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Julian Rix
(1850-1903)
Julian Rix was a landscape painter born in Peacham, Vermont on December 30, 1850. Rix moved with his family to San Francisco in 1853, but due to his mother’s death, was sent back to Peacham four years later to live with his grandmother. After graduating from Peacham Academy in 1868, he returned to San Francisco where he was apprenticed to a trading firm and later worked in a paint store painting signs and decorative work. He was briefly a pupil of Virgil Williams at School of Design but remained self-taught. Rix became close friends with Amedee Joullin and Jules Tavernier, and when the latter established and art colony in Monterey in 1876 and Rix, ever the Bohemian, followed him there. Rix's studio in Monterey was in the French Hotel, but in 1879 he returned to San Francisco and shared a studio with Tavernier at 729 Montgomery Street. The art market in San Francisco during this period was not a healthy one, and prompted Rix to move to Patterson, New Jersey in 1880 and establish a studio in New York City.
New York was the milieu that he seemed to need to find artistic success. In 1888 his illustrations appeared in Picturesque California. His work was exhibited at the National Academy of Design during the 1880s and, after studying art briefly in Europe during 1889, his watercolors and oils were in great demand in the East. He maintained an active interest and participation in the San Francisco art scene and in 1883 sent back 200 paintings for a successful solo show. Rix returned for several months in 1901 and painted the valleys and mountains near Monterey and Santa Barbara. His poetic landscapes are illuminated by atmospheric light and often include sunsets. A handsome man with a New England accent and blond sideburns, he never married and was called the Adonis of the profession. Following a kidney operation, Rix died in New York on November 24, 1903 and was buried in the cemetery plot of a patron friend in Patterson, New Jersey.
Member: Bohemian Club, San Francisco; Salmagundi Club, New York; San Francisco Art Association; Lotus Club, New York (director).
Works held: Corcoran Gallery of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Oakland Museum; Toledo Art Museum, Ohio; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Bohemian Club; de Young Museum; Crocker Museum, Sacramento; California Historical Society; Society of California Pioneers.
Source:
Hughes, Edan M. Artists In California 1786-1940. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. Sacramento: Crocker, Art Museum, 2002. N. pag. 2 vols. Print.
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