William Lewis Marple

William Lewis Marple first traveled west to seek his fortune during the 1849 Gold Rush. A self-taught artist, he soon found painting to be financially lucrative and became one of the early prominent landscape painters who settled in San Francisco. Marple traveled frequently throughout his career, including a trip to Europe to study the Old Masters and regular trips to the east coast where he would have been in contact with many of the most notable landscape painters of the day and important patrons who would help support the artist in his foundings of both the San Francisco and Saint Louis Artists Associations. The present work, Along the Russian River, California, San Fernando Valley, demonstrates a superb early rendering of the nineteenth century American western landscape. Whether or not Marple's style can be definitively characterized as Luminism, it is certain that the artist shares the Luminist preoccupation with light, atmosphere, and attention to detail while capturing the distinct landscape of Yosemite.