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Description & Provenance: Shipyards by Maurice Logan, An original California watercolor. He was one of the artists from the Society of Six. Maurice Logan, N.A. (1886-1977) Born: San Francisco, CA; Studied: Mark Hopkins Institute of Art (San Francisco), California College of Arts and Crafts (Oakland), Chicago Art Institute; Member: National Academy of Design, American Watercolor Society, California Water Color Society. Maurice Logan was raised in Northern California. He began to receive attention as a professional artist about 1915 and by the mid 1920s, was one of San Francisco’s best known commercial illustrators and poster designers. During this era, he produced colorful expressionist oil paintings and exhibited them as a member of a group known as the Society of Six. In the 1930s, he began exhibiting his transparent watercolor paintings and helped to form the Thirteen Watercolorists group. For many years, he was an influential art instructor at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. Logan was also on the board of directors of the Society of Western Artists, the West Coast Watercolor Society, and other local art clubs. He also juried art exhibitions at the Oakland Art Museum and was a member of the Bohemian Club, where he showed his paintings on a regular basis. Biographical information: Interview with Richard Logan, 1983 Biography courtesy of California Watercolors 1850-1970, *If you need more information please call us. 415-776-0104 *Our job is to find and target great art by collecting a vast array of contemporary, vintage, antique and collectible items from across the globe. Individually handcrafted, we breathe new life into these forgotten relics by giving back each piece it's unique story. We welcome dealers, galleries, and private collectors to register securely and buy with us.

Origin, Encyclopedia & Researched Articles:

Encyclopedia Name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Six

The Society of Six was a group of artists who painted outdoors, socialized, and exhibited together in and around Oakland, California in the 1910s and 1920s. They included Selden Connor Gile, August Gay, Maurice Logan, Louis Siegriest, Bernard von Eichman, and William Clapp.[1] They were somewhat isolated from the artistic mainstream of the San Francisco Bay Area at the time, and painted in more avant-garde styles than most of their peers, especially after being inspired by modern trends represented in the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915.



William Henry Clapp (1879-1924) was the last to join the group and had the most cosmopolitan background, including art training in Montreal and Paris and a six-month stay in New York City. Having lived in Oakland in his youth, he returned in 1917, settled in Piedmont, and began teaching life drawing at the California School of Arts and Crafts in Berkeley. He was appointed acting director of the nearly new Oakland Art Gallery in 1918 and served as its director from 1919 to 1952. In 1923 he organized the first of six annual Society of Six exhibitions at that venue. Although he brought exposure through the gallery to more radical styles of painting, his own work adhered to the features of American Impressionism.



Selden Connor Gile (1877-1947) was the oldest member of the group, more than twenty years older than Siegriest (1899-1989) and von Eichman (1899-1970). Nancy Boas, author of The Society of Six: California Colorists, called Gile "the forceful center of the Six--teacher, provider, and provocative critic."[2] Primarily self-taught, he enthusiastically embraced a vigorous style using broad, rapid brushstrokes and intense, non-naturalistic colors. His home was the social center for the Six, who would follow their days of plein-air painting with critique sessions, food, and drinking.

Verbal History:

In the period between 1850 and today, California has been the home to a large number of extremely talented and versatile watercolor artists. While some became nationally and internationally recognized, most were largely overlooked until recent years. Since the 1970s, art collectors and museum curators have developed a serious interest in California watercolors and have been seeking these works to collect and display.



The group of artists working in this style often chose to paint watercolors depicting scenes of everyday life in the cities and suburbs of California. They were considered an important part of the American Scene or Regionalist movement that swept across the United States during the mid part of the twentieth century. The best of their works were painted directly with little or no preliminary pencil drawing, had bold design, creative use of the white paper as a “color” and featured the transparency of this unique medium. With the increased popularity of watercolor painting in recent years, the innovations of the California style have become part of the mainstream of American art.

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