GRANVILLE REDMOND: THE JONATHAN CLUB’S LONGEST OWNED PAINTING

Granville Redmond in his studio

Granville Redmond quickly became one of Southern California’s leading landscape painters. He is regarded by art historians such as Nancy Dustin Wall Moure as “the area’s first important resident Impressionist,” given that his earliest works demonstrate a love of high horizon, light colors, and dashed brushstrokes. Yet they also combine qualities espoused by the Barbizon school, such as a focus on small glades, pastoral fields, and cloudy skies.

A strong proponent of Tonalism, Redmond’s paintings could be moody and introspective, utilizing neutral colors such as grey and dark brown and depicting brooding mist and other atmospheric effects – a style that suited his melancholy disposition. His patrons favored his more vibrant landscapes strewn with golden poppies, however, and these were easier to sell than his Barbizon-inspired works. And, because few artists captured these flowers with greater vigor than him, he became a victim of his own success. “Alas,” he said of his darker prospects, “people will not buy them. They all seem to want poppies.”

Born in Philadelphia in 1871, it’s believed that a bout of scarlet fever resulted in Redmond becoming completely deaf from the age of two. Henceforth, he would occupy a silent world. Shortly after, his family relocated to San Jose in Northern California, a short distance from the California School for the Deaf, where Redmond was enrolled in 1879. A naturally talented student, Redmond gained invaluable mentorship from hearing impaired teachers Theophilus Hope d’Estrella and Douglas Tilden, before going on to attend the California School of Design in San Francisco.

He would later secure a scholarship to live and study in Paris at the prestigious Académie Julian. He returned to America five years later, his dreams of financial success in France unfulfilled. His hearing loss certainly didn’t seem to limit his social and professional involvement. Redmond was a member of a great many art associations, including the California Art Club, the Laguna Beach Art Association, and the Bohemian Club, where it is said he became friends with pianist Paderewski and Buffalo Bill.

Granville and Charlie Chaplin

At this point in 1917, struggling to support his family solely through his artwork, he moved with lifelong friend Gottardo Piazzoni to Los Angeles to pursue a career as an actor in the burgeoning movie business. All films were silent at the time and Redmond felt that his natural skills as a pantomimist would give him a great advantage.

The aspiring actor, described as “tall, heavy and vigorous with a large mouth, large blue eyes and an expressive face topped off by a magnificent head of abundant, curly hair,” began to gain favor in Hollywood thanks to letters of introduction from art critic Antony Anderson. Then – it’s not clear how – he met and became close acquaintances with Charlie Chaplin, whose renown was rapidly growing. Both men came to regard each other in high esteem, developing a special and mutually beneficial friendship. From Redmond, Chaplin learned the nuances of pantomime and sign language too. Redmond, meanwhile, took a plethora of small film roles in Chaplin’s films between 1918 and 1931. He featured in seven in total: first, as a saloon owner in A Dog’s Life, and, most famously, as a sculptor in City Lights. He would also appear alongside Douglas Fairbanks, a visitor at the Jonathan Club, in The Three Musketeers in 1921. Some of those cameos can be viewed here.

Chaplin would regularly champion Redmond’s incredible skill as a painter. He effused of his canvases that, “There’s such a wonderful joyousness about them all. Look at the gladness in that sky, the riot of color in those flowers. Sometimes I think that the silence in which he lives has developed in him some sense, some great capacity for happiness in which we others are lacking.” He even arranged for him to have a dedicated space on his studio complex for him to produce his artworks, with numerous works disappearing into Chaplin’s private collection. But, despite his success in Hollywood as one of its most well-known deaf actors, Chaplin recognized that painting was Redmond’s enduring talent.

Redmond, whose distinctive style was akin to the pointillism of the French Impressionists, followed the imperative of a deep personal philosophy. He felt that the artist should approach painting with a positive, untroubled state of mind, knowing clearly what he wanted to express and striving to put his soul into each work. His advice to his fellow artists? “When you come down to it, art is not all realism. You must know what you yourself want to express, and what no other person can do for you. Shut yourself up, and don’t allow anyone to tell you how a picture should be painted.”

Oaks and Meadow, Granville Redmond, circa 1904, oil on canvas

Jonathan Club owns three of Redmond’s works: Late Afternoon, California (circa 1910), on display in the Main Lobby; Pond with Oaks (1909), on the third floor; and California Landscape - Oaks and Meadow (circa 1904), visible within the Florentine Lounge. The latter was exhibited at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904, where it received a great deal of acclaim. It represents a tranquil Southern California scene, and a vista well known to Redmond: the view from his home looking north. Rich Reitzell comments of the work: “It shows how Redmond applied the traits of the French Barbizon style to California’s local landscape. The brushwork is oily and smooth. He chooses the dramatic lighting of the late afternoon, when the lower elevations are bathed in shadow and the distant hills are still illuminated by the sun. Yet he bows to Southern California’s inherent warmth by using reds and oranges in his shadowy area rather than blues and greens.”

Pond with Oaks, Granville Redmond, 1909, oil on canvas

Redmond exhibited the painting again in 1905 at the Fourth Annual Exhibition of the Ruskin Art Club in Los Angeles. There, Henry E. Huntington saw and acquired it for the Jonathan Club’s Pacific Electric headquarters for $500, as a gift to celebrate the club’s 10th anniversary. The work remains on display in the Jonathan Club and is the longest-owned painting in its collection. Another Redmond painting was purchased by the Club shortly after, but was stolen a few years later.

This thinly painted work is stylistically close to Tonalism, a movement in America at the turn of the 20th century, in which artists bathed their landscapes with overall color tones inspired by sunlight, moonlight, fog, and rain. In this painting, the marshy landscape seems compressed under a lowering sky, and the muted colors convey that serene time in the late afternoon before night descends. These quiet depictions have often been interpreted as exemplifying his deafness, due in part to Redmond’s own statement that he wished to paint “pictures of solitude and silence.”