California Collector on an Art Spree : Patron: Joan Irvine Smith, whose grandfather established the Irvine Co., is building a collection and hopes to open a museum and galleries to showcase the works.

Over the last six months, real-estate heiress Joan Irvine Smith has become the biggest buyer of Southern California impressionist paintings in the nation, acquiring hundreds of artworks that depict the Southland’s scenic past.

Smith, granddaughter of the man who established the Irvine Co., Orange County’s largest private landowner and one of its biggest real-estate developers, received a quarter billion dollars from the sale last year of stock in the Irvine Co. She is now scouring art dealerships, auctions and the storehouses of private collectors in search of paintings that capture the beauty of Southern California before developers rolled over its canyons, hills and coves.

“She is the strongest person investing in the field right now, hands down,” said Whitney Ganz, director of William A. Karges Fine Art, a Santa Monica art gallery. “You can walk into an art dealer and see a masterpiece of California painting with a sold sign on it and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know she is the one who bought it.”

Exactly how much Smith has bought and at what price is uncertain. Peter Fairbanks, director of the Montgomery Gallery in San Francisco, which has sold her dozens of paintings, estimates she has spent $6 million for 1,000 pieces of various sizes and quality over the last six months.

Another dealer, who asked to remain anonymous, said he would double that estimate. Smith’s aggressiveness is particularly extraordinary in the current recession-softened art market, dealers noted with unbridled glee.

The 58-year-old heiress and veteran patron of the arts said in a recent interview that she plans to open a museum in Irvine, preferably on the campus of the University of California, that would feature the work of plein-air painters of California. This group of outdoor artists was influenced by the French Impressionist school and migrated to Southern California between 1890 and 1930 for the rare “quality of light” and pristine natural settings. These artists formed a colony in Laguna Beach, close to the Irvine Ranch that was owned by Smith’s grandfather, James Irvine II.

“Looking at the pictures is like stepping back in time to the way Orange County was when I was a child,” she said, adding that she remembers going with her father to visit the Laguna studio of his good friend, Frank Cuprien, who painted some of the seascapes in her collection.

The museum, she said, “is not only a way people can learn about this period of art and appreciate the art, but also it gives one an appreciation of the environment and of retaining some of it in its natural state. So much of it has been lost through development.”

Smith said that besides her own paintings, the museum will welcome exhibits of California plein-air art loaned by other museums and private collectors. She said she would be particularly interested in showing paintings in storage at the Laguna Art Museum, which was founded by California impressionists.

Charles Desmarais, director of the Laguna Art Museum, said that museum’s collection of 150 works by plein-air artists always draws large crowds to special exhibits. But he added that because the museum is dedicated to showing “the whole range of history” of art, the plein-air pieces are not on permanent display.

Desmarais said he would be happy to lend the paintings to a museum founded by Smith. He noted that the Irvine family has had a long involvement in the museum, capped by a $100,000 gift the museum received in December from Smith and her mother.

The curator of California art at one museum, however, described the trend of private collectors opening their own museums as “unfortunate.”

“These people, instead of supporting existing institutions, are going ahead and making their own institutions,” said the official, who asked not to be identified. “I don’t want to use the word competing, but (the private individual is) really duplicating the activities of the existing museums.”

In general, the official added, donors “prefer to donate (art or money) to public institutions with a broad base (of support or curatorial focus) rather than those named after a private individual.”

Ilene Susan Fort, associate curator of American art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, said she foresees no conflict or competition between Smith’s venture and the Laguna Art Museum, which for decades has had a broad base of support in the community.

“Even if Smith opens her museum to the public, it’s still basically a private collection formed by one person with advisers, whereas Laguna (Art Museum) has been in operation for about 70 years, it’s a public institution” with a substantial collection of plein-air works from the area and others. “Plus, in the last few years, the museum has tried to (focus on) Southern California art in general and is developing a strong (emphasis) on contemporary art and a more modern collection. There’s room for both, although I’m sure Laguna would say it would have been nice if they’d gotten her collection.”

Smith said if she can get permission from UC Irvine, she would like to build a museum of between 40,000 and 60,000 square feet on land she would lease from the university. She would like it to be located in the vicinity of Irvine Hall, a medical building that was named after Smith’s family in recognition of a $2-million gift for its purchase that Smith and her mother made to the university last December through their foundation.

Walter Henry, dean of the UCI Medical School and vice chancellor for health sciences, said the Orange County campus already has agreed that some of Smith’s art collection will be displayed in the foyer of Irvine Hall.

Henry said that any plan to provide land for a museum would have to be considered by various faculty groups on campus regarding siting and other issues and final approval would have to be sought from the university’s Board of Regents.

“I think Mrs. Smith is developing a major collection of plein-air paintings,” Henry added. “If it is not the largest, it is close to the largest collection, and the opportunity to have it located in or near the university would be very exciting.”

In addition to gallery and storage space, Smith said she would want the museum to contain a research library with extensive information on the plein-air painters and their work as well as a collection of historic photographs of Orange County. She also wants the museum to publish books on the artists whose work it exhibits.

A high priority, she said, is getting the museum up and operating as quickly as possible. “I own the paintings and I don’t want to wait around. I want to act right now,” she said. If the university proposal doesn’t prove feasible, she added, she will look for an industrial building in Irvine that could be converted.

Smith said she already has named the museum the Irvine Museum and incorporated it as a nonprofit organization with a board of directors that includes herself; her mother, Athalie Clarke; her eldest son, Jim Swinden; her cousin Anita Ziebe and her tax attorney.

While she declines to say how much money she has spent on plein-air art, she said this year she and her mother are donating $1 million in cash and $2 million in paintings, mostly landscapes, to the museum foundation.

Jean Stern, previously director of the Petersen Galleries in Beverly Hills, has been hired as curator and director of the museum.

“There must have been 35 or 40 prominent California impressionists who painted at one time or another in Orange County and probably 500 lesser-known artists,” Stern said. In selecting paintings for the Irvine Museum, he said, “We will start at the top and work down.”

Smith’s art buying spree is not limited to museum pieces. She also has been making acquisitions for a commercial gallery that she intends to open in July on South Coast Highway in Laguna Beach specializing in plein-air art, both historical and works done in that style by contemporary painters.

Currently 1,800 square feet of commercial space is being prepared for the gallery, to be called Joan Irvine Smith Fine Arts Inc., in a building across the street from the Surf and Sand Hotel. She said she is searching for a second gallery site in Rancho Santa Fe in northern San Diego County.

In addition, Smith said she is buying some of the paintings for her private collection.

She said she is benefiting from the recession because it enables her to buy paintings at a reduced price. “If you have cash to invest, it is the time to do it,” she noted.

Smith began shopping for art last fall, intending at first to buy paintings only for her own enjoyment. “The more I saw, the more interested I got and I thought why not set up a museum?”

Smith, who with her mother has contributed to a myriad of ecological, arts and other causes since pocketing $255.8 million for their Irvine Co. stock last June, also said she considers the museum “another way to put back into the community some money” from her family’s legacy in the giant development company.

Besides, Smith, who for years devoted nearly all her time and energy to legal battles with Irvine Co. owner Donald Bren over his acquisition of majority interest in the company, said she is thoroughly enjoying her new venture in the art world: “I’m just having a wonderful time.”

Michael Johnson, formerly an art dealer and private detective who specialized in the recovery of stolen art, is Smith’s “manager of acquisitions.” Johnson said he has accompanied her on forays to dealers and auctions and she is relentless in her search for what she likes. “She just doesn’t quit,” he said. “We go to a storeroom and look through unframed and dirty paintings by the hundreds and she will want to go through them again and again.”

But dealers say when Smith sees what she wants, she does not hesitate to spend. “She is kind of a dream client,” said Ganz of William A. Karges Fine Art. “She sees a painting she likes and she buys it.”

Johnson said Smith has hired conservators to clean and repair the paintings and check them for authenticity.

David Hoy, owner of David & Son Fine Arts in Laguna Beach, said he doesn’t know of a dealer who hasn’t sold paintings to Smith--or tried to.

“Although she may have upward of several thousand paintings, she does not buy everything,” he said. “She’s a smart lady. I really believe when this is all over, she will end up with a splendid collection.”

Times staff writer Zan Dubin contributed to this story.