E. Charlton Fortune (1885- 1969)

One of the most widely traveled of the California Impressionists, Euphemia Charlton Fortune was born in Sausalito, CA in 1885 but had close ties to Britain.

Town Gossip by E. Charlton Fortune (1885-1969) 38" x 45", Oil/Canvas laid to board, Signed Lower Right

E. Charlton Fortune (1885- 1969)

One of the most widely traveled of the California Impressionists, Euphemia Charlton Fortune was born in Sausalito, CA in 1885 but had close ties to Britain. Her father was a native of Scotland and during her early childhood she visited the family home of Barnsmuir, a 500-acre farm near the coast in Fifeshire. She returned to Scotland in 1898, three years after the death of her father, and stayed for six years, attending school at the prestigious St Margaret’s Convent in Edinburgh. After graduating in 1904, she enrolled at the St John’s Wood School of Art in London. She continued her art studies after moving to San Francisco with her mother and brother in 1905, enrolling in classes taught by Arthur Mathews at the Mark Hopkins Institute. Mathews, a Tonalist and inventor of what is now referred to as the “California Decorative Style,” strongly emphasized harmony of color and design, as well as the subjective interpretation of nature as subject matter. Fortune’s style was further influenced by Frank Vincent DuMond, with whom she studied at the Art Student’s League in New York, where she and her family moved after losing their home in the 1906 earthquake and fire. DuMond taught his students “to paint light and movement” using technical exercises that aimed to balance light values in order to unify a canvas. The students were also taught to eliminate extraneous details and organize masses into basic shapes, which were to be placed within a system of light, shadow, and halftones. Another profound influence on Fortune’s work was renowned Impressionist William Merritt Chase, with whom she studied at the ASL starting in 1910. She incorporated his bright palette and sense of light and movement into her work, while retaining the balance and tight editing of detail she had previously learned, creating a distinctive modern style that has earned her a place as one of the most admired of California painters.

Throughout the teens and twenties Fortune exhibited often and widely, and divided her time between San Francisco, Monterey, and Scotland and England, where she and her mother spent six years including a year in St Ives, Cornwall in 1922. They also stayed in St. Tropez in 1923. Returning to Monterey in 1927, she re-established her studio there and founded the Monterey Guild, which was devoted to liturgical art. The bulk of her work from that time on was religious in theme, and she worked on the interiors of several churches in the Monterey area, including St. Angela’s church in Pacific Grove, and later, in the 40’s and 50’s, churches in Kansas City, Missouri and Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Her liturgical works, which include altar paintings, mosaics, and murals, are powerfully direct and approachable, and display her skill in figure painting in depictions of scriptural scenes. In 1958 she visited Great Britain and Italy, and returned to live in San Francisco in 1960. From 1963 until her death in 1969 she was again a resident of Carmel.