Misty Valley by Sam Hyde Harris, Oil on Board P3550

A soft, atmospheric valley scene capturing Harris's gift for hazy morning and overcast light settling across the landscape. Comes from the artist's official estate, with an estate stamp on the reverse — solid provenance for a major figure in early California plein air painting. Oil on board.

Born in England in 1889, Harris emigrated with his family to Los Angeles in 1903 and began working as a commercial sign painter as a teenager, eventually running his own successful studio while pursuing fine art on the side. He studied painting with Hanson Puthuff starting in 1906 and by 1920 was exhibiting with the California Art Club, going on to a decades-long career showing throughout Southern and Northern California. In the 1920s and '30s he and Puthuff took frequent painting trips together into the backcountry of Arizona and California in search of atmospheric landscapes — the kind of hazy, moody light seen in this piece. He settled in Alhambra in the 1940s, working from a studio on the San Gabriel Valley's old "Artists' Alley," and remained active as a painter well into his later years.

Art measures 12" x 16", in frame 17.5" x 21.5"