Carl Eytel
Carl Eytel (September 12, 1862 – September 17, 1925) was a German American artist who built his reputation for paintings and drawings of desert subjects in the American Southwest. Immigrating to the United States in 1885, he settled in Palm Springs, California in 1903. With an extensive knowledge of the Sonoran Desert, Eytel traveled with author George Wharton James as he wrote the successful Wonders of the Colorado Desert, and contributed over 300 drawings to the 1908 work. While he enjoyed success as an artist, he lived as an ascetic and would die in poverty.[2] Eytel's most important work, Desert Near Palm Springs, hangs in the History Room of the California State Library.[3]
Carl Eytel | |
---|---|
![]() Eytel sketching – during his trip with George Wharton James, c. 1900 | |
Born | Karl Adolf Wilhelm Eytel September 12, 1862 |
Died | September 17, 1925 63) Banning, California, United States | (aged
Resting place | Jane Augustine Patencio Cemetery, Palm Springs 33.8224°N 116.5340°W |
Nationality | German American |
Education | self taught; Royal Art School of Stuttgart |
Known for | painting, landscapes, illustrations |
Notable work | Desert near Palm Springs (1914) now in the California State Library California History Room[1] |
Movement | "Smoketree School", California Plein-Air Painting, American Impressionism, Realism |
Patron(s) | Martha M. Newkirk |
Life
Early life and immigration
Carl Eytel was born as Karl Adolf Wilhelm Eytel in Maichingen, Böblingen to Tusnelda (née Schmid) and Friederick Hermann Eytel, a Lutheran minister in the Kingdom of Württemberg (now the state of Baden-Württemberg, near Stuttgart), Germany.[4][5]:V.I,p.30 As a boy, he became a ward of his grandfather when his father died.[2] Eytel was well educated in the German gymnasium and became enamored of the American West while reading the works of Prussian natural science writer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, which he found in the Stuttgart Royal Library.[6]:41,47[7]:xxxvii From 1880 to 1884 he studied forestry in Tübingen and then was drafted into the German Army.[5]:V.II,p.17 He first traveled to the United States in 1885 aboard the Suevia and worked as a ranch hand in Kansas.[4] Later he worked at a slaughterhouse for 18 months to earn his living and to study cattle.[7]:xxxviii In 1891, he read an article about the Palm Springs area in the San Francisco Call and was "incited" to visit the California desert.[8]
Palm Springs
Eytel returned to Germany to study art for 18 months (1897–1898) at the Royal Art School Stuttgart and then re-immigrated to the United States.[5]:V.II,p.18[8][9]:2 Wanting to be a cowboy,[10] he worked as a cowhand in the San Joaquin Valley and in 1903 he would settle in Palm Springs.[5]:V.II,p.18[6] Living in small cabins he built himself, Palm Springs would remain his home.[11] Eytel often walked on his travels, covering 400 miles in the Colorado Desert on foot.[7]:xl On one of his travels he was nearly lynched as a horse thief and in 1918, during a trip to northern Arizona, he was threatened with lynching as a German spy.[7]:xliii[12]:16
Work
![](../I/Sugar-pine%252C_by_Eytel.jpg.webp)
While living for the most part as a "desert rat" and starving artist, he both traveled alone throughout the American Southwest and accompanied author J. Smeaton Chase and painter Jimmy Swinnerton on their travels.[13][14] Serving as George Wharton James' guide to "every obvious and obscure location of importance", he illustrated James' two volume The Wonders of the Colorado Desert.[15] The work was successful and received generally favorable reviews.[7][9][16] The collaboration on the book lasted from 1903 to 1907.[8] Eytel's illustrations were also used by James in his 1906 article "The Colorado Desert: As General Kearney Saw It".[17]
Successes
By 1908 Eytel was exhibiting works in Pasadena and enjoying the patronage of socialite Martha M. Newkirk.[18] He was also planning to build a bungalow in Beaumont, California.[19] And, in 1909, his work was being exhibited in major art venues and the Kanst gallery in Los Angeles.[20] Later, in 1911, after traveling with Chase on horseback, he contributed 21 realistic line art drawings to Chase's book, Cone-bearing Trees of the California Mountains.[21]
Besides his work in Wonders of the Colorado Desert and Cone-bearing Trees, Eytel contributed (both drawings and articles) to the best periodicals, including the Los Angeles Times [22] and, for nearly 14 years, the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung.[6][8][23][24]:85 (During his travels in the southwest he became friends with Los Angeles Times city editor Charles Lummis.[6]) A stone wall in the dining room of Dr. Welwood Murray's early hotel was covered with an Eytel mural of Palm Canyon.[25] His hundreds of drawings of native palms were his trademark and he became known as "The Artist of the Palms".[9]:33[24]:103[26] His work helped publicize early Palm Springs.[27] In 1977 his works were selling for $10,000 and under.[28]
"Creative Brotherhood"
Along with naturalist Edmund C. Jaeger, and authors Chase and Charles Francis Saunders,[29] Eytel was a core member of what University of Arizona Professor Peter Wild called a "Creative Brotherhood"[5] that lived in Palm Springs in the early 20th century. Other Brotherhood members included cartoonist and painter Swinnerton,[30] author James, and photographers Fred Payne Clatworthy and Stephen H. Willard.[31][32]:106–13 The men lived near each other (like Eytel, Jaeger built his own cabin), traveled together throughout the Southwest, helped with each other's works, and exchanged photographs which appeared in their various books.[5][33]
The Brotherhood lasted from 1915 when Jaeger, who was the teacher in the Palm Springs one-room school house, met Eytel and Chase. It ended in 1923 when Chase died.[34] (In 1924, after completing his studies at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Jaeger began a 30-year teaching career at Riverside Junior College in Riverside, California.[35]) Jaeger wrote the initial eulogy for Eytel upon his death[23] and in 1948, recalling his time with him, Jaeger said:
As an artist Eytel was largely self-taught.... Not widely schooled, but widely read. Eytel possessed a knowledge not only of the Greek and Roman classics but of the best literature of England, America and his native Germany. I never knew Eytel to sleep indoors. Trying to inure himself to hardships in the belief it would toughen his constitution....[12]
Over the years it was Eytel who served as their "spiritual figurehead".[36] Even after Jaeger left to complete his studies and Chase married the wealthy Isabel White (1917), the three, plus Saunders, often exchanged letters.[34]:126–31,153–8 [37] Suffering from a "hacking and persistent cough",[38] Eytel remained in Palm Springs, impoverished, and Swinnerton would buy art supplies for him. Later Eytel became a recluse.[6]:50
Smoketree School
![](../I/Psorothamnus_spinosus_form.jpg.webp)
Journalist Ann Japenga has characterized Eytel's work as "Smoketree School" – a school which is named after a favorite desert art subject, the smoketree.[7]:41[39] The school has origins with Alson S. Clark and Jack Frost, who were influenced by French impressionist Claude Monet. Other Smoketree artists include Carl Bray, Fred Chisnall, Maynard Dixon, Clyde Forsythe, Sam Hyde Harris, John Hilton, R. Brownell McGrew, Agnes Pelton, Hanson Puthuff and Swinnerton.[40]
Style and subjects
![](../I/Eytel's_The_Moonlight_Sonata.jpg.webp)
Like many artists of the desert southwest, Eytel's style was impressionistic.[42] His subjects were varied and included the Mission San José de Tumacácori, in the Tumacácori National Historical Park near Nogales, Arizona (pre-restoration), and California Mission San Gabriel Arcángel and Mission San Juan Capistrano Spanish missions. His drawings for Cone-bearing Trees of the California Mountains and Wonders of the Colorado Desert were especially detailed and included Desert Bighorn Sheep, desert reptiles, and cattle. (His Mirage in the Desert (1905), painted for Wonders, depicts cattle and cowboys.)[6][7][18]
![](../I/Desert_near_Palm_Springs_Oil_painting_by_Carl_Eytel_(1914).jpg.webp)
Eytel depicted the life of Navajo, Hopi, Cahuilla, Serrano and Kamia peoples, including landscapes of the New Mexico Eight Northern Pueblos in San Ildefonso, Laguna, Tesuque and Taos Pueblo. The Walpi Pueblo on First Mesa, Hopi Reservation, Arizona, and Cocopah people near Calexico, California were drawn as well.[43]
Prospectors working the Anaconda (Dale District) and Manana (Colorado River) mines in Arizona and the famous Picacho gold mine were drawn, as were the Rancho Guajome Adobe near Encinitas, California, the Sierra Bonita Ranch near Fort Grant, Arizona, turn of the century Tucson, Arizona, and the Yuma Territorial Prison, Yuma, Arizona.
His scenes from early Palm Springs included the stagecoach station and William Pester – "The Hermit of Palm Springs".[44]
![](../I/Washingtonia_filifera_in_Palm_Canyon.jpg.webp)
Eytel's landscapes and mountain scenes in Wonders included:[7]
- Ehrenberg, Arizona
- Algodones, including the Pilot Knob landmark, Imperial County, California
- Palo Verde, Arizona
- San Jacinto National Forest, California
- Oak Creek Canyon, within Coconino National Forest, Arizona
- Mt. San Gorgonio, California
- Mt. San Jacinto, California
- Royal Gorge, Colorado
- San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Arizona
- Sentinel Rock and Cathedral Spires in Yosemite Valley, California
- Tahquitz Peak, near Idyllwild, California
- Twin Buttes, Navajo County, Arizona
Honors
![](../I/Amphipappus_fremontii_4.jpg.webp)
Eytel was a friend of the Cahuilla people and they allowed him to be buried in their cemetery in Palm Springs after he died of tuberculosis in a Banning, California sanatorium.[12][23][24]:100–1 His funeral and burial were arranged by Nellie Coffman, who had established the original Desert Inn in the Palm Springs village in 1909.[45]
Eytel received the following eulogy from Saunders writing in August 1926:
But to Carl Eytel, pioneer of Palm Springs artists, working there long before the world of fashion had heard of the place, Palm Springs was his home, and the desert his life. He knew it in all seasons, in all moods, and he painted it with a sort of religious ardor springing from unfailing love, in season and out. Others have been better draughtsmen than he, but when you look at a canvas by Eytel at his best you are looking into what seems the desert’s heart.[46]
His painting Desert near Palm Springs (1914) is displayed in the California History Room of the California State Library.[1] The Palm Springs Art Museum has a set of Eytel's sketches and displays various of his paintings.[47]
The desert shrub amphipappus fremontii was given the common name "eytelia" in his honor.[48] The short "Via Eytel" in Palm Springs is named in his honor, as is the short "Eytel Road" in nearby Cathedral City.[49]
See also
Art topics:
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Literature topics: Desert topics:
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Notes and references
- "Picture Catalog – Holdings". Sacramento, CA: California State Library. Retrieved November 25, 2011.
- Larson, Roger Keith (1996). "Part Five, Carl Eytel, 1862–1925". In Kurutz, Gary F. (ed.). California Book Illustrators: a Keepsake in Fourteen Parts for the Members of the Book Club of California (Keepsake Series ed.). San Francisco: The Book Club of California. LCCN 97157635. OCLC 36888109.
No phrase epitomizes the life of Carl Eytel better than the cliche 'art for art's sake,' or for those who prefer the original language, L'art pour l'art.
Also available at: University of California, Riverside, Rivera Library - Kurutz, Gary F. (2009). "Carl Eytel: Southern California Desert Artist" (PDF). Bulletin. Sacramento, CA: California State Library Foundation. 95: 17–20. Retrieved November 13, 2011. It was originally hung at the State Capitol in the Main Corridor. See Rider, Fremont; Cooper, Frederic Taber (1925). Rider's California: a guide-book for travelers. New York, NY: Macmillan Company. p. 207. OCLC 2650242.
- German Immigrants, 1880s: Carl Eytel from Wurtemberg to Kansas in 1885 arrived: 11-04-1885; occupation: hunter; destination: Kansas; native country: Wurtemberg; native city: Machingen; embarkation port: Hamburg; manifest number: 38415.
- Wild, Peter (2007). News from Palm Springs: The Letters of Carl Eytel, Edmund C. Jaeger, J. Smeaton Chase, Charles Francis Saunders, and Others of the Creative Brotherhood and Its Background. Vol. I and II. Johannesburg, CA: The Shady Myrick Research Project. OCLC 163456618.
- Ainsworth, Ed (1970) [1960]. Painters of the Desert: Glimpses at Those Who Captured for Themselves and Their Fellowmen the Beauty and Message of the American Desert. Palm Desert, CA: Desert Magazine. p. 111. LCCN 61016101. OCLC 1814783.
- James, George Wharton; Eytel, Carl (illustrator) (1906). The Wonders of the Colorado Desert (Southern California). Boston: Little, Brown and Company. pp. 547. ISBN 978-1103733613. LCCN 06043916. OCLC 2573290. (Available as a pdf file through the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
- Law, George; Illustrations by Carl Eytel (January 28, 1923). "Desert Painter: Carl Eytel". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. p. X17 (Illustrated Magazine). ISSN 0458-3035.
...an elaborate and beautiful book...
(subscription required) - Hudson, Roy Fred (1979). Forgotten Desert Artist: The Journals and Field Sketches of Carl Eytel, an Early-day Painter of the Southwest. Palm Springs, CA: Palm Springs Desert Museum. p. 118. OCLC 5802826.
[James'] epic, two volume book...[is] now a collector's item.
Hudson's book was reviewed in: "Books for Desert Readers". Desert Magazine. Palm Desert, CA: Desert Magazine. 42 (4): 6–7. April 1979. Retrieved September 9, 2012. - Ainsworth, Edward Maddin (1968). The Cowboy in Art. John Wayne (forward). Bonanza Books/World Publishing. p. 124. ISBN 978-1199424945. OCLC 443225.
- Davidson, Harold G.; Swinnerton, Jimmy (1985). Jimmy Swinnerton. Hearst Books. p. 160. ISBN 978-0688037109. LCCN 84027964. OCLC 11531621.; Wild, Peter (2007). The Grumbling Gods: a Palm Springs Reader. p. 98. ISBN 978-0874808995.
He lived in a shack on what is now Palm Springs' upscale Tennis Club.
OCLC 122974473, 608203796, 608020250 (print and on-line); and, Leach, Frank Aleamon (1920). "1: The Desert of Southern California". Wild Life in California: Some of Its Birds, Animals and Flowers. Oakland, CA: Tribune Publishing Company. pp. 13, 15. OCLC 12257730. - Jaeger, Edmund C. (September 1948). "Art in a Desert Cabin" (PDF). Desert Magazine. Palm Desert, CA: Desert Press. 11 (11): 15–19. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-12-02. Retrieved 2016-03-23.
- This same issue has the following as a side story: Lloyd, Elwood (September 1948). "Of Such As These Is the Spirit of the Desert". Desert Magazine. Palm Desert, CA: Desert Press. 11 (11): 18.
It was in Tahquitz canyon, where he wanted to show me the hidden waterfall....[Some] little spotted skunks...were playing and frolicking.... I...pulled my pistol...and fired.... 'A clean hit! I got him!' Carl...peered, [then] said to me, 'Yes, you did.... [B]ut what are you going to do about giving back that life you took from him? It was giving him joy but it gives you nothing. Alive he did you no harm.'
Originally published as: Lloyd, Elwood (1939). Enchanted Sands. Los Angeles, CA: Arthur H. Steake. p. 61. OCLC 8796275.
- This same issue has the following as a side story: Lloyd, Elwood (September 1948). "Of Such As These Is the Spirit of the Desert". Desert Magazine. Palm Desert, CA: Desert Press. 11 (11): 18.
- McKinney, John (2010). A Walk Along Land's End: Dispatches from the Edge of California on a 1,600-mile hike from Mexico to Oregon. Olympus Press. pp. 23, 32, 41. ISBN 978-0934161350.
- Kleinschmidt, Janice (August 2007). "Cabins of the Brotherhood: Author Peter Wild delves into the Spartan lives of Palm Springs' early desert rats". Palm Springs Life. Palm Springs: Desert Publications. Retrieved November 15, 2011.; Davidson, Harold G. (1985). Jimmy Swinnerton: the artist and his work. New York: Hearst Books. p. 76. ISBN 978-0688037109. OCLC 11531621.
In June 1916, his old sketching companion...Eytel, visited Jimmy in Flagstaff....Jimmy wined and dined him, took him on a tour to the Grand Canyon and Hopiland.
- Eytel contributed 1 full page painting (Mirage in the Desert (1905)) and 173 pen sketches to Volume I and 164 pen sketches to Volume II. Edwards, Elza Ivan (1962). Desert Harvest. Los Angeles: Westernlore Press. p. 78. LCCN 62022266. OCLC 2022836.
- Reviews included:
- Adams, Cyrus C. (March 2, 1907). "Wonders of the Far West: George Wharton James's New Book on the Colorado Desert" (PDF). The New York Times Saturday Review of Books. Retrieved August 30, 2012.
...its pictures are worthy of special mention. They are...graphic story tellers, for the artist has hit off admirably the characteristics of things...without waste of crayon. ...James says that no other man knows the Colorado Desert as Eytel knows it 'and his sketches are faithful portrayals of the objects he has seen and lived with.'
- "A Guide to the New Books". The Literary Digest. New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls. XXXIV (7): 263–64. February 16, 1907.
This elaborate treatise is a distinct contribution to the literature of the natural wonders of our country....The illustrations...are a notable feature...and admirably illustrate the text.
- Gilmour, John Hamilton (February 3, 1907). "The Wonders of the Colorado Desert, California". San Francisco Call. 101 (65): Magazine, 3.
He has written admirably and knowingly...and this...is in line with his previous works. ...It is a pity, though, that he has trusted to statements of a few people rather than investigated for himself....The book is well illustrated by Carl Eytel.
- "Holiday Books of Travel and Description". The Dial. XLI (492): 454. December 16, 1906.
A chapter, too, on Mr. Eytel himself is one of the best in the book.
- Sanborn, Kate (March–August 1907). "Books as I See Them". New England Magazine: an Illustrated Monthly. New England Magazine Company. New Series, 36. ISSN 2154-6223. OCLC 7568653.
- Adams, Cyrus C. (March 2, 1907). "Wonders of the Far West: George Wharton James's New Book on the Colorado Desert" (PDF). The New York Times Saturday Review of Books. Retrieved August 30, 2012.
- James, George Wharton (May 1906). "The Colorado Desert: As General Kearney Saw It". The Four-Track News. Passenger Department, New York Central & Hudson River R.R. 10 (5): 389–93. OCLC 214967241.
- "Hermit Artist Will Exhibit – Carl Eytel Once More in Civilization". Los Angeles Herald. 35 (278): II, 4. July 6, 1908. Retrieved August 31, 2012.
Noted Painter About to Give Display – Lives Most Isolated Existence, Surrounded by Venomous Reptiles and is Extremely Popular Among the Indians
- "Big Demand for Beaumont Lands". Los Angeles Herald. 35 (284): II, 9. July 12, 1908. Retrieved August 31, 2012.
Carl Eytel, the famous scenic painter, is building a $1500 bungalow.
- Rucker, Kathryn (July 27, 1909). "Art". Los Angeles Herald. 36 (299): II, 2. Retrieved August 31, 2012.
Among the pictures now hung in the Kanst gallery are a number that were exhibited at the world's fair, St. Louis, others at the Royal Academy and Royal Scotch Academy....Arizona landscapes by C. Eytel, among which is a translation of a mirage very well expressed, are rather too vivid to be pleasing to those of quiet tastes....
- "Author and Artist Seek Material for Booklet". Los Angeles Herald. 37 (337): 14. September 3, 1910.
...Chase...and...Eytel, an artist of Palm Springs, returned this morning from a horseback jaunt among the mountains from this valley [San Bernardino] to the Mexican line, gathering material for a booklet describing the pine trees of this end of the state.
; and, Chase, J. Smeaton (1911). Cone-bearing Trees of the California Mountains. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. pp. 99. LCCN 11004975. OCLC 3477527.The line-drawings are the work of my friend, Mr. Carl Eytel.
- Bailey, Victoria J. (2003). California Desert Resort Cities: Reflections & Visions. Palm Springs, CA: Desert Springs Publishing. p. 43. ISBN 978-0972757201. OCLC 54384087.
- Jaeger, Edmund C. (September 18, 1925). "Eulogy: Death Claims Noted Painter of Desert". Riverside Press-Enterprise. Riverside, CA.
His illustrations are to be found in many of the best periodicals and in the publications of Little, Brown & Co., of Boston. Many Southern California homes carry his canvases on their walls and hundreds of former guests of the Desert Inn treasure his remarkably executed pen drawings....
- Bogert, Frank M. (2003) [1987]. Palm Springs: First Hundred Years. Palm Springs, CA: Palm Springs Library. p. 288. ISBN 096187242X. OCLC 17171891.
- Shumway, Nina Paul (July 1949). "Patriarch of Palm Springs". Desert Magazine. Palm Desert, CA: Desert Press. 12 (9): 28.
- His reputation as "the desert artist" continued. In 1913 he was visited by Ulysses S. Grant IV, then age 20. "1913 / A Midsummer Motoring Trip". Desert Magazine. 25 (3): 20. March 1962.
'Then we went on toward a small settlement called Palm Springs....' The desert artist, Carl Eytel, was living alone in a shack.... I recall him well as a lean man with a large moustache, seemingly of frail constitution but wiry and actually, when under stress, possessed of great endurance.
Also available at Grant, U. S (March 1961). "A Midsummer Motoring Trip". Historical Society of Southern California. 43 (1): 85–96. doi:10.2307/41169503. JSTOR 41169503. - Henderson, Moya; Palm Springs Historical Society (2009). Images of America: Palm Springs. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. p. 127. ISBN 978-0738559827. OCLC 268792707.
- Barnes, Leo; Feldman, Stephen (1977). Handbook of Wealth Management. McGraw-Hill. p. 37-11. ISBN 978-0070037656. OCLC 2818209.
- "Charles Francis Saunders and Mira Culin Saunders Collection of Photographs and Negatives". Online Archive of California (OAC). Regents of the University of California. Retrieved November 22, 2011.
Charles Francis Saunders (1859–1941)...and his first wife, Elisabeth Hallowell Saunders (d. 1910), were both avid naturalists...
; also see Saunders, Charles Francis (1914). "IV: Three Hunting on a California Desert". With the Flowers and Trees in California. New York, NY: McBride, Nast & Co. pp. 286. OCLC 403367.Besides the Professor and myself, there was...Eytel, an artist who...has painted up and down the desert and in a sense made it his own....
, and Saunders, Charles Francis (1926). Carl Eytel, Artist of the Colorado Desert. Pasadena, CA: Saunders. OCLC 58931532. - Filmore, Gary (2011). Desert Horizons: Images of James Swinnerton's Southwest. lulu.com. p. 7. ISBN 978-1105051173.
- Hilton, John H. (July 1941). "Nature is His Teacher". Desert Magazine. El Centro, California: Desert Publishing Co. 4 (9): 12.; and, "Fred Payne Clatworthy (U.S., 1875–1953)". Autochromes: The World Goes Color-Mad. American Museum of Photography. 2008. Retrieved 22 November 2011.
Fred Payne Clatworthy...a professional photographer in...Colorado, published Autochromes in National Geographic...
- Niemann, Greg (2005). Palm Springs Legends: Creation of a Desert Oasis. San Diego, CA: Sunbelt Publications. p. 286. ISBN 978-0932653741. LCCN 2005021837. OCLC 61211290. (here for Table of Contents)
- Yerxa, Cabot (December 1951). "Carl Eytel". Palm Springs Villager. 6 (5): 17, 41.
- At the start of World War I Eytel took the conflict personally towards his old English friend Chase; but they may have reconciled when peace was achieved. Wild, Peter (2005). J. Smeaton Chase. Johannesburg, CA: The Shady Myrick Research Project. pp. 40, 127. OCLC 62232191.
Eytel could get testy about Chase's marriage to a wealthy woman. Also, as to Palm Springs gossip, [he] could have a fishwife's tongue; and the ascetic's prerogative, he carped about the horror of declining morals in the village...
- The Museum of Riverside has a permanent "desert cabin" exhibit about Jaeger which references Eytel as his mentor. See: Museum of Riverside permanent exhibits.
- Japenga, Ann (March 2004). "Bloomsbury, P.S." (PDF). Desert Magazine.
Now and then a knot of likeminded artists and writers converges in one place and you get a Bloomsbury Circle or an Algonquin Roundtable. Such a confluence happened in Palm Springs early in the 1900s. But instead of paneled drawing rooms, the artists convened in a couple of oil can shacks beside the Tahquitz ditch, near where the Tennis Club is today.
- Kleinschmidt, Janice (August 2007). "The Letters of Carl Eytel: The early desert painter's correspondence with travel writer and teacher Edmund C. Jaeger". Palm Springs Life. Palm Springs: Desert Publications. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
- James, George Wharton (1914). "XXVII: California's Influence Upon Art". California, Romantic and Beautiful. Boston, MA: The Page Company. p. 397. OCLC 3285978.
- Japenga, Ann (Winter–Spring 2011). "The Smoketree School: Painters respond to the call of the desert". Palm Springs Life. Desert Publications. Archived from the original on April 7, 2012. Retrieved November 27, 2011.
The Smoketree School encompasses not only traditional landscape, but also modernist and Western works, watercolors, and even abstract painting, as well as contemporary artists, such as Terry Masters, Elaine Mathews, and Diane Best.
- Japenga's commentaries are at:
- "April is Desertscapes Month". California Desert Art. 2011. Retrieved November 27, 2011.
- "Welcome". California Desert Art. 2011. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
- "Goodbye to Carl Bray". California Desert Art. 2011. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
- Chase, J. Smeaton (1987) [1920]. Our Araby: Palm Springs and the Garden of the Sun. Pasadena, California: Star-News Publishing Co. (1987 by the Palm Springs Public Library). p. 83. ISBN 0961872403. LCCN 24010428. OCLC 6169840.
It looks more than likely that by ten or fifteen years from now a school of painters will have made Our Araby their province, just as now there are the Marblehead and Gloucester men in the East and the Newlyn men in England. A forerunner of the group I forecast has already been working for many years with Palm Springs for his headquarters, Mr. Carl Eytel, whose knowledge of his field has been earned, as it were, inch by inch and grain by grain, and whose conscientious work gives a truer rendering of the desert than do sensational canvases of the popular Wild West sort.
(Electronic copy) - Gerdts, William H. (1990). "The Pacific: Southern California". Art Across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting 1710–1920. 3. New York: Abbeville Press. pp. 311, 322. ISBN 1558590331. LCCN 90000598. OCLC 755165724.
The style adopted by almost all of the leading Los Angeles-area artists in the early twentieth century was Impressionism...The proximity of Los Angeles to the Mojave Desert attracted a whole group of scenic painters to investigate this motif...
- Law, George (May 20, 1923). "Among the Pueblo Indians". Los Angeles Times. 11: 15, 30.; and, James, Harry Clebourne (1968) [1960]. The Cahuilla Indians. Morongo Indian Reservation: Malki Museum Press (Westernlore Press). p. 185. LCCN 60010491. OCLC 254156323. – includes drawings of Indian houses, wells, basket granaries and ollas)
- "Palm Springs stagecoach station". Online Exhibitions: Annexation and Statehood. Agua Caliente Cultural Museum. Retrieved August 31, 2012.; and, Wild, Peter (2008). William Pester: The Hermit of Palm Springs. Johannesburg, CA: The Shady Myrick Research Project. p. Photo 13 (Chino Canyon (Christ Reflected in Water) (1913)). OCLC 234084689.
- Bright, Margorie Belle (1981). Nellie's Boardinghouse: A Dual Biography of Nellie Coffman and Palm Springs. Palm Springs, CA: ETC Publications. pp. 35, 58, 83. ISBN 088280068X.
...arranging for [the] funeral service to be read by his favorite Moravian minister from Banning.
LCC F869 P18 C63- Professor Wild disputes that the Indian cemetery burial was a particular honor, contending that non-Indian burials were fairly common. Wild, Peter (2007). Tipping the Dream: A Brief History of Palm Springs. Johannesburg, CA: The Shady Myrick Research Project. p. 159n67. OCLC 152590848. He also documents this contention in his 2007 Letters from Palm Springs (1:140–142).
- Saunders, Charles Francis (August 25, 1926). Carl Eytel: Artist of the Colorado Desert, California. Sacramento, CA: Unpublished typescript, California History Section, California State Library. OCLC 58931532.
- Young, Patricia Mastick (1983). Desert Dream Fulfilled: The History of the Palm Springs Desert Museum. Palm Springs, CA: Palm Springs Desert Museum. p. 80. LCCN 83080384. OCLC 19266381.
- See:
- Morhardt, Sia; Morhardt, Emil (2004). California Desert Flowers: an Introduction to Families, Genera, and Species. University of California Press. p. 284. ISBN 978-0520240032.
- Jaeger, Edmund C. (1940). Desert Wild Flowers. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. p. 259.
Named eytelia in honor of Carl Eytel...desert artist and traveler, and good friend of many botanists.
- Map links:
Further reading
- Ainsworth, Katherine (1996) [1976 edition published by the Palm Springs Art Museum]. The McCallum Saga: The Story of the Founding of Palm Springs. Palm Springs, CA: Palm Springs Public Library. ISBN 0961872411. LCCN 96052785. OCLC 799840.
The friendship between the little reclusive artist, hiding the scars life had inflicted upon him and who found cruel life almost beyond endurance, and the lonely, overburdened young woman deepened into a close friendship. It was not until Eytel proposed marriage that Pearl realized such a relationship would be wrong for both of them. [p. 169]
– Pearl McCallum McManus was a major figure in the development of early Palm Springs. This book also contains some 26 of Eytel's pen and ink drawings. - Brown, Renee (May 28, 2016). "Early artists inspired by Palm Springs area landscape". The Desert Sun. Palm Springs, California: Gannett.
- Chase, J. Smeaton (2009). California Coast Trails: a Horseback Ride from Mexico to Oregon. BCR (Bibliographical Center for Research). ISBN 978-1116315660. LCC F866 .C48
- Chase, J. Smeaton (Fall 2005) [1913]. "California Coast Trails: A Horseback Ride from Mexico to Oregon". The Double Cone Register. Santa Cruz, CA: Ventana Wilderness Alliance. VIII (1). Retrieved December 2, 2011.
Ever since I had lived in California I had been waiting for an opportunity to explore the coast regions of the State. At last the time had come when I could do it; and Eytel, my companion on other journeys in the mountains and deserts of the West, was free to join me for the southern part of the expedition.
(Electronic copy)
- Chase, J. Smeaton (Fall 2005) [1913]. "California Coast Trails: A Horseback Ride from Mexico to Oregon". The Double Cone Register. Santa Cruz, CA: Ventana Wilderness Alliance. VIII (1). Retrieved December 2, 2011.
- Chase, J. Smeaton (1911). Yosemite Trails. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin. OCLC 34014279.
- Eytel, Carl; Jaeger, Edmund C. Sketchbook 1904–1905. OCLC 32945154. University of California, Riverside, Jaeger Collection
- Carl Eytel correspondence, 1910–1926. Sacramento, CA: California State Library archival material. OCLC 436466432. Includes letters with State Librarian James Louis Gillis and Milton J. Ferguson.
- Eytel, Carl (January 1913). "From Palms to Pines". Out West. 5: 23–25. OCLC 73687761, 02604648
- Eytel, C. (April 1910). "How we came to Arizona". Arizona Magazine. Yuma, AZ: Arizona Magazine Co.: 5. OCLC 19695642, 20846621 (listed in: Alliot, Hector; Munk, Joseph Amasa (1914). Bibliography of Arizona. Los Angeles, CA: Southwest Museum. p. 74. OCLC 1970415, 166504460)
- Hector, Juliann (January 15, 2006). "Desert Tales: Roughing It Artistically in Palm Springs". The Press-Enterprise. Riverside, CA. p. B: 5. ISSN 0746-4258.
- Hughes, Edan Milton (1986). Artists in California, 1786–1940. San Francisco, CA: Hughes Pub. Co. ISBN 978-0961611200. LCCN 85091064. OCLC 77497974.
- Jaeger, Edmund C. (1922). Denizens of the Desert: A Book of Southwestern Mammals, Birds, and Reptiles. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. LCCN 22023350. OCLC 1459267. – Jaeger credits Eytel for a drawing of Washington Palms in a rocky gorge (p. 82). He also relates a story told to him by Dr. J. H. Kocher when Eytel and Kocher were camping in the mountains at Keyes Ranch near the Colorado Desert – a spotted skunk had come into their tent while they were sleeping. Eytel's advice to Kocher was a whispered "Better keep still." (pp. 288–90).
- Jaeger, Edmund C. (2012) [1919]. The Mountain Trees of Southern California. Carl Eytel (illustrations). Pasadena, CA (original printing): Hardpress Publishing. ISBN 978-1290251082. LCCN 21001210. OCLC 940514410.
- Jennings, Bill (September 1978). "Early Desert Artist Re-emerging Folk Figure: German-born Carl Eytel Played Important Role in Desert Books" (PDF). Desert Magazine. Palm Desert, CA: William and Joy Knyvett. 41 (9): 12–15. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 2, 2011. Retrieved December 18, 2011.
'Eytel inspired me to pursue this new interest, also helped me develop my own sketching style,...' Jaeger said in a recent interview.
Also available at: . - Larson, Roger Keith (1991). Controversial James: An Essay on the Life and Work of George Wharton James. San Francisco, CA: The Book Club of California. LCCN 91209578. OCLC 24570433.
- Merrill, Peter C. (1996). German Immigrant Artists in America: A Biographical Dictionary (Carl Eytel). Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0810832664. LCCN 96039017. OCLC 144611664.
- Moure, Nancy Dustin Wall (1998). "Artists of the Desert, Cowboys & Native Americans". California Art: 450 Years of Painting & Other Media. Dustin Publications. p. 197. ISBN 978-0961462246. OCLC 40234375.
- Starr, Shannon (April 12, 2003). "Artist Eytel sketched pioneer life: History: The German immigrant developed an affinity for the desert and American Indian culture". The Press-Enterprise. Riverside, CA. p. B: 3. ISSN 0746-4258.
- Wild, Peter (Autumn 1997). "Carl Eytel: The Monk of Palm Springs". Wildflower. Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada: North American Native Plant Society. 13 (4): 22–25. ISSN 0842-5132. OCLC 13726664.
External links
- USC Digital Library, Carl Eytel
- Artnet.com: auction results on Carl Eytel (subscription required) (Contains images of the paintings A Rio Grande Pueblo and Cattle Herding)
- Ask/Art. The Artist's Bluebook: Carl A. Eytel (subscription required) (Contains biographical material and images of paintings)
- Heritage Auctions: Carl Eytel (registration required) (Contains images of the paintings Palm Desert and California Palms, sold at auction.)
- Braun Research Library Collection: Carl Eytel (394 images) Autry National Center, which holds the original drawings by Eytel for The Wonders of the Colorado Desert
- Carl Eytel at Find a Grave