🔥 Antique California WPA Regionalism Oil Painting, Greenbrae Arks

Description: This is a well done and expressively rendered Antique California WPA Regionalism Oil Painting on Artist Board, by early Northern California landscape painter, Ted Christensen (1911 - 1998.) This artwork depicts a neighborhood of "Ark Homes" in Greenbrae, California. These sorts of homes, built over water, flourished in the San Francisco Bay area from the 1890's - 1930's, particularly in Marin County and the early communities of Sausalito, Greenbrae, and Tiburon. The central building depicted in this artwork is a large, two-story Ark home, which are nearly nonexistent today. Signed: "Ted Christensen" at the lower left edge. Additionally, this piece is titled and signed on the verso: "Greenbrae Arks - Ted Christensen." Approximately 19 x 23 inches (including frame.) Actual artwork is approximately 16 x 20 inches. This piece likely dates to the late 1940's - 1950's. Good condition for age, with some mild scuffing and edge wear to the vintage wooden frame (please see photos.) Acquired from an old collection in Los Angeles County, California. If you like what you see, I encourage you to make an Offer. Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks! About the Artist: Ted Christensen Born: 1911Died: 1998 - Sonoma, CaliforniaKnown for: Landscape, coastal view, seascape The following biography is provided by Gary Stanley / ArtSanDiego:Ted Christensen was born in 1911. He painted impressionist landscapes and seascapes in a variety of media. His images came from his extensive travels to New Mexico, California, Hawaii, and Europe.After World War II, where he served as a machine gunner, he received an injury-related discharge, which forced him to search out other occupational avenues. He took up painting at this time. His formal training included time spent at the Otis Art Institute and the Museum School in Portland, Oregon.He has exhibited widely throughout the Southwest and Northwest. He has been an award winner at the Oregon Society of Arts. His works are in the permanent collections of the University of New Mexico and St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico.In 1989 he was residing in Sonoma, California. He died in California in 1998.Credit: The California Art Review, Les Krantz, 1989 Ted ChristensenAmerican1911-1998Biography Painter and printmaker Ted Christensen was born in Vancouver, Washington, on March 20, 1911. He began as a self-taught painter, borrowing from the landscape surrounding his hometown beginning in 1938. With the entry of the U.S. into World War II, Christensen enlisted in the Army; after only a few months a gunner, he incurred a broken neck and was honorably discharged from his duties. Rather than return home, he enrolled in courses at the Otis Art Insistute in Los Angeles, CA, and then the Museum School in Portland, OR, on the G.I. Bill. In 1949 he moved to Sausalito, CA, where he set up his first permanent studio.Christensen's style included Abstract and Impressionist influences. He was known for his outdoor scenes and he was frequently on the road, painting en plain air, even in wintery conditions. He traveled throughout the U.S. from coast to coast, and taking special interest in the Southwest and the West Coast. He recorded the landscapes and cityscapes of New Mexico, California, and Hawaii, as well as Europe. He exhibited widely throughout the U.S.In 1968 he was the recipient of New Mexico's Wurlitzer Foundation Grant, and in 1983 was selected as a Treasure Artist by the Sonoma Cultural and Fine Arts Commission. From 1952 to 1960 he was an art instructor at the College of Marin.In the 1980s Christensen settled permanently in Sonoma, California. He lived and worked there, continuing to exhibit until very near his death in 1998. His works are held in the University of New Mexico and in the permanent collections of museums in Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, and California. Artist Ted Christensen Adopts Sausalito For Permanent HomeSausalito News, Number 22, 9 June 1949 A new member of the S. S Lassen family to set up his easel aboard the historic old boat and call her home, is Ted Christensen, versatile, Washington born artist whose works include oil paintings, water colors, etchings, dry points, block prints and caramics. Ted has been exercising his talents in the field of art for the past ten years during which time he has received wide recognition for his work. His art has rated numerous first awards in West coast exhibits and has also been featured in a number of one man shows. Sitting tailor fashion on the not too gently sloping floor of his Lassen studio (incidently Ted occupies the most unique quarters on the ship; you can fish right through the floor of his living room) the artist reaches for a cigarette from a nearby coffee table as he recalls the days when he first took to paints and brushes. Most of his early work was inspired by the scenery in and around Vancouver, his home town, back in about 1938. After two years of painting, he enlisted with the army and three months later incurred a broken neck while soldiering at Fort Lewis. He was released from the service and tried to re-enlist, overseas duty being his goal. However, those who had the say so said, “No,” and Ted decided to go to art school. He studied at Art Center school in Los Angeles and later transferred to Otis. He has also received instruction at the University of Oregon Extension, Portland Art Museum and from several well-known individual artists. Ted doesn't dote on any specific type of subject. His canvasses include landscapes, seascapes, portraits or quaint old building which he is particularly fond of doing. One unusually interesting painting, casually displayed in his studio, depicts a gay group of dancer with the musicians in the background. Another, which catches and holds the eye bears the self-explanatory title, “Carrousel." This artist’s inspiration is completely unpredictable and much of his work is done from memory. He is a rapid-fire painter, devoting anywhere from twenty minutes to four hours in completing a picture. His average is about two and one half hours. He accounts for his speed by explaining that he is not really conscious of actually painting. He merely re-acts to his inspiration and consequently the time allotted to a picture is measured by the duration of the inspiration. Many of Christensen’s landscapes possess the wild flavor of the rugged countryside—and in all his work there is an appealing naturalness and warmth of color. His art reaches out to everyone. It can be understood by those who find it difficult to appreciate some of the more abstract works and obviously appeals to the experts as well, since some of his paintings have ben sold to the connoisseurs. Very little of his work is modern and even that is only moderately modern. When asked whether he likes Modern Art, the artist nods in the affirmative and readily answers, “Yes,” but adds, ‘‘of course there is good and bad modern art." Although Ted has completed, some three hundred oils and watercolors during the past two years, he has found time for various other activities in the artistic world, one of which is ceramics. Following two years of work with clay and the potter’s wheel, one of his creations was displayed in the thirteenth national ceramics exhibit at the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts. “It didn’t merit an award,” Ted says modestly, “but somebody must have liked it because it was sold the first day.” The newcomer to this community is currently associated with Heath Ceramics. He loves Sausalito and has already adopted it for his permanent home. He expects to do a lot of painting since he finds a wealth of material here. Incidentally he loves the Lassen too and grins his broad grin as he tells an amusing story of how she stole the credit for one of his masterpieces. It seems he recently received a catalogue from an art show where two of his oils were exhibited. One was listed under the name of Ted Christensen: the other under the name S. S. Lassen. A new interest in the artist’s life is jewelry making. His instructors are none other than Ed and Loyola Fourtane, incomparable jewelry designers, currently teaching adults classes at Marina Junior high school. The Fourtanes keep shop in the pilot house aboard the Lassen. When Marin Arks Took to the HilltopsBy Laurie ThompsonADecember 15, 1907 San Francisco Call piece by Woodbury S. Brintnall, tells us how some residents of Larkspur’s “Arkville” community were affected by the dredging of the Corte Madera Creek for a resort to be called “Marin City” that never came to pass:Winding in and out like some great serpent, there flows a sluggish stream of salt water which is familiarly known to Marin County as Corte Madera Creek. After following a tortuous course for some distance, it eventually…opens into the waters of San Francisco Bay just to the east of Greenbrae.Years ago, boats of considerable tonnage easily made their way under sail upon this stream…but ceaseless tides have made the channel of little depth and rendered it impossible to navigate for craft other than light skiffs and the houseboat flotilla….From the day…old Captain Samuels..fitted up an abandoned hulk and proceeded to convert it into a home, the idea of houseboat existence has been contagious. One by one other people fitted up houseboats, some of them simply, others rivaling the accommodations afforded by the most luxurious yachts on the coast….Arkville was cheerful. Where once…only the harsh piping of meadow frogs was heard, came the tinkle of mandolin, the plaintive notes of guitars, the sound of laughter borne from the windows of floating homes whose twinkling lights gleamed in hospitable welcome in almost unbroken succession from Escalle to Greenbrae…..…there is the ark Catalina, owned by Charles Parent, a prominent contractor of this city; H. L. Mayo’s ark Ramona, and the Rutheria, belonging to Eugene Mowdry….Every Berkeley and Stanford man knows of the ark Kick Inn, where hilarity never ceased…and where the wildest of pranks were ever being perpetrated….Arkville has been aroused to a frenzy of excited moving, all on account of a peremptory notice served upon its inhabitants, couched in explicit and concise language whose interpretation was merely ‘Sail on; get out; at once -not tomorrow- but today….’ Already the steady pound of pile drivers belonging to the Glann syndicate and building its foundations is heard, great dredgers are deepening and widening Corte Madera creek for ships that are to find dockage at the wharves of Marin City that is to be….They of Bohemia held a hurried and informal session…to discuss ways and means for the preservation of the community at large….But one hateful alternative existed. These were the hills that rose in their redwood garb close by…and so, one by one, over the winding roads of Marin, arks of Bohemia made their creaking sorrowful way, some with the aid of block and tackle and others by means of automobiles and horses. Till now, far up among the redwoods, the flat bottomed houseboats that were wont to dip and toss with the ebbing tide on Corte Madera creek are moored high and dry….But, after all, Bohemia on land or sea is much the same. Only the sight of that houseboat moving is one that will not be forgotten in Marin County for many a year to come… On the Boardwalk / Larkspur Arkites love their unusual living quarters By Sam Whiting (Aug. 17, 2003) The Arks in Larkspur is nearly impossible to find, and some of the residents are upset about that. They want their boardwalk of cottages on the south bank of Corte Madera Creek to be entirely impossible to find. For years, Chris McCluney rented one of the bland apartments across the creek and could not figure out how to get to this ramshackle row without getting wet. When a real estate agent finally snaked him around to the gravel road, parked in the communal lot and walked him out Boardwalk No. 1, McCluney bought a place in a minute flat.He does not live in an ark, by the Larkspur definition of an old floating barge or houseboat dragged up onto the marsh and held there by post and pier. His house was built here and is modern and angular.But he's an Arkite just the same because he embraces the inconvenience of living a third of a mile out a plank walkway that is 4 feet wide and 3 feet high. Everything - groceries, furniture, construction materials - has to be wheeled out on carts in plain view, and the refuse has to be wheeled back in.The Larkspur and Greenbrae hills have been built up around the Arks, but Boardwalk No. 1 has the same curve as it did in 1911, as proved by a vintage postcard that McCluney displays in place-mat size.He's happy to show it, but first you have to find him, and you can't just drop in on an Arkite. McCluney faxes a first-time visitor 25 single-spaced typewritten lines of direction, plus a map.Once past the mailbox cluster and the private-property sign, there are 32 homes with walkways that branch off the main plank. Addresses increase by one- digit increments. McCluney lives at No. 25, so he can see you coming all the way, maybe a third of a mile, and hear the creaking of the boards getting louder.It takes five minutes end to end, so he has plenty of time to tidy the place, open the front door wide and be out on the back deck - a customary Arkite greeting."People always say, 'Do you still live out on a houseboat?' " he says. "Most of the time I won't even correct them, but none of them really are houseboats because they aren't floating."The Arkites are reminded of this at high tide, when the water washes underneath the floorboards.McCluney grew up in St. Louis, and a house on stilts over moving water is the closest thing on the bay to life on the Mississippi. "You'll hear more birds than you will vehicles," he says. "My cats have never even seen a car except when I take them to the vet."According to "Larkspur Past & Present: A History & Walking Guide," there were maybe 400 of these floating flat-bottom shacks in the creeks and channels, starting in the 1850s when Corte Madera Creek was a major port and the hills were full of trees.When the loggers were finished, the creek silted over and became a floodplain. The arks put down roots and there they sat. There used to be four boardwalks full of them in Larkspur, but the three others were on state property that was reclaimed. The residents of No. 1 own their land, so it survived and was once named Arksville, with its own mayor.Now it is a neighborhood near downtown Larkspur, west of Highway 101 and south of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. It's a 10-minute walk to City Hall for McCluney, who is a Larkspur planning commissioner. He's also active in the Arkites Association, which makes sure residents maintain their piece of the walkway. The front yards are uniform house to house - pickleweed and tules."We don't have lawns to water," McCluney says, and there is just one water meter for everybody. The bill is divvied up according to the number of bodies per household, so it is a fiscal duty to watch the comings and goings next door."The fact that we are so joined at the hip does make for a real neighborliness," says McCluney, 54, who works at home, which seems to be the way of the Arkite. There isn't a tremendous pounding down the planks every morning as people rush to work. "We had one person who had to put on a three- piece suit," McCluney says. "But he's no longer here." At 11 a.m. on a summer Tuesday, neighbors are in shorts on their decks waving as he walks by.McCluney paid $275,000 for his home 12 years ago, and has since doubled its size. But some neighbors live in low-ceilinged originals with even lower overhead. Herb Launer, for instance, paid $1 to relieve the town of Tiburon of the Pacific Striped Bass Club building, in 1975. Launer hung the wooden fishing club sign, but he doesn't belabor the ark theme."It's just the fact that the roof is a gentle arc to keep the water off. It hasn't got anything to do with two animals and all of that," he explains. But then he thinks again. "Although," he adds, "I had a friend who lived in one, and when he had a child he called him Noah." LOOKING FOR TIBURON’S ARKSBy Susan CluffArks flourished on San Francisco Bay from the 1890s through the 1930s and were the forerunners of the modern houseboat communities in Sausalito and Greenbrae. In Tiburon, arks were built as weekend dwellings, as duck hunting or fishing clubs, or inexpensive housing that could be towed to deep anchorage, moored to the shoreline, or put up on wood pilings above mudflats, beaches or dry land. Since most arks were built by shipwrights, they had a distinctive style and design for life afloat, even if the dwellings never left the shore. The typical flat -bottom hull was raked at bow and stern allowing it to be towed, a bulkhead was built into the barge for stability, seams were caulked with oakum and pitch for waterproofing, and the area below the waterline covered with Irish felt and a sheath or redwood boards to deter wood-eating shipworms. Tied to the barge wall was the ark cabin, generally with a bow or arched roof, tongue and groove walls, ceilings and floors. Skylights were a common feature and windows slid sideways into the walls or dropped down to take up less space. Interiors were nautical with sleeping bunks, closets, cabinets, benches, and water storage tanks built in. Many arks had masts to fly their colors and brass nameplates with names like Neptune, Nautilus, Dolphin, Zephyrus, Lizzard and Mudlark. In the Landmarks book of oral histories, Both Sides of the Track, Laurence “Bunk” Mersereau said a man named Stinky Wilson who lived on Corin thian Island would haul the floating arks onto the beach once a year, scrape off the barnacles and mop on hot tar as waterproofing. “I remember seeing all the arks, just took them for granted, Mersereau lamented in 1975. “Now they’re all gone.”Over time, Bay ark dwellers anchored closer to shore or put their homes on stilts and set up ark neighborhoods with friends. Moorings along San Rafael Avenue attracted Italian families, another behind Tiburon’s Main Street housed railroad workers, groups of fishermen and dairy workers could be found near Greenwood Cove on Richardson Bay. For a few years, the local library was housed in an ark on the lagoon. In 1964, the Little Mermaid, was moved for use as a teenage clubhouse at the Tiburon Peninsula Club. By the 1960s, most of the arks in Tiburon had destroyed, moved or repurposed to make way for development. Still a few old arks remain if you know where to look for them. Many still have the original porches, pediments, gabled trim, Victorian cottage molding, panel doors and bay windows. There’s a pretty cottage with a white porch at 5 Beach Road, its brick fireplace, rear entrance and other improvements were added later. Over on Ark Row, the blue ark at 104 Main Street is actually two arks on top of each other – the dwelling is 90 percent original with a flat roof, bead and reel molding and slender Corinthian columns. You can find even more if you keep your eyes open Growing Up in Greenbrae by Ann Thomas 2005 Growing up at mid-century, before the hills above Sir Francis Drake Boulevard were covered with homes and apartments, before there was Bon Air Center or Kentfield Gardens, Grant Gildroy recalls a life and a landscape dominated by the creek running through it. Grant was raised on Almenar Drive—one of the first streets developed in the Greenbrae subdivision— and Los Cerros Drive where his parents still live. He now lives in Corte Madera with wife Jill and son Alex; an older daughter Kim teaches college psychology. He attended Greenbrae, Kent Middle and Redwood High schools, and life for him focused on the waterway. Greenbrae during the early 1950s was very different from what it became a decade later. On the Larkspur side of the creek, sparse development along Magnolia Avenue threaded its way into downtown Larkspur, before Skylark and Hillview subdivisions were laid out. On the Greenbrae side, oaks and native grasses covered the hills and flats along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard from San Quentin to Kentfield and down to the creek. The only business at what later became Bon Air Center was Bon Air Super, a freestanding grocery store on the site of the current Wells Fargo bank. It was “the first automated supermarket in Marin,” Grant recalls. A pedestrian bridge at the future site of Bon Air Road linked the two sides of the creek, while to reach downtown Larkspur from Greenbrae by car it was necessary to drive to Kentfield Corners and turn south onto College Avenue. Living in sparsely developed Kentfield and Greenbrae was “like being in the country,” said Grant. An ark owned by a Gildroy cousin was moored, with ballast in its hull, on a pickleweed patch that was occupied years later by Straw Hat Pizza and which is now the Creekside housing complex. The ark was a favored summertime haunt, and was one of a row of these craft linked by a boardwalk that extended to the current location of Larkspur Isle. They were occupied by an assortment of permanent and temporary residents. From the ark Grant and his friends played, swam, fished, hunted, and searched the creek banks for bottles to throw in the water. He even remembers watching people water water-skiing in the creek in the 1960s. The arks were relocated or destroyed in the 60s, he recalls, when the Army Corps of Engineers began its flood control project, the still incomplete undertaking that massively altered the creek up to the Ross Post Office, including putting it in a concrete channel through Kentfield. Besides witnessing the construction of the controversial flood control channel, Grant saw marshes filled in throughout the 50s to facilitate development along South Eliseo Drive, in Hillview and Kentfield Gardens. Fill taken from the hill that later became the Skylark apartments was trucked across Magnolia to fill the flood plain where Hillview would be built. What later became South Eliseo Drive was open land and marsh, vacant except for a couple of hillside homes. Near the creek, next to a large boulder that is still prominent on South Eliseo going east before the road starts sloping uphill, was the now-vanished Polliwog Pond, named for its springtime inhabitants. Though only two to three feet in depth, it was a popular splashing hole for youngsters who clamored on the boulder to jump into the water, and the spot was also rumored to be an Indian burial ground. For Grant, his five siblings and friends, the creek, hills, fields and marshes of the lower reaches of the watershed were a perfect playground. An abandoned boat that floated in on the tide was caught, patched, and fitted with a 3- horsepower motor, then put to work exploring the waterway from College of Marin to the creek’s eastern terminus in the Bay. A birding enthusiast, Grant regrets today that as a teenager he hunted ducks on ponds along Riviera Circle and on marshes off Redwood Highway in Corte Madera. Occupants of homes and arks along the creek, he said, would “pop the ducks off their back porches.” “Now every bird to me is a miracle,” he said. He credits his teen years of hunting with sharpening his ability to differentiate species and with helping build the foundation for a lifelong advocacy for wildlife. In his youth he hunted canvasback, scaup, ruddy duck, pintail and a few mallard, occasionally saw a cinnamon teal or single wigeon, hardly ever a green-winged teal or Canada goose. Although fish and turtles in the creek may have diminished in quantity, he no longer sees king snakes, and polliwogs are nowhere to be seen on South Eliseo, he believes some species of wildlife are more abundant in the lower watershed today than they were a half century ago. He rarely saw a mourning dove as a child, although that species is abundant today, as are Canada geese. Nor does he recall deer at all – probably, he conjectured, because they were hunted at that time on the fringes of the valley. Last year Grant also observed an otter playing in the abandoned creek channel near Friends’ restoration project at the Ecology Study Area off the multi-use path.

Price: 1350 USD

Location: Orange, California

End Time: 2024-08-25T22:02:17.000Z

Shipping Cost: 25 USD