Browse > Juan B. Wandesforde

Juan B. Wandesforde

Paintings in Inventory

Click on an image for a larger view. 

Artist's Biography

Juan Wandesforde was an English born and trained artist who settled in New York in 1850 and spent most of the next twelve years working as a New York painter of portraits, landscapes and genre. He exhibited at the National Academy of Design until 1862 when he moved to San Francisco.  He quickly became a central part of the vigorous San Francisco art scene of the 1860s and early '70s.  In the late 1860s, he started roaming remote areas of California, painting picturesque subjects.  His view of "French Lake" was praised in the San Francisco Bulletin as "one of the best pieces of landscape painting we have yet seen in this state." (S.F. Bulletin, May 12, 1869).  In 1871, Wandesforde organized the meeting of local artists and connoisseurs that led to the founding of the San Francisco Art Association of which he became the first president.  But soon thereafter he concentrated more on teaching students then exhibiting his own paintings.  In the 1880s he retired to a fruit ranch in Hayward where he died in 1902.

In 1866 Wandesforde traveled to Clear Lake and took the studies that he used for studio paintings of later years.  In October of 1866, the art critic for the Californian mentioned a Wandesforde view of Clear Lake at Roos’ Gallery, noting that "the tone of this picture is excellent–the finish perfect."  In February of 1867, "Magilp" writing for the San Francisco Call, praised "several landscapes [portraying Clear Lake] from various points upon this lovely inland sea worthy of a place upon the walls of any gallery in Europe or America."  In April of 1869, Wandesforde exhibited at Snow and Roos Gallery "Uncle Sam, Near Clear Lake," perhaps our painting or a version of it.