Portraits of Local Pride Star in Shows

Pride of place seems to be the curatorial condition in San Diego this summer. Local artists are featured in shows at the San Diego Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art and numerous galleries throughout the county, among them a show of the work of Marie DuBarry at the First Street Gallery in Encinitas.

Bruce Kamerling, the San Diego Historical Society’s Curator of Collections, has been seriously smitten, too, and the evidence can now be seen in the show, “100 Years of Art in San Diego: Selections from the Collection of the San Diego Historical Society,” at the Museum of San Diego History.

A solid, historical show, well-researched and catalogued, “100 Years of Art” also includes a few mesmerizing paintings. Margaret (Margot) King Rocle’s stunning portrait of Eileen Jackson (circa 1939) fuses lush realism with tinges of the surreal. Eileen sits in a strapless gown, her gaze meandering to one side, while odd, sinuous strands of foliage sway in the vague space behind her.

The portrait hangs at the opposite end of the gallery from the earliest work in the show, also a portrait of a young woman, painted by Leonardo Barbieri in 1850. Together, these images show just how far a century spans. Barbieri and Rocle both rely on the same conventional format, posing their subjects in elegant dress against simple backgrounds and painting them from the waist up, but their effects differ mightily.

Barbieri’s sitter, Rosario Estudillo Aguirre, smiles agreeably if somewhat stiffly, adorned in a black, lace-trimmed dress, gloves and gold jewelry. She is entirely of this world, and the fine details of Barbieri’s rendering emphasize the materiality of her presence and possessions. Eileen, on the other hand, comes across as an ethereal being in Rocle’s portrait. She, too, is well modeled and has a magnetic presence, but it is diffused by her faraway gaze and the indefinite identity of the organic forms behind her.

Other highlights of the show include an exemplary landscape study by Maurice Braun, a touching narrative scene by Everett Gee Jackson and a sprightly lithograph of “San Diego Plaza” (now Horton Plaza Park) by Ivan Messenger. Lesser works by such local notables as Charles Arthur Fries, Alfred Mitchell, Belle Goldschlager Baranceanu and Ethel Greene are also here.

Informative throughout, many of the show’s 68 works (by 50 artists active between 1850, when California gained statehood, and the 1950s) are of scholarly interest only and fail to distinguish themselves otherwise. San Diego has long been a conservative town, and this show demonstrates that, in art, too, traditional portraiture, impressionistic landscape painting and a fairly generic form of realism dominated local production. Currents of modernism and abstraction touched the city only lightly during the century in question. The story of their full impact and of San Diego’s more recent blossoming as a regional center for the arts are left for later exhibitions.

Museum of San Diego History, Casa De Balboa Building, Balboa Park, open Wednesday through Sunday 10-4:30, through Oct. 20.

Missing from the San Diego Historical Society’s show but deserving of at least a footnote in the chronicles of local art history is Marie DuBarry, whose work can be seen through July at the First Street Gallery in Encinitas. “Illumination on San Diego: The Plein-Air Paintings of Marie DuBarry from the 30s and 40s” features an ample array of small outdoor studies by the artist, who died last year at 93.

Neither innovative nor innocuous, DuBarry’s work nestles comfortably into that vast middle ground reserved for pleasant, attractive art of modest ambition. Born in Denver, DuBarry moved to San Diego alone at the age of 16. Here, she finished high school and studied under painter and printmaker Otto Schneider at the San Diego Academy of Fine Arts.

Like most of Southern California’s prewar landscape painters, DuBarry defined her subjects through brushy, Impressionistic dabs of color. She favored the “Eucalyptus School’s” muted palette of dust, gold and lavender to describe San Diego area trees, canyons and hills, but sporadically she extended her range and created passages of intense sensuality. In one painting, for instance, DuBarry seemed to sculpt hills out of glowing, muscular flesh. In another, she shadowed a tree with an unexpected swash of cobalt blue, and in another, set a cluster of chickens to rest in a pool of violet shade.

DuBarry’s views of unsullied nature clearly reveal her affection for the land. Her observations of animals and the shifting patterns of light and color feel tender, respectful. This warmth for her subjects makes DuBarry’s work appealing, despite its overall blandness.

First Street Gallery at the Lumberyard, 967 1st St., Encinitas. Open Monday through Saturday 10-6 and by appointment (753-5458) through July.

CRITIC’S CHOICE: A MIX AT ‘LOCAL MOTION’

“Local Motion,” at the Faith Nightingale Gallery, stops dead in its tracks more than a few times, but the show does begin vigorously with the work of Joanne Hayakawa. Hayakawa’s ceramic sculptures of an aqueduct and another more fantastic architectural structure have a monumental presence, despite their modest size.

Appearing weathered, aged and used, they set a moody tone for viewers’ varying interpretations. The show continues through July 27 (535 4th Ave.) and includes work by Joan Austin, Arline Fisch, Gail Roberts and Jo Ann Tanzer. All five women teach at San Diego State University.