Rare Vintage Mid Century Joe Brotherton San Francisco Rooftops Western Artist-California- Asian 4 Panel Screen Painting- please read the story! Note - International buys, please contact us for shipping.
We are offering an incredible Mid Century San Francisco California ink/watercolor/gouache painting that was done on paper and applied on a four panel Japanese screen. The scene is of the tops of San Francisco buildings, house rooftops. Zen, peacefulness and mindfulness . Beautiful!
The paintings are applied to beautifully constructed screens that are are rimmed in wood, with brass ormolu fittings, a Chantung silk matt and backed with interesting hand printed optical illusion wall paper. The screens are joined together on one side with interwoven silk straps. Features a 1950's label "No 5A-4, Japan" Such wonderful craftsmanship!
Asian influence was a big design motif of the 1950'S. Use this as a feature headboard , or to make a statement, or on a wall. A very nice long size- almost 82"- going on 7 ft by 33.5" high. The outer panels are 20.75" long, the two inner panels a 20" long.
This was purchased at a Gallery show in the 1950's.
Joe Brotherton was called a "Western Oriental Artist." Listed American California artist. Rare Mid Century San Franciscan scene. Statement wall piece. Excellent condition. Please see the Bio below!
Biography from Johns' Western Gallery
Joe Brotherton, A Life In Art
Joe Brotherton was born in the rough community of Bozeman, Montana in 1918. A contemporary photograph ca. 1930 captures young Brotherton astride his pinto horse herding horses into the Ox Yoke Ranch corral at Emigrant, Montana, which not only stands in contrast to his later artistic career but presents a continuing reminder of the Northwest life that continues alongside the enormous array of Asian, urban, and psychic landscapes that inform his brush strokes to this day.
Brotherton left Montana for Seattle, attending the University of Washington to major in journalism. After service in World War II, he returned to live in Seattle, then in La Conner, Washington, where he began to paint as well as write. At La Conner he met other painters such as Guy Anderson and Mark Tobey, who would, along with Morris Graves and Kenneth Callahan become known as the Northwest Mystics due to the influence of Asian spiritual traditions on their work. Though Brotherton did have a serious interest in Asian art and antiquities at the time, it wasn't until after he moved to San Francisco in 1948, that an epiphany in the form of a Japanese ink brush, would change his painting forever. He tells the story in his oral history interview with Paul Karlstrom for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art:
"Anyhow, when I came to San Francisco I kept on working at painting. But what really transformed my work happened this way: One evening I was walking home from some place -- and here was a plaque on the side of a building on Bush Street, "American Academy of Asian Studies." So, I walked upstairs and met this sort of slender gent who was very affable and forthcoming. His name was Alan Watts and at that time he was sort of headmaster or curator of this organization, The American Academy of Asian Studies. I got quite well acquainted with Alan Watts and gave some very sparsely attended lectures on Asian art at his Academy. One night he called up and said, "Joe, I'm terribly sorry to do this to you but I have this Zen Abbott in my office here in full canonical fig and he insists that he wants to teach calligraphy at the Academy here. Joe took lessons from this famous man, Hodo Tobase.
Thus by the 1960's, the title line of an Alfred Frankenstein review of Joe's work in the San Francisco Chronicle was, "A Western Oriental Artist." The grounding in calligraphy and the Japanese manner of brush painting, along with a serious study of Asian Art, were a source of thematic development and experimentation with form and style from simple spare ink sketches of North Beach coffee house bohemia, to elaborately mounted scrolls and screens translating northwest scenes such as the Olympic Rain Forrest, as well as architecturally detailed descriptions in color of Venice, Florence, Rome, San Francisco, Kyoto and other cities. Further demonstrating his sense of freedom and receptivity to the possibilities inherent in these forms, was the example of a series of 16 paintings exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum. Noticing the patterns on a wet porch of drift planks at Hartstene Island, Washington, Joe devised a method using tempera and Chinese ink on kozo paper laid down on the wood and was thus able to achieve interesting textural effects, behind which he could paint, as in his marvelous, "Goose Resting." Many of these were then mounted as panels and folding screens. It seems a possibility that this painting came from this gallery exhibition.
Painting
Four Panel Fold
11L2z+ 5=16.2
33.5 H
81.75" when total open
20.75, 20" small ones
cardbd 42x25x4
