One of the most gifted of the historic California plein-air painters, Edgar Alwin Payne (1883?1947) utilized the animated brushwork, vibrant palette, and shimmering light of Impressionism, but his powerful imagery was unique among artists of his generation. While his contemporaries favored a quieter, more idyllic representation of the natural landscape, Payne was devoted to subjects of rugged beauty. His majestic, vital landscapes, informed by his reverence for the natural world, are imbued with an internal force and an active dynamism. An avid traveler, Payne was among the first painters to capture the vigor of the Sierra Nevada, and his travels through the Southwest resulted in equally magnificent depictions of the desert. In Europe he rendered the towering peaks of the Alps and the colorful harbors of France and Italy. His unending quest to convey the "unspeakably sublime" in his landscapes
