Mother's Councel

Clark Hobart

Monotype printmaker Clark Hobart described the process he used:

"A 'monotype' is perhaps the most severe test of an artist's creative skill. It is painted on copper in oil and while damp is transferred by means of a wringer to the paper, which is its final form. The composition is conceived and painted without the change of a single stroke in the limited time to make possible the transfer to the paper. Should a stroke should [sic] be added on top of the first stroke it would be covered by the first stroke in the transfer."

Clark Hobart was an artist member of the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. Horbat was part of a group of California printmakers who were working in monotype in the early 20th century and, with Xavier Martinez, exhibited them at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915. He won a Silver Medal for his 12 monotypes.

Painter and printmaker Clark Hobart (1868-1948) was born in 1868, though it remains unclear where: reference books indicate that he was born in Rockford, Illinois while his death record states that he was born in Seattle, Washington. Nevertheless, his childhood and the majority of his life was spent in California. He was a pupil of John A. Stanton and Giuseppe Cadenasso at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute in San Francisco - then known as the School of Design - and also received private instruction from William Keith. Hobart went to New York to continue his schooling at the Art Students League under Robert Frederick Blum and George Brant Bridgman, winning a student art cometition for a four-panel display at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Following his time at the ASL he traveled to Europe, where he spent three years in studying in Paris.

Upon his return to the U.S. at the beginning of the century, he worked in New York City as an art editor for Burr-McIntosh magazine. He moved West in 1911, settling for a few years in the coastal town of Monterey. He became primarily known for his color monotypes, exhibiting a selection at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, receiving a silver medal and much critical acclaim. In 1916 he moved north to San Francisco and that same year the Oakland Art Museum, during its inaugural exhibition, devoted a room to Hobart's monotypes. He was a vital part of the Bay Area arts community, holding memberships in and exhibiting with the San Francisco Art Association, the Society of California Etchers, and the Bohemian Club.

Hobart married the head of the art department at San Francisco's Mission High School, Mary Young, and in 1923 they opened an interior design company. He continued to work and paint, and lived throughout the greater Bay Area until his death in Napa, California on February 23, 1948.