The Hills of Home

ClassificationsPaintings-oils

Artist Hanson Duvall Puthuff (American, 1875 - 1972)

Datec. 1915

Place DepictedCalifornia, United States, North America

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions24 × 30 in. (61 × 76.2 cm)
Framed: 33 × 39 × 3 3/4 in. (83.8 × 99.1 × 9.5 cm)

Credit LineMartha C. Stevens Memorial Art Collection

Object numberF7694

DescriptionThis painting by Hanson Duvall Puthuff displays a darkened foreground, beyond which one views a sunlit valley and distant hills, and a pathway leading one’s eye into the distance. Plein air artists often finished works in the studio that were based on sketches and studies made outdoors on the land. Puthuff moved to Los Angeles in 1903, and founded the Art Students League with Antony Anderson. He lived in La Crescenta, which is depicted in many of his paintings. Although he arrived in Los Angeles as a commercial artist, Puthuff was able to devote himself full-time to easel painting by 1926.

In 1928, Los Angeles Art Critic Merle Armitage named the local school of landscape painters the "Eucalyptus School." This derogatory term carrried with it the implication that the painting's brushwork was weak, the hues bland, the drawing negligible, and the meaning vapid; however, it described possibly 90 percent of the landscapes produced in Southern California in the 1920s. Puthuff, one of the top names in the California Impressionist arena, certainly approaches the "Eucalyptus School" category in some of his later works, but the Bowers Museum is fortunate to have two early excellent paintings that still retain three-dimensionality and structure:"The Hills of Home" and "The Hills of Santa Ynez".

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