Thaddeus Welch, California landscape painter

(1) The major source for Welch's biography is Helen V. Broekhoff, Thad Welch: Pioneer and Painter (Oakland Art Museum, Oakland, California, 1966), first published in the Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine, vol. 82 (March-July 1924), by Helen V. Reid, as she was then known. The author was a close friend of the artist's second wife, Ludmilla Pilat Welch (see Fig. 3). Other sources published during the artist's lifetime are Charles Montville Gidney, History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California (Lewis Publishing, Chicago, 1917), vol. 2, pp. 550-552; Eufina C. Tompkins, "Story of Two California Artists," Sunset Magazine, vol. 13, no. 2 (June 1904), pp. 131-136; and clippings from American newspapers in the Thaddeus Welch file in the North Point Gallery Archieve of Early California Art, San Francisco.

(2) Ludmilla Welch to Helen V. Reid, June 28, 1920 (North Point Gallery Archive). For the 1868 date of the trip, see Tompkins, "Story of Two California Artists," p. 134.

(3) For the organization of the Graphic Club, see the San Francisco Evening Post, May 31, 1873, p. 1. For the meeting on February 26, 1874, see ibid., February 27, 1874, p. 3.

(4) Lisa N. Peters, "Youthful Enthusiasm under a Hospitable Sky," American Art Journal, vol. 31, nos. 1 and 2 (2000), p. 67.

(5) For Frank Duveneck painting portraits of artist friends, see Robert Neuhaus, Unsuspected Genius: The Art and Life of Frank Duveneck (Bedford Press, San Francisco, 1987), p. 36. Welch had the portrait cut down to transport it back to the United States. It was owned for a long time by Helen Broekhoff and her heirs and is now in the collection of Stathis Andris.

(6) Boston Evening Transcript, March 18, 1879, p. 4. Also Boston Daily Advertiser, March 19, 1879, p. 4.

(7) Lois Marie Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons (National Museum of American Art, Washington, D. C., and Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990), p. 404.

(8) Quoted in Ludmilla Welch to Reid, June 14, 1920 (North Point Gallery Archieve).

(9) Final Report of the California World's Fair Commission... (Sacramento, 1894), p. 55.

(10) Broekhoff, Thad Welch, p. 33.

(11) See Alfred C. Harrison Jr., "Thaddeus Welch's View of Los Angeles," Los Angeles Art Show Catalogue (Fine Art Dealers Association, Los Angeles, 1999), pp. 70-73, for the attribution of this unsigned painting to Welch.

(12) For the 1894 Bohemian Club exhibition, see the Wave, September 22, 1894, p. 8 and, December 10, 1894, p. 10; and San Francisco Chronicle, December 11, 1894, p. 4, and December 13, 1894, p. 5.

(13) Thaddeus Welch to Anna Pilat, January 22, 1919 (North Point Gallery Archieve).

(14) San Francisco Chronicle, December 28, 1919, p. E3.

(15) Ibid., July 5, 1908, p. 19.

(16) San Francisco Call, November 1, 1908, p. 31.

(17) Ibid., September 5, 1909, p. 27; and San Francisco Chronicle September 15, 1909, p. 5.

(18) For the Hotel Potter as Welch's Santa Barbara art gallery and dealer, see the San Francisco Call, November 1, 1908, p. 31. For patronage by tourists, see Gidney, History of Santa Barbara, p. 552.