Edgar Payne

Edgar Alwin Payne (1 March 1883 – 8 April 1947) was an American Western landscape painter and muralist.

Payne was born near Cassville, Barry County, Missouri, in the heart of the Ozarks. Cassville is in southwest Missouri, near the Arkansas border. Despite his relative isolation this turn-of-the-century Missouri teenager toured the world. Before Edgar was done he would crisscross the United States, travel to Mexico, Canada, and Europe, and even spend the summer in the Alps. But, like John Muir before him, and Ansel Adams after, it was the American West that most appealed to his heart.

According to the U.S. Census of 1900, he resided with his parents, two sisters and five brothers in Prairie Grove, Washington County, Arkansas; his Alabama-born father was employed as a carpenter. Edgar’s occupation was listed as “carpenter, apprentice.” Leaving home on several occasions, Payne painted houses, signs, portraits, murals, and local theater stage sets, to pay his way. Traveling through the Ozarks, then around the Southeast and Midwest, he finally wound up in Chicago, and enrolled to study portrait art at the Art Institute of Chicago. He remained only two weeks at the institute, finding it too structured. He preferred instead to be self-taught, relying on practice and his own sense of direction.

Struggling at first, he soon exhibited a group of landscape works, painted on a small easel, at the Palette and Chisel Club. During this period he also obtained the occasional mural work to supplement his income.

He made his way to California for the first time in 1909, at the age of 26. He spent several months painting at Laguna Beach, then headed to San Francisco. In San Francisco he met other artists, including commercial artist Elsie Palmer (1884–1971). He returned to California for a second time in 1911. When he returned to Illinois that fall, he found that Elsie had taken a job as commercial artist in Chicago. This cemented their already growing interest in each other. On the morning of their wedding day about a year later, 9 November 1912, Edgar noticed that the light was "perfect", and had Elsie postpone the ceremony until the afternoon. Luckily the artist in her offered some understanding.

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