John Marshall Gamble (1863-1957). Landscape painter.
John Gamble was born in Morristown, New Jersey on Nov. 25, 1863. John Gamble's father worked for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and when John was a teenager he moved with his family to Auckland, New Zealand. At age 20 John Gamble sailed to San Francisco. There he trained with Virgil Williams and Emil Carlsen at the San Francisco School of Design. Following this period, he went to Paris to study at the Academie Julian with Jean Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant. He opened a studio in San Francisco but relocated to Santa Barbara after his studio was lost in the big fire in 1906. For twenty-five years, he was color consultant for the Santa Barbara Board of Architectural Review but made a good living from the sale of his paintings. For the opening of the Fox Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara, he created a huge panoramic landscape on the stage curtain.
Influenced by French Impressionist painter, Claude Monet, John Gamble is known for his California floral coastal and landscape paintings especially fields of poppies and lupines. Once John Gamble relocated to Santa Barbara he was one of the leaders of the California plein-air painting movement. A favorite painting subject was coastal views of Pacific Ocean sunsets, and judging by his auction records, he occasionally painted in Arizona and Utah. One of his closest painting companions was Elmer Wachtel.
John Gamble suffered a stroke in his studio and died on April 7, 1957. Gamble is nationally known for his landscapes which often include poppies, lupines, and other wild flowers against the greens and purples of the California hills.
Source: Edan Hughes: "Artists in California 1786-1940"
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