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Louis E. Rea

Paintings in Inventory

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Artist's Biography

Louis Rea (pronounced "Ray") was a specialist in hillside landscapes, often of Marin County subjects.  His best works were done in the 1920s.  Rea seems to have been largely self-taught, although his works are in the tradition of Thaddeus Welch, who popularized pastoral landscapes depicting the country north of San Francisco.  Rea's landscapes also show the influence of the tonalist aesthetic embraced by such artists in the early twentieth century as Xavier Martinez and Arthur Mathews.  Tonalist paintings restrict the color scheme to several dominant tones, exploring subtle harmonies within a limited chromatic range.  In 1922, Rea explained his ambitions as a painter to the San Francisco News Letter:  "My greatest hopes are to give the people, who do not know California, the impression of beauty that the mountains, and scenery, and sunshine give to me."  Rea had the gratifying habit of painting topographically accurate views and inscribing the location of his subject on the back of his canvas.  His works often give us a glimpse of the land the way it looked before the advent of development in the twentieth century.