Philip Dike; Portrayed Coastline in Watercolors

Philip L. Dike, an award-winning watercolorist best known for his paintings of the Southern California coastline, has died in Claremont, where he had been a member of the Scripps College faculty since 1950 and professor emeritus since his retirement in 1970.

Dike, 83, died Feb. 24 of what his wife, artist Betty Woodward Dike, described only as a long illness.

Born in Redlands, Dike devoted nearly all his lengthy career to the Southland.

He studied at and later taught at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles while also training at the Art Students League in New York and the American Academy in Fontainbleau, France.

With Millard Sheets and Rex Brandt, he became known nationally in the 1930s for his seascapes and later a series of paintings of Newport Beach and Balboa Bay. In 1988, Antiques and Fine Art magazine called him the “champion of the Western coastline.”

He had one-man shows at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and the Pasadena Museum of Art. His paintings are part of the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Library of Congress Penell Print Collection and the National Academy of Design.

He was a former president of the prestigious National Watercolor Society and held more than 60 national and local awards.

Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, a sister, two grandsons and a great-grandson.

Donations are suggested to a scholarship fund in his name at Scripps College.