Dana Bartlett Biography

Dana Bartlett

American

1882–1957

Biography

Dana Bartlett, painter, printmaker, teacher, and gallery owner, was born in Ionia, Michigan on 19 November 1882. He studied at the Art Students League in New York with William Merritt Chase and Charles Warren Eaton.

Bartlett established a studio for a few years in Boston before moving to Portland, Oregon where he worked as a commercial artist for the Foster & Kleiser Company. He moved to San Francisco where he briefly had a studio before moving to Los Angeles and opening his studio in 1915. Bartlett traveled to Europe in 1924 where he studied with Armand Coussens in Paris and upon his return he joined the faculty of the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles.

Bartlett was a member of and exhibited with the California Arts Club, the California Water Color Society, the Laguna Beach Art Association, and the Print Makers Society of California. His work was included in the Painters and Sculptors exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and he also exhibited at the Stendall Gallery in Los Angeles. A solo exhibition of his work was mounted at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in December 1927. The following spring he opened the Bartlett Galleries which specialized in sketches and small paintings. Bartlett worked in the painting division of the California Federal Art Project of the Work Progress Administration beginning in 1935. The Long Beach Museum of Art holds three of his watercolors from the project.

Bartlett co-founded and served as the first president of the California Water Color Society (known as the National Watercolor Society after 1971) and he served as the seventh president of the California Art Club in 1922.

Dana Bartlett's work is represented in the collections of the Boston Public Library, Massachusetts; the Laguna Beach Museum of Art, California; the Long Beach Museum of Art, California; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Los Angeles Public Library, California; the Monterey Museum of Art, California; the Huntington Library, San Marino, California; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Dana Bartlett died in Los Angeles, California on 3 July 1957.