angeles on Seventh Avenue near MacArthur Park. One year later, Hatfield married Ruth, who became an integral part of their growing business. After nine successful years, the gallery closed in 1934, but Dalzell, an expert on modern art and design, traveled the country as a guest curator and lecturer for major galleries and museums, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the National Academy of Design in New York. The couple also took numerous extended trips to Europe to acquire the latest works in European art. They reopened the Dalzell Hatfield Galleries in 1939 at the Ambassador Hotel, establishing itself as one of the most prosperous galleries in Los Angeles.

In the 1950s, Dalzell also operated the Barbizon-Plaza Art Galleries at the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel. From the late 1920s until the early 1980s, the Hatfields (Dalzell and wife Ruth) introduced Los Angeles to some of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. From the late 1920s to the early 1970s, the Hatfields dedicated their lives to exhibiting and selling modern art, in the process educating Angelenos about cutting-edge works of genius coming from Europe, Latin America and the United States. Hatfield was active in the art world for nearly 40 years. Not only was he instrumental in setting up the first major American exhibitions of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin and other post-Impressionist European artists, but he also exposed and encouraged regional California artists, his most noted discovery being Millard Sheets. Over the course of 24 years at the Ambassador, the gallery held more than 250 exhibitions. Dalzell passed away in 1963, yet the gallery maintained a steady output of modern exhibitions for another 20 years until Ruth’s death in 1984. Ruth and Dalzell left behind a vast collection of art in addition to a legacy of helping to establish Los Angeles as a modern art sanctuary.