In this second day of our visit to the coast of California in paintings, we have reached the years of the First World War, whose trenches and mud in northern Europe must have seemed so far removed.

In 1915, Anna Althea Hills painted The Quiet Sea, probably close to Laguna Beach, where she settled at that time, and went on to help found the Laguna Beach Art Museum shortly before her untimely death at the age of just forty-eight, in 1930. As this demonstrates, she was an early and accomplished painter en plein air, which she taught in her painting school there.

Hill’s Spell of the Sea (also known as Laguna Beach, near Moss Point) (1920) must be among her best, and compares well with those being painted on the south coast of France at the time. She painted this further down the coast to the south-east of central Laguna Beach, away from areas becoming more popular with visitors.

Guy Rose also painted along this section of coast, as shown in his Laguna Trees from about 1916. These are seen looking to the north-west over the bay, in a Mediterranean light.

Rose’s Carmel Dunes from about 1918-20, shows unspoilt land near Carmel-by-the-Sea, in a small bay to the south of Monterey, on the coast south of San Jose. Carmel wasn’t developed until the early twentieth century, and still only has a resident population of three thousand. It was featured in the International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915, but has never been developed in the way that many other resorts along this coast have.

At the end of the war, Rose painted this Monterey Cypress as if influenced by the paintings of twisted trees along the French Mediterranean coast.

Granville Redmond’s later paintings include a few moonlit motifs, such as this of the Catalina Island Coast under a Moonlit Sky in 1920. Redmond became a close friend of the movie actor Charlie Chaplin. Catalina, or Santa Catalina, Island is about 35 km (22 miles) off the coast of California, south of Los Angeles. Redmond’s sky is formed from innumerable short, fine brushstrokes in apparently random directions, and gives the effect of the atmospheric buzz of small insects, contrasting with the dark mass of rock.

Steamer leaving Avalon, Catalina Island (1920) is a small and painterly sketch in oils on cardboard made by Redmond during his visits to the island. The small town (officially a city!) of Avalon is situated on its natural harbour, and has grown from tents and three wooden huts in 1883 to a modern resort now attracting a million visitors every year. Its development for tourists started in the late 1880s, but when Redmond visited in 1920 it had recently been purchased by the chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr, who opened a casino there in 1929.

Redmond’s Malibu Coast, Spring from about 1929 shows the 21 mile beach of this coastal resort thirty miles to the west of central Los Angeles, in the summer with golden poppies and purple lupines in full flower. At this time, Malibu was only just starting development, with the small Malibu Colony and a ceramic tile factory which had been funded by May K Rindge, owner of the land.

William Frederic Ritschel’s wonderfully rough Carmel-by-the-Sea Seascape was painted in 1930.

Paul Dougherty painted this section of California Cliffs after 1935, in calmer conditions more conducive to working en plein air.