Golden State of Mind

Pat and Dick Amtower’s home pays homage to fine art depicting California and reflects their adventures within the state

Pat and Dick Amtower’s home pays homage to fine art depicting California and reflects their adventures within the state

When they were living in married student housing while attending college, Pat and Dick Amtower began collecting art.associated American Artists had been started in 1934 to make affordable prints available to collectors like them.aaa offered “signed originals by America’s great artists” for $25.The couple bought their first Leonard Baskin through the program.they also bought a Haku Maki print at a sale at the Riverside Public Library and two Ansel Adams photographs, also for $25 each, at Best Studio in Yosemite.

“Our collecting paralleled our pursuits,”

Pat relates.“we camped out in ourvw bus: Palomar Mountain, Death Valley, Mammoth Mountain, Joshua Tree,yosemite Valley. Richard took up landscape photography, developing and printing his images in our tiny kitchen in the married student house. I experimented with printing lino and woodcuts, also in the kitchen. “Our interest in Mission-style Arts and

Crafts furniture and California plein air paintings developed from trips to Pasadena to Greene and Greene’s Gamble House and its neighborhood. Our first piece of furniture from this period came from my mother’s antique shop which was in the carriage house of the Mission Inn in Riverside. It was a buffet which had been in the underground storage of the Inn.

Later, when we moved to a house with a large garage, Richard bought the necessary woodworking tools to hand-craft furniture in this style. Our Japanese prints, which include works by Hiroshige and Hokusai, came from galleries and trips to Japan.”

When the couple were out of college and both were working, they were able to expand their collecting. Their Japanese prints were primarily landscapes and it seemed natural for them to stay with landscapes when they began collecting the work of Southern California plein air painters. “The paintings were often scenes of places we liked to travel in ourvw bus,” Pat says,“the sycamores in Laguna Canyon,torrey Pines. Sometimes we bought a landscape of a scene we hadn’t been to and would drive out to the site.” Dick adds,“the paintings had been done many years earlier and often it was impossible to find the view the artist saw.”

Later, they developed relationships with dealers who then knew their taste and interests.with the advent of the Internet, their scope expanded even more.

Among the paintings they purchased from George Stern at Stern Fine Art in West Hollywood are two oils by Phil Dike (1906-1990). Pasadena Bridge, circa 1928, was featured in the Laguna Art Museum’s exhibition Phil Dike:at the Edge of the Sea in 2017.The scene is the famed bridge crossing the Arroyo

Seco at a time when there was a gypsy encampment in the arroyo. “it was a moment that existed once and will never exist again,” Pat observes.

“When we saw it at George Stern’s,” Dick adds, “the architecture and gorgeous colors were stunning. It stood out… george also had the estate of Conrad Buff (1886-1975).”

Pat adds, “we like his style. He painted on the back of postcards, anything he could find.we also collect memorabilia around the artists we like. We have a cigarette box Buff made. When you lift the cover it dispenses a cigarette. In 1917 he worked for Edgar Payne stretching canvases.we also have one of his self-portraits. ”they have 22 or 23 of his paintings.

Buff’s paintings influenced their daughter Laurel in a painting that is now part of their collection. a medieval literature scholar and professor at San Diego State University, Laurel died of brain cancer at the age of 44. In 2017 Pat and Dick established the Laurel Amtower Cancer Institute and Neurooncology Center at Sharp Health Care

in San Diego in her memory.

Business success enabled the couple to expand beyond their $25 print purchases and to acquire works of major importance.t hey discovered Albert Bierstadt’s (1830-1902) Mount Brewer from King’s River Canyon, California, 1872, in an online auction. “It’s the last of his Sierra paintings,” Pat explains. Despite a nerve wracking bad phone connection, Dick was able to place the winning bid.

“Ira Spanierman had a number of paintings in a California art show,” Dick relates. “among them was Rocky Mountains by Thomas Moran (18371926).We liked the painting and bought it.” “it was sold on behalf of the federal government which had seized it from a Ponzi schemer,” Pat adds.

“We like the tonalist painters,” Dick explains, “and purchased our two Charles Rollo Peters (1862-1928) paintings from George Stern. Peters lived in Monterey and his nocturnes of the area earned him the title of ‘Prince of Darkness.’”

The couple also own a rare oil painting by Edward Steichen (18791973), Flower Study on Gold. A painter and photographer, Steichen reached a fateful decision in 1920. He wrote, “As a painter I was producing a high grade wall paper with a gold frame around it…we pulled all the paintings I had made out into the yard and we made a bonfire of the whole thing... it was a confirmation of my faith in photography, and the opening of a whole new world to me.”

“Our painting somehow survived the great bonfire,” Dick comments. His own interest in photography expanded into collecting cameras, especially a wide range of newspaper cameras. “cameras were made of fine wood and leather, which doesn’t hold up very well,” he explains. “i started collecting historic pistols about 15 years ago. they’re all flintlocks and brilliantly made. they’re from the period of the American Revolution and the period of the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815.”

“Many of our paintings have a transcendental quality,” Pat explains. “When they’re good at what they do the paintings are more than a pretty picture of a scene. there’s a sense of the universality of beauty. Maurice Braun (1877-1941) was a follower of theosophy and had a great influence on Charles Reiffel (1862-1942) whose

paintings are in our collection along with several of Braun’s.” John F. Kienitz, who curated an exhibition of Braun’s work in 1954, wrote,“maurice Braun’s serenity before the vexations of life and the complexities of nature impressed all who knew him. He was an artist of deep philosophical conviction for whom all expressions of life were divine.”

The couple are eager to continue expanding their collection.they’re on the lookout for a painting by Chiura Obata (1885-1975), famed for his paintings ofyosemite. They are also looking for paintings of both world wars by soldiers in the wars.

Above the fireplace is William Wendt (1865-1946), Spring Landscape, Tioga Pass, California, 1915, oil on canvas. Above the table is Charles Reiffel (1862-1942), Winter Scene, circa 1920, oil on canvas. On the table is George Spangenberg (1907-1964), Farm in San Diego Landscape circa late 1940s, oil on canvas laid on board. In the adjoining dining room is Thomas Moran (1837-1926), Ulysses and the Sirens, 1900, oil on canvas.

On the left are, from top to bottom, Thomas Moran (1837-1926) Mount Brewer from King’s River Canyon, California, Rocky Mountains, oil on canvas, and Raymond Dabb Yelland (1848-1900), Monterey Bay, oil on board. The three oil on board paintings to the right are Wlliam F. Jackson’s (18501936) Soda Springs, Poppies and Lupine and Mountain Meadow. Above the stand is William Ritschel (1864-1949), Days End circa 1900s, oil on canvas. Next to it is Theodore Wores (1859-1939), Flower Seller, Tokyo, 1886, oil on canvas laid on masonite. The sculpture on the stand is Leonard Baskin (1922-2000), Study for the Monument (Birdman), 1982, bronze. The three small oil on board paintings on the stand are by Gottardo Piazzoni (18721945), Green Brae Summer, 1914; Alameda, 1902; and Vichy Springs, 1918.

On the left are two oil on canvas paintings by Charles Rollo Peters (1862-1928), Custom House, Monterey and Monterey Adobe. The large painting is Joseph Kleitsch (1882-1931), Mother’s Watchful Eye, 1917, oil on canvas. An oil on canvas by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), Mount Brewer from King’s River Canyon, California, 1872, hangs above the sideboard. Next to it is Edgar Payne (1883-1947), Peace of Mountain, circa 1920, oil on canvas. Above the table on the far right is Charles Reiffel (1862-1942), Winter Scene, circa 1920, oil on canvas.

Tower Ruins, 1905, oil on canvas, by Thomas Moran (1837-1926), hangs above a Limbertstyle quarter-sawn white oak bookcase built by Dick Amtower in 2005.

Bottom: On the wall, from left to right, are Everett Gee Jackson (1900-1995), Still Life with Peppers and Bottle, oil on canvas; Maurice Braun (1877-1941), Around San Lucias (Coastal Range Above San Luis Obispo), oil on canvas; and Conrad Buff (1886-1975) Matterhorn, oil on canvas. On the dresser are Belle Baranceanu (1902-1988), Houseboat, oil on board, and Gottardo Piazzoni (1872-1945), Kentfield, 1925, oil on board.

Middle: On the left, from top to bottom, are Alfred Mitchell (1888-1972), El Capitan Dam, oil on board and Charles Reiffel (1862-1942), La Cresta, oil on canvas. On the adjoining wall are William Wendt (1865-1946), Laguna Canyon, Oaks and Sycamores 1924, oil on canvas and Alfred Mitchell (1888-1972), Late Afternoon, oil on canvas. Above the door is George Gardner Symons (1861-1930), River Scene, Winter, oil on canvas. Above the book case are—top to bottom, left to right—oil on boards by Alfred Mitchell (1888-1972), Avalon, 1926; Julian Snow, and Sierra Lake; and Franz Bishoff (1864-1929), Mt. Alice, oil on board, and William F. Jackson (1850-1936), Juniper, oil on canvas.

Top: From left to right in the bedroom and the hall are Franz Bischoff (1864-1929), Mount Alice, oil on board; William F. Jackson (1850-1936), Juniper, oil on canvas; Luvena Vysekal (18731954), Still Life, Zinnias, oil on canvas; Emil Kosa Jr. (1903-1968), All Roads Lead to the One I Love, oil on canvas; John Califano (1862-1946) In the Pyrenees, oil on canvas; and John Bond Francisco (18631931), Sunset Landscape with Sheep, oil on canvas.

Hanging above examples from the couple’s collections of cameras, art pottery and pistols are two oils on canvas by Phil Dike (1906-1990), Pasadena Bridge, circa 1928, and Quiet Harbor, 1960.

Above: Above the standing desk is Will Sparks (1862-1937), Old Adobe, oil on canvas. Through the doorway is Laurel Amtower (1965-2010), Untitled, oil on canvas. On the right is Alfred Mitchell (1888-1972), In the Mountains, oil on board.

Inset: Above the fireplace, from top to bottom, are Orrin White (1883-1969), Sierra Snows, oil on canvas, and his California Springtime, oil on canvas. On the right is Edward Steichen (1879-1973), Flower Study on Gold, oil on canvas.