Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University

05/28/2021

Vote For All Your Favorites for 2021's 'Best of the Southland'

We are delighted to announce that the Hilbert Museum has been nominated for Best Museum in Orange County in the Los Angeles Times' 2021 "Best of the Southland" Awards.

Of course it's an honor just to be nominated (thanks to everyone who supported us!!) -- but now it's a voting thing! If you love the Hilbert Museum, we need you all to vote!

Please VOTE for us (in the Orange County section) at:
https://www.latimes.com/bestofthesouthland

Vote for your favorites for the L.A.

05/27/2021

Jessie Arms Botke (1883-1971), "Hidden Kingdom," c. 1930s, oil and gold leaf on panel. The Hilbert Collection.

California artist Jessie Hazel Arms Botke achieved great popularity beginning in the 1930s for her elegant paintings of birds, particularly the classic Art Deco avian subjects: herons, peacocks, egrets, flamingos and cockatoos.

Due to her early training in decorative arts and as a tapestry designer with Herter Looms in New York City, her bird paintings often resemble Asian screens or scroll designs, gleaming with real gold and silver leaf meticulously applied by hand. They are fantasies of nature, the birds portrayed realistically but also with decorative intent, posed with studied grace against lush foliage and flowers.

Botke and her husband, fellow artist Cornelius Botke, were prominent members of the artists' colony in Carmel, California, before moving to Los Angeles for a brief period and finally settling on a ranch they acquired in Santa Paula. There, Jessie maintained her own aviary stocked with exotic birds, so she could study and paint them.

In addition to her famous bird paintings, which today command tens of thousands of dollars at auction, Jessie Botke also painted many other subjects, including landscapes, views of the California missions, and images of Native American life.

#hilbertmuseum #jessiearmsbotke #jessiebotke #birds #birdart #art #california #flamingos #cockatoos #birdlife #parrot #egret #botanicals #museum #museumfromhome #artmuseum #painting #oilpainting #womenartists #artist #chapmanuniversity

Jessie Arms Botke (1883-1971), "Hidden Kingdom," c. 1930s, oil and gold leaf on panel. The Hilbert Collection.

California artist Jessie Hazel Arms Botke achieved great popularity beginning in the 1930s for her elegant paintings of birds, particularly the classic Art Deco avian subjects: herons, peacocks, egrets, flamingos and cockatoos.

Due to her early training in decorative arts and as a tapestry designer with Herter Looms in New York City, her bird paintings often resemble Asian screens or scroll designs, gleaming with real gold and silver leaf meticulously applied by hand. They are fantasies of nature, the birds portrayed realistically but also with decorative intent, posed with studied grace against lush foliage and flowers.

Botke and her husband, fellow artist Cornelius Botke, were prominent members of the artists' colony in Carmel, California, before moving to Los Angeles for a brief period and finally settling on a ranch they acquired in Santa Paula. There, Jessie maintained her own aviary stocked with exotic birds, so she could study and paint them.

In addition to her famous bird paintings, which today command tens of thousands of dollars at auction, Jessie Botke also painted many other subjects, including landscapes, views of the California missions, and images of Native American life.

#hilbertmuseum #jessiearmsbotke #jessiebotke #birds #birdart #art #california #flamingos #cockatoos #birdlife #parrot #egret #botanicals #museum #museumfromhome #artmuseum #painting #oilpainting #womenartists #artist #chapmanuniversity

05/25/2021

Today we welcomed members of the Pacific Club (everyone fully vaccinated, with masks and social distancing indoors, as required by Chapman University) to the Hilbert Museum for our first actual tour since the pandemic era began. Pictured are Pacific Club members in front of the museum this morning, with museum founders Mark and Jan Hilbert seated in foreground. It felt like a bit of normalcy after a long hiatus!

Today we welcomed members of the Pacific Club (everyone fully vaccinated, with masks and social distancing indoors, as required by Chapman University) to the Hilbert Museum for our first actual tour since the pandemic era began. Pictured are Pacific Club members in front of the museum this morning, with museum founders Mark and Jan Hilbert seated in foreground. It felt like a bit of normalcy after a long hiatus!

05/21/2021

GEORGE SAMERJAN
"La Tour Eiffel," from The Liberation of Paris Series, 1944
One of a 12-painting set of watercolors
The Bollman Collection, Orange County, California

California artist George Samerjan (1915-2005) served with distinction in the U.S. Army during World War II, as an officer in the Medical Corps. In his limited free time, he painted scenes of Army life and the historical events unfolding around him.

He painted a historically significant series of watercolors after the Nazis surrendered the city of Paris on August 25, 1944, following four years of occupation. Samerjan's paintings depict the sudden rush of joy and freedom experienced by the Parisians upon their liberation.

The set of 12 paintings is currently on view in the Hilbert Museum as part of the exhibition "George Samerjan: Paris and Los Angeles," through June 26.

In this painting, an Allied pilot is about to fly a Piper Cub through the arch of the Eiffel Tower on a lark. The folks milling around the Tower don't seem to realize yet that the stunt is about to happen.

Samerjan in his journals described his overall experience of being in Paris at this historic moment: “Goldwyn-esque beauty, dazzling, tantalizing, intriguing and exciting. Color and movement, people and pavement…flags, banners, standards, greetings from all. A momentary stop and one is deluged with Parisians trying to help.”

Little did Samerjan know at the time that he would soon be fighting for his life as the war in Europe entered a deadly new phase: the Battle of the Bulge. He was seriously injured in Belgium when a bomb leveled the field hospital in which he was serving. Despite his wounds, Samerjan managed to save numerous others from the burning rubble.

For his courage and valor, he was awarded the Bronze Star as well as a Purple Heart. Samerjan went on after the war to become a highly successful fine and commercial artist. Upon his death in 2005, after a long and lauded post-war art career, he was interred in Arlington National Cemetery.

GEORGE SAMERJAN
"La Tour Eiffel," from The Liberation of Paris Series, 1944
One of a 12-painting set of watercolors
The Bollman Collection, Orange County, California

California artist George Samerjan (1915-2005) served with distinction in the U.S. Army during World War II, as an officer in the Medical Corps. In his limited free time, he painted scenes of Army life and the historical events unfolding around him.

He painted a historically significant series of watercolors after the Nazis surrendered the city of Paris on August 25, 1944, following four years of occupation. Samerjan's paintings depict the sudden rush of joy and freedom experienced by the Parisians upon their liberation.

The set of 12 paintings is currently on view in the Hilbert Museum as part of the exhibition "George Samerjan: Paris and Los Angeles," through June 26.

In this painting, an Allied pilot is about to fly a Piper Cub through the arch of the Eiffel Tower on a lark. The folks milling around the Tower don't seem to realize yet that the stunt is about to happen.

Samerjan in his journals described his overall experience of being in Paris at this historic moment: “Goldwyn-esque beauty, dazzling, tantalizing, intriguing and exciting. Color and movement, people and pavement…flags, banners, standards, greetings from all. A momentary stop and one is deluged with Parisians trying to help.”

Little did Samerjan know at the time that he would soon be fighting for his life as the war in Europe entered a deadly new phase: the Battle of the Bulge. He was seriously injured in Belgium when a bomb leveled the field hospital in which he was serving. Despite his wounds, Samerjan managed to save numerous others from the burning rubble.

For his courage and valor, he was awarded the Bronze Star as well as a Purple Heart. Samerjan went on after the war to become a highly successful fine and commercial artist. Upon his death in 2005, after a long and lauded post-war art career, he was interred in Arlington National Cemetery.

05/19/2021

Come find yourself at the Hilbert Museum! Maybe not exactly like these folks found themselves - but you never know!

05/12/2021

Patricia Chidlaw (b. 1952), "Broadway," 2017, oil on canvas. Gift of the Hilbert Collection to the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University.

On view now in the exhibition "Los Angeles Area Scene Paintings" through June 26 at the Hilbert Museum, 167 N. Atchison St., Orange, CA. Open (temporary limited hours) Tues-Fri, 11am to 5pm. Free admission; free parking in front of the museum.

Patricia Chidlaw is a Santa Barbara artist who dubs her works "urban landscapes" to distinguish them as paintings about areas of human habitation rather than landscapes that reference the natural world.

"But my subjects are certainly not all urban -- some are suburban, some small towns and some are ruins, such as a faded sign, and abandoned business bleaching in the sun as once-populated areas return to their former empty silence," she says. "While I often treat older architectural forms, I want to make it clear these are not paintings about nostalgia -- all are contemporary scenes, recently observed."

Here she portrays the historic Broadway Theater District in Los Angeles as it looks today. With twelve classic movie palaces built between 1910 and 1931 located along a six-block stretch of one of the oldest streets in the city, it's the only large concentration of movie palaces left in the United States. (Many of them have been repurposed over the years to other uses, but many of the classic facades and marquees survive.)

Truly, for that brief shining moment in the past, a boulevard of dreams.

Patricia Chidlaw (b. 1952), "Broadway," 2017, oil on canvas. Gift of the Hilbert Collection to the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University.

On view now in the exhibition "Los Angeles Area Scene Paintings" through June 26 at the Hilbert Museum, 167 N. Atchison St., Orange, CA. Open (temporary limited hours) Tues-Fri, 11am to 5pm. Free admission; free parking in front of the museum.

Patricia Chidlaw is a Santa Barbara artist who dubs her works "urban landscapes" to distinguish them as paintings about areas of human habitation rather than landscapes that reference the natural world.

"But my subjects are certainly not all urban -- some are suburban, some small towns and some are ruins, such as a faded sign, and abandoned business bleaching in the sun as once-populated areas return to their former empty silence," she says. "While I often treat older architectural forms, I want to make it clear these are not paintings about nostalgia -- all are contemporary scenes, recently observed."

Here she portrays the historic Broadway Theater District in Los Angeles as it looks today. With twelve classic movie palaces built between 1910 and 1931 located along a six-block stretch of one of the oldest streets in the city, it's the only large concentration of movie palaces left in the United States. (Many of them have been repurposed over the years to other uses, but many of the classic facades and marquees survive.)

Truly, for that brief shining moment in the past, a boulevard of dreams.

05/06/2021

Irv Wyner (1904-2002), "Farm Scene (Day)," c. 1930s, oil on board, 20" x 30". Gift of Drs. James L. and Lynne P. Doti to the Hilbert Museum of California Art.

The Hilbert Museum has re-opened to the public for temporary limited hours, Tues-Fri 11am to 5pm. Admission is free, and there is free parking in front of the museum, located at 167 N. Atchison Street in Orange, Calif.

Irv Wyner is best known to animation fans as the masterful background artist for Warner Bros' "Looney Tunes" animated shorts. He worked in Friz Freleng's unit at the studio. Wyner's first credited work was on the 1952 animated short "Gift Wrapped," a Sylvester and Tweety cartoon, and he stayed with Freleng's unit until 1957. His last credited work there was on the one-shot cartoon "Three Little Bops."

In the early 1960s, Wyner worked for Disney Studios on the "Disneyland" anthology TV series. He also worked with Walter Lantz of "Woody Woodpecker" fame, and later, in the '70s, for Chuck Jones' Sib Tower 12 production studio on the feature film "The Phantom Tollbooth" and the TV specials "Horton Hears a Who!" and "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," among others.

Throughout his work with the entertainment studios, Wyner continued to produce his idiosyncratic fine-art paintings. In particular, he turned again and again to portraying intensely hued farm scenes like this one.

In this colorful farm scene with its brilliant, almost hyper-realistic lighting and hyper-focused raking shadows, you can see Wyner's meticulous style. The light slants in strongly from the lower left, casting intense shadows. The various farm characters, from the farmer with his horse to the farm wife with the dog, to each individual chicken and pig, are all rendered with precision, each with its own slanting shadow.

And what exactly IS casting that looming shadow to the lower right? Your guess is as good as ours. There is almost always a rather ominous aura of mystery or even foreboding even in Wyner's sunniest toy-box farm scenes -- perhaps an artifact of his work with the subversive geniuses of the Warner animation stable.

Irv Wyner (1904-2002), "Farm Scene (Day)," c. 1930s, oil on board, 20" x 30". Gift of Drs. James L. and Lynne P. Doti to the Hilbert Museum of California Art.

The Hilbert Museum has re-opened to the public for temporary limited hours, Tues-Fri 11am to 5pm. Admission is free, and there is free parking in front of the museum, located at 167 N. Atchison Street in Orange, Calif.

Irv Wyner is best known to animation fans as the masterful background artist for Warner Bros' "Looney Tunes" animated shorts. He worked in Friz Freleng's unit at the studio. Wyner's first credited work was on the 1952 animated short "Gift Wrapped," a Sylvester and Tweety cartoon, and he stayed with Freleng's unit until 1957. His last credited work there was on the one-shot cartoon "Three Little Bops."

In the early 1960s, Wyner worked for Disney Studios on the "Disneyland" anthology TV series. He also worked with Walter Lantz of "Woody Woodpecker" fame, and later, in the '70s, for Chuck Jones' Sib Tower 12 production studio on the feature film "The Phantom Tollbooth" and the TV specials "Horton Hears a Who!" and "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," among others.

Throughout his work with the entertainment studios, Wyner continued to produce his idiosyncratic fine-art paintings. In particular, he turned again and again to portraying intensely hued farm scenes like this one.

In this colorful farm scene with its brilliant, almost hyper-realistic lighting and hyper-focused raking shadows, you can see Wyner's meticulous style. The light slants in strongly from the lower left, casting intense shadows. The various farm characters, from the farmer with his horse to the farm wife with the dog, to each individual chicken and pig, are all rendered with precision, each with its own slanting shadow.

And what exactly IS casting that looming shadow to the lower right? Your guess is as good as ours. There is almost always a rather ominous aura of mystery or even foreboding even in Wyner's sunniest toy-box farm scenes -- perhaps an artifact of his work with the subversive geniuses of the Warner animation stable.

05/05/2021

Mischa Askenazy (1888-1951), "Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles," 1935, oil on board. Gift of the Hilbert Collection to the Hilbert Museum of California Art.

On view now in the exhibition "Los Angeles Area Scene Paintings" at the Hilbert Museum (open Tues-Fri, 11am to 5pm, free admission).

Sunset Boulevard was originally developed to link Hollywood with downtown Los Angeles. Today it still functions as a route that starts at Pacific Coast Highway and winds through Beverly Hills and Hollywood, eventually ending in L.A.'s Chinatown.

California Scene Painting artists, in their search for everyday-life scenes, found inspiration for their art at many points along the famous boulevard.

Where we might think of a bright, sunny Sunset Boulevard lined with palm trees, Mischa Askenazy gives us entirely the opposite. This Depression-era scene focuses on one of the boulevard's steep hills above Hollywood, on a grim, rainy day with a stiff wind blowing. The two people in the painting clasp their coats around them and plod along -- hopefully they're heading home or to some warm place!

The foreground tilts vertiginously upward and to the right, throwing us a bit off-balance and making us consider how tough it must be to walk up or down that hill. To the left, some kind of wagon sits abandoned in the road - why? Further down and to the left you can see the vista of the city below, with rooftops and smoking chimneys. This is not the L.A. of picture postcards -- it's a grey, workaday Los Angeles during an economic crisis.

Mischa Askenazy was born near Odessa, Russia and moved to the U.S. with his family at the age of four. He grew up in New York City and entered art school at the National Academy of Design at age 13. He then traveled to Europe to continue his art studies in France and Italy. All through the prosperous 1920s, Askenazy made a comfortable living painting the portraits of wealthy patrons. When a commission brought him to Los Angeles, he loved the climate and decided to move there.

His paintings are done in a bold post-Impressionist style, strongly influenced by Cezanne and Gauguin, among others. In L.A. he painted landscapes, interior scenes and street scenes as well as portraits, always with solid, active forms and large areas of flat, passionate color.

Mischa Askenazy (1888-1951), "Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles," 1935, oil on board. Gift of the Hilbert Collection to the Hilbert Museum of California Art.

On view now in the exhibition "Los Angeles Area Scene Paintings" at the Hilbert Museum (open Tues-Fri, 11am to 5pm, free admission).

Sunset Boulevard was originally developed to link Hollywood with downtown Los Angeles. Today it still functions as a route that starts at Pacific Coast Highway and winds through Beverly Hills and Hollywood, eventually ending in L.A.'s Chinatown.

California Scene Painting artists, in their search for everyday-life scenes, found inspiration for their art at many points along the famous boulevard.

Where we might think of a bright, sunny Sunset Boulevard lined with palm trees, Mischa Askenazy gives us entirely the opposite. This Depression-era scene focuses on one of the boulevard's steep hills above Hollywood, on a grim, rainy day with a stiff wind blowing. The two people in the painting clasp their coats around them and plod along -- hopefully they're heading home or to some warm place!

The foreground tilts vertiginously upward and to the right, throwing us a bit off-balance and making us consider how tough it must be to walk up or down that hill. To the left, some kind of wagon sits abandoned in the road - why? Further down and to the left you can see the vista of the city below, with rooftops and smoking chimneys. This is not the L.A. of picture postcards -- it's a grey, workaday Los Angeles during an economic crisis.

Mischa Askenazy was born near Odessa, Russia and moved to the U.S. with his family at the age of four. He grew up in New York City and entered art school at the National Academy of Design at age 13. He then traveled to Europe to continue his art studies in France and Italy. All through the prosperous 1920s, Askenazy made a comfortable living painting the portraits of wealthy patrons. When a commission brought him to Los Angeles, he loved the climate and decided to move there.

His paintings are done in a bold post-Impressionist style, strongly influenced by Cezanne and Gauguin, among others. In L.A. he painted landscapes, interior scenes and street scenes as well as portraits, always with solid, active forms and large areas of flat, passionate color.