Artist Biography

Charles CROCKER
1877 - 1950

Charles Matthew Crocker was born in a log cabin in Belair, Illinois in 1877. He was from a poor family and dropped out of school in the third grade. He began drawing as a teenager and later studied painting in Decatur with Jean Mannheim and at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1909 he moved to California. While living in Oakland, he commuted to San Francisco where he had a studio on Post Street while working as a reporter for the Berkeley Gazette. In 1919 he moved to Los Angeles and opened a studio which was a gathering spot for intellectuals, writers, and world-famous personalities. Returning to Chicago in 1938, he died there on October 18, 1950. Although his work includes portraits and figures, Crocker was primarily a visionary painter of landscapes. Most of his murky landscapes are of the Barbizon esthetic and similar to those painted by William Keith during his last years. Exhibited: Santa Rosa Library, 1913 (solo); San Francisco Art Ass'n, Palace of Fine Arts, 1916; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1923 (with Helena Dunlap), 1934 (solo); Hollywood Plaza Hotel, 1929. Works held: Santa Fe Railway Collection.

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