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OREGON VOICES

Artist Ray Strong

An Enduring Vision of the Oregon Landscape

by Mark Humpal

IT WAS A CRISP OCTOBER MORNing as our two-car caravan headed out from the Frenchglen Hotel, bouncing along the dusty, washboarded road to the top of Steens Mountain. In the van ahead of me rode one-hundred-year-old artist Ray Strong, who had confided to me in early 2004 that he had always dreamed of seeing and painting the distinctive notch-topped mountain but, for various reasons, had never made the trip. After we reached the turnout for Kiger Gorge and surveyed the heavily rock-strewn path to its rim, we realized it would be impossible to roll Strong's wheelchair to a suitable viewpoint for him to sketch. Four of us decided to carry him down, wheelchair and all — "sultan style" — to an appropriate spot near the rim of the gorge. There Strong went to work, sketching the scene in charcoal on canvasboard with his remarkably large, steady hands seemingly undiminished by time. From there, we traveled further up, to the edge of the East Rim, where Strong viewed firsthand the extensive panorama of the Alvord Desert. That evening, he amused dinner guests at the Frenchglen Hotel with entertaining stories delivered in a booming voice and with occasional harmonica accompaniment. 1
      I first met Ray Strong in February 2004, after arranging to interview him regarding his activities with another Oregon painter, Clyde Leon Keller. Who better to ask about Keller, I thought, than an artist who painted with him for over three years in the 1920s? When I arrived at Strong's home and studio in Santa Barbara, I was welcomed by an alert, bright, and outgoing man of ninety-nine years who gladly answered each question in detail with colorful language and gestural animation. Strong fully addressed my questions regarding Keller, and we proceeded to spend the remainder of the afternoon discussing the many Oregon paintings tucked here and there in his studio, some of which had been painted as long ago as the mid-1920s. As I reflected over the day that evening, I decided there was an equally fascinating but more timely story to be told than the one I was currently developing on Keller and the early Oregon Impressionists. I decided to focus my attention on Strong's life and art and spent the following three days interviewing him and becoming familiar with his work through the many paintings scattered about his large studio. Strong was enlivened by my interest in his painting activities in Oregon, and I soon discovered that his connections to the Pacific Northwest were lasting and extensive. Our lengthy discussions about all things Oregon reawakened his desire to return to the state and paint in areas he had not seen before:
I never made it to Eastern Oregon.... I always dreamed that sometime I would.... [I did go] outside of Dufur, the bare hills out of The Dalles, John Day country at different times over 30 to 40 years. I never really got to Eastern Oregon or Steens Mountain. I always wanted to get to Wallowa Lake ... yes it's the kind of thing I would have wished to have gotten, but never did.1
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Figure 1
    After getting his first glimpse of Steens Mountain in October 2005, centenarian artist Ray Strong sketches Kiger Gorge on canvasboard.

    Courtesy Mark Humpal, photographer
 


 
      Today, artist Ray Strong is considered by many art historians and collectors as one of the foremost California landscape painters of the twentieth century. Perhaps not as well-known is that Strong has left an extensive artistic legacy to his home state, Oregon. His enduring vision of the Northwest landscape was nurtured early on by his parents, who were active in theater arts in Portland, most notably acting and singing in productions of Gilbert and Sullivan musicals held at the Apollo Club.2 They also believed in art and music education for all their children and encouraged each child to play a musical instrument; Ray first tried cornet, then switched to flute in high school. 3


 
Figure 2
    The Strong family celebrates Christmas with neighbors at their Southeast Portland home in about 1914. Standing from left to right are Strong's brothers Edward and Hillman, his mother Ethel, and his father H.W. Seated to the far left is his brother Winston; Ray is on the floor with a toy train in his hand. The neighbors are unidentified.

    Courtesy Ethel Strong Adams
 


 
      From the time of his teenage years until his early thirties, Strong's artistic talents blossomed and became more refined as he worked with a succession of art teachers and mentors. Throughout his long and prolific career as a professional artist, Strong repeatedly returned to Oregon for extended painting trips and exhibitions, and he always kept the natural, rugged beauty of the Pacific Northwest alive in both his mind's eye and in his dreams.

 4
RAY STANFORD STRONG WAS born on January 3, 1905, in Corvallis to Harold (H.W.) and Ethel Strong. H.W. Strong wrote in his journal that, at just over eight months old, "Ray is precautious, precocious, quick to learn, ambitious in extreme."3 Following the completion of H.W. Strong's law studies in 1906, the family moved to Portland and, in 1908, built an Arts and Crafts style home on East Eighth Street. One of the earliest houses built in the Brooklyn neighborhood, surrounded by numerous open lots, and within a stone's throw of the east bank of the Willamette River, the home was an ideal location for the adventurous young Strong children to explore and play as well as fertile ground for the emergence and development of Ray's artistic talents. 5
      At age seven, Strong was bedridden with a near-fatal bout of ptomaine poisoning. His recovery was long and gradual, and he was home-schooled as a result. He recalled:
My father, a lawyer, told the truant officer that by my studying an hour each day at home, I could then regain my health out-of-doors to balance my studies. In retrospect, my illness made me a painter as I was free to fish, roam the fields and bluffs about the Willamette [River] in Portland chasing health and butterflies, till I was nine when I skipped into the third grade.4
 		6
      A physically and mentally active child, Strong compensated for restrictions to his activity by sketching and painting in watercolors. Copies of nineteenth-century Hudson River School landscapes by Strong's maternal grandmother were displayed in his family's home and captured his imagination. He copied the pictures and found additional subjects for practice within the pages of National Geographic magazines. Recognizing the enthusiasm and diligence with which he pursued his sketching activities, Strong's parents decided, around the time he was twelve years old, to take him to Mary "Mamie" Parvin Brown, who taught watercolor and china painting in Portland. 7
      Brown had moved to Portland from Salem around the turn of the century, establishing the Northwest Normal School of Music and Art in 1912.5 Strong's mother had been taking china painting classes with Brown and took him along with her on weekends. Strong remembered arriving at Parvin's studio and observing the room full of women who "would take pure shapes, such as dishes, vases, and the like and proceed to massacre them [with applied decoration]."6 Strong followed a different course of study under Brown's tutelage, learning to paint by copying prints and magazine illustrations in watercolors. 8


 
Figure 3
    Any family picnic or excursion was an excuse for Strong to paint en plein air, as in this photograph with his mother and sister at Paradise Park on Mount Hood in about 1925.

    Courtesy Ethel Strong Adams
 


 
      In 1918, Fanny Cotton, who was the widow of H.W. Strong's former employer W.W. "Judge" Cotton, approached Strong for advice regarding her 181-acre raspberry and wheat farm in Gresham. They worked out an agreement whereby the Strongs would lease the farm for ten years.7 The family moved to Gresham and established residence in the large farmhouse on the property. Everyone had assigned jobs on the farm; when Ray became old enough to drive, he assumed all of the trucking duties — loading crates of berries and delivering them to the canneries and produce terminals in Portland as well as picking up supplies for the farm. 9


 
Figure 4
    An eighteen-year-old Strong (left) poses with an unidentified friend prior to driving a load of freshly picked raspberries in a Model T truck from the farm in Gresham to Portland.

    Courtesy Ethel Strong Adams
 


 
      Early -twentieth-century Gresham, twelve miles east of Portland, was a growing town with a distinctly rural flavor and an agriculturally based economy. The Strong children spent many hours hiking, exploring, hunting, and fishing in the relatively undeveloped land. Shortly after moving to Gresham, fourteen-year-old Strong began to paint in oils, using a number of old tubes of paint — remnants of his grandmother's art activities — he had found on a top shelf in the Brooklyn home while the family was packing for the move to Gresham. Strong's interest in landscape painting intensified as he learned to paint in oils, and he often hiked to remote and rugged locations for subject matter. Strong painted without any formal instruction and established a lifelong preference for painting his subjects out-of-doors and on location — en plein air.8 10
      Strong's growing passion for and progress in art began to command the attention of his father, who endeavored to locate a suitable instructor to more formally guide his son. H.W. inquired about instruction at a number of art stores in downtown Portland, and the most prevalent advice he heard was to call on Clyde Leon Keller, a prominent local impressionist landscape painter who owned a thriving art supply and framing shop known as Keller The Art Man.9 Keller had started painting landscapes in oils approximately eight years earlier and had begun teaching landscape painting around 1921.10 That Keller had developed a local reputation as a landscape painter and was also sole proprietor of a successful retail establishment appealed to H.W. Strong's desire to guide his son into a career that would provide financial stability. Arriving at Keller's shop, Strong was fascinated by his paintings as well as the finishes Keller applied to his gold frames to darken and tone them down. "He had a silver wash that he made up," Strong recalled, "and he would wipe this over the bright gold and that would take the curse off of it."11 Keller also took Strong to see two large paintings — approximately thirty-by-forty inches — he had recently completed for the Columbia Theatre in Portland. Strong recalled being astonished on seeing the large works:
This was really a grand opera of painting ... a sense of envelopment all over. The whole thing was complete and juicy. It was like biting into Hood River apples right off the tree. I thought they were magnificent and I didn't know how in the hell he could paint that scale with the juicy pigment he put on it. He juiced up his oil painting and I never saw anything parallel to it until Gardner Symons.... They were juicy — post-impressionist — with a lot of gusto.12
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Figure 5
    Dicey weather was seldom a deterrent to Strong, seen here painting a landscape in the snow on Mount Hood during the winter of 1923. One of his brothers is visible in the background.

    Courtesy Ethel Strong Adams
 


 
      H.W. Strong paid Keller five dollars per session to accompany Strong on Sundays, painting outdoors from the fall through the spring for over three years. Because Strong's help was needed on the farm during the summers, he did not paint with Keller then. Strong would borrow the family's Ford Coupe and pick up Keller, who did not drive, at his home in East Portland early on Sunday mornings and convey him to varied and remote locations to paint. Keller painted primarily around the outskirts of Portland, by the Columbia Slough, and on Sauvie Island. Strong remembered accompanying him to paint the dense stands of Cottonwoods and the earthy colors of the moist, cut banks on the backwaters of Columbia Slough. Every year, between the berry harvest and resuming his high school studies and tutelage under Keller, Strong would venture alone into the Mount Hood country, painting the mountains and other rugged scenes. On seeing some of Strong's sketches from those sojourns, Keller asked to be taken there to paint.13 12


 
Figure 6
    Mount Hood in Moonlight from Paradise Park, 1924, 16" × 24", oil on canvasboard. According to Strong, this oil was painted on location after premixing paint values in the headlights of his car.

    Courtesy of the author
 


 
      In Keller, Strong found an enthusiastic mentor and kindred spirit. Both were prolific painters and nature lovers who were not deterred by the Pacific Northwest weather conditions that were often frequently challenging and unpredictable. They would simply rig a tarp over their heads if it was raining or build a bonfire if it got cold and continue to paint. Keller did not teach Strong in any formal or regimented manner or give lessons in his studio; the two would simply paint side-by-side, with the older artist offering advice and pointers to his young friend. Strong recalled that Keller had taught him how to suggest the soil beneath the foliage in his landscapes by first under-painting his initial charcoal sketches with "Indian Red" pigment, thereby also achieving the appearance of greater volume and mass in the finished work. Strong remarked that Keller "never touched my paintings with a brush, but would always give me a good crit [art criticism]."14 While Strong did not desire to imitate Keller's impressionistic brushwork in his own paintings, at least one surviving example of Strong's work from his time with Keller, a painting of a cottonwood forest interior, exhibits the sinuous lines and dappled color employed by Keller.15 Encouraged by Keller, Strong began to exhibit his paintings at the Multnomah County Fair in 1921.16 During the next four years, he garnered numerous premiums from the fair for his figure studies, portraits, street scenes, marines, and entire collections of landscape paintings.17 13
      During the early 1920s, Strong's ability to associate with artists other than Keller was limited because there were no significant art associations to join. The Mutual Art Association, the Circle "A" Club, and the Society of Oregon Artists — all of which had emerged in the early 1910s — were defunct by 1920, and the Oregon Society of Artists was not organized until 1926.18 Keller's artistic energies centered on his framing business during the week and his painting excursions on weekends; consequently, his art activities were pursued largely outside the realm of the Portland Art Museum School, where educators such as Harry Wentz and Clara Jane Stephens influenced a large circle of students. Strong's tutelage under Keller did not push him toward Portland's artistic life, and Strong's quest for painting-subjects took him into remote locations east of the city. 14


 
Figure 7
    Harvest, Estacada Farm, circa 1927, 23" × 33", oil on canvas. Strong was hauling a load of lime in the family truck and stopped to capture this scene in oils.

    Courtesy of Tim Strong
 


 
      In 1924, Strong's high school baseball team traveled to the town of Dufur, about twenty miles south of The Dalles. For the first time, Strong glimpsed the landscape east of Mount Hood, where the tall firs and lush foliage of the Willamette Valley and the west-facing slopes of the Cascade Mountains are dramatically replaced by the sparsely vegetated and arid terrain of the high desert region of Central Oregon. Having taken his paint box on the trip and risen early in the morning, Strong sketched the dry vastness and the sculpted, parched hills in the vicinity of Dufur and Tygh Valley to the north. He later recalled that it was that particular morning when he became an "earth painter."19 For Strong, being an "earth painter" meant a preference for depicting essential structural features and qualities of any given landscape, unobstructed by vegetation, and painting features of the land unobstructed by foliage. He believed the essential structural qualities of a landscape were vital in his work. 15


 
Figure 8
    Deschutes Country, 1941, 10" × 14", oil on board

    Courtesy of Tim Strong
 


 
      Strong graduated from high school in 1924 and registered to enter the University of Oregon in Eugene, but his older brother Ed and Ed's college friend Norton Brown encouraged him to instead pursue his passion for art in California. They suggested that he work under the guidance of Brown's aunt in Palo Alto, Elizabeth Norton, who was an accomplished professional artist.20 The three young men persuaded Strong's father to support the idea with finances, if not in spirit. That fall, Strong left for California and moved in with his brother, who was finishing studies at Stanford. Soon after his arrival, Strong began painting and sketching under Norton's guidance. She introduced him to her teacher, Hobart Jacobs, who had arrived in Palo Alto in 1923 from New York.21 Strong remembers Jacobs's advice:
Each Eucalyptus is reaching for the sun. Don't do a bunch of them, take one, root it and let it, in your drawing, reach for the sun and from the rooting and reaching you will get the life of that particular tree.22
 Jacobs's words struck a deep chord with Strong, who disseminated the same advice to aspiring landscape painters throughout his long career as an art teacher. Strong gradually integrated Jacobs's teachings into many aspects of his own evolving approach to landscape painting, and he mastered an ability to envision natural forces and structures that lie unseen below the surface of the earth. In subject selection and in development of a painting, Strong worked to comprehend the ages-old geological forces and the gradual effects of weather that informed the visual characteristics of the land he would strive to capture on canvas.		 16


 
Figure 9
    Autumn Landscape near Sandy, Oregon, circa 1927, 18" × 24", oil on canvas

    Courtesy of Tim Strong
 


 
      Strong also received helpful criticisms from William Posey Silva, while on periodic visits to his studio in Carmel, and he began more structured, formal training at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) in San Francisco.23 He painted city scenes and landscapes around Palo Alto and, in 1925, exhibited a number of those works at the Palo Alto Art Club (later the Pacific Art League) in their gallery, which was reached through a side door in the Bryant Street Library.24 The subjects of those paintings included "sketches of crescent moons, eucalyptus, a Redwood City circus tent at night, and Palo Alto shops also at night with lights skidding across wet pavement."25 Jimmy Swinnerton viewed the exhibit, took note of the high quality of Strong's work, invited him to his studio in Palo Alto, and offered to give him instruction. Swinnerton was a charter member of the recently organized Art Club, as was Elizabeth Norton, and was a nationally syndicated cartoonist and accomplished desert painter who worked in a highly detailed, realistic style.26 17
      Shortly thereafter, Swinnerton asked Strong to join him and a group of painters, including Frank Van Sloun and Ferdinand Burgdorff, on a trip to Arizona to paint the Grand Canyon and places in northeastern Arizona such as Kayenta and Monument Valley from August to November 1925.27 Swinnerton, thirty years Strong's senior, became a technical and philosophical mentor to the young painter during the trip, advising Strong that "the greatest thing is to be a landscape painter and to pass it on to others."28 Swinnerton encouraged Strong to boldly utilize his natural abilities in regard to color and suggested that Strong focus on the most essential elements in his compositions, eliminating superfluous details. Strong recalled that Swinnerton encouraged him to acknowledge Burgdoff's tips on drawing and composition but to disregard his advice on color.29 18
      When Strong returned to San Francisco in November 1925 and resumed his studies at the CSFA, he was summoned by the school's director, Lee Randolph, to present samples of the nearly two hundred small oil sketches he completed on the trip.30 Strong remembers that Randolph exclaimed, "Get with it Ray. If you continue to keep painting in this style, you'll soon find yourself fifteen to twenty years behind the times!"31 Randolph discussed contemporary art innovations, specifically endorsing the achievements of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, and suggested that Strong make some effort to incorporate those approaches in his studies. Resisting what he saw as the school's propensity to promote an almost slavish following of modern European art trends, Strong told Randolph, "I'm from Oregon and I want to become a man who can paint Oregon as well as Western scenery.... Forget any more time here with you!"32 19
      Strong left CSFA in early 1926, but he still desired further professional training and skill development. Swinnerton had told Strong about the Art Students League (ASL) in New York, where students chose instructors who best suited their particular needs and goals. The ASL instructors, Swinnerton explained, were not overtly partial to any particular style in art and generally did not force students to follow trends. Frank Van Sloun had been both a student and instructor at the ASL, and he likely offered Strong additional encouragement and advice about the school. Strong found the school's atelier method — essentially a group of students working to progressively master the fundamentals with a guiding professional artist — attractive, and he decided to continue his art studies at the ASL. He arranged to travel to New York in the late summer of 1926. 20


 
Figure 10
    Multnomah County Fair, circa 1927, 20" × 24", oil on canvas

    Courtesy of Tim Strong
 


 
      Prior to his departure for the East, Strong made his annual trip home to Gresham to resume trucking duties on the family farm. He painted Oregon landscapes and exhibited over twenty paintings at the Multnomah County Fair, eighteen of which were mentioned by name in the local newspaper.33 Other prominent local artists who had entries were C.C. McKim, Clyde Leon Keller, Sydney Bell, Melville T. Wire, and Emil Jacques. Prior to the opening of the exhibit, the paintings were competitively judged by Esther Wuest and May E. Gay, and the finest selections were prominently hung on the line (at eye level) in the exhibit building.34 Three of Strong's oil paintings —Trail to Never Never Land, Mt. Hood in Clouds, and S.P. Repair Yards— were accorded that placement.35 21


 
Figure 11
    Mount St. Helens from Larch Mountain, circa 1949, 12" × 16", oil on canvasboard

    Courtesy of Tim Strong
 


 
      Strong arrived in New York in the fall of 1926 with a monthly stipend of one hundred dollars from his father. On his first visit to the Art Students League, he saw a book on life-drawing by one of the instructors, George Bridgman, and promptly enrolled in Bridgman's class.36 Strong acquired solid technical training with Bridgman, but he became frustrated with Bridgman's approach to art education, complaining that Bridgman taught by "reducing everything to a cube and a cone," thereby obfuscating the fluid, natural lines of the human figure.37 By chance, he saw a drawing of an old man's head by a fellow student at the League, Mortimer "Red" Wilson.38 The drawing, Strong believed, probed the psychological interior and spirit of the subject by subtly invoking the qualities that enlivened and informed his character. The remarkable poignancy exuding from the portrait reminded Strong of the work of Frans Hals. Wilson told Ray that he had created the drawing in Frank Vincent DuMond's class. After only a month with Bridgman, Strong switched his enrollment to DuMond's class.39 22


 
Figure 12
    The Brook, near Poughkeepsie New York, 1928, 13" × 16", oil on canvas, exhibited at the National Art Club in New York in 1928

    Courtesy of the author
 


 
      During his time in New York, Strong received most of his ASL education and guidance from DuMond, and the significance of Strong's early studies with DuMond cannot be overstated. In DuMond's classes, Strong acquired advanced technical skills and found a mentor who possessed the philosophical attitude and abilities he sought to develop as a professional artist. A fellow ASL student and friend of Strong's, Ogden Pleissner, was similarly affected by DuMond:
His philosophy of teaching has never been one dealing with the mere manipulation of pigment on canvas, nor with the keeping abreast of every new "ism" that appears on the horizon, but with timeless fundamental principles. He has eloquently shown his students that the true source of inspiration and learning is not alone in the painted work of the masters, but primarily in life — the very life they are living.40
 DuMond's principal philosophy regarding art was, like Strong's, fundamentally rooted in a naturalistic and representational approach to painting. That similarity gave Strong validation and encouragement regarding his vision of art. That vision, which had previously existed for Strong as an intuitive approach, was now becoming more conscious, refined, and synthesized as a result of DuMond's instruction.		 23


 
Figure 13
    Dancing Trees (Mount Jefferson from Timberline Lodge), 1952, 9" × 12", oil on board

    Courtesy of Tim Strong
 


 
      When Strong began studying with DuMond in early 1927, he brought a number of recent Oregon oil sketches for DuMond to examine. Strong recalled that DuMond "loved my little sketches from Oregon" and gave him a criticism regarding one of his Oregon mountain paintings: "You're sense of distance — of ridge on ridge — you catch the poetry but you don't enhance it with your foregrounds.... They're mush! Use Cadmium Orange here like a brass band and your poetry will be greatly enhanced."41 DuMond taught students to use a nine-value grey scale, ranging from white to black, created by progressive mixing of white and black pigment.42 By mixing that range of grey values with pure colors on the palette, artists can depict light, shadow, and accents in a unified manner, allowing them to capture the light and atmosphere of any particular time during the day or season. Strong's paintings from what may be termed his "New York Period" are notable not only for evidence he implemented DuMond's grey values but also for the preponderance of greens and yellows, colors which characterize many of DuMond's works.43 Many of the techniques Strong taught his own students were rooted in DuMond's teaching. Strong applied his growing skills to the immediate subjects he found in New York City, painting small panels depicting
ash can subjects.... I made sketches of the East side where I had a rent of 25 dollars a month, on a top floor, and from up there I could look down to see California oranges [in pushcarts] to broken light from railroad ties and paint the blind musician and others from above.... I painted lots of looking-down subjects as well as on the street.44
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Figure 14
    Kale Patch, 1936, 14" × 18", oil on board

    Courtesy of the Multnomah County Library
 


 


 
Figure 15
    A Cherryville Barn, 1936, 24" × 24", oil on board

    Courtesy of Tim Strong
 


 
      Strong returned to Gresham to resume his duties on the family berry farm in mid-May 1927. His old friend and mentor, Clyde Leon Keller, invited him to join the Oregon Society of Artists (OSA), a Portland art organization recently organized by the Impressionist, Realist, and otherwise representational artists of the region in response to the Portland Art Museum's increasing focus on currents in contemporary art and its reluctance to hold exhibitions of more traditional art forms.45 Strong became a charter member and exhibited with the group intermittently for nearly twenty-five years. After that summer's harvest he completed Solitude, a painting depicting a solitary snag left standing after a forest fire on Mount Hood, and it was shown at the first annual OSA exhibit at the Portland Art Museum in 1927. 25
      Inspired by a conversation on the train from New York to Portland, Strong planned to move overseas with his fiancée Betty Brown and live in Paris for two years. Strong's father, who subsidized most of his art-training and living expenses, opposed the plan, and their arguments over the matter briefly cost Strong his summer job on the farm. In an unaddressed letter apparently written to vent his own frustrations, H.W. Strong laid out a plan to divert Ray from Paris with the family's new vacation home and property at Brightwood, on the west slope of Mount Hood:
This brings me to my last tyrannical act. I told Ray that in my judgment a trip to Paris this fall was folly. Looking from Ray's standpoint, [Jimmy] Swinnerton told Ray Paris could give him nothing and for him to spend the next year in the Mt. Hood territory painting, painting, painting. He would find himself there.46
 		26
      Evidently, Strong acquiesced to his father and spent most of the next year and a half in Oregon. Strong and Brown were married at her family's home in Palo Alto on August 3, 1928.47 Following a brief stay in Oregon, they traveled east so Ray could resume his studies at the ASL that winter and Betty could continue her training as a concert violinist. After returning to New York, Strong had two paintings — a Mt. Hood scene, Twilight: Oregon, and a New York picture, Manhattan Bridge— selected for the prestigious National Academy of Design Winter Exhibition of 1928.48 27
      About the time Strong resumed his studies with DuMond at the Art Students League in January 1929, he applied for and was accepted as a junior member of the National Arts Club (NAC) in New York. The NAC was founded in 1898 by art and literary critic and art collector Charles DeKay, who envisioned a venue for artists and art patrons to gather with the goal of nurturing a distinctly American approach to art. Strong entered nine canvases in the 1929 NAC Junior Exhibit and won a cash prize for Twilight, which is likely the same painting as Twilight: Oregon.49 He maintained involvement with the NAC during the following two years, exhibiting paintings and being awarded prizes.50 28
      The Strongs were living in New York when the stock market crashed in October 1929, leaving the economy in shambles and plunging the country into the decade-long Great Depression. Strong maintained employment at a bakery until he finished school and left New York in 1933, providing some insulation from the harsh economic conditions of the times. Strong was also able to gain some income from his work as an artist. In 1930, he secured work on a project through the efforts and social contacts of his brother Ed. One of Ed's professors at Columbia University, Frederick Woodbridge, had a son, Fritz, who was an architect and had recently designed a parish hall addition for Keene Valley Congregational Church, in upstate New York. Woodbridge hired Strong to design and execute murals for the new hall, depicting a panoramic view of the Adirondacks from a central vantage point in the Keene Valley area.51 The project took approximately six weeks to complete, with Strong often working all day and into the night. 29


 
Figure 16
    Keene Valley and Church, 1955, 18" ×24", oil on board. In 1955, Strong made a trip to Keene Valley to clean and restore the church murals he had painted in 1931, and he completed a number of new paintings while in the area.

    Courtesy of Jane Knight
 


 
      After completing the Keene Valley murals in September 1931, the Strongs returned to New York City, where Ray embarked on his last year of study with DuMond at the ASL. During the summers of 1932 and 1933, the Strongs returned to Keene Valley, where Ray sold landscape paintings of the area. Late each summer, formal exhibitions of his Keene Valley pictures were held, the first of which offered sixty paintings for sale.52 By the end of their last summer in Keene Valley, the Strongs had saved enough money from painting sales to purchase a car and drive to California in the fall of 1933. They envisioned opening an art gallery and supply store based on cooperative ideals, where members could pool limited resources to facilitate greater buying power and savings for all who participated in the venture. They purchased nearly one thousand dollars of art supplies and opened Artists Cooperative Associates at 166 Geary Street in San Francisco in 1934, with Betty Strong managing all gallery and sales operations. Strong was enthusiastic about replicating a school similar to the ASL in San Francisco, and he helped organize the Art Students League of San Francisco over the winter of 1934–1935. Strong, Maynard Dixon, George Post, Frank van Sloun, and Dixon's metal artisan brother, Harry Dixon, formed the initial core faculty. Establishing the school began Strong's long career as an art educator. He primarily taught landscape painting and collaborated with Maynard Dixon to teach mural painting. Strong was also a student, studying with Dixon and Van Sloun. 30
      Strong's paintings from the mid-1930s onward display Maynard Dixon's influence in their subtle but effective stylization of forms, which allowed him to convey a more direct and powerful visual expression of his response to the beauty of the American West.53 Dixon encouraged Strong to avoid relying heavily on the incorporation of modernist techniques. Both Strong and Dixon integrated hints of modernist approaches — such as abstraction, cubism, simplification of forms, and elimination of unnecessary details — into many of their works as a way to strengthen the visual impact of their realist compositions. Strong commented on his own attitude regarding modernism in landscape painting:
To hell with all that experimentation and expression and the intangibles of the spirit with abstraction. My god, the earth talks to you [and there is] enough abstract down there [in the earth] to try to grab. Why fool around with being "on the wave?"54
 		31
      Artists who remained anchored in realism — such as Strong, Dixon, and those who gravitated to their school and gallery — found themselves increasingly unable to find exhibit venues other than their own Artists Cooperative Gallery. Their entries to other shows were repeatedly turned down. While formal exhibition prospects were increasingly limited, Strong became more open to opportunities tangentially related to art, augmenting his fine art with mural commissions, diorama backgrounds, and other commercial applications of his skills. 32
      Strong began to work for the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) in early 1934, creating large works such as The Golden Gate Bridge under Construction, which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt selected to hang in the White House as a picture that exemplified the economic recovery promised by the New Deal.55 Strong completed another PWAP mural project, a five-by-twenty foot mural of the Santa Clara Valley hills flooded with spring sunlight, for the library of Theodore Roosevelt Junior High School in San Jose. The library mural was so well-received by students that they organized a paper drive to match Strong's $37.50 weekly PWAP wages and hire him to execute another mural for the school. They requested a mural of smaller dimensions than the previous one and stipulated that he create a work totally of his own design.56 33
      Given carte blanche, Strong translated his personal concerns for the state of the world into a politically charged composition much in the spirit of Diego Rivera's work. When Strong presented his preliminary sketch to the school, the faculty expressed alarm about the right half of the mural, which included depictions of a field of bones, a full skeleton wielding a scythe, an emaciated child, and other grim and ominous scenes of war that Strong had primarily derived from images of World War I, though he was also influenced by recent civil unrest in Spain. The other half of the mural depicted a world of peace, plenty, and harmony based on cooperation. The school's principal decided to approach the issue democratically and selected one hundred students to vote for the acceptance or rejection of the mural; the vote was nearly unanimous in favor of the mural. The finished mural is one of Strong's most powerful and visually stunning paintings —The Choice: Peace or War. The mural is portable and was loaned for exhibit over the following few years, most notably as the centerpiece for the Women's Peace Projects building at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island in 1939.57 34


 
Figure 17
    The Choice: Peace or War, 1934, 66" × 158", oil on canvas laid down on board

    Courtesy of Pacific University
 


 
      In 1934, Ray became resident artist for the U.S. Forest Service in the Western states and completed a series of background paintings for dioramas for the California Pacific Exposition in San Diego, which opened in 1935. Those exhibits depicted Civilian Conservation Corps workers engaged in various activities. Other important large-scale WPA-era works by Strong included post office murals in Decatur, Texas, and San Gabriel, California. He won both jobs via open competition with other contemporary artists under the auspices of the Section of Fine Arts.58 Under "Section" (as it was commonly called) artists could request blueprint drawings of public building wall spaces in order to create sketches for proposed murals through anonymous competition. The artist with the winning submission received a paid commission plus materials to paint and install the mural. 35
      During the mid-1930s, Strong began painting landscapes and coastal views of West Marin County, works for which he is perhaps best known in California. He continued to return to Oregon for lengthy visits for the next forty years, creating hundreds of landscapes of rural and rugged Oregon scenes. He also maintained membership in the Oregon Society of Artists and exhibited with them through the 1940s. Strong showed work in the April 1946 inaugural exhibit for Elfstrom Galleries in Salem and was offered an exhibit of his paintings for their show the following month.59 In July of the same year, he exhibited twenty-six paintings at J.K Gill in Portland.60 While spending the summer of 1947 painting in Gresham, Strong read an editorial in the Oregonian by Stewart Holbrook, calling for an artist to document the effects of the Tillamook Burn of 1945, which had devastated five hundred square miles of the Tillamook State Forest in Oregon's northern Coast Range.61 Strong drove to the site and sketched a view of King's Mountain in July.62 He presented the resulting work, painted "in somber grays and blacks, the dullness of a high fog rolling in from the sea adding to the melancholy of the scene," to Holbrook in August and requested that it be permanently placed at the Zigzag Ranger Station.63 36


 
Figure 18
    Tillamook Burn, 1947, 24" × 34", oil on board

    Courtesy of Oregon Department of Forestry, Tillamook Forest Center
 


 
      Strong exhibited two Oregon paintings in the annual Oregon Society of Artists show in 1947. The following year, he exhibited two more at OSA and showed work at Elfstrom Galleries' third anniversary exhibition as their guest artist. In 1950, he exhibited one painting in the Artists of Oregon show at the Portland Art Museum. In late August of 1950, Strong and his family arrived in Gresham for an extended stay, which was a fruitful trip in terms of the number of Oregon landscapes he produced. During an extended vacation to the family property at Brightwood in early July 1952, Strong sketched and painted virtually every day. The dramatic landscapes he painted on location in the high elevation environs of Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens are, I believe, some of his finest Oregon works.64 37
      With the advent of abstract expressionism in the years following World War II, representational art fell even further out of favor with art critics, curators, and collectors. Through the 1950s, Strong found it necessary to supplement his reduced income from painting sales by teaching and taking on carpentry jobs. Prior to World War II, Strong had begun to work on diorama backgrounds for museums and institutions. He became a highly sought artist in that niche field, raising the art of the diorama to the level of fine art. His major commissions include diorama backgrounds for the Science in the Service of Man exhibit at the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939 and Palo Alto Junior Museum in 1941. He completed subsequent installations at the University of California's Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Morro Bay Museum, and the Hillendale Museum (now defunct) in Pennsylvania during the 1960s. For all of those dioramas, he consulted extensively with geologists, biologists, paleontologists, and paleobotanists. In the case of the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum dioramas, Strong developed new innovations, such as utilizing what he called "logarithmic shells" for the background in order to facilitate more effective and seamless blending of foregrounds to his background paintings. Strong described his methods in a 1965 article for American Artist magazine:
Some of the diorama problems at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, where I was Artist in Residence 1960–1964, may suggest the range of creative thinking required by museum work. Luckily, I received the Santa Barbara assignment before the forms were built; thus I was given the opportunity to explore the best possible form for the given subjects to be depicted.65
 Strong's painstaking attention to accuracy and attention to detail were remarkable in the field of diorama art and succeeded in providing viewers with incredible spatial depth of field and aerial perspective.66		 38
      By May 1966, Strong was back in Oregon on another painting trip. He exhibited and lectured on landscape painting at Oregon State University and Oregon Southern College in Ashland in late summer 1966.67 The exhibit in Ashland was comprised of sixteen large Oregon paintings, including at least one he had painted in Ashland earlier in the year while finalizing the details of the show. Strong's heightened activity in Oregon during this trip also had the aim of proposing to Oregon State the idea of creating an artist in residence position.68

 39


 
Figure 19
    Strong works on a diorama background for the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum in about 1963. This diorama is entitled Oso fresh water marsh, and it measures 8-by-34 feet. Strong painted it with a mixture of liquitex acrylic and oil paint.

    Courtesy of Tim Strong
 


 
STRONG'S OREGON PAINTINGS comprise a distinct artistic legacy to his home state and may be categorized into three groups.69 As a young man, Strong hiked to high altitudes on Mount Hood to produce oil paintings of rugged terrain that few people, let alone artists, have experienced firsthand. Those small panels — colorful, fresh, and intimate — display a kinship to the works of early–twentieth-century Canadian artists, The Group of Seven, which Strong remembered viewing in the mid-1920s in San Francisco.70 The Oregon works created during Strong's years in New York comprise the next group and begin to display an academic polish resulting from the guidance of Frank DuMond. Those works resulted in Strong receiving high acclaim and entrance to the National Academy, one of America's most prestigious exhibition venues. On return to the West, Strong's exposure to the art community of Northern California, particularly his years with Maynard Dixon, pushed his work toward a deeply personal, stylistically distinct, and modern expression of objective realism. He interpreted the Oregon landscape in that fully developed style, with subtle variations, from the mid-1930s until the end of his life. Through Strong's gradual synthesis over time of many concepts and techniques for creating successful landscape paintings, from many important teachers and mentors and, above all, from prolific output and direct experience, he developed a guiding concept of "the brick and the veil." Essentially, his idea is that atmosphere can never be separated from the underlying solidity of earth when depicting a landscape:
The Brick and the Veil.... For me this is a visual symbol, the kernel of an idea, a synthesis of two concepts, a symbiosis that in the nature of it all, the realities of the landscape of the Oregon country, pose to me. How does one secure in paint the solidity of form, its width, breadth, and depth except in value relationships ... to envelope it with light and mood, over the forms of its geologic creation, through the veil of time, of seasons, space, and growths of night and day.71
 Many of Strong's paintings from his mature period are notable for the crisp staccato brushwork of their foregrounds, verging on impressionism, which invite viewers to enter a rhythmically and poetically unified composition.		 40


 
Figure 20
    Mount St. Helens from Eden Park, 1952, 22" × 28", oil on board

    Courtesy of Tim Strong
 


 
      Ray Strong's Oregon paintings are little-known today, in spite of the large body of work he created in the state during more than six decades.72 After he completed most of his training in New York in the early 1930s, he decided not to return to Oregon but to settle in San Francisco, sensing better economic prospects in that city during the lean years of the Great Depression. While living in Northern California from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, Strong weathered the incoming tide of abstract expressionism and other movements in non-representational art. Unlike many artists of his generation who gravitated towards modernism, he identified ideologically with older artists, a number of whom became his most influential teachers and mentors. 41
      In spite of his many years living outside of Oregon, Strong continually returned to paint the landscapes of his youth, managing to do so with an output of work that is formidable both in number and quality. His unique interpretation of the Oregon landscape and the distinct style evident in his paintings is perhaps due to the fact that he lived away from the state and incorporated perspectives and techniques from artists who had no direct contact with other Oregon artists. Strong's Oregon works may also have offered him a counterpoint to his California works, elevating the quality of both. His shuttling between both states no doubt kept his artistic vision of each vital and fresh. His goal in returning to his native state was simply to continue to interpret the dramatic landscapes and vistas of Oregon with feeling and sincerity, realizing his boyhood dream of becoming a landscape artist of the American west. 42


 
Figure 21
    Dancing Trees (Mount Hood from Larch Mountain), 1957, 18" × 48", oil on board

    Courtesy of the author
 


 
      In more recent years, Strong continued to return to Oregon for extended visits to his family in Gresham and, of course, to paint the Oregon landscape. In 1994, he traveled to Gresham to host an exhibition of his Oregon paintings at the Gresham Historical Society. Becoming progressively less able to travel with advancing age, Strong did not go back to Oregon again until 2005. After our Steens Mountain trip, Strong returned to his home and studio in Three Rivers, California, where he continued to paint and exhibit until his death in July 2006 at age 101. I visited Strong a week before he died, finding him weak but fully alert, gracious, and philosophical. After his passing, I began to reflect on the long, productive life of this remarkable artist, who knew early on what he wanted to do, stuck with it for so many years, and accomplished so much. I found myself thinking about a poem Strong wrote in the early 1960s, which I believe encapsulates the essence of who he was as a landscape painter:

To Paint

To paint is to affirm.
To paint vitally — is to apply awareness vigorously.
To paint wisely — is to know fully your subject, in depth.
To paint well is to gesture-stroke yourself into the felt-movement,
Whether it be tree, field, valley, hill, mountain or cloud.
For to paint is to love freshly again, and again deeply involved
In each new subject's significance,
Fusing sensory-self with all of your past,
Funded into the present alive moment,
Here and now.73

 43


Notes

1.  Videotaped interview with the author at the artist's studio in Santa Barbara, California, February 24, 2006. Hereafter cited as Strong interview. As I transcribed the videotapes from our first interview and began to research many of the details Strong had told me, I was astonished not only by the clarity of his memory for events and people but also by the accuracy of his recall for details I was often able to corroborate through further research. I developed additional questions, and those would in turn lead him to offer even more finely detailed information. In total, I interviewed Strong in six multiple-day visits over two years.

2.  Harold and Ethel Strong's children were: Edward, born 1901; Harold Hillman, born 1903; Ray, born 1905; Bryman, born 1907 (died in infancy); Winston, born 1908; Ethel, born 1916; and Jack, born 1918. The Apollo Club was founded. See 1947 Apollo Club program pamphlet, Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Portland.

3.  "Record of Events," entry for September 20, 1905, Collection of Ethel Strong Adams, Ray Strong's sister [hereafter Ethel Strong Adams collection].

4.  Ray Strong, "Brief Biography of Ray Strong for the Santa Barbara Art Association Tour," typewritten draft, May 25, 1985, Ray Strong Family Papers, held by Tim Norton Strong in Upper Lake, California [hereafter Ray Strong Family Papers].

5.  See Ginny Allen and Jody Klevit, Oregon Painters, The First Hundred Years (1859–1959) (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1999, 7, 124–25.

6.  Strong interview, November 19, 2004.

7.  Harold Strong purchased the Gresham farm property at the conclusion of the lease term in 1928.

8.  "En plein air" is a French term essentially meaning "in the open air." The immediacy of the scene in terms of light and atmosphere in a painting is the desired result of this practice, as opposed painting in the studio. There is also a spontaneous vitality evident in such works, as the essentials of the scene must be captured within a couple of hours, because the qualities of light on the subject change progressively over time. Strong, like other artists, would often use smaller field works as studies for larger and more refined studio works.

9.  Strong told me about his father's inquiry process in personal conversations. See Allen and Klevit, Oregon Painters, 205–206. Keller's earliest formal art instruction was in Salem at Willamette University with Marie Craig LeGall, also an early teacher of Mamie Parvin Brown. The shop was located at 450 Washington Street.

10.  Clyde Leon Keller, Jr., "This Is Your Art Life Clyde Leon Keller," an unpublished, brief biography written and illustrated by the artist's son in 1955, Keller family collection, held by Clyde Keller in Bend, Oregon.

11.  Strong interview, February 14, 2004.

12.  "Symons, George Gardner (1861–1930)," in Edan Hughes, Artists in California 1786–1940 (Sacramento, Calif.: Crocker Art Museum, 2002), 1086; and Strong interview, February 12, 2004.

13.  Strong interview, February 14, 2004.

14.  Ibid., February 15, 2004.

15.  Ethel Strong Adams collection. Adams, Ray's sister, told me that she had saved this painting from destruction by the artist.

16.  "Many Prizes Won," Gresham Outlook September 30, 1921. Strong won first premium for Figure Study and second premium under Best Collection in the Art category, watercolor division.

17.  "Premium Awards Given," Gresham Outlook August 7, 1923. In the Oil Painting division, Strong won first premium for Marine Scenes and for Best Collection and second premium for Landscapes, Nature and Best Collection. In the Watercolor Division, Strong won first premium for Figure Study.

18.  See the chapter "Art Organizations and Centers" in Allen and Klevit, Oregon Painters, 61–73.

19.  Strong interview, February 15, 2004.

20.  "Norton, Elizabeth, (1887–1985)" in Edan Hughes, Artists in California 1786–1940 (Sacramento: Crocker Art Museum, 2002), 822. Norton, a sculptor and painter, is perhaps best known for her woodblock prints depicting animal subjects.

21.  Hughes, Artists in California, 579.

22.  Strong interview, November 19, 2004.

23.  Hughes, Artists in California, 1023.

24.  Tanya Sabatini, "A Page from Our Past: Elizabeth Norton," a short biography posted on the Pacific Art League website, http://palpa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemid=1 (accessed January 15, 2008). The Palo Alto Art Club was formed in 1921; in 1985, with Elizabeth Norton's consent, the group's name was changed to Pacific Art League.

25.  Ray Strong Family Papers. From a circa 1970 typewritten paper, apparently a transcribed interview with the artist on the occasion of the opening of his one-man show at Los Robles Gallery, Palo Alto, California. The show dates were November 16 to December 7, 1970.

26.  Hughes, Artists in California, 1085.

27.  Ibid., 170, 1135.

28.  Strong interview, November 19, 2004.

29.  Ibid., February 13, 2004.

30.  Hughes, Artists in California, 912.

31.  Strong interview, November 22, 2004.

32.  Ibid., February 24, 2006.

33.  "Professional Work Features Art Exhibit," Gresham Outlook July 30, 1926. The titles of Strong's paintings were: Trail to Never, Never Land; Homeward Bound; Sentinel; The Dunes; Twilight; Little Colorado Canyon; Carmel by the Sea; Eucalyptus; Top of the Ridge; Fountain; S.P. [Southern Pacific] Repair Yards; Quaking Aspen; The Storm; The Side of the Road; Mt. Hood in Clouds; Mt. Hood Sunset; Sunlit Alders; and Marine. In addition to these, Strong also submitted a number of sketches.

34.  "Wuest, Esther F., (1878–1975)" in Allen and Klevit, Oregon Painters, 325.

35.  "Art Exhibit Draws Appreciative Crowds," Gresham Outlook August 10, 1926.

36.  George Brant Bridgman, Bridgman's Life Drawing (Pelham, N.Y.: by the author, 1924), is likely the book Strong saw at the ASL when he arrived in 1926.

37.  Strong interview, February 12, 2004.

38.  "Wilson, Mortimer, Jr. (1906–1996)" in Peter Falk, Who Was Who in American Art (Madison, Conn.: Sound View Press, 1985), 686.

39.  On Dumond, see The Harmony of Nature: The Art and Life of Frank Vincent DuMond 1865–1951, (Old Lyme, Conn.: Florence Griswold Museum, 1990); and Barbara Rizza Mellin, "Universal truths and the laws of nature : the life, art, and teaching of Frank Vincent DuMond" (A.L.M. thesis, Harvard University, 1994). Class registration records obtained from the Art Students League indicate that Strong was enrolled in Bridgman's class from October 4, 1926, until May 14, 1927; the switch Strong recalled may not have been officially recorded. In a January 29, 2006, email, Stephanie Cassidy, archivist at the ASL, noted: "Then as now, students moved around from class to class without the knowledge of the office."

40. A Memorial Exhibition of Paintings by Frank Vincent Dumond, N.A. Sponsored by The Art Students League of N.Y. in the Galleries of the National Academy of Design, Exhibition catalogue published by The Art Students League of New York, May 25–June 22, 1952, p. 4.

41.  Email from Barbara Strong, January 8, 2006; and Strong interview, November 19, 2004. Frank DuMond had an enduring connection to Oregon resulting from his marriage to Helen Savier of Portland. In 1905, he was the chief of Fine Arts exhibit at the world's fair in Portland, the Lewis and Clark Centennial and American Pacific Exposition and Oriental Fair. The DuMonds visited Oregon regularly, and there are at least two known DuMond paintings depicting Oregon subjects.

42.  Strong explained that DuMond's system of grey values could be divided into seven values or up to fifteen distinct shades, depending on the needs of the artist.

43.  I have seen a number of works by Strong's students, including Oregon artists Lilian Bain, Helen DuMond, and Clara Jane Stephens, that utilize the yellow-greens distinctive in DuMond's paintings.

44.  Strong interview, November 19, 2004.

45.  The first name of this group, first organized in 1926, was "The Society of Oregon Artists." Owing to confusion between the new group and the 1910s group of the same name, it changed to "The Oregon Society of Artists" in 1929.

46.  "Ray's Case," a letter written by Harold Strong on July 7, 1927. Ethel Strong Adams Collection.

47.  "Ray Strong and Bride on Honeymoon Trip," Gresham Outlook August 24, 1928.

48.  Peter Hastings Falk, The Annual Exhibition Record of the National Academy of Design 1901–1950 (Madison, Conn.: Sound View Press, 1990) 493.

49. Exhibition by The Junior Artist Members, April 3 to April 26, 1929 (New York: The National Arts Club). Strong submitted the following paintings for exhibit: Back Court Yards — N.Y., Cherryville, December Afternoon, Indian Summer, The Road to New York, Twilight, Renascence, The Brook, and Oregon Landscape. The Junior exhibit, initiated in 1928, was created for artists under age thirty.

50. Exhibition by The Junior Artist Members, March 5 to March 28, 1930, (New York: The National Arts Club). Strong submitted the following paintings for exhibit: Twilight New Hampshire; Seventh Avenue; Central Park; Desert Storm, Arizona; Winter Afternoon, Oregon; Old Farm House; North Wind; Riverside Park; Central Park (2); Under the Bridge; and Silence. For Exhibition by The Junior Artist Members, March 4 to March 27, 1931 (New York: The National Arts Club), Strong submitted the following paintings: Ninth Avenue Elevated; Twilight; Riverside Park, Morning; and The Brook.

51.  According to Keene Valley librarian Karen Glass, these murals are still in their original location and are slated for conservation.

52.  "Exhibition in Parish House Keene Valley Church New York 1932," hand-written list of sixty Ray Strong paintings for sale, collection of the artist.

53.  Donald J. Hagerty, Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon (Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 1993) 139–72.

54.  Strong interview, February 12, 2004.

55.  The Public Works of Art Project was the first of the federal art programs designed to put artists to work during the Depression; it preceded the better known and longer lasting Works Progress Administration (WPA). Established by an act of Congress, the program lasted from December 1933 to April 1934.

56.  Hand-typed description of the mural, November 11, 1983, Ray Strong Family Papers.

57.  Typewritten note by Strong dated November 11, 1983, Ray Strong Family Papers.

58.  Heather Becker, Art for the People: The Rediscovery and Preservation of Progressive- and WPA-Era Murals in the Chicago Public Schools, 1904–1943 (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2002) 224.

59.  "Ray Strong: Exhibition and Sale of Paintings," exhibit brochure (Salem, Ore.: Johnson-Smith, 1946).

60.  "Ray Strong: Exhibition and Sale of Paintings," exhibit brochure (Portland, Ore.: J.K. Gill, 1946).

61.  "Call for an Artist," Oregonian July 8, 1947.

62.  Elizabeth Strong Diary, entry for July 14, 1947, Ray Strong Family Papers.

63.  "Editorial Inspires Artist to Paint Tillamook Burn," Oregonian August 31, 1947. This painting was recently rediscovered and is now on display at the Tillamook Forest Center, part of the Oregon Department of Forestry, approximately five miles from where the scene was sketched.

64.  Most of the details of this trip were well documented in Betty Strong's diaries. Most notable were the many positive comments made by Betty in reaction to Ray's work on location, not seen to the same degree on their other trips. A large number of Oregon scenes painted primarily between the years 1931 and 1952 formed the nucleus of what is now known as "The Elizabeth Strong Collection," held in the Strong family trust.

65.  Ray Strong, "Art of the Diorama," American Artist 29:8 (October 1965): 39, 71. This is a detailed account of the pioneering work Ray did in the diorama field from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s. Strong did not use strict mathematical formulations in developing what he referred to as "logarithmic curves" for his diorama shells. Rather than the flat curved backgrounds housed in rectangular diorama shells of typical diorama designs, Strong's dioramas were concave enclosures with sides made of curves such as those seen in seashells. As the curved panels of the diorama intersect each other, such as with side to back or back to top, the seam of their intersection is a curve of a progressively tighter radius. The overall effect produces the illusion of infinite depth.

66.  Lawrence Abt, Ray Strong interview for Santa Barbara Natural History Museum Oral History Project, April 4, 1990, 1–10.

67.  During the 1960s, Ray lectured nationally on landscape painting through the Association of American Colleges.

68.  Letter to George L. Stevens, Director of Memorial Union and Student Activities, November 17, 1966, Ray Strong papers.

69.  Ray destroyed most of his work prior to 1924.

70.  Strong interview, February 12, 2004.

71.  From an undated, circa 1990 note written on an exhibition brochure of Strong's work.

72.  Based on Strong's sales records, exhibition catalog titles, and the paintings I have seen in family and other collections, I estimate the total number of Strong's output of Oregon subjects at five hundred works.

73.  Typewritten biography sheet including a number of poems, Ray Strong Family Papers.

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