Henrietta Dunn Mears, American, 1877-1970, Massachusetts, Minnesota, California, Wisconsin. Landscape painting, etching. Similar artists: Birger Sandzen, Granville Seymour Redmond, William Wendt, Dana Bartlett, Selden Connor Gile, Louis Bassi Siegriest, E. Charlton Fortune, Thomas Lorraine Hunt, Guy Rose, Benjamin Chambers Brown, Elmer Wachtel, Fremont Ellis, Maurice Braun.

"Untitled (California Wash and Mountains)" is an oil on canvas that is signed lower right. 25 x 30 in image, 31 x 36 in frame.

Mears studied at the Art Students League in New York with Charles Hawthorne and Eric Pape. Mears lived in St. Paul, Minnesota for a large portion of her life, before settling in California in 1945 for her mature art career. At one point she was also active in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her solo exhibition was held at the Copley Gallery, Boston in 1917. This painting was created later in life as it depicts a landscape of the Southwest, which is nearly certain California where the artist had resided. The yellow foreground leads a short path to a grouping of trees that stand before brilliantly composed mountains. Rocks and dry shrubs decorate the earth and provide the textured forms necessary to demonstrate the arid climate. Mears' artworks exhibit an Impressionist flair, sometimes exuding a vibrancy atypical of standard landscape paintings, that can truly be appreciated when viewing in person. No exception is made with this landscape, which vivaciously balances vibrant warm and cool colors.