ART : Autumn Exhibit Captures California in Its Golden State

Ask any New Yorker about California autumns, and a smirk is the likely response. We don’t have snow. We don’t have cold. We barely have rain. What we have is less smog and, maybe, more sweaters in the fashion parade.

So, what does a museum do when it puts together a show called “Celebrating California’s Autumn”? It tries to get creative, looks for subtlety and hopes visitors can tell the difference between a hillside in July and a bluff in October.

“Sure, it’s a bit of a challenge,” admitted Jean Stern, the executive director of the Irvine Museum, where the new exhibit continues indefinitely. “People say, ‘Seasonal change? What seasonal change?’ Coming up with diversity is hard, but I think we’ve accomplished that.

“We’ve displayed (paintings) with mums and other (indigenous) flowers that bloom in fall. We show golden fields and oaks getting a little brown. We show sycamores with a wintry look. It’s what we have here in autumn, (perhaps our most) beautiful time of the year.”

The exhibit, including 65 paintings from the museum’s permanent collection and private sources, is mostly Impressionistic landscapes done between 1890 and 1930, an era Stern considers the apex of California nature painting.

The artists include Franz A. Bischoff, Maurice Braun, John Frost, Armin C. Hansen, Edgar Payne and William Wendt.

The state has proved to be a bounty for artists over the years, Stern said, noting that California in the more pristine early 1900s was a mecca for painters seeking glorious vistas, all within easy reach of each other.

“This was a new part of the country that was just developing--it really was the ‘golden state,’ ” he said. “It was so appealing to landscape painters, really a dream for them, because of the short distance it took to find variety. They tended to flock here for the inspiration.”

Another important element, especially for Impressionists, was the pervasive sunlight.

That was apparent to Ella Abramson and her husband, Phil, as they wandered through the small museum. The Huntington Beach couple said Impressionistic paintings were their favorites, mainly because of the rich colors and use of light and shadows for effect.

“This is really lovely,” Ella Abramson, 67, said of Jack Wilkinson Smith’s seascape “Marine,” which shows rough waters churned by an incoming storm as a few rays try to break through.

“The way he uses the grays and blues, and the (sense of) foreboding is very suggestive. It looks like a nasty winter day, very moody.”

Phil Abramson, 72, agreed, but added it was nearly impossible to tell what time of year it was by looking at other works. Paul Grimm’s “Untitled Desert Mountains,” with a snowy mountain range in the background and a sandy expanse in the foreground, seemed autumnal to him, but many works weren’t obvious fall scenes.

“Really, though, who cares?” he said. “They’re pretty pictures anyway.”

Phil’s favorite was Edgar Payne’s large rendition of the Matterhorn. Not Disneyland’s remake, but the towering Swiss original. Though most of the paintings are California-inspired (the landscapes range from San Francisco to San Diego), the museum decided to include Payne’s work because of “its sheer beauty,” Stern said.

“That one really stands out to me,” Phil agreed. “It looks icy, cold. Stare at it long enough and (it might make you) shiver.”