Will Sparks - Adobe - Oil on Canvas P3212

Measures 13 3/4" x 17 5/8", frame is 19 3/4" x 24". Painter, etcher, and muralist, Will Sparks became one of California's premier artists, known for his mission and nocturnal adobe scenes.  He was highly prolific, completing about three-thousand oil paintings. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and showed art talent as a youngster, selling his first painting when he was age twelve.  He became a doctor, but his love of art prevailed.  He attended the St. Louis School of Fine Arts and then went to New York and then Paris to the Academies Julian and Colarossi where he studied with Gerome, Harpignies, and Bouguereau.  In Paris he earned money as an assistant to biologist Louis Pasteur for whom he made anatomical drawings.  He was also much influenced by the Barbizon painters and Cezanne.He returned to St. Louis and in 1886 exhibited in the St. Louis Expo where he met Mark Twain whose stories of California inspired him to head West.  He stayed briefly in Cincinnati and Denver and then Cali