Edgar Alwin Payne (1883-1947)
Edgar Payne was born in Washburn, Missouri in 1883. At the young age of fourteen he was completely on his own and traveled to Chicago where he briefly studied at the Art Institute. In 1911 he traveled west to Laguna Beach, California where he met his wife Elsie Palmer, also a painter in San Francisco. They moved to Laguna Beach in 1917, and Payne was the first president of the Laguna Beach Art Association, elected in 1920. Payne was commissioned by the Chicago owned Congress Hotel in San Francisco to paint an 11,000 foot mural. As a California native he sketched the Sierras frequently and learned them so well that later a lake was named for him there.
In the early 1920′s he traveled to Europe where he painted maritime and mountain scenes, but upon returning to California he once again painted what he is most noted for, the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range’s majestic peaks and lakes. Eventually, Payne gained respect as one of the leading California landscape artists. In 1941 he wrote, “The Composition of Outdoor Painting”, which is now in it’s fifth printing. Payne’s works can be found in important private collections and in museums such as the Laguna Beach Museum of Art, the Chicago Art Museum, and Southwest Museum of Los Angeles and the National Academy of Design Collection. Payne passed away in 1947 in Hollywood, California.