Christian August Jorgensen

Christian August Jorgensen
(1860-1935)
Born in Oslo, Norway in 1860, Christian Jorgensen moved with his family to San Francisco in 1870. He showed artistic promise at an early age, and when the School of Design opened in 1874, he was among the first to enroll. Jorgensen later became an instructor at the School of Design and served as assistant director from 1881-83. He established a studio in San Francisco where he continued to teach and by the mid-1880s had acheived critical success as a landscape painter. Over a period of five years he visited the sites of the 21 California missions and during this time he produced 80 watercolor studies of the missions and a complete set of oils.
In 1899 he spent a considerable amount of time in Yosemite, and eventually obtained a permit to build a studio-home there. Over the course of 19 years he continued to paint there during the warm months. (His home in Yosemite is now used as headquarters for the government rangers.) In 1905 he built a home in Carmel which is now the Hotel La Playa. He and his wife lived there for a few years, but most of his time was spent at the family home in Piedmont, CA. Travel excursions brought him to Italy (1892-94), Mexico (1907), the Grand Canyon (1910) and New England (1916).