James Milford Zornes Art

California Image by well known watercolorist Milford Zornes (1908-2008). This work in mint condition, is signed lower right “Zornes,” and dated ‘67. The watercolor is also signed on the verso ‘Milford Zornes, ANA’ and titled “From Dana Point.” This painting is unframed and measures 21"h x 27"w. It’s a beautiful depiction of Dana Point in Orange County. A prominent artist in the watercolor movement known as the California Style, Milford Zornes became especially known for his application of watercolor in broad brush strokes to large sheets of paper. He was born in Camargo, Oklahoma, and moved to Los Angeles while a teenager. In Santa Maria, California, he enrolled in Santa Maria Junior College, where he had art instruction from Stanley Breneiser and lived for a period of time with him and his wife, Babs Breneiser who was an art teacher at the local high school. Then at age 20, he began adventurous travel that took him across the United States that had him working on the docks of New York City, and then shipping out to Denmark as a merchant seaman, a job that eventually led to a tour of Europe. He returned to Los Angeles by 1930, and studied at the Otis Art Institute with F. Tolles Chamberlain, and at Pomona College where Millard Sheets was his teacher. Throughout the 1930s, he was exhibiting widely including the 1938 Art Institute of Chicago International Watercolor Exhibition, Seventeenth Year. Zornes did murals during World War II for the Federal Arts Project of the W.P.A., and was a United States Army artist correspondent in Burma and India. Because of the distinction of his W.P.A. and other wartime artwork, he was honored with a one-person exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC, and one of his paintings was selected by President and Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt for the White House Collection. This attention brought him much positive publicity. After the war, he lived in several locations in California and in 1963, Milford and his wife Pat, bought the Maynard Dixon summer home and studio in Salt Lake City, Utah from Edith Hamlin...