The Painters' Club of Los Angeles

The Painters’ Club of Los Angeles was a short-lived arts organization that existed from 1906-1909, and allowed only men as members. When the group disbanded a number of artists who had been members reorganized themselves as the California Art Club, including Charles Percy Austin (1883-1948), Franz Bischoff (1864-1929), Carl Oscar Borg (1879-1947), Benjamin Brown (1865-1942), Hanson Puthuff (1875-1972), Jack Wilkinson Smith (1873-1949), and William Wendt (1845-1946). Beginning with its founding in December 1909, the new California Art Club widened its membership guidelines to include female painters and sculptors of any gender.

Four artists in Indiana, Albert Clinton Conner (1848-1929), his brother Charles Conner (1857-1905), Frank J. Girardin (1856-1945), and Micajah Thomas Nordyke (1847-1919) were responsible for founding the Rambler’s Sketch Club (c.1881); they soon added John Elwood Bundy (1853–1933) to their small art group. The Rambler’s Sketch Club became the Richmond Art Association (founded 1898), which eventually became the Richmond Art Museum. One of these artists, Albert Clinton Conner, moved to California sometime around 1902 and settled in Manhattan Beach.

On March 10, 1906, several Los Angeles area painters got together with the idea of forming a club. Many of them had met each other casually at exhibition openings, but they wanted to create a more formal association. A week later, on March 17, eleven of the group, including Albert Clinton Conner met at the Los Angeles studio of artist William Swift Daniell (1865-1933), where The Painters’ Club of Los Angeles was officially created. The intended mission of the club was "to meet in the spirit of comradeship and good temper for mutual criticism and suggestion on one another’s recent work." Albert Clinton Conner was elected President and Antony Anderson, the Los Angeles Times' first art critic, was chosen to be the first Secretary and Treasurer. Membership was limited to male painters; no women were allowed to join, nor were sculptors of either gender. "It may be that women painters will be admitted later on, but at present they are not eligible."

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