Pastoral with Mt. Tamalpais in Distance, c. 1915
oil on canvas
Courtesy Trotter Galleries, Carmel California

The exhibit, Manuel Valencia: California’s Native Son is on loan from the Hearst Gallery at St. Mary’s Collage in Moraga. The exhibit contains over 25 paintings, as well as personal item lent by Valencia descendants Mary Lou Valencia Giller and Edwin Valencia, Jr.

The following is an excerpt from the exhibition catalog by the exhibit Curator Julie Armistead.

Manuel Valencia is distinctive in the annals of California art: as a direct descendant of one of the soldiers of the 1775-1776 Anza-Moraga expedition to establish the Mission and Presidio of San Francisco, he is certainly one of California’s first native-born artists.

Valencia began painting as a youth, perhaps inspired by his artist father, also named Manuel Valencia. Painting did not, however, always pay the bills. As with many other artists of the day, Valencia’s earliest employment was as an illustrator. He worked for the Salvation Army magazine War Cry, Pacific Coast Edition, published in San Francisco between 1883 and 1900. During that time Valencia met and married Mabel Eadon, with whom he had nine children. The family lived in San Francisco, and Valencia maintained a studio there as well.

After his studio was destroyed during the 1906 earthquake and fire, Valencia moved his family to 954 Vine Street, San Jose. Throughout his career, while he continued to keep a studio in San Francisco and exhibited regularly, he also spent time traveling the state and beyond, producing images of a California that largely has been lost through population growth and urbanization.

Manuel Valencia was a prolific painter who focused the passion of his Californio spirit to capture on canvas the essence of the California landscape. He died at age 79 in Sacramento on July 6, 1935, after an operation. It is fitting that his family scattered his ashes on Mt. Tamalpais, not far from the place where he was born.