William Wendt California, 1865-1946 Study for The Silence of Night, 1910 Watercolor on artists board 14 3/4" x 19 7/8" Signed and dated to the bottom left, and presented in a period wooden frame that measures 20 3/8" x 25 3/8". A study from a birch grove in Laguna Canyon, executed in watercolors in preparation for Wendt's important oil, The Silence of Night (1910). That oil was sold by The Art Institute of Chicago through Sotheby's in June 2016, and was previously exhibited in The Art Institute of Chicago, Corcoran Gallery, and Carnegie Museum. Nearly identical in composition to the final oil, the study offered is by comparison quite subdued in tone, done with the ethereal light of the watercolor medium. Dubbed "the dean of Southern California artists", William Wendt was a significant practitioner of plein-air painting of the American West. He helped to found the California Art Club in December 1909, which included notable California landscape artists including Franz Bischoff, Carl Oscar Borg, and Edgar Payne. American art historian William Gerdts has referred to Wendt, along with Guy Rose, as the "two most significant and original painters in Southern California." Mat burn across the reverse of the artists board from non-archival framing. On the front surface, there are a handful of small whitish scrapes interrupting a few areas of the image. The top left corner also has a linear stain at the top of the clouds.