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Edgar Alwin Payne
American, 1882-1947
Leaving home at age 14, Payne painted houses, signs, portraits, murals, and local theater stage sets, to pay his way. First traveling through the Ozarks, then around the Southeast and Midwest of the U.S., and then on to Mexico, he finally wound up in Chicago, and enrolled to study portrait art at the Art Institute of Chicago. He remained only two weeks at the institute, finding it too structured. He preferred instead to be self-taught, relying on practice and his own sense of direction.
Struggling at first, he soon exhibited a group of landscape works, painted on a small easel, at the Palette and Chisel Club. During this period he also obtained the occasional mural work to supplement his income.
He made his way to California for the first time in 1909, at the age of 26. He spent several months painting at Laguna Beach, then headed to San Francisco. In San Francisco he met other artists, including commercial artist Elsie Palmer (1884–1971. He returned to California for a second time in 1911. When he returned to Illinois that fall, he found that Elsie had taken a job as commercial artist in Chicago. This cemented their already growing interest in each other. On the morning of their wedding day about a year later, 9 November 1912, Edgar noticed that the light was “perfect", and had Elsie postpone the ceremony until the afternoon. Luckily the artist in her offered some understanding.
As a couple they became well known in Chicago’s art circle. Elsie helped Edgar with his mural work, and soon he had an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. He earned his first major commission in 1917. In a bid to attract tourist, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad asked him to paint the Southwest, along the railroads' trek from Albuquerque to California. This commission would solidify, not only his reputation as an artist, but it would also forever link him to Western America. When the Santa Fe commission expired the couple returned to San Francisco. Edgar received a commission from the Congress Hotel in Chicago for a mural of 11,000 square yards of muslin. The mural would cover several floors of the hallways of the hotel. 1918, Edgar and Elsie would make their home, with studio in Laguna Beach. He would organize a local art association, the Laguna Beach Art Association, and become its first president. They would spend the next four years painting their way throughout the southwest, and to places like Canadian Rockies in British Columbia, and Alberta, Canada, and then exhibiting in the Los Angeles area. Sometimes their trips would be hiking into the backcountry, looking for undisturbed places of raw, and rare beauty, to paint, sometimes for weeks. After finding success during this period, the trio took a two-year “painting tour” of Europe, 1922-1924. Painting in Brittany, Paris, Provence, Switzerland, and Venice. Of course his favorite place in Europe was the Alps, painting The Great White Peak of Mont Blanc.
Upon returning the U.S. in the fall of 1924, they first stayed in Chicago, then back to Laguna Beach, and then on to New York City in 1926. Always on the go, they would move and paint in Arizona, California, the California Sierras, Connecticut, New Mexico, New York, and Utah. They would spend the summers crossing the country, painting as they went. They returned to Europe to paint the harbors of Brittany, and Chioggia, in 1928. The following summer they painted Lake Louise, Alberta.
After the financial collapse of 1929, and the subsequent Great Depression, commissions didn’t come as easily, so the Paynes returned to Southern California on a more permanent basis. His lifelong obsession with the Sierras would lead him to produce a documentary film, “Sierra Journey”. In 1941 he wrote "Composition of Outdoor Painting".
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