MILLARD OWEN SHEETS

As a leading example of the California School of Painting during the 1930s and 40s, the work of Millard Sheets helped bring worldwide attention to the artists of California. In addition to his watercolors, Sheets was able to travel the world, serve in World War II, head several art school departments, including the Otis School in Los Angeles, and design hundreds of murals and buildings across the United States.

Table of Contents

• I. BIOGRAPHY
• II. AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK
• III. CHRONOLOGY
• IV. COLLECTIONS
• V. EXHIBITIONS
• VI. MEMBERSHIPS
• VII. AWARDS
• VIII. BIBLIOGRAPHY
• IX. WORKS FOR SALE BY THIS ARTIST

I. BIOGRAPHY

Millard Owen Sheets was born on June 24, 1907 in Pomona, California to Milly Owen and John Gaspar Sheets. Shortly after his birth, Milly Owen passed away, leaving Millard to be cared for by his grandparents, Lewis and Emma Owen, at their purebred horse ranch in Pomona. Growing up in such an idyllic place allowed Sheets to develop a love for his surroundings. After high school, Sheets received a scholarship to attend the Chouinard School of Art in 1925. While there, Sheets learned from Clarence Hinkle (1880-1960) and F. Tolles Chamberlin (1873-1961) and discovered a personal preference for watercolors. Sheets had spent less than two years at the school when Mrs. Chouinard herself hired him on as a watercolor teacher. Just before graduating from art school, at the age of twenty-one, Sheets had a solo exhibition at the Newhouse Galleries in Los Angeles in 1929.

In that same year, Sheets received the Edgar B. Davis Prize in the San Antonio Competitive Exhibition which consisted of a $1,750 award. With the prize money, Sheets decided to travel the world. He painted and sketched his way across South America, Central America, and Europe for a year. While he was in Paris, Sheets learned the art of lithography and had the opportunity to meet Henri Matisse (1869-1954).

Sheets returned back home to Los Angeles and after five months, he married a UCLA student named Mary Baskerville in 1930. Soon after, his painting Women of Cartagena (1930) was selected into the International Exhibition of Paintings at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, the most demanding art jury in the United States. His work was the only representative art west of the Mississippi in the show and acted as a breakthrough for other Western artists. Along with some of his fellow Chouinard graduates and friends, such as Phil Dike (1906-1990), Sheets became active in the California Water Color Society As a prominent member of the Society, Sheets helped bring a renewed interest in watercolor across California.

The Great Depression was occurring at this time and as one of the leading representatives of California art, Sheets became one of five directors of the Public Works of Art program in Southern California. Along with Merle Armitage, Dalzell Hatfield, McDonald Wright, and Arthur Millier, Sheets selected ninety-five artists to create paintings, sculpture, murals and graphics to be used by the government for public spaces.

In 1932 Sheets went back to school, this time at Scripps College in Claremont. After his graduation, he was asked to head a brand new fine arts department. Five years later, he was also asked to be the director of the Claremont Graduate School’s art department. His time at Claremont was interrupted briefly by military service during World War II. As an artist correspondent for Life magazine, he was stationed on the Burma-India front from 1943-44. There he documented the troubling scenes of war, famine, and destruction through painting. His time in the military deeply affected him and consequently the work he produced post war is dark, both in subject matter and color palette.

When he returned to Los Angeles in 1944, Sheets continued his post at Scripps until 1955. He also began a directorial position at a new art school called Otis Art Institute. Sheets completely revamped the mission and format of the school, allowing its students to earn bachelors and masters degrees in Fine Arts. In addition to his administrative work, Sheets also began work designing a couple of branch banks in Los Angeles. This job would eventually turn into the completion of over forty Home Savings and Loan buildings throughout the state. Along with the design of the banks he created murals of either paint, mosaic, stained glass or tapestry. By the end of his career, Sheets had completed over one hundred such murals for buildings across the United States.

In 1960, he moved to Gualala, on the Northern California coast, where he built the home of his dreams. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Sheets continued his work in education by holding painting workshops in the United States and abroad. On March 31, 1989, at the age of eighty-two, Sheets died at his home in Gualala.

II. AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK

As a child, Millard Sheets’ aunts gave him crayons and pencils and encouraged him to draw and color. At seven years old, he began to take painting lessons from a neighbor. At age eleven, Sheets won first prize for a drawing at the L.A. County Fair in 1919. While attending the Chouinard School, Sheets studied under the artist Clarence Hinkle who had a significant influence on his early painterly style. Also influential was instructor and artist F. Tolles Chamberlin.

Sheets worked in both oils and watercolor, but because he was constantly traveling, he preferred to paint plein-air with watercolor because of its portability and its quick drying, easy to work with nature. The early paintings that he produced for the California Water Color Society are impressionistic with bold brushstrokes and reminiscent of Clarence Hinkle’s work. After 1931, his style became his own, with more defined lines and abstract forms with a focus on the California landscape. His landscapes convey movement and rhythm and are imbued with Sheets’ love of the land. His brushstrokes are long and fluid and his color choices dramatic.

Sheets also painted scenes of the working class, being careful to present an honest picture of the times. His interest in capturing the lives of the common people fueled his travels around the world. Mexico, in particular, had a large impact on Sheets, and he returned there several times. The work of Mexican artists Diego Rivera (1886-1957) and Jean Charlot (1889-1979) were influential to Sheets in his early years. In the 1950s, Hawaii became a major focus of his painting. He and his wife had visited there several times.

A major shift occurred in Sheets’ style because of his time served overseas in World War II. The paintings produced during and in the years after the war are somber and lack the peaceful energy of his earlier landscapes. During this time, Sheets was so affected by what he had experienced that he was not able to create many complete works. He made many sketches and worked “furiously”, in his words, in order to exorcise the demons inside him.

In addition to paintings, Sheets is responsible for the design of over forty California branch banks as well as their accompanying mural works. The bank murals highlight local subject matter and are created from tapestry, mosaic, stained glass or traditional paint. These murals allowed Sheets to continue his love for public art.

The time in which Sheets began his career as an artist was the height of American Scene painting, the focus on the people and landscapes of the United States as a reaction against European art after World War II. Because of his talent and quick rise to prominence as a watercolorist in the California Water Color Society, Sheets helped to start a Southern California Regionalism movement. From 1929 to 1948, Sheets helped bring national attention to California and its artists.

The Millard Sheets Center for the Arts at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona stands today as a testament to the educational work Sheets accomplished in his life. In 1931 Sheets was named director of what was then known as the Fine Arts Program of the L.A. County Fair. He was to hold this position for twenty-five years, during which he created some of the most impressive exhibitions ever to be brought to Los Angeles. In 1994 the gallery was dedicated to Millard Sheets.

III. CHRONOLOGY

1907 Born in Pomona, California on June 24

1925-29 Attends the Chouinard School of Art

1928 Wins the first prize Los Angeles County Fair

1929 Graduates from Chouinard School of Art

1929 First solo show at the Newhouse Galleries in Los Angeles

1929-30 Wins the Edgar B. Davis Prize in the San Antonio Competitive Exhibition and travels through Europe

1930 Marries Mary Baskerville

1931-56 Acts as the director of the Fine Arts Exhibition at the L.A. County Fair

1932-38 Teaches at Scripps College

1933-35 Serves a director of the Southern California Public Works of Art Program

1935-36 Teaches at University of Hawaii, summer school

1936-55 Becomes director of arts at Scripps College

1937-38 Teaches at the University of California, Berkeley

1938 Guest of Honor, International Watercolor Exhibition, Arts Institute of Chicago

1940-42 Teaches regional painting workshops in New Mexico and Texas

1943-44 Serves as war correspondent for Life magazine on the Burma-India front

1953-59 Acts as director of Otis Art Institute

1954-75 Begins designs on what will become forty Home Savings and Loan buildings

1960 Moved with his wife, Mary, to Gualala, on the Mendocino Coast, to build his dream home, “Barking Rocks”

1960-61 Visits and lectures in Turkey and USSR as part of the U.S. State Department American Specialist Program

1967-75 Member of the Board of Directors at the California Institute of the Arts

1976-83 Teaches regional painting workshops in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Texas, Virginia and Hawaii

1983 Produces the book Your Drawing is a Measure of Your Mind

1989 Died at the age of 81 at his home in Gualala, California on March 31

IV. COLLECTIONS

Art Institute of Chicago, IL

Brooklyn Museum, NY

Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA

Cleveland Museum of Art, OH

De Young Museum, San Francisco, CA

Fort Worth Museum, TX

Hackley Art Center, Muskegon, MI

High Museum, Atlanta, GA

Irvine Museum, CA

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA

Los Angeles Public Library, CA

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Museum of Modern Art, New York

National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.

Orange County Museum, CA

San Diego Museum, CA

San Francisco Museum of Art, CA

Scripps College, Claremont, CA

Seattle Art Museum, WA

Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC

The White House, Washington, DC

Whitney Museum, New York, NY

Wood Art Gallery, Montpellier, VT

V. EXHIBITIONS (Selected)

1918, 1928, 1930 Los Angeles County Fair, CA

1928-30 Arizona State Fair

1929 Texas National Competition, San Antonio, TX

1929-40 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

1929 Dalzell Hatfield Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (first solo)

1930, 1932, 1945, 1980 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA

1930, 1932, 1933, 1938 California State Fair

1931-32 Santa Cruz Art League

1932 Oakland Art Gallery

1932 Painters & Sculptors Club, Los Angeles, CA

1932-49 Corcoran Gallery Biennials, Washington, D.C.

1933 Century of Progress Exposition, Chicago, IL

1936 Foundation of Western Art, CA

1938 Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1939 World’s Fair, New York, NY

1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, CA

1939 Whitney Museum, NY

1950 Pasadena Art Institute (solo)

1964 Arthur Tooth Galleries, London, England

1972 Phoenix Art Gallery, AZ

1974, 1979, 1983 Laguna Beach Museum of Art, CA

1983 Crocker Art Museum Association, Sacramento, CA

1984 Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art

VI. MEMBERSHIPS

American Watercolor Society

Bohemian Club

California Art Club

California Water Color Society

Laguna Beach Art Association

National Academy

Society of Motion Picture Art Directors

VII. AWARDS (Selected)

1928 First prize, Los Angeles County Fair

1929 Edgar B. Davis Prize, San Antonio Competitive Exhibition

1928 First landscape purchase prize, Arizona State Fair

1929 Prize, Texas National Competition, San Antonio

1930 Second prize, landscape, California State Fair

1930 First prize, watercolor, Ebell Club, Los Angeles

1931 First prize, watercolor, Santa Cruz art league

1932 First prize, landscape, California State Fair

1932 First prize, watercolor, Los Angeles Museum

1933 Second prize, California Water Color Society

1933 First prize, watercolor, Santa Cruz Art League

1938 First prize, watercolor, California State Fair

1938 Watson F. Blair Purchase Prize, Chicago Art Institute

1943 Dana Watercolor Medal, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

1945 First prize, California Watercolor society Exhibition, Los Angeles Museum

1946 Art prize, Orange County Fair

1962 Otis Art Institute, Master of Fine Arts

1977 National Watercolor Society, Citation in Recognition of Distinctive Achievements During Fifty Years of Membership, 1927-1977

VIII. Bibliography

1. 1. Westphal, Ruth Lilly, and Janet Blake Dominik, ed., American Scene Painting: California, 1930s and 1940s. Westphal Publishing, 1991.
2. 2. Loovos, Janice, and Edmund F. Penney. Millard Sheets: One Man Renaissance. Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Press, 1984.
3. 3. Selections From The Irvine Museum. Irvine, California: The Irvine Museum,1992.
4. 4. Gordon McClelland. The California Style: California Watercolor Artists 1925-1955. Beverly Hills: Hillcrest, 1985.

IX. WORKS FOR SALE BY THIS ARTIST