(River Valley)

Dong Kingman

Dong Kingman painted this Northern California landscape in 1942 while serving at Camp Beale. It is a typical Kingman early landscape watercolor, painted wet on wet; as Kingman noted: "My ideal medium is watercolor. When making a painting, my idea is to paint an object with the greatest simplicity, and with a free and unfettered style."

Born in Oakland, CA in 1911, Dong Kingman moved to China at age five and later studied at the Chan Sun Wen school in Hong Kong. Kingman excelled at calligraphy and watercolor, despite his family's discouragement of his artistic interests. He studied under Szeto-Wai, the Paris-trained head of the Lingman Academy, who would introduce him to Northern European trends.

In 1929, still a teenager, Kingman returned to Oakland, California and attended the Foz Morgan Art School while holding a variety of jobs. It was at this time he decided to concentrate on watercolors. During the Depression, Kingman would emerge as one of the nation's leading practitioners of the medium, and was one of the pioneers of the California Style school of painting. His first solo show in San Francisco was an instant success, with critcs remarking on his dramatic, dynamic depictions of urban life which became a main focus of Kingman's work.

Beginning in 1936, Kingman was a participating artist in the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Over the next five years he created nearly 500 paintings for the program, which not only helped artists but made America aware of its own art. During this time he also earned two Guggenheim Fellowships back to back, which allowed him to travel. In 1941 he joined the army, and was assigned to the Office of Strategic Service (OSS) at Camp Beale, California and then to Washington D.C. After the war he settled in New York, assuming teaching positons at Columbia University and Hunter College.

From the collection of the California artist and one of Kingman's art instructors at Arts & Crafts in Oakland, Cora Boone.