Watercolor by Frank Tolles Chamberlin

1918 or 38 or 48?

Three oil derricks to the left of the scene with smoke rising in the distance to the right.

Signed with monogram in lower right corner with what looks like the number 18, 38, or 48, though the latter would mean Chamberlin painted this when he was 65 or 75. I do see another landscape of oil derricks for sale on ebay that dates from 1938 (listed at $900), so I have used that date here.  On laid paper with part of an incomplete figure drawing on reverse. Tear along upper edge of sheet and stains as shown in photos.

Sheet: 6.5 x 9 inches

Frank Tolles Chamberlin (1873-1961). Although born in San Francisco, as a child Chamberlin moved with his family to the eastern United States where he lived in Vermont, Connecticut, and New York. He initially studied with Dwight Tryon at the Wadsworth Atheneum and later at the Art Students league with George de Forest Brush and George Bridgeman. After working as a technical draftsman for an architecture firm, Chamberlin won the Lazarus Scholarship to study at the American Academy of Rome. After three years of study, Chamberlin returned to New York where he painted, sculpted, and started his long career as an art instructor, first at the Beaux Art Institute of Design and then at Columbia University. In 1919, Chamberlin moved to southern California where he taught at the Otis Art Institute and the University of Southern California. With Mrs. Nelbert Chouinard, he co-founded the Chouinard Art Institute. Chamberlin became one of the most important teachers in Southern California, where his students included an impressive list of artists who would go on to define the California aesthetic of the 1930s and 1940s, including Millard Sheets, Phil Dike, Paul Sample, Milford Zornes, and Tom Craig. Throughout his extensive career, Chamberlin exhibited widely, in the East and Midwest at the National Academy of Design, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago and in the West at the Los Angele County Museum of Art, the Pasadena Art Museum, and California Watercolor Society, among many others. He worked for the Public Works of Art Project during the Great Depression and completed what Arthur Millier described as California’s finest mural for McKinley Junior High School in Pasadena. Chamberlin is listed in Who Was Who in American Art and all other standard references.