August Gay "Monterey Wharf" 5 x 7 inches, oil on board. Available!
August Gay
August Gay
August Gay
August Gay Biography:
August Francois Pierre Gay was an American painter that holds a high place in the northern California school of Art. He was born in Rabou, France on June 11, 1890 and arrived in the U.S. about 1901 settling in Alameda, California.
August Gay attended art classes at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco and California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland. His colleague, Selden Gile, had a strong influence on his creative growth and the two artists were the first of a group who became known as the Society of Six. Although he lived in Monterey after 1919, he was still an active member of the Six and exhibited regularly with them at the Oakland Art Gallery until 1926. Gay worked during the Depression as an employee of the local fish factories and Oliver's Frame Shop. While in Monterey he shared a studio with Clayton S. Price in the Stevenson House. During the last ten years of his life he was a furniture designer and custom framer for the Monterey Guild (the furniture in the San Juan Bautista Mission is from his shop) and lived on the Monterey Peninsula until his death on March 9, 1948.
Many of his oils were painted on cigar box tops and small segments of artboard. His wonderful depictions of the Monterey Wharf, of the Carmel Valley, coastal scenes, and the fishing fleet of Monterey Bay were inspired by the Cubists in form and by the Fauvists in bold and colorful planes of colors. August Gay's high level of art began to receive national recognition in the 1950s.
His works were exhibited at: San Francisco Art Association in 1916 & 1921; at the Del Monte Art Gallery in Monterey in 1919; at the Beaux Arts Gallery in San Francisco in 1929; at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1935; Oakland Museum, 1972 & 1981; Monterey Museum, 1993 (solo). His works can be found in: State Museum Resource Center (Sacramento); Oakland Museum; Pacific Grove High School (mural); Monterey Peninsula Museum.
