J.B. Bonsall "Pier at Santa Monica California" Oil, Painted New Orleans 1962 View Watchlist >
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Lot # F761
System ID # 29887513
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J.B. Bonsall "Pier at Santa Monica California" Oil, Painted New Orleans 1962
An expressionist coastal landscape by Louisiana modernist James Belton Bonsall (1926–1999), depicting the Santa Monica Pier and its historic Looff Hippodrome carousel pavilion (built 1916), the grey-black structure canting hard across a field of teal water and stormy green sky. Bonsall works the scene in confident, flat planes — arched windows blacked in, the pier deck driving to the upper right on its cluster of pilings, foreground brush rendered in swirling yellow-green impasto. Signed "Bonsall" lower right in paint. Oil on stretched canvas, unframed.
The verso carries an inscription in the artist's hand documenting the work in full: "Pier at Santa Monica California, sketched 1960 with George Dureau, painted 1962 in New Orleans, J.B. Bonsall," with an exhibition notation for Frazar Library, McNeese University, January 16 – February 16, 1990. Bonsall trained at LSU, worked in California as a set designer for theater, television, and film, then settled in New Orleans in the 1950s, where he became a fixture of the city's mid-century art scene and produced over 500 works blending modernist abstraction with Gulf Coast subject matter. This canvas belongs to that New Orleans period and ties directly to a documented 1960 sketching trip with George Dureau (1930–2014), the noted New Orleans painter and photographer.
Provenance
- From the collection of the heir to the Bonsall estate
- Sketched 1960 during a documented trip with George Dureau; painted 1962 in New Orleans
- Exhibited: Frazar Library, McNeese University, January 16 – February 16, 1990
Collector's Note
The subject sits at a useful intersection: the Looff Hippodrome is an instantly recognizable California landmark, while the maker and painting history are firmly Louisiana modernist. Detailed artist-inscribed verso documentation and the Dureau association distinguish this from a standard Bonsall canvas in this tier.
CONDITION
Good with no remarkable damage. Minor surface scratching shows in raking light. Canvas is unframed on its original wood stretcher with staple holes along one edge.
DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS
- Overall: 24" H × 27" W × 7/8" D
- Medium: Oil on stretched canvas
- Signed: "Bonsall" lower right (paint); inscribed and signed verso
- Unframed
