Untitled Landscape

William Wendt
Untitled landscape
Oil on canvas, 1933
16 x 20 inches
Gift of Robert and Shirley Foster from the Estate of Janet W. Wood
2012.007

In 1933, the Laguna Beach papers reported that Wendt was painting in El Toro and in Trabuco Canyon.This painting was likely done en plein air at one of those campsites. The strip of road gives us a sense of the modern, human presence in the artist’s beloved Southern California scenery. Although Wendt generally lamented the incursions of modernity, here he seems to accept the idea of the natural and the man-made coexisting.