New Acquisition by Fred Grayson Sayre

Verbena Time on the Desert, by Fred Grayson Sayre

The Jonathan Art Foundation was thrilled to acquire Fred Grayson Sayre’s Verbena Time on the Desert at the California Plein Air art auction, held last November by John Moran Auctioneers. The exceptional work will be on display in the Town Club this month. Before the auction, the painting was one of four Sayre western scenes hanging in an estate in Tennessee.

Fred Grayson Sayre, who signed his paintings “F. Grayson Sayre,” was known as an elegant desert painter. According to Laguna Beach gallery owner Ray Redfern, Sayre was a master at capturing wind, light, and vibration with his short brush strokes. “Life, beauty and motion” define his work, he wrote in an essay for a 1987 catalogue.

The artist is one of 12 the Art Foundation has identified as vitally important plein air painters not currently in the Club’s collection. When Richard Reitzell, a former Art Foundation president and Jonathan Club member, viewed John Moran’s November catalogue, he contacted the Art Foundation Acquisition Committee. After further research, and an actual viewing with Greg Thorpe and myself, the thrilling decision to place a bid was approved by the Foundation.

A highly successful illustrator who later became one of California’s best-known desert landscape painters in both oil and watercolor, Sayre was born in Medoc, Missouri. Except for a high school drawing correspondence course, his only formal art training was several months spent with portraitist J. Laurie Wallace in Omaha, Nebraska. Other than that, Sayre was a self-taught artist.

He first worked in lead and zinc mines and with leather goods before determining to become an artist. He took an engraving job in Houston, Texas, and later moved to Chicago where he earned distinction as an illustrator. He also became a member of the Pallet and Chisel Club, where he met fellow artists Victor Higgins, Edgar Payne, and Walter Ufer. In 1915, Sayre – a rising star in the art world – was abruptly felled by the Chicago diphtheria epidemic. His doctor gave him the solemn news that he only had a few months to live and encouraged him to move to the Southwest.

The history of desert art is entwined with sickness. Painters such as Jimmy Swinnerton and Gordon Coutts first encountered the desert in order to convalesce. Sayre retreated to the Coachella Valley, specifically, the date ranch belonging to his second cousin Ben Laflin, and stayed there for two years. He didn’t pick up a paintbrush the entire time. Rather, he just lay sprawled under the palm trees, looking out over the desert. When he finally regained his strength, he began painting again and didn’t stop for the next 25 years. He knew the desert so well in all its moods that it became part of his consciousness.

In 1922 Sayre settled in Glendale, thriving in the climate of the West. That same year, Sayre held his first art exhibition, comprised of 65 watercolors, in San Francisco’s Bohemian Club. With fellow painter Joseph Kleitsch, Sayre co-founded the Painters and Sculptors Club of Los Angeles (where he served as president in 1929) and was a founding member of the California Watercolor Society.

In the years following his marriage to Ruth Barker in 1926, Sayre gained the acquaintance of a multitude of famous painters, including Guy Rose, Nicolai Fechin, Hanson Puthoff, and Jack Wilkinson Smith. He would visit places like Box Canyon, as well as venture further afield, finding inspiration in the landscapes of Laguna Beach, La Jolla, Monument Valley and Lone Pine.

The years following Fred Sayre’s death in 1939 never yielded a big, post-career retrospective. No matter, he would go on to quietly gain a reputation in the art world as one of California’s most accomplished desert painters.

Sayre’s works have been exhibited at many venues, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Bohemian Club of San Francisco, Wilshire Art Galleries in Los Angeles, and Glendale Art Association in Glendale. We are extremely pleased to add this superb example of Sayre’s work to our collection.