Landscape Painter Rex Brandt Dies

Artist Rex Brandt, a founder of Newport Harbor Art Museum who was renowned for his watercolor paintings of Newport Beach and Balboa Bay, died Tuesday at his home in Corona del Mar. He was 85.

The cause of death was either a stroke or heart attack, said his daughter, Joan Scarboro. Brandt had been in poor health since cracking two vertebrae in a fall six weeks ago.

Westways magazine called Brandt “one of the central figures in California art in the mid-20th century.” E. Gene Crain, the foremost collector of Brandt’s paintings, said they are “as good as any work in a water-based medium that has ever been painted anywhere at any time.”

Brandt’s most well-known paintings celebrated a bygone era of California, with its open fields, blue water and unpolluted air.

“I see landscape as a focus for our feelings,” Brandt wrote in a pamphlet about painting. “I need to paint for the same reason I must walk, swim, dig in the earth and make things grow. A crackling wood fire is more satisfying than the best microwave oven.

“I paint the happenings of land and sky to overcome a certain dizziness caused by such unfertile objects as TVs, helicopters and noisy autos. The push/pull of earth/sky reassure me--I am here.”

Besides his painting, Brandt designed the city of Newport Beach’s seal and was known for his teaching and his instructional books. Along with the watercolorist Phil Dike, he formed the Brandt-Dike Summer School, held at his house in Corona del Mar. His books included “Watercolor Technique in Fifteen Lessons” and “Composition of Landscape Painting.”

Rexford Brandt was born in San Diego on Aug. 12, 1914. He received his bachelor’s degree at the University of California’s Berkeley campus and did graduate work at Stanford University.

Brandt’s wife, Joan Irving, a painter who later helped him run the art school, died in 1995. He is survived by daughters Joan Brandt Scarboro and Shelley Walker, five grandchildren and four great grandsons.

A memorial service will be held Saturday at 3 p.m. at Pacific View Memorial Park in Newport Beach. The family requests that instead of flowers, donations be sent to Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, 151 E. Pacific Coast Highway, Newport Beach 92660.