|
About Arthur Best
Known as a "painter of the Grand Canyon," landscapist Arthur W. Best was born at Mount Pleasant near Petersboro, Ontario, Canada in 1859. He traveled to Oregon with his brother Harry (1863-1936) in 1895. The brothers arrived as musicians in a band: Arthur played clarinet and Harry, the violin. Both moved to San Francisco and became landscape painters. While Harry started out as a cartoonist for the San Francisco Post, Arthur and his wife Alice (1829-1926) established the Best Art School, which grew out of a sketching club. Between 1898 and 1904 Arthur exhibited at the Mark Hopkins Institute, then a year later he was commissioned by the Southern Pacific Railroad to paint appealing images of the Southwest and Mexico for their publicity department. In 1906 many of his works were destroyed in the San Francisco Earthquake.
Meanwhile, Best was a member of the Berkeley League of Fine Arts and the Bohemian Club. In 1909 he won a bronze medal at the Alaska-Yukon Exposition in Seattle. Best died in 1935 in Oakland, California, where the Oakland Museum has one of his works. Best’s paintings are also to be found at the Phoenix Art Museum, the University of Oregon, the Santa Fe Railroad Collection, and the Charles M. Russell Gallery in Great Falls, Montana. Another stunning view by Best, The Grand Canyon is in the Anschutz Collection. |
Paintings by Arthur Best
| Grand Canyon |
| oil on canvas: 20 x 26 inches |
|
|
| |
Click Picture to Enlarge
|
|
)