Class of Winter 1934
Charles L.A. Smith
b. Auburn, Michigan, 1871
d. Los Angeles, California, 1937
Monterey Pines, 1934
Oil on canvas
39 x 46 inches
Conservation funded by the W.M. Keck Foundation
On April 26, 1934, the Gardena Valley News reported that the Winter Class had selected Pyramids of the Desert by Charles L.A. Smith as their purchase. However, around that time the painting apparently flew out of the open bed GHS truck after a student picked it up in Los Angeles; Monterey Pines must have been its replacement. It shows a road leading through the pine and cypress forest of Pebble Beach down to the shoreline, where Samuel F.B. Morse had opened a golf course in 1925. The narrow road, dappled with sunlight, leads the eye of the viewer through an allée formed by the branches of a cypress tree. Sand traps and golfers are framed in the distance, with the lavender and blue of the Pacific Ocean behind.
