Art Sleuthing Edgar Payne’s Paintings

Art Sleuthing Edgar Payne’s Paintings, lecture with Eric Jessen
May 30, 2013

7:00 p.m.
Free admission
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Eternal Surge by Edgar Payne (detail pictured above) has just returned to Laguna Art Museum from traveling as part of the exhibition Edgar Payne: The Scenic Journey. As a consultant to the exhibition, Laguna Beach resident Eric Jessen was tasked with finding the locations of fifteen of Payne’s views in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. Jessen will share in vivid detail the detective work that went into solving the mysteries of those locations, as well as some discoveries about paintings by Payne of the Laguna Beach shoreline.
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>> To reserve your spot, please make a reservation online through our website, or contact Membership Manager Valerie Tate at 949.494.8971 x203.
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Edgar Payne is considered one of the most gifted and beloved of California’s early plein-air painters. With its majestic, vital landscape subjects and a bravura application of pigment, Payne’s work exemplifies the power and dynamism that distinguishes California Impressionism from the more genteel French Impressionism of the 18th century.

Eric Jessen

Eric Jessen is a museum environmental consultant who specializes in finding the geographic locations depicted in California Plein Air and Italian Renaissance canvases.
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Jessen retired from his position as Chief of Orange County Department of Harbors, Beaches & Parks (now OC Parks) in 2005, after having been with the department for 31 years.  Previously, he was master planner for projects such as LAX redevelopment, the Fluor Corporation world headquarters in Irvine, and Balboa Park in San Diego. Prior to that, he worked as strategic planner for Howard Hughes holdings, where he did the first master plan for the Ballona Wetlands near Marina del Rey.
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While Jessen was in college, he worked as a landscape contractor, specializing in ocean front estates in Laguna. He was responsible for the historic landscape restoration of the Villa Rockledge, Laguna’s only home on the National Register of Historic Places. His undergraduate and graduate work was in physical geography and biogeography, both at CSU Long Beach.