Arthur Frank Mathews

Arthur Mathews was a painter, muralist, illustrator, architect, teacher, publisher, and craftsman. Along with his wife, Lucia, who was also an artist, he is credited with creating the California decorative style, which in painting and furniture combined elements of European Art Nouveau, classical antiquity, the Arts and Crafts movement, and California’s trees, flowers, and locales.

Born in 1860 in Markesan, Wisconsin, Mathews came to Oakland, California, with his family at age six. As a teenager, he worked in his father’s architectural office, but enrolled at the California School of Design (later the San Francisco Art Institute) where he studied painting. In 1885, he went to Paris and studied at the Académie Julian under Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre, and in 1886 he was awarded the Grand Gold Medal, honoring his skills in composition, drawing, and painting. In 1887, 1888, and 1889, Mathews had paintings accepted into the Paris Salon. Upon his return to San Francisco in 1889, he began teaching at his alma mater and soon became the school’s director.

In 1894, Mathews married Lucia Gay Kleinhans, who had been his student at the California School of Design. Between March 1898 and Fall 1899, the couple traveled to Europe and spent considerable time in Paris. At this time, Art Nouveau was gaining in popularity and had its home in Siegfried Bing’s new gallery of the same name. L’Art Nouveau gallery showed works by international artists and craftspeople and the Mathewses would likely have visited or knew of the gallery. During their time in Paris, Arthur opened an atelier while Lucia studied with James McNeill Whistler at his Académie Carmen. Upon returning from Europe, Arthur Mathews began to produce figurative and allegorical works that were inspired by the Art Nouveau and Symbolist movements he saw firsthand.

After the earthquake and fire of 1906, Arthur Mathews designed and built a new studio complex at 1717 California Street, which would house the most important enterprise of the Mathewses’ careers. In collaboration with John Zeile, a local businessman and art patron, Arthur Mathews founded Philopolis Press and, with Zeile and Lucia Mathews, the Furniture Shop, the company producing carved and painted furniture, picture frames, and other decorative pieces and employing as many as fifty craftspeople. While Lucia supervised furniture decoration and carving, and produced original handcrafted objects of her own, the couple also collaborated. At Philopolis Press, Arthur Mathews and Zeile started the magazine Philopolis, which was concerned with art and city planning and was published monthly from October 1906 until September 1916. Arthur served as the primary author, and Lucia contributed illustrations, decorative type, and page embellishments.

By 1910, Arthur and Lucia had a second home and studio in Carmel and the area’s landscape made its way into their mural and design work. Arthur began to focus on paintings of Classically inspired women dancing in the California landscape, which became a hallmark of his work. Many of his murals are allegorical in nature and steeped in antiquity, while others depict local historical events.

_Notes:

_{Shields, Scott A. Artists at Continent’s End: The Monterey Peninsula Art Colony, 1875–1907. University of California Press, 2006.}

_{Shields, Scott A., ed. The Crocker Art Museum collection: unveiled. Crocker Art Museum, 2010.}