Clark Hobart

American, (1868–1948)
Notable for his color monotypes, Northern California artist Clark Hobart was also a gifted painter of landscapes and portraits. Most sources list Hobart’s birthplace as Rockford, Illinois, although his death certificate lists his birthplace as Seattle. He and his parents moved to California during his childhood. He studied art in San Francisco under Guiseppe Cadenasso (1858-1918) and John A. Stanton (1860-1941) at the School of Design (a precursor of the Mark Hopkins Art Institute and later the San Francisco Art Institute) and took private lessons from William Keith (1839-1911). By the end of the 1890s Hobart had moved to New York City to study under George Brant Bridgman (1864-1943) and Robert Frederick Blum (1857-1903) at the Art Students League, where he won a student competition in 1898 to paint four panels for display in the Building of Ethnology in Buffalo’s 1901 Pan-American Exposition. Around 1900 Hobart went to Paris to study, returning to New York City in 1903 to work as the art editor for the Burr-McIntosh Monthly Magazine. He moved to Monterey in 1911, where he participated in an exhibition at the Hotel Del Monte in 1913. Thirty-six of his color monotype prints were shown at San Francisco’s Helgeson Gallery in 1915 to critical praise. Hobart exhibited his painting The Blue Bay, Monterey (ca. 1914, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco) and a dozen monotypes at San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, receiving a silver medal for his monotypes. Critics compared his landscapes to those of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). The success of these two exhibitions of his work led to invitations to exhibit in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, in its annual exhibition, and at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art later in 1915, and in New York’s Kennedy Gallery and National Academy of Design in 1916. Hobart moved his studio to San Francisco in 1916, where he established a successful portrait practice and continued to paint landscapes. Hobart was a member of the San Francisco Art Association, the California Society of Etchers and the Bohemian Club. Oakland’s Art Museum devoted a room to Hobart’s monotypes in its inaugural exhibition in 1916. He won prizes at the exhibitions of the San Francisco Art Association in 1918, 1920 and 1922. In 1923 the Bohemian Club mounted a retrospective exhibition of his work. After marrying Mary Young, the head of Mission High School’s art department, in 1923, Hobart and his new wife opened an interior-decorating studio, and within a few years he became semi-retired. He exhibited in the Bohemian Club’s exhibition in 1929, and later was recorded as living in Campbell and then in Los Gatos, California. Suffering from a long illness, Hobart died in Napa State Hospital in 1948.