Channing Peake - Portrait of His Mistress - My Beautiful Linda 1959 - Oil on Canvas P2605
The accompanying love letter tells the story. And she was not one of his three wives. The protean Western artist Channing Peake lived the life of an artist to the hilt, and his work fully justifies it. The portrait is one of his very finest. One of the most fascinating qualities of his work was his natural affinity with the work of the great French moderns, and the painting shows that, prophesying the years he would spend in France, close to his hero and friend Picasso. This is an important work, artistically and biographically.
Canvas measures 20" x 24" and the frame is 23 1/2" x 28" x 1".
Born in Marshall, CO on Oct. 24, 1910. At age five Channing Peake moved to Inyo Valley, CA with his family. From San Fernando High School he was awarded a scholarship to the CCAC. With artists Ed Borein, Joe DeYong, and Will James, he painted murals in Santa Barbara's El Paseo Restaurant in 1928. For two years he studied at the Santa Barbara School of Art followed by study in NYC at the ASL under Rico Lebrun. For four years he lived and worked with Diego Rivera and traveled widely in Mexico, Guatemala, and Europe. Under the Federal Art Project, he was assistant to Louis Rubinstein in the murals for the Germanic Museum at Harvard University and to Lebrun in the murals in Pennsylvania Station in NYC.
He collaborated with Edward Borein, Joe deYong and Rico LeBrun on mural projects in California and on the East Coast. He spent four months in Mexico working with Diego Rivera, followed by extensive travels in South America and Europe. During those travels he associated with such characters as Picasso, Tamayo and Hemingway.
Peake was a founding member of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. After 1938 he had a studio in that city while maintaining a horse ranch nearby in Lompoc. He collaborated with Howard Warshaw in the Don Quixotte mural for the Santa Barba City Library. Peake died in Santa Barbara, CA on May 29, 1989. Exh: Montecito Country Club, 1940.
