Los Osos
Artist
Milford Zornes
(1908 - 2008)
Date1958
MediumWatercolor
Dimensions15 1/2 x 24 in. (39.4 x 61 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineGift of the Hilbert Collection
Object number2022.193
DescriptionJames Milford Zornes was born in Oklahoma in 1908. As a child, he was taught to draw by his mother. In 1925, he briefly enrolled at Santa Maria Junior College to study journalism but soon dropped out and hitchhiked across the United States. He finally found work on a ship bound for Copenhagen and upon arrival he jumped ship, bought a bicycle and began touring Europe. He worked his way back to California in late summer 1928.He enrolled at Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and took classes with E. Roscoe Shrader and F. Tolles Chamberlin. In 1931, he began taking art classes with Millard Sheets at nearby Pomona College. Through Sheets' guidance, Zornes became a master of watercolor. In 1938, Zornes started teaching at Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. In 1939, he assisted Millard Sheets on a mural for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. The following year, his Arizona Evening, a watercolor painted in 1938, was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
All through the 1950s and 1960s, Zornes was teaching watercolor painting workshops throughout the world, including China, Alaska, Mexico, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Hawaii, Thailand, Hong Kong, and many other locations. He continued to paint well into his nineties and on his 100th birthday party, he painted a watercolor in front of a gathering of friends and admirers at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. Less than a month later, Milford Zornes died of congestive heart failure on February 24, 2008 in his Claremont home.
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