Object of the Week: William Wendt's Trees They Are My Friends

William Wendt
Trees They Are My Friends, c.1935
Oil on canvas; 24 x 32 in.
Bowers Museum #F7685
Gift of Martha C. Stevens Memorial Art Collection

The Bowers Museum is fortunate to own several fine landscapes by William Wendt, a self-trained artist from Chicago who settled in Los Angeles in 1906. Wendt was at one time called "the dean of Los Angeles landscapists" because he was one of the most talented and because he outlived many of his generation's artists. Wendt liked to make long sketching excursions into the country where he could commune with nature and paint on-site. His landscapes, unlike those of the "Eucalyptus School" artists, had sound underlying structure, natural and organic colors, and his compositions were derived from the actual geological formations that he viewed in person rather than composed from imagination in a studio. Unlike some artists whose careers peaked shortly after leaving art school and then declined, he produced stronger and bolder work as he aged.

The recently conserved Trees They Are My Friends will be placed on loan to Laguna Art Museum for the exhibition William Wendt: A Retrospective from November 9, 2008 until February 8, 2009.

Signed photograph of William Wendt from the

Evelyna Nunn Miller Photographic Library

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