Lot 21
William Franklin Jackson (1850-1936)
Provenance:
Private Collection by descent to the present owner, Ontario
Note:
In 1863, William F. Jackson, then 13 years old, came to California from Iowa crossing the plains in a covered wagon. Upon graduation from the California School of Design in San Francisco in 1875, he launched into a career as an easel painter in Sacramento, painting both portraits and landscapes. He was appointed the first curator of the E.B. Crocker Art Gallery, a position that lasted for 49 years. He was also the director of the museum-based art school, the Sacramento School of Design while continuing to develop his landscape style under California artist John Marshall Gamble who introduced Jackson to the subject of poppy painting.
Family memoirs claim that he was the originator of the so-called California poppy painting. By 1911, one San Francisco newspaper noted that “Jackson has claimed the state flower to be his very own and has proceeded to make good that claim by his absolute mastery of the subject.” (January 22, 1911)