Charles Reiffel An American Postimpressionist

About this book

Charles Reiffel (1862-1942) is widely regarded today as one of the foremost figures of the California plein air school of landscape painting. This catalogue, accompanying an exhibition of the same name at The San Diego Museum of Art and San Diego History Center, aims to reevaluate Reiffel as a leading practitioner of Post-Impressionism in the United States. Reiffel trained as a lithographer and traveled, worked, and studied in Europe before establishing himself as an independent artist in Silvermine, Connecticut. He finally settled in San Diego in 1925. THere, he immersed himself for the remainder of his life in the landscape of Southern California, its coast and rolling hills, discovering in its unique contours new motifs for his striking mix of Post-Impressionist and Expressionist brushwork. During his lifetime, Reiffel's work was widely exhibited throughout the country. He won national awards and the accolades of innumerable critics, who pointed out the relationship between his work and that of European Post-Impressionist. Indeed, Reiffel was often referred to as the "American van Gogh." While the San Diego region came to be the inspiration for the last important phase of his art, he did not enjoy the same financial success there that he had back East. His work was often dismissed by collectors as "too modern" in comparison with the more restrained production of the local plein air school. Even so, in the decades following his death, Reiffel's work was largely eclipsed by subsequent developments in American art. Charles Reiffel: An American Post-Impressionist proposes a fresh assessment of the artist, firmly reestablishing his place as a national figure in the canon of American painting and shedding light on a splendid page in the history of American Post-Impressionism and Expressionism. -- from dust jacket.