Sultry Day

Paul Hambleton Landacre

Paul Landacre strikes a keen balance between sensuality and comfortable familiarity, portraying his wife Margaret and their pet cat lounging in a patch of sunlight coming through the open door of their mountain home, Margaret nude and reading. The only suggestion of civilization outside of their home is the crooked telephone pole in the distance standing sentry alongside two fir trees. Landacre's preoccupation with nature, home, and human desire in his artwork is rendered in a quiet confluence in "Sultry Day", inviting the viewer to place themselves in this peaceful space.

In writing a recommendation for Landacre for a Guggenheim Foundation grant, Merle Armitage declared: "It is my considered opinion that he is the greatest technician of his type who is working today. He is a complete master of the intricacies of wood-engraving, and his work from a technical side is impeccable."

Paul Landacre was born in July 1893 in Columbus, Ohio and attended Ohio State University until he was suddenly crippled by a debilitating illness. In 1916, he moved to Chula Vista, California to convalesce and he found solace in drawing the landscape and purchased his first linoleum blocks. He moved to Los Angeles in 1922 to attend classes at the Otis Art Institute. Woodengraving was not part of the curriculum so he was self-taught. He worked as a commercial illustrator, married Margaret McCreery in 1925, and devoted himself to woodengraving in 1926.

Landacre had his first solo exhibition at the Blanding Sloan Workshop Gallery in San Francisco in 1929 and an exhibition the following year at Zeitlin's bookshop in Los Angeles was the genesis of a long and rewarding relationship between the artist and Jake Zeitlin.

He taught at the University of Southern California, the Otis Art Institute and the Kahn Institute and was a member of and exhibited with the California Society of Etchers, the California Print Makers Society, the American Society of Wood Engravers, and the American Society of Etchers. Landacre became the pre-eminent American woodengraver, an honor bestowed on Rockwell Kent and Carl Zigrosser. His mastery of the medium led to his election to the National Academy of Design in 1946. Landacre illustrated award winning books of poems for Ward Ritchie and Alexander Dumas, A Gil Blas in California and his first solo book, California Hills and other Woodengravings of 1931 won Fifty Books of the Year.

Paul Landacre died in Los Angeles, California on June 1, 1963, soon after—and emotionally resulting from—the death of his wife who had been an essential working companion for 38 years, even helping the artist late in his life pull impressions from the formidable Washington Hand Press. In March 2006, with the growing appreciation of Landacre's artistic significance, their hillside home was declared a City of Los Angeles landmark (Historic Cultural Monument No. 839).