Elmer Wachtel & Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel Original Vintage Antique California Impressionist Plein Air Landscape Miniature Oil Painting 2 Painting Set
Two original vintage antique, miniature California Plein Air impressionist landscape oil paintings; one of each, by husband and wife artists, Elmer Wachtel, (1864-1929), and Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel, (1873-1954).
Elmer Wachtel (1864-1929) was an American painter who lived and worked in Southern California. He was known for his Plein Air California impressionistic landscapes.
Wachtel was born in Baltimore, Maryland on January 21, 1864. He moved to California in 1882 to live with his brother, who was working in San Gabriel. Wachtel worked as a ranch hand and as a furniture store clerk while saving money to attend art school.[1][8] He also worked as a violinist, playing for the Philharmonic Orchestra of Los Angeles. Wachtel was largely self-taught as a painter. He studied at the Art Students' League in New York for two months and then later at the Lambeth School of Art in London. Wachtel married painter Marion Kavanagh in 1904; the two lived in the Arroyo Seco region of Los Angeles.
Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel (1876-1954) Landscape painter. Born in Milwaukee, WI on June 10, 1876 into an artistic family. Marion’s mother was an artist and her great grand-father a Royal Academician in London. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago under Vanderpoel and in New York City with William M. Chase. For several years she taught at the AIC and established a reputation in Milwaukee as a competent portrait painter. A commission from the Sante Fe Railroad Company to paint scenes in their ticket offices brought her to California. Arriving in San Francisco in 1903, she became a pupil of William Keith. Learning of her proposed move to Southern California, Keith suggested that she contact Elmer Wachtel. A romance blossomed, and they married in 1904. After Elmer’s death in 1929, she was inactive for a few years but continued to live in their Arroyo Seco home; by the early 1930s, she was painting and exhibiting again. Mrs. Wachtel worked almost exclusively with watercolors until after her husband’s death; and then used both watercolor and oil in her paintings. Regular exhibitions with both the New York and California Watercolor Societies, made her paintings popular on both coasts. Her early works are tighter and more meticulously detailed than those produced after 1920. After her marriage, the artist dropped the "u" in her surname and spelled it "Kavanagh". She died at her home in Pasadena on May 22, 1954.
Member: California Watercolor Society; Academy of Western Painters, LA; Pasadena Society of Painters; Friday Morning Club, LA; New York Watercolor Club; Ten Painters of LA.
Exhibited: LACMA 1915, 1917; Stanford University, 1936.
Works held: Laguna Museum; California State Building, LA; Woman’s Club, Hollywood; Cedar Rapids Museum; Freemont High School, LA; Gardena (CA) High School; Friday Morning Club, LA.
American Art Annual 1909-1929; Who’s Who in American Art 1936-53; Fielding’s; The Woman Artist in the American West; Women Artists in America; Samuels; Ber; Laguna Beach Museum of Art, 1918-78 cat; California Design, 1910; Artists of the American West; Southern California Artists; Los Angeles Painters of the 1920s; Plein Air Painters; Women of the West, 1928.
Ref: https://www.californiawatercolor.com/pages/marion-wachtel-biography
Elmer Wachtel
(1864-1929)
Approximately 4.5” X 3”, plus frame
Oil on canvas, backed by board
Mountain landscape
Signed lower right, "WE" (inverted initials)
Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel
(1876-1954)
Approximately 4.5” X 3”, plus frame
Oil on canvas, backed by board
Lone Cypress, ocean landscape
Signed lower right, "M"
Rare miniature set of paintings by the popular Southern California wife and husband team. (Both have miniature paintings catalogued, but none found that are a set of paintings from both painters)
Both paintings are in excellent original condition, with no missing paint, or restorations performed. Both paintings are housed in original vintage frames. Both are estimated to have been created approximately 1925. Please review images.
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