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Bruce Nelson
(1888-1952)
Bruce Nelson was born in Santa Clara, California on June 13, 1888 and spent most of his life in California. In 1905 he attended Stanford University as an engineering student, later changing his major to architecture. When he graduated from college he worked as an architect in San Francisco.
Nelson then traveled to New York to study at the Art Students' League in New York City, spending his summers painting with Tonalist Birge Harrison. It wasn't until 1912 that he returned to San Francisco where he had a solo exhibition at the Helgesen Galleries in 1914. He set up a studio in Pacific Grove, California, where he painted coastal landscapes and seascapes.
In 1914, Anthony Anderson, art critic for the "Los Angeles Times" newspaper, described Nelson's works as, "lively and delicate, full of light and air, of brooding sunshine and permeating mists". Bruce Nelson painted coastal seascapes, coastal valleys, and coastal villages. The location of many of Bruce Nelson's paintings are unknown.
He earned a silver medal for his work at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco during 1915. After serving in World War I, Nelson moved back to New York where he did some commissioned mural work. Little is known about his further involvement in art during the last twenty-five years of his life.
Source: Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940, AskArt.com
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