Laguna Beach’s early art colony grew around a view that kept changing. From a coastal bluff, the color of the water could shift as clouds moved or the afternoon light dropped. Painting outdoors gave artists a chance to work directly with those changes. That practice, called plein-air painting, helped make the Laguna Beach coast a subject in California art.
The painters who came for the coastline
Local histories date the arrival of painter Norman St. Clair to 1903. Other artists associated with early Laguna included William Wendt, Frank Cuprien, Anna Hills and Edgar Payne. The town gave them many subjects within a short distance. A painter could work with the open horizon, the shape of a rocky headland or the sharper contrast where a bluff met the water. The coastline gave the colony a common subject and room for different approaches.
From an art association to Laguna Art Museum
In 1918, Hills, Payne and other artists founded the Laguna Beach Art Association. Early exhibitions took place in the Old Town Hall. The association opened a purpose-built gallery in 1929 after a fundraising effort led by Hills. Designed by Myron Hunt, the gallery survives within Laguna Art Museum. The gallery gave the town a place where artists could show their work and the public could see several interpretations of the same coast together.
How Coast Highway changed the approach
A stretch of Coast Highway between Laguna Beach and Newport opened in 1926. It made the coastline easier to reach from the north during the years the art association was establishing itself. The road and the gallery changed how people encountered Laguna, one by bringing visitors closer to the bluffs and the other by giving them a place to see how local artists had looked at those bluffs.
The place in the poster
Laguna Beach Pacific Coast takes a travel-poster approach to the same coastline, following a flower-lined path past palms and turquoise water.
See the Laguna Beach Pacific Coast poster or browse the Pacific Moderne Travel Posters collection.
Continue with Victoria Beach Pirate Tower: The History Behind Laguna’s Seaside Staircase.