Virginia City

John Charles Haley

Virginia City is an historic town in Storey County, Nevada, founded in 1856 after the first major lode of silver was discovered in the surrounding hills. It is abutted by the Sierra Nevada hills.

In 1940 the San Francisco Chronicle devised a “plan to bring western art to the western public” by presenting Contemporary Graphics to its readers. On Sunday, March 10, 1940, the series was launched with a three-quarter page devoted to the concept of purchasing original art by western artists.

Contemporary Graphics presented twenty original prints in four series over four consecutive Sundays. Works by Herman Volz, George Gaethke, Ray Bertrand, Rueben Kadish, and Arthur Murphy comprised the first series. Sunday, March 17th, the Chronicle presented the second series that included works by Glen Wessels, Sargent Johnson, A. Ray Burrell, Beckford Young, and Theodore Polos. The third series, featured on March 24th, included works by Dong Kingman, Shirley Staschen, Clay Spohn, Edgar Dorsey Taylor and George Harris. The fourth and final series was presented to the public on March 31, 1940, with works by Otis Oldfield, Benjamin Cunningham, Mallette Dean, John Haley, and Erle Loran. Virginia City was offered in this fourth set of Contemporary Graphics on March 31, 1940.

With the exception of Mallette Dean's linoleum block print, all the prints were original lithographs. Each print was pencil signed and titled and the edition size was 150. The price for the individual works was $2.00 and they could be purchased in San Francisco from the following locales: the Chronicle, the City of Paris, O’Connor, Moffatt, Paul Elder, Schwabacher-Frey and Gumps.

John Charles Haley was born in Minneapolis on September 21, 1905. His earliest studies began at the Saint Paul School of Fine Art where he came under the influential instruction of Cameron Booth. His art education continued in Europe where he studied with Hans Hofmann in Munich and André Lhote in Paris. Haley arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1930 and began his forty-two year career as Professor of Art at the University of California in Berkeley.

Fascinated by the art of other cultures, he amassed an amazing collection of art, masks, and artifacts which inspired his sculptural work. Haley died on November 10, 1991.