MYRON ANGELO OLIVER (1891-1967) Was Born on June 16Th in Fulton, Kansas, and Migrated About 1894 with His Parents, Joseph and Annie Oliver, to the Monterey Peninsula
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550 MYRON ANGELO OLIVER (1891-1967) was born on June 16th in Fulton, Kansas, and migrated about 1894 with his parents, Joseph and Annie Oliver, to the Monterey Peninsula. Joseph, who was trained as a muralist and portrait painter in München and Chicago, became an art instructor at the local branch of the University of the Pacific which was located in the basement of the Methodist Church in Pacific Grove. He resigned that post in 1896 to establish the Mission Art & Curio Store in Monterey.1 The elder Oliver reportedly added to his Curio Store in 1902 the first art gallery on the Peninsula. According to the U.S. Census of 1900, Myron was an only child who resided with his parents at the family home on Alvarado Street.2 He first studied art at the local high school and briefly at the Los Angeles Art Students League.3 In 1910 he continued his training in Monterey under Lester Boronda; at that time he was still residing with his parents.4 He was enrolled on the Monterey voter index as a “Republican.”5 In 1912 Oliver entered Stanford University to study graphic arts, crafts and mechanical drawing; he contributed drawings to The Chaparral, a student magazine, and joined the Hammer and Coffin Club.6 Oliver was a student in the 1914 Carmel Summer School of Art taught by William Merritt Chase.7 He frequently assisted the latter, often as a chauffeur, and received in compensation a sketch portrait in oil of himself by Chase inscribed “To my friend Olivers.”8 Following his 1915 graduation from Stanford Myron continued his formal training for fourteen months at the Art Students League in New York City with Frank DuMond; he spent the summer in Gloucester and studied under Haley Lever.9 In 1917 he was advertised as an “artist” in the Monterey Directory.10 When he registered for the military draft in 1917, he listed himself as an “unemployed artist.”11 After serving for eighteen months during World War I as chief draftsman and map maker in the Western Department of the U.S. Army’s 472nd Corps of Engineers he returned to Monterey and trained with Armin Hansen for six months. His excessive zeal brought on “a complete breakdown” and his parents sent him to Art Students League in New York City.12 Here he apprenticed at Lester Boronda’s framing business and furniture workshop. He became an exhibiting member of the Salmagundi Club and contributed to shows at the National Academy of Design. He briefly reappeared in Monterey where he resided with his parents in the early spring of 1920 and officially listed his occupation on the U.S. Census as “artist.”13 His National Academy entry from the fall of 1920 was exhibited the following year in Monterey at the family’s Curio Shop.14 In New York City on May 31, 1921 he married the artist Dorothy Welsh whom he had met in Gloucester.15 Myron applied for a honeymoon passport to travel in Europe and he was officially described as five feet ten and a half inches tall with blue eyes, brown hair, a mustache and a scar on his “pointed” chin.16 When family matters detained his wife in the United States for six months, he decided to sketch with fellow artist Phillips Frisbie Lewis in Brittany. Thereafter the reunited Olivers purchased an old Red Cross ambulance and toured extensively through France, including Paris, St. Tropez and Nice, as well as Italy.17 While in Florence he studied frame making as well as “the old methods of applying gesso and laying gold leaf.”18 The couple maintained a “summer” mailing address at the American Express Company in Paris.19 During his stay in Europe Myron sent paintings home for exhibition. In the spring of 1922 he was selected as one of three Monterey painters – in addition to C. S. Price and Frederick Gray – for an exhibition of Peninsula Artists at the Stanford University Art Gallery.20 Of his sixteen displayed works eleven were French scenes and carried such titles as: Quimper, Etaples, Breton Harbor and The Bridge-Rouen. In addition, he exhibited five American subjects: Divers, Eve on the Hudson, Fish Boats and Warf (Gloucester, Mass.), Early Mass at the Carmel Mission and Grey Afternoon.21 In September of 1922 his painting Mid Day was exhibited at the Monterey Peninsula Industries and Art Exposition.22 Myron Oliver returned to New York City from Europe in April of 1923.23 His wife had arrived the previous November and several months later gave birth to a son, Myron Jr., in Los Angeles. Oliver spent several weeks in New York and left paintings for the forthcoming exhibition-auction of the Salmagundi Club; the proceeds from these sales were divided evenly between the artist and Club.24 In Monterey he maintained his professional address at 110-120 Main Street (later 120 -150 Calle Principal) and his home at 502 Pierce Street; he consistently appeared on the local voter index as a “Republican.”25 He managed his father’s emporium, the Mission Art & Curio Store, as well as a furniture, mirror and framing business, which offered “original designs in gold and silver leaf.” He “specialized in Spanish Hand-made Furniture and . Mexican Fabrile Glass.”26 According to other prominent advertisements, his Curio Store sold “artists materials and supplies” as well as “unusual jewelry, ambers, cornelians, jades, diamonds, potteries, paintings, prints, etchings” and even “thousands of cacti.”27 Periodically, between 1926 and the early 1950s part of the first floor of the Store continued as a “little gallery” where he staged solo exhibitions to promote the work of Peninsula and visiting artists, including: Thomas S. Parkhurst, Armin Hansen, Theodore Criley, Allan G. Cram, Cornelius 551 Botke, Jennie V. Cannon, Gennato Favai, E. Charlton Fortune, Paul Fisherman’s Cove and Inner Harbor-Gloucester in February of 1939; and Whitman, Gene Kloss, Millard Sheets, Burton Boundey, Arthur Hill Gilbert, Path of the Moon and Journey in Brittany in March of 1940.59 Sam Colburn, W. Harvey Williamson, Edmund Dempsey, Ferdinand To the CAA’s Second Exhibition of “Thumb Box Sketches” in Burgdorff and the National Serigraph Society.28 Myron designed and built December of 1927 he displayed four canvases that had “a delightful sense custom frames for the large canvases of Jessie Arms Botke.29 of rhythm and form:” Evening-St. Tropez, Spanish Night, A Stop on the Oliver never abandoned his painting and maintained an active Hudson and Old Byzantine Chapel-Capri.60 At the Eleventh CAA Exhibition schedule of exhibitions through the mid 1940s. He exhibited at the in May of 1929 his contribution was described as “a palette-knife sketch Seventeenth and Eighteenth Annuals of the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club in entitled French Village with color pleasing to the eye.”61 A month later at 1923 and 1924.30 To the former he contributed four works – Inner Harbor, the next CAA show he submitted another (or perhaps the same) French Main Street-Gloucester, St. Suplice and Gill Netters – and to the latter three Village: “The architectural subject is so well handled, one does not discover canvases: Evening-San Tropez-France, Afternoon-San Tropez-France and at first that most of the left foreground is occupied by a boat or two and Piccola Marina. In her review for the Carmel Pine Cone Jane Holloway masts.”62 In November of 1930 for the exhibit and sale at the Crafts said in 1923 that he “entered some charming canvases – especially his St. Exchange of Carmel in the Seven Arts Court Building Oliver displayed “a Suplice with its slender trees tinged with the glad young green of charming telephone table, frankly a period imitation, but with panels carved springtime. This is a contrast to the pervading virility of his Gill Netters, in the solid wood, not inset. He also exhibits hand-made frames.”63 At the which is rich in low-toned vibrant color.”31 Monterey artists wishing to CAA Gallery in December of 1935 he displayed “a pattern of the roofs of exhibit at those Annuals left their paintings for collection at Oliver’s Curio Florence” and exhibited an identical subject at that venue in October of Store.32 In 1924 Myron also exhibited at the Annuals of the San Francisco 1936.64 For the December exhibit at the CAA in 1937 Rosalie James Art Association and the Oakland Art Gallery.33 At the former his friend and observed in the Pine Cone that Oliver “has a fine bright little oil entitled, art critic, Jennie V. Cannon, referred to his contributions as “a romance in charmingly enough, 398 Pacific Street-Monterey. This painting has a hard paint.”34 Florence W. Lehre, the art critic for The Oakland Tribune, gave time holding its own in its frame, however, which is unfortunate both in this assessment of Oliver’s Piccola Maria at the Oakland Annual: “Here is color and design.”65 In February of 1938 his work was included in the first the light of the impressionist combined with the clever form arrangement of exhibit by CAA artists in Salinas at the Women’s Club.66 Concurrently, at the modern.”35 In 1924 and 1925 he contributed to the Fifth and Sixth the CAA Gallery James remarked of his two submissions that “Oliver uses Annual Exhibitions of the Painters and Sculptors of Southern California the heavy blue and purple pigment to gain a charming effect, of peaks and following two works: Piccola Marina-Capri-Italy and Quiet Noonday.36 In spires and sailing-fleet at rest, in Gloucester.