California Meadow

Born in Morristown, New Jersey, John Marshall Gamble moved to San Francisco in 1883 where he trained at the San Francisco School of Design. Pursuing the seasonal changes of nature, Gamble traveled much of California and his reputation quickly grew as a superb painter of wildflowers. Gamble's canvases vividly captured the California landscape and the vibrant masses of yellow, orange and blue blooms which blanketed the countryside. The artist once commented, "I never painted them as flowers at all. I didn't even think of them as flowers while I was painting. They were just color patches to me. I simply liked the way they designed themselves across the field." (Santa Barbara News Press, 3 April 1956)