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Artist: Gile, Shelden Connor (1877-1947) Title: “Belvedere Still Life”

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Artist: Gile, Shelden Connor (1877-1947) Title: “Belvedere Still Life” Artist: Gile, Shelden Connor (1877-1947) Title: “Belvedere Still Life” Medium: Oil on canvas signed Size: 20 x 16” Show Price: $7500 Provenance: Family estate w/written documentation History: Selden Connor Gile (1877-1947) was active/lived in California, Maine. Selden Gile is known for modernist landscape, marine and figure painting. The major force behind the Society of Six in the 1920s in the Bay Area of California, Selden Gile set aesthetic standards that espoused color and guided the group with the strength of his personality, physical energy, and warm hospitality. Departing from dominant decorative and Tonalist influences of materials for Gladding McBean whose products became crucial in Arthur Mathews and William Keith, the Society of Six created a new the rebuilding of San Francisco after the earthquake. landscape art of sunny reality; it was Impressionism-Fauvism ap- plied to the California Scene. The other painters associated with He was basically self-taught as an artist and with high energy and Gile in this rebellion were Maurice Logan, William Clapp, Bernard a sturdy build, had a capacity for long hiking trips and outdoor, von Eichman, August Gay, and Louis Siegriest. plein-air painting that he pursued passionately. Few of his early paintings of California survive, but most existing ones have barns, Gile was born in Stow, Maine, to parents from Salem, England, and which became a repeated symbol in his work of the artist himself. was named for Seldon Connor, Governor of Maine. The family lived on a farm, but from childhood, he was regarded as different from his His talents as food and drink host and provider of lodging became boisterous, carousing brothers because of his artistic talents and ap- legendary. He shared his house with several aspiring artists and parent refinement. He completed high school in 1894 in Fryeburg held dinners that he prepared with skill in what was described as and then lived with his brother Frank in Portland, Maine, where he an all-male, raucous atmosphere. Friendship with writer Jack Lon- attended Shaw’s Business College. Frank was head chef at the land- don underscored Gile’s seeking out of people that were creative, mark Lafayette Hotel in Portland and taught Gile cooking and con- romantic, assertive, and working class. vivial hosting, qualities that would later serve him well in California among his artist colleagues. With the Six, he exhibited regularly at the Oakland Art Gallery. In 1927, he moved north to Tiburon across the Golden Gate Bridge General Marshall Wentworth, owner of a hostelry in Jackson, New and after that to a houseboat in Belvedere from where he contin- Hampshire, where Selden worked, took an interest in the young ued to paint. However, he also fell in with a heavy drinking crowd, man and arranged a job as paymaster and clerk on a vast ranch in which affected the quality of his work and caused him to fore-go Rocklin, California, near Sacramento. Selden’s reasons for wanting his energetic plein-air painting treks. to head West are unknown, but one of his brothers loaned him fifty Indicated by his painting, Desert Bridge, Holbrook, dated 1926, dollars for the journey. His job was dangerous, requiring him to Gile traveled to Arizona where, according to author and gallery deliver the payroll from the bank to the ranch, and he carried a gun owner, Alfred Harrison, his subject was Holbrook, Arizona. Sever- which he sometimes used to defend himself. al years later, according to Harrison, Gile was in Taos, New Mexico which resulted in his painting, Woman of Taos, dated 1931. Fur- He fell in love with Beryl Whitney, daughter of the ranch owners, ther evidence of Gile being in Taos is his painting, Taos, New Mexi- and was deeply hurt when her parents, disapproving of the relation- co, dated 1924, which is in the collection of the Oakland Museum. ship, sent her away to Europe and she married another man. From that time, he had an open aversion to women. In 1905, he moved to It is likely that Gile, who was Belvedere’s only WPA mural commis- Oakland, California, and worked as a salesman of ceramic building sion artist during the Depression years, was in Taos with fellow painter, Maurice Logan. They returned to the Southwest in 1934 During the 1920s, he became the dominant figure in a group of according to a front page column of the Oakland Tribune February painters known as the Society of Six. The Six were active in the San 21 of that year. Francisco Bay area and exhibited regularly at the Oakland Art Gal- lery. In 1927 Gile moved across the Golden Gate to Tiburon and, On June 8, 1947, Selden Gile died from alcoholism and is buried at shortly thereafter, to a houseboat in Belvedere. Destitute and an the cemetery at Mt. Tamalpais, a site he loved to paint. alcoholic, he died at the poor farm in San Rafael, California on June 8, 1947 and was buried at Mt Tamalpais Cemetery. Sources: Nancy Boas, Society of Six Member: Timothy Burgard, Ednah Root Curator of American Art Marin County Art Association; Oakland Art League. (12/05/2006 email about Gile’s painting in NewMexico and Arizo- na) Exhibitions: Timothy Burgard and Alfred Harrison, “California Landscapes from San Francisco Art Association, 1916-35; Society of Six, 1923-28; the Willrich Collection”, American Art Review, 12/2006, p. 78 Galerie Beaux Arts (SF), 1928 (solo); California Statewide (Santa Michael and Genta Holmes, Art in the Residence of the American Cruz), 1929 (prize); Vallejo Art Guild, 1929 (1st prize); Oakland Ambassador, Australia (photo of Taos, New Mexico painting, 1924) Art Association, 1933-36; San Francisco Museum of Art Inaugural, 1935; Smithsonian Institution 1976-77; Oakland Museum, 1981. Biography from the Archives of askART Born in Stow, Maine on March 20, 1877, Selden Gile, after attend- In: Monterey Peninsula Museum; Oakland Museum; Fleischer Mu- ing Business College in Maine, moved to California in 1901. He was seum (Scottsdale). a payroll master in Lincoln and in Oakland after 1905 for Gladding McBean Company. Edan Hughes, “Artists in California, 1786-1940” Painters & Sculptors in California: the Modern Era; American Art His art studies were under Perham Nahl, Frank Van Sloun, Spen- Annual 1929-33; Who’s Who in American Art 1936-41; Society of cer Macky, Wm H. Clapp, and at the California College of Arts and Six; Expo to Expo; Monterey: The Artist’s View; A Feast for the Eyes; Crafts. Prior to 1914, he painted in the manner of classical Cali- American Impressionism ; SF Chronicle, 11-10-1984. fornia landscape painters such as William Keith. After that time he assumed the palette and style of Impressionism-Fauvism, but remained an “individualist” in his mode of expressing the California scene. .
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