Yesterday & Today | Habitat: Making the California Environment

By Bonnie Gangelhoff

In the late 19th-century, artists from Europe began arriving in California. Stories about the light-filled landscapes sparked curiosity and drew painters to the western edge of America. The special quality of illumination there was said to be reminiscent of the Mediterranean.

Soon the newly arrived artists set up their easels to capture the scenic terrain that unfolded before them—fields of golden poppies, lush coastal grasses and brilliant blue lupines. The early European transplants included legendary landscape painters such as William Wendt and Maurice Braun. They were joined by a cadre of artists born in the United States and eager to portray California’s splendors, including Granville Redmond, Edgar Payne and Guy Rose. Some of the natural wonders these artists depicted back then still flourish amid the Golden State landscape; others have all but disappeared.

Paintings in a current exhibition at the Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute & Museum of California Art at University of California, Irvine spotlight this pivotal point in the state’s ecological history—between the late 19th century and early 20th century. The period is best described as after the European settlement but before California’s pristine scenes were transformed by urban growth and development. Titled Habitat: Making the California Environment, the exhibit features 40 artworks drawn from the museum’s permanent collection and loans from the James Irvine Swinden Family Collection.

Many of the early California painters were influenced by European traditions of landscape painting. Their style reflected the burgeoning impressionist movement taking place in France at the time. Like their European counterparts, the early California landscape artists often eschewed highly detailed realism. Their paintings featured loose brushstrokes and rich colors while paying close attention to light and atmospheric elements. As in the French tradition, they often painted “en plein air”—outdoors on beaches and farmlands, and in forests and orange groves. As a group, these artists are often referred to as the early California Impressionists.

The viewers of the exhibition can expect to enjoy a visual feast as they peruse stunning artworks that depict California as it appeared a century ago. But what makes the exhibit unique is that the paintings also hold a lens to the state’s environmental history. The provocative presentation invites the public to make ecological connections between the past and contemporary issues such as preservation. “This exhibition isn’t about illustrating a science lesson but about unpeeling visual and historical layers—revealing how landscape paintings made in California a hundred years ago reflect a complex interplay among colonial, ecological and aesthetic forces,” says curator Dr. James Nisbet, professor and Chair in the Department of Art History and Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine.

The show is divided into five themes: Native Blooms, Orange County, California Missions, Mountains and Arboreal Landscapes. In each section, visitors can assess paintings both aesthetically and from an ecological point of view. The exhibit is interactive in a sense, suggesting viewers ask questions as they compare the past and the present such as which plants are extinct today and why? “Much of the text throughout the exhibition provides information to help viewers see the interactions between native and introduced plants, some of which do indeed impact current concerns around fire and the management of native ecosystems from intrusive species,” Nisbet says.

For example, the Arboreal Landscapes segment spotlights the state’s abundant array of trees, including artworks depicting coastal live oaks, sycamores, Monterey cypress and redwoods. Several pieces also depict eucalyptus trees, such as LAGUNA EUCALYPTUS by Guy Rose and SEPTEMBER EUCALYPTUS by Paul Lauritz. Like the golden poppy, the eucalyptus tree is seen everywhere today. Both have become almost synonymous with California. But the eucalyptus tree is also an ecological example of a tree not native to the state but thought to have arrived from Australia and planted for the lumber needed to develop communities.  Today, the fast-growing tree, and one that is hard to get rid of, is the subject of serious discussions when it comes to concerns around wildfires and wildfire mitigation. The tree’s eucalyptus oil is highly flammable. While the trees are still lovely to look at and paint, they are also seen as potentially dangerous today.

In the Orange County portion of the exhibit, another ecological change from the past to the present is pointed out. The painting, THE OLD COAST ROAD (ARCH BEACH ROAD) by Curtis Chamberlin, features a small bungalow perched on a hill sprinkled with gardens and trees. In the foreground of the piece, the artist depicts native southern coastal grasslands. Today, that area is blanketed by mustard grass. Environmental experts now know that the invasive mustard grasses produce a substance that inhibits the growth of other plants. The grass also dries easily and then turns into wildfire fuel. Furthermore, its seeds survive fire, and the plant spreads quickly across the terrain again. Between the mustard grass and the rapid development of the region, the southern coastal grasslands are nearly extinct.

As the Mission section of the exhibit reveals, the grasses were first introduced by the Spanish colonists and missionaries who began to settle in California about 1769. These days the grasses fill the areas where ranch cattle once grazed. A 1914 painting UNTITLED (POPPIES, LUPINES AND COWS) by Spanish American painter Angel Espoy featured in the exhibit, shows a meadow of lupines next to a field of grazing cows, suggesting to the viewer that at this moment in history, nature and agriculture once were living in harmony.

The Habitat exhibit also points out that missionaries and settlers arrived in the new frontier with their own ideas of what was beautiful or aesthetically pleasing. The section contains several paintings depicting the mission network that stretches from San Diego to Sonoma County. The San Juan Capistrano Mission in Southern California was a particularly popular subject for artists at the time. Pieces such as IN THE MISSION GARDEN, SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO by Julie Mathilde Morrow DeForest and SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO MISSION by William Swift Daniell feature the colorful arrays of plants surrounding the mission. At the time there was a growing interest in ornamental gardens and the period marked the introduction of Peruvian peppertrees, bougainvillea and the Mexican fan palms into the environment. Such plants have become so commonplace in the environment that today people assume they are native to the state.

In the Native Blooms section viewers see a quintessential California scene. CALCE DE ORO (POPPY FIELD NEAR BANNING) by John M. Gamble depicts a field of golden poppies rimmed by brilliant blue lupines. (Banning is a small town located in Riverside County 80 miles east of Los Angeles.) Gamble is often credited, in part, with popularizing the golden poppy as a state symbol. In 1903 it was proclaimed the official state flower. Today, almost a century later, the iconic poppy remains popular subject matter among plein air painters.

The eye-popping lupines depicted in the piece were once thought to be an invasive species, robbing the soil of needed nutrients. That thinking has since changed and that is no longer believed to be true. The exhibition suggests that as the environment of the Golden State evolves, the thinking about the environment should change with it.

Nisbet, doubts that these early artists were conscious of the history of the various plants or thinking about questions of ecological concern or preservation in any way. “Yet, what they have left us are pictures that bundle together the conscious and unconscious ideas of their time,” Nisbet says. “It’s one of the beautiful things about art—it collects everything from its time and holds it together to be unpacked later on.”

When asked what he hopes viewers will take away from the exhibition, Nisbet replies that he hopes visitors start asking questions they might not previously have asked or see things they might not have paid attention to previously. “That might mean looking to other art traditions and thinking about the role of plant history in those artworks, or it might mean looking around their own neighborhood and seeing new stories to be told from the plants around them,” he elaborates. “At the end of the day, there’s nothing natural about the natural environment, and we can all take pleasure and responsibility from understanding our role in shaping it.”

Bonnie Gangelhoff is a Colorado-based writer and former senior editor of Southwest Art. 

Habitat: Making of the California EnvironmentJack and Shanaz Langson Institute & Museum of California Art at the University of California, IrvineSeptember 20-January 10imca.uci.edu

This story appeared in the October/November 2025 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Subscribe today to read every issue in its entirety.

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