Orpha klinker biography of mahatma

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Their longitudinal journey through the Golden State was a defining moment in Orpha Klinker’s life as it was made via covered wagon, much in the same way as the droves of American settlers heading to the west coast during the 19th century would have done.

orpha klinker biography of mahatma

Klinker began her career as a commercial artist, but Paris beckoned and she continued her studies at the Julian and Colarossi Academies. Art School and at the Cannon Art School. All of these things and more offer hints into the past for those who are interested in learning where we have come from. Klinker is represented in the collections of the City of Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Spencer Museum of Art and the Museum of the San Fernando Valley.

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Fellow artist and friend, Sam Hyde Harris, pretends
to paint a portrait of Orpha at a costume party
while Orpha poses inside a framed box.

Orpha said of the experience, "I felt like a princess rattlng around in that huge palace.

Two years after her death, the Bowers Museum honored her with a memorial exhibition pulling from the twenty works described above.

Text and images may be under copyright. and founder of its Medical School.

She painted many famous and socially prominent people including Mrs. Alfonso E. Bell, founder with her husband of Bel Air, California, Madame Caroline Severance, founder of the first two Women's Clubs in the United States (the Boston Woman's Club and the Friday Morning Club in Los Angeles), the famous humorist Will Rogers, the early movie star, Miss Claire Windsor, comedian Edgar Bergen and his daughter Candice, and many others.

Orpha was commissioned to paint a very large portrait of one of the earlier mayors of Los Angeles while he was in office, Mayor Frank E.

Shawl. She was vice president of the Campo de Cahuenga Association and was one of the best qualified and most genuinely interested historical painters in California.

She is also noted for her oil paintings and portraits. At the site of the signing in North Hollywood, there is now a large memorial building, The Campo de Cahuenga, containing Orpha's paintings and oil por-traits of the signers, Col.

John C. Fremont and Jose Antonio Carrillo. During her lifetime, she became recognized as an expert on early California history and later in her career she wrote and lectured on this theme. She continued her study of art at the Julian and Colarosi Academies in Europe.

Some of her earliest work was in designing.

Klinker’s fame rivaled and even surpassed that of her father, a well-known Los Angeles-area minister, her brother, Zeno, who was a Hollywood writer, and her sister, Elza, who was a national tumbling champion.

The Decisions, 1930-1950
Orpha Klinker (American, 1891-1964)
Ink and graphite etching on paper; 17 1/4 × 21 1/4 in.
2016.11.1
In Memory of Orlene Klinker-Bowers

All OK at the Bowers

Klinker was very closely associated with the Bowers Museum.

Orpha Klinker: History on Canvas, Paper, and Platter

General Sherman Tree Commemorative Plate, 1946-1950
Made by Vernon Kilns; Designed by Orpha Klinker (American, 1891-1964); Text by Harrye Forbes (American, 1861-1951)
Fired ceramic; 10 in.
31737.1
Evylena Nunn Miller Memorial Collection

California Legacies

History is all around us: the buildings that we inhabit, work, and shop in; the roads we drive; the water we drink.

After a year abroad Klinker worked in New York and Philadelphia before returning to Los Angeles in the mid 1930s.

It was in Southern California that Klinker was able to devote herself to her main interests: history and the desert. Her paintings and prints were exhibited internationally and she garnered numerous honors for her work. Scotty would come up from his own little shack in the back and pose for me by the front gate.

She graduated from Polytechnic High School, L.A. and later studied at U.C.L.A. One of the first major undertakings by Klinker was a recurring column in the Los Angeles Times titled, “Speaking of Pioneers,” in which she would write a short bio about an early California pioneer, accompanied with a portrait she painted of them. Many pages of her fine pen work drawings appeared in Los Angeles newspapers, illustrating the fashions of the day, not only in clothes but in furniture and other things.

This portrait still hangs in the Los Angeles City Hall.

She also did outstanding work as an illustrator, illustrating such books as "Artists of the Desert" and the Enchanted Pueblo" by Ed Ainsworth of the L. A. TIMES, and many other books.

In addition to all this, she designed some 150 china plates depicting histori-cal events and landmarks of principal cities of the United States, Alaska and Hawaii.



When Orpha was a child, the family settled in northern California at the foot of the Sierra in the town of Chico. But he never told me the secret of his gold."

Orpha was born with parents who had an affection for Biblical names. As a close personal friend to Evylena Nunn Miller, a Bowers Board member and fellow artist, she continued to work with the museum, presenting three solo exhibitions—the first of which was in 1943 and the last of which took place the same year as her passing—and also exhibiting alongside members of Women Painters of the West in 1952.

Orpha Klinker, a Californian painter, illustrator, and print maker working in the early to mid 20th century was keenly aware of this.