Collectors Send Their ‘Children’ on Tour : Art: James and Linda Ries’ paintings start a national tour this month. To them, it’s like the last offspring leaving home.

It happens at the oddest hours. James and Linda Ries’ collection of California paintings, among the best of its era and region, seem to whisper for them.

“We will very often wake up at 2 in the morning, get up and rearrange the paintings,” James Ries explains. “It’s quiet. The phone isn’t ringing. It’s wonderful to be able to pad around the house and move things around. You can’t help yourself; it’s a very compelling thing.”

Collecting art for this couple is much more than hanging wallpaper-pretty pictures in their airy contemporary Encino home. The paintings must speak to them.

“We have formed a very personal relationship with our paintings. But there have been times when the paintings we were in love with no longer beguiled us, and we had to move on,” Ries says.

The Rieses have painstakingly picked artwork--from thousands of offerings--to be part of their collection of 57 paintings.

The couple spent eight years piecing together their highly personal collection. Now, they have parted with their paintings for two years as the body of oils and watercolors travels around the country on an exhibition tour, which began last December with a three-month stay at the Oakland Museum. The paintings will be on display at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art beginning Thursday before heading east.

“Our house looks like the repo man came by,” Ries rues. “We have nothing hanging on our walls. We have an excellent collection of hooks, though.”

“The house is extremely empty,” adds Linda Ries, sounding like a mother whose last child has just left home. “It’s kind of bleak here.”

The collection is an assortment of paintings by 43 Southern California artists from the first half of the 20th Century. The body of images consists of landscapes, portraits, still lifes and genre subjects with reference to technique, history and place. In fact, the presentation has been titled, “A Time and Place: From the Ries Collection of California Painting.”

In Oakland, the paintings gave Northern Californians a glimpse of the creative energy and artwork from their southern neighbors.

“It was somewhat of a revelation,” observes Oakland Museum senior curator of art Harvey Jones, who arranged the exhibit and says it drew significant interest.

“There was a substantial response for several artists whose work has not been on regular view in the Bay Area. There is a new appreciation for the depth and strength of Southern California painters from that period.”

Writes one critic: “The collection is doubly striking, both for the singular vision that has brought a disparate group of paintings together, and for the fact that such a worthwhile group of works could be gathered in a relatively short time.”

The collection includes Impressionist-inspired landscapes of the 1910s and 1920s, as well as work from progressive painters of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. They have acquired paintings by artists of national and international stature, including Fletcher Martin, Helen Lundeberg, Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell.

Michael Quick, curator of American art for the Los Angeles County Museum, is impressed with the couple’s eye for art.

“It represents the highest level of knowledge in connoisseurship of its area,” he says of the Ries collection. “It’s one of the very best collections of Southern California paintings that I know of. There are collections that are larger. But this collection has been raised to a very high level of selectivity.”

The Rieses say they never intended to put together a definitive collection of period paintings. Nor do they plan to expand their collection. Every time they acquire a new work, one they already own must go.

“We did not want to buy more paintings than we could hang on our walls,” explains Ries, a 52-year-old real estate attorney. “As our tastes have evolved, we have made the decision to get rid of a painting if we are going to buy a painting. It’s very difficult. A lot of times you feel a little like Solomon. You have to cut the baby in half.”

Indeed, selecting an image can be as involved as a human encounter. Before buying anything, they insist on living with a painting at least a week. Artwork viewed at midday, they explain, may be something different in the early morning light.

“It takes time to know a painting,” Linda Ries says. “You continue to see things in a painting over a period of time, layers of meaning that slowly reveal themselves to you. Other times, at first glance, a painting is just fabulous. But after looking at it for one or two days, you say, ‘I’ve seen everything this painting has to offer, and it’s not for me.”’

The Rieses have always moved on the cusp of the art world. James Ries was first influenced by his mother, who trained as a painter at the Art Institute of Chicago. His 50-year-old wife has a minor in art history from UC Berkeley, and at present is receiving docent training at the Los Angeles County Museum.

Originally, he collected whaling artifacts and scrimshaw. But he and his wife were drawn to plein-air paintings after thumbing through Ruth Westphal’s book, “Plein-Air Painters of California--the Southland.” And they were immediately attracted to Alson Skinner Clark’s “The Weekend, Mission Beach,” which they eventually acquired as their first painting.

In the handsome catalogue accompanying the exhibit, the Rieses explain their attraction to Clark’s painting, a stark but placid landscape. “We were drawn to the desolation of the wind-swept tents, the minimalist quality, the way human presence is suggested without figures to detract from the landscape.”

The Ries collection is truly a joint effort. “Whether it’s because of their ostensible control of the money, or because there’s a lot of competition, collecting seems to be a male pursuit,” Ries observes. “We are both in it. It gives us an intellectual pursuit that we can both share.”

The Rieses display an independence similar to that which drove and shaped the artists whose work now hang in their collection.

“Five years ago, they had a choice collection of landscapes,” Quick says. “But they pushed ahead into collecting these less-than-charming pictures. They went beyond having the perfect collection of stuff everyone knew about. They set out on their own, and the results are tremendous.”

“The two of us have always followed our own instincts,” Linda Ries explains simply. “We have purchased paintings, not artists. A dangerous trap for any collector is to collect a signature.”

It’s at no small risk that the Rieses are putting their prized paintings on display.

“When you get down to selecting friends and lovers, it’s hard to explain to others that selection process,” says Oakland Museum senior curator of art Harvey Jones. “And it’s not any less personal when you select paintings for a collection. They took a risk in exposing their collection to the public. We all care about what people think. But they have the courage of their convictions.”

“We would be very pleased if the world loves the work,” Ries says. “But if they don’t, that’s fine. Some of our best insights about our collection have come from informed criticism of our paintings. There’s a lot of room for disagreement, and that’s what I think makes collecting exciting.”

Collecting art is more than a hobby. “There’s a certain bug that bites you,” Ries says. “It’s a palpable need to explore these things and what the artists had to say. The best ones were profound people--philosophers, theologians. They have strong beliefs. Once you’re hooked, it’s like an intellectual narcotic.”