The Corral
Artist
Stanley Murray Edwards
(1899 - 1981)
Date1936
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineGift of The Hilbert Collection
Object number2023.105
DescriptionCalifornia artist Stanley Edwards was a lifelong resident of Santa Barbara, California. In 1898, his parents and four children moved from Ohio to Santa Barbara. On November 9, 1899, Stanley Murray Edwards became their fifth and last child born. The Edwards family home was eventually established on an ocean view lot in what is now known as the Riviera Neighborhood. Stanley was raised in Santa Barbara and by the time he was attending Santa Barbara High School, his ability to produce art was evident. He entered several contests and received awards for his art.
While still in high school, he exhibited alongside celebrated California artists Carl Oscar Borg and Douglas Parshall and was listed as a contributing artist to his class yearbook. During those years his art instructor was Frank Ingerson, a nationally known muralist and craftsman.
Just as he was graduating from high school, Ingerson and his partner George Dennison hired Edwards as a mural assistant. According to newspaper articles the Persian themed murals Stanley Edwards produced on his own for the Samarkand Hotel building and renovation project brought him notoriety in Santa Barbara as a professional level artist. Edwards was then hired to produce art for several other Ingerson and Dennison interior decoration projects in the region.
By the 1930s, Stanley Edwards was producing art for the PWAP Government Funded art project. He was also contributing oil and gouache paintings to California Art Club exhibitions, Painters and Sculptors Club exhibitions and he had individual works in the Golden Gate International Expo in San Francisco and in State Fair and regional museum group shows.
The art he produced in the 1930s that brought him attention was representational American Scene-Regionalist style oil paintings. As it turned out, it was for these works he is best known.
In the 1940s he began experimenting and producing more painterly expressionist style art using low key colors. After the early 1950s he gravitated toward flattened space modernist works using high key colors. His art produced during the later part of his career went largely unnoticed although some works are now finding their way into serious art collections.
Stanley Murray Edwards passed away in Santa Barbara on April 27, 1981 at age 81. He was buried at the Santa Barbara Cemetery.
Gordon McClelland, Curator
On View
Not on viewCollections
