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C.S. Price

(1874 - 1950)

Clayton Sumner Price, known as C.S. Price, was born in Bedford, Iowa, in 1874 to a farm family of twelve children. At 21 he staked a homesteading claim in Wyoming and became an accomplished carpenter and cowhand. He was 31 before he sought formal art training at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts in 1905. He met notable Western artist Charles Russell there, a friend who encouraged his artistic pursuits. After only a year of study, Price left the school to accept a job as an illustrator in Portland, Oregon. In 1915 he traveled to San Francisco to view the Panama-Pacific International Exposition and was inspired by the modern artworks he encountered on his trip. In 1920 he settled in Monterey, where he shared studios with August Gay and Armin Hansen at the old French Hotel known as the Stevenson House, where Robert Louis Stevenson had stayed briefly in 1879. Price, Hansen, and Gay belonged to a community of artists called “The Monterey Group” that also included Lucy Valentine Pierce and Myron Oliver.

artistic community that was known as “The Monterey Group,” which also included Armin Hansen, August Gay, C. S. Price, Lucy Valentine Pierce,

While in Monterey he was also influenced by the paintings of Cezanne and began to use bright colors to express emotion and adopted a more Modernist approach that moved toward abstraction and depiction of a flat 2-dimensional plane with more angular forms. He returned to Portland in 1928, where he would stay for the rest of his life. In the 1930’s he was one of the first artists in that area to participate in the government’s Federal Art Project, creating large paintings and Murals. One of his murals, “Huckleberry Pickers” is still on display at the Timberline Lodge. He is best known for his renderings of western ranch scenes that include cowboys, cattle, Native Americans, and especially horses. It has been said that C.S. Price painted the “essence” of horses, both their anatomy and inner character. He certainly understood them well after living on farms and ranches in his early life as he became an experienced horseman.

Mary Murray, former Curator at the Monterey Museum of Art, deftly expressed why this unique artist continues to intrigue and fascinate us: “Instead of creating a specific representation-for example a horse, one of his favorite subjects-he would strive to paint the essence of a horse, its "horseness" so to speak. Because he has gone past the specific in order to find what lies at the heart of things, a painting by Price can move the viewer immensely. His expression of the inexpressible, the representation of what lies beyond the visible, is what captivates us.”

In the final years of his life, Price began to receive critical acclaim and his uniquely styled colorful paintings are now sought after by collectors eager to experience their vibrant energy. In 1942 he had his first retrospective at the Portland Art Museum, which introduced his work to a broader national audience. In 1946 he was included, along with fellow Northwest artist Mark Tobey, in the New York Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition titled “Fourteen Americans”, and other important museums including the Metropolitan and the Detroit Art Institute began to purchase examples of Price’s work to add to their collections.

Wikipedia
C.S. Price at the Portland Art Museum
Clayton Sumner Price - Oregon Encyclopedia, A Project of the Oregon Historical Society
C. S. Price Exhibit at the Monterey Museum of Art: Landscape, Image and Spirit