Maurice Logan, who was known for his sense of humor and for always wearing a three-piece suit, was born, raised, and had worked his entire life in the California Bay Area. He grew up in Oakland, and while he took art classes as a youth, it was not until age fourteen, when he watched a local artist paint a landscape near his home on Lake Temescal, that he decided to become an artist himself. He studied under that painter and then at the San Francisco Art Institute. 

The year 1915 was an important one for Logan. By that time he was earning a living as a commercial artist in San Francisco, he was viewing and learning from the extensive art exhibits at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and he met the artists Selden Gile and August Gay. Within a short time he joined them and others on weekend sketching expeditions around the Bay. When the group exhibited together, it was given the name “Society of Six,” and their use of bright colors and expressive brushwork made it one of Northern California’s earliest, most cohesive, and important modern art movements.

After the group broke up in the late 1920’s, Logan continued to earn his living as a commercial artist at Logan, Staniford and Cox, founded in 1935, where he made illustrations and covers for such publications as Sunset and Westways. He continued to spend weekends sketching around the Bay in new media, styles and colors. In 1968 he suffered a stroke and ceased to paint, dying nine years later.

Source: Art at the Jonathan Club, Jonathan Art Foundation