Lorenzo Palmer Latimer, California watercolor painter

Magazine Antiques, April, 2005 by Alfred C. Harrison, Jr.

When he did reappear in San Francisco in 1891, Latimer rose quickly to the upper levels of the city's art world. In 1892 he again showed his work at the San Francisco Art Association. His address was listed as Windsor, but the following year he is listed in the San Francisco city directory at 1830 Turk Street, with a studio at 841 Market Street. Also in 1893 two watercolors and an oil painting entitled Misty Morning (unlocated) were accepted for inclusion in the art gallery in the California Building at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and a mural (whereabouts unknown) was installed in the San Francisco County display, curiously depicting Berkeley in Almeida County, across the bay from San Francisco. (12)

Another indication of Latimer's improving fortunes was his marriage on June 29, 1893, to Jennie E. Phelps (b. 1857), an event that indicated that he was prosperous enough to start a family. A son, Lorenzo Phelps Latimer (1896-1968), would grow up to become a distinguished professor of agriculture at the University of New Hampshire in Durham and an amateur painter. Lorenzo Palmer Latimer spent the academic year of 1893 to 1894 on the faculty of the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art, as the California School of Design was called after 1893, teaching a landscape class while its regular teacher, Raymond Dabb Yelland (1848-1900), was on sabbatical. On Wednesday and Saturday mornings he would take a class of about forty students to picturesque sites in the countryside. (13) In 1894 he became the art teacher at the Mechanics' Institute, a post he retained until 1906, when the art classes were discontinued after the San Francisco earthquake. Also in 1894 Latimer won gold medals for a watercolor, The Brook (whereabouts unknown), and an oil painting, Redwoods (see Pl. VI), exhibited at the Midwinter Fair held in Golden Gate Park.

Newspaper accolades and increased sales came his way during this period, and his role as a leading painter in watercolors started to be recognized. "L. P. Latimer gets enough time from his laughing, uncontrollable young women pupils to do something in water colors every now and then," the San Francisco Examiner commented in 1893. "He is easiest in aldered creeks and redwoods, but is continually trying his brush on marines and wood interiors, that require more study." (14) In September 1894 a writer for the Wave, a weekly that commented on the social and cultural scene, lumped Latimer with Arthur Frank Mathews (1860-1945) and William Keith (1838-1911) as one of "the great men of California." (15)

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Late in 1894 the artist received two more honors that reflected his rising status in the San Francisco art world. First, he was elected to an artist membership in the Bohemian Club, an organization founded by journalists, writers, and artists in 1872, which by 1894 had begun to hold art exhibitions that quickly displaced the fall exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association as the important showcase for local art. Latimer became a loyal participant in Bohemian Club activities, painting elaborate cartoons for their "High Jinks" productions and smaller commemorations of their annual summer convocations in the redwoods, like his Bohemian Club Encampment (Pl. III) of 1904.