Before Edgar was done he would crisscross the United States, travel to Mexico, Canada, and Europe, and even spend the summer in the Alps.

Despite his relative isolation this turn-of-the-century Missouri teenager toured the world. Payne, 'The Approach to Art,' Composition of Outdoor Painting, 7th Edition (De Ru's Fine Arts, 2005), 10.Edgar Alwin Payne (1 March 1883-8 April 1947) American Western landscape painter and muralist.īorn near Cassville, Barry County, Missouri, in the heart of the Ozarks. He also sought to capture the vastness and power of the Southwestern landscape. Upon their return, Payne turned to vigorous, powerful scenes drawn from his sketching trips to the Sierra. He continued painting and exhibiting in Laguna and Los Angeles until 1922, when he and Elsie began a two-year painting tour of Europe. In 1918, he became a founding member and president of the Laguna Beach Art Association. He moved to Glendale, California, in 1917 and then established a home and studio in Laguna Beach. While in San Francisco, he met artist Elsie Palmer, whom he married in Chicago in 1912. Payne first visited California in 1909, spending several months painting in Laguna Beach before visiting San Francisco. As a painter, he considered himself self-taught, having studied just two weeks at the Art Institute of Chicago. He earned money by painting houses, signs, and stage sets, and later found employment producing murals for civic buildings, courthouses, and theatres throughout the Midwest. Payne left his native Missouri in 1902 to travel to the South, the Midwest, and Mexico. Although Payne utilized the vigorous brushwork and color of Impressionism, his paintings were a departure from the quiet, genteel refinement of most Impressionist painters. Payne’s diverse subjects included Southern California coastal views, the peaks and lakes of the Sierra, the Swiss Alps, boats in Brittany, France, and Italy, and western scenes of Navajo horsemen in the Arizona and New Mexico deserts. In his 1941 book Composition of Outdoor Painting, Edgar Payne summed up a fundamental quality of his art: “At the basis of all things there is energy, activity or power-call it what you will-that is produced between opposing forces.”(1) Here, he portrays the force of the Pacific meeting the rocky Laguna coast.

Edgar alwin payne artist